Our Favorite Dragon Con Tradition: Scavenger Hunts and Hilarious Challenges

Every Labor Day weekend, we head down to Atlanta for Dragon Con, one of the most popular hobby and fandom conventions in the world. Our group (pictured above) usually cosplays at least a few of the days, we’ve been IN the parade, we go to panels, people watch, attend the late-night parties, and of course we drink! But that’s only part of the fun. One of our traditions now is a scavenger hunt filled with challenges, dares, and chaos…

How Our Dragon Con Scavenger Hunt Started

What began as a handful of quick dares and photo challenges printed out on paper became something we looked forward to every year. The next year, we added teams, bonus objectives, and hand-made trophies for the winners. Soon, we were making custom group shirts with challenge lists that could be marked off with Sharpies.

We kept adding new twists — RPG-style health systems, trading cards with surprise challenges, and even scavenger hunt decks with one-off tasks that could change the course of the game. These games turned downtime between panels and parties into unforgettable moments.

Favorite Convention Challenges We’ve Created

Some of the best challenges have become stories we still talk about years later. Here are a few highlights:

• Convincing three different Spider-Men to recreate the infamous pointing meme for a photo
• Starting a conga line at a late-night Dragon Con party (our friend dressed as Mojo-Jojo led one with about 50 people)
• Convincing someone we thought they were famous to get their autograph
• Handing out funny copyright violation tickets to people cosplaying as disney characters

These challenges always draw in the people around us. They spark conversations, invite strangers into the fun, and turn simple moments into shared experiences. We always leave the convention with hilarious photos and videos, unexpected new friends, and… memories!

Now You Can Thrillify Your Con

We’ve built Thrillify to bring all our years of scavenger hunt experience into one place and make the whole thing much easier to manager. The app lets teams:

• Join or create a custom event
• Complete extremely entertaining and memorable photo, video, and trivia challenges
• Track progress on a live leaderboard
• View a real-time feed of all submissions
• Use timed challenges to add urgency and excitement

Everything that used to live on printed shirts, card decks, and scribbled notes now lives in your pocket. And this is just the start to what we’re imagining for Thrillify.

How to Create Great Convention Challenges

Whether you’re making your own game or playing in ours, here are some tips we’ve learned for creating fun, engaging challenges at conventions:

1. Use the crowd

Dragon Con is filled with people in cosplay, artists, vendors, and fans from every corner of fandom. Create challenges like:

• Find a group cosplay from the same show
• Replicate an obscure meme with a stranger
• Get an action shot with someone in an obscure costume
• Collect 10 different ribbons and attach them to your badge
• Get a picture with a celebrity or panelist
• Get a stranger to complete a challenge with you

2. Be specific but flexible

You want your challenges to be clear and achievable, but open enough that people can interpret them in creative ways. Instead of “take a picture with a cosplayer,” try:

• Find a Marvel character eating something
• Find a board or arcade game and play it
• Find a cosplayer with a prop that matches your own

3. Make players get creative

The best challenges are the ones that get people thinking outside the box and interacting with others, rather than just finding something. Here are some ideas:

• Design a hat out of convention swag and convince someone to wear it
• Create a “Cosplay Citation” slip (e.g. “Too Much Sparkle,” “Excessive Shoulder Pads”) and hand it to a cosplayer
• Find two people from totally different fandoms and get them to act out a dramatic scene together. Capture it on video.

4. Variety is key

Mix photo, video, and trivia to keep things interesting.
Try to come up with many unique challenges different from the others. You can also vary point values based on difficulty or creativity.

5. Timed challenges keeps things exciting

One of our favorite features in Thrillify is the ability to set timed challenges — where players only have a limited window to complete the task once it’s revealed.

At a con, this turns “find a Spider-Man cosplay” into something a lot more intense:

You see the challenge appear. You’ve got 20 minutes. Somewhere out there is a Spider-Man. Can you find him, pose for the classic pointing meme, snap the shot, and submit it before the timer runs out?

This time pressure adds urgency and energy to what might otherwise be a casual game. It gets people moving, strategizing, and laughing — fast. You can use timed challenges to reward people who are paying attention and create surprise moments throughout the day.

Ready to Play?

If you’re headed to Dragon Con this year, join our Event in Thrillify for free with the code dcon25 and play alongside us. Whether you’re competing to win or just want to spice up your con experience, we promise it’ll make the weekend even more memorable. The Thrillify event opens on Wednesday Aug 27th, 2025 at 6:00 PM ET, you’ll be able to join the Event at that time. This Event will be entirely run by us as huge fans of the Con, and is not affiliated with or endorsed by Dragon Con in any way.

And if you want to play with your own groups and create your own challenges — whether at a con, a party, or a work retreat — Thrillify makes it easy to build and run your own custom game and is completely free for small groups!