letterboxing (hidden goodies)

It'd be cool if sl had something similar to letterboxing. In rl (parts of it anyway), participants put a blank book (or paper pad) with an inkstamp in a weatherproof box and hide it somewhere inconspicious. When someone finds the box (and knows what it is), he signs the book and stamps his own log book with the stamp provided.
We could do this in sl. Instead of a weather proof box, it could be anything- a distinctive kind of box, for example. Owners could hide them on their land. The boxes would be scripted to record who's been there and perhaps could take messages. Ideally it could distribute a tangible proof that it was discovered by each person, perhaps distributing a unique pattern or script which the discoverer could use but not sell/give away.
I think this would be fun.

Olympia

Sounds rather like Geocaching.

You can do this yourself.

I could make them, but I could only hide 'em on my land, which is pretty small. To clarify, I was thinking a group of people could agree on the looks/specifics of the "boxes" and each participant would hide one or more on his/her land, so they could be potentially anywhere.

For those interested, the link below is about "real" letterboxing.



http://www.letterboxing.org/

No, you could start a group, and get people organized.

You can do this yourself.

That's...pretty esoteric.

People who are into letterboxing might be interested in BookCrossing.

I forgot to ask, if a letterbox contains things other than just the logbook and stamp, are you supposed to take them? Do you replace them with something new? Do you appreciate them momentarily then move along? Would a ham sandwich be a good thing to include? Ok, forget that last one.

Mmmmmmmmm... Grilled Peanut Butter Sandwiches.

Heh heh

I believe you put the box back where you find it. I hear some rl letterboxes have notes on/in them explaining what it is and requesting that the finder doesn't move or take it.

In sl you probably could put a ham sandwich (if you had a ham sandwich texture) if you felt like it.

A few posts ago someone pointed out that this could be done as a group effort (as oppossed to a linden-designed/sponsored feature). If I get time to whip up a virtual "letterbox" on my own I'll post it on the events forum and see if anyone's interested in playing

Olympia

check out slgeocaching.com we are a geocaching community that has set up the sport in SL. We just started but it seems to be growing pretty well.

Is this some kind of treasure hunt type of thing or what? Does the person with the most stamps win a prize or something?

I know about real Geocaching and it works like this:
People will find the latitude and longitude of some place and put a box of trinkets their. It's an out of the way spot that only people who are looking for the box should be able to find. They then publish the latitude and longitude to the geocaching site (or make it more of a challenge by obscuring the numbers with large math functions or other forms, such as "the number of seconds into the minute JFK was shot" being a good example).

Geocachers then work out the lat/long and travel there and find the box. Out of it they pull a trinket and replace it with another they brought with them.

Other forms of geocaching involve virtualized locations, such as "find the lat and long of a dragon" or "lat and long same as the time and date" (i.e. dd/MM/yy hh:mms becomes dd"mm'ss N yy"hh'MM as an example you can arrange the numbers however you'd like so long as you are at the location within 5 minutes of the indicated time).

SL geocaching would work in a slightly different manner, I'm sure, but it'd be doable.

geocaching in sl and geocaching in real life have some similarities and some differences.

The hunt is still fun in both. Less sweat in SL though.
Caches can have SWAG in SL and RL.
Caches all look like 30mm ammo cans in SL.
Cache owners have the option to restrict a cache to non members (much like the premium membership option in real life caching).
You can log your finds in SL and RL. for second life this is done at slgeocaching.com
You can hide caches in SL and RL. This is the big difference. Hiding caches in SL is an art onto itself. This is due to land owners and groups. slgeocaching.com forums for more details.
In SL the more caches you find and/or hide the higher your ranking gets.
Events are held both in SL and RL.
Also, with land turnover rates as high as they are in SL , owning a cache is like raising a kid...they sometimes return back home and you have to go put them out in the world again.

The Key difference though is hiding caches in SL. I have hidden over 27 caches now and for each one I have had to meet and educate the land owners on what geocaching is. I have met a lot of cool landowners and have made some good friends just doing this. I almost enjoy hiding caches as much as I do finding them now!

Anyway..thats my 2 cents.

This actually can be done like "Find the (Wi-Fi) router!". Lol. As weird as it sounds, driving around with a WiFi signal tracker in your friend's hand and "hunting" it sounds pretty fun ^.^.

I've done that sans "friend" and add one "car."
Of course, I was trying to find an unsecured wireless network at the time.