Mission Ideas
What mission themes have you come up with - besides just "hack all these things that just happen to be geographically close to each other"? (I'm hoping we're all making singles and one-row banners, to do on the next two Second Sunday Mission Days.)
Here are ten themes I've made. For most, I used a portal picture for the mission badge.
1) "Photograph the Courthouse" (or something large) - hack portals all the way around it, each with clear view to take a picture from a different angle. "Then you can show friends your photo album and your badge!"
2) "Jesus is Everywhere" or "Angels are Everywhere" - hack only. This is respectful to religions, and interesting artistically to see different ways Jesus or angels are depicted. (These are usually driving missions - unlikely to find enough close together. Good for unique hunting.)
3) At a park - visit each numbered sports field - in order (sequenced, hack only).
4) Anywhere, sequenced in a spiral, hack only - BUT if you link each portal to the prior one, you make spiral field art.
5) "Capture the Animals of" (name-of-place) - Description: "The animals are loose! Please help capture (or at least feed) them all." All animal-related portals, capture/upgrade.
6) "Ghost Tour" of haunted places. To make sure people can read the story of what ghost is at each portal, I made it passcode, with password always "boo". I made 9 of these in St Augustine FL. They were my most time-consuming missions, because of the research. But I saw paid tours going by and said, this should be free.
7) "Linking Past and Present" - current and historic portals (mostly hacks, but at least one link).
8) "Trek and Field" at a college or university, where you have to get out of your car, hacking, but with a field required near the end. Now you're on the school's Trek and Field team, lol.
9) Name-of-place "Garden Club" - all plant-related portals, and you "plant a field". (All hacks except one field.)
10) "Heros' Mission" at a portaled-up veterans park. "Come play war games, while remembering those for whom it was not a game. Capture, upgrade, link, field, mod."
GENERAL NOTES about LINKS and FIELDS in missions:
A) It helps to put in the description "This is an advanced-level mission, for agents looking for a challenge. Cannot be done under a field". OTOH, if you can't do it the first time, it gives you something to think and plan about - and a really good feeling when you finally accomplish it.
B) Beware putting more than one each (link/field) - it quickly gets hard to do with a friend. OTOH some people really enjoy the challenge of doing link/field missions together - it takes planning and teamwork. (Also, missioners can include portals not on the mission.)
Comments
I'm not a fan of linking missions, but as the Unofficial Honorary Secret Vice-President of Team #NoBanners, I spend an unhealthy amount of time thinking about "reusable" themes I can spread to different cities in my region. Sit back and prepare to be amazed (at how much time I must spend writing history lessons nobody reads):
Ghost Tours: I've done that, in four different cities so far:
On a related theme, some cities have too many fairy door portals, so "Fairies" (or however you spell it, not sure why I picked the spelling I did), is an easy theme:
(That one used to have more portals. The rest got deleted. Fairies are prone to moving on, once discovered.)
Secret Societies -- a tongue-in-cheek theme for the portals and history of local civic groups.
(Yes, the "Ladies Literature Club" and the "Ladies Library Association" really are two different societies. Women in this town were so into reading that one club wasn't enough for them.)
Welcome to the Neighborhood -- Downtowns and business districts get most of the mission love, but if a residential neighborhood has enough portals, you can create something that summarizes the history and vibe of neighborhood:
Historical Periods: World War II is usually the easiest, and almost everybody loves a good story about the last good war:
Historic Architects -- This one only works well in big cities, but if you've got enough "historic building" wayspots in a city, you can use them to tell stories about the architects who designed the buildings:
Dead Presidents is one that only works on college campuses with too many portals. Make a mission about the portals named after college presidents:
(I should have just called these ones "Dead Presidents Society.")
Take A Seat is a frivilous and slightly spiteful theme for areas that have too many memorial bench portals. It's the only time I use "capture or upgrade" in a mission:
(I wrote about this mission and its art on Instagram.)
Walking Tours -- Seriously, if the town already has history/architecture walking tours, just shamelessly copy them (as sequential missions) so agents doing the tours can get medals out of them:
Those are very clever! Thank you for sharing!! I'm inspired!!!
I remembered some others...
11) Passcode mission in a cemetery - where every answer is found on the grave or in the family plot. (This cemetery is open 24/7).
12) A water tower portal, along with fountains or other water-related portals that the water tower helps (theoretically, lol). This theme is more likely to be a driving mission.
13) "I went inside the statehouse!" would work with any public building with a dome that's pretty from the inside (so can be a mission badge), even if it's not a portal or FieldTrip. (It's probably a FieldTrip.)
14) A sequenced mission on a Path Around a Park - Then ANOTHER sequenced mission, in the other direction with the same portals - titled the same as the first, only backwards (karP a dnuorA htaP), with the same picture as the first, but upside-down.
15) Name-of-town Infrastructure, lol. Water tower, Post Office, City Hall, Library, art gallery, museum, etc. I was inspired by a mission named "You Can't Beat City Hall", description "so you might as well hack it." Also inspired by the "oldie but goodie" themes: a tour of murals, or of statues.
16) Remember #MissionsForGood? I think they're still good mission ideas, even if the tag isn't "a thing" anymore. For example, I made a mission that went to six different churches that join together to collect food for the local food bank, and encouraged missioners to leave non-perishables in a drop-box.
I've made sequential banners, but not all mine have to be done in a specific order. For all these, you could do any 1 or 6 or 12, or any odd number, and your profile would look fine:
My favorite is... well, it's quite specific and to be fair it wasn't my idea.
One day on a drive from Las Vegas to the San Francisco bay area a friend and I stopped in California City and had lunch with Joe Philley. After we ate he said, "Want to go see the town? Hop in the car." We spent the next hours careening around California City seeing the sites and hitting as many unique portals as we could. Joe showed us his airplanes. He took us out to see the sort of junkyard place filled with Mad Max cars and pieces from movie sets. We went here, there, and everywhere. He talked up a storm, told stories, and alluded to some others. Eventually we ran out of both time and city to explore, so my friend and I wished him well and headed home.
Two days later we learned that Joe had died unexpectedly. It seemed impossible... he was so energetic, so full of life. I told the story of our crazy afternoon to some friends and one of them said, "You should turn that into a mission." I scrolled comms for that day and meticulously reconstructed our journey, created Delta102's Last Ride, and finagled an executive-level override to permit a mission to be about an agent. The mission starts at Gloria's Fountain, at the restaurant where we had lunch, then follows our path as much as I could do that... it was impossible to capture some of the nutso U-turns or places where he backed up in the middle of a road because he passed a portal and wanted us to get the unique. The mission photo is from that day, and is perhaps the last photo of him ever taken.
Nice tribute, @Hosette Maybe it'll inspire another agent to create a mission that recreates a fun time. Maybe a parade route? Nothing can be that epic tho. Wow.
I did create a (sequential) mission to follow a local Memorial Day parade, but it was a lucky situation where there were enough military-related portals along the route to make the mission's theme align with the parade's theme. I haven't been able to replicate that anywhere else.
I've seen a fair number of misisons created to accompany festivals and conventions, but they tend to be random "these are the portals closest to the park." It's difficult to relate missions to events like that.
I've come to learn that using Password actions and preparing short test type questions is a better way to actually getting people to read. Questions are very short and test type answers are A, B or C, so no time wasted there either if you don't know the right one.
Also, placing description at the portal is not good since it gets hidden as soon as you trigger the action.
@XK150 Thank you for the ideas! I got "Secret Societies" missions approved in 2 Georgia towns. Also a Welcome To name-of-town mission that ends at a Welcome Center portal. AND 2 "You Can't Fight City Hall". All 5 approved in time for November's Second Sunday!
I also created a "Dead President's Society" and a "Take a Seat" at Clemson University, where I plan to visit in December. But I didn't submit them yet. I need to withdraw some old missions to open up the slots, and I don't want to withdraw anything so close to November's Second Sunday - just in case someone is planning. Next week tho! (I researched and made a write-up for each dead president.)