A Hitchhiker Mission is the route and conversational brief given to a group as they travel from one Towel Station to the next. A mission usually includes three things: - a route. - a topic or question to discuss. - one or more optional roles, contexts, or perspectives for the participants to adopt while talking. The route may include several Way Points along the way. These way points can act as prompts, pauses, observations, recording spots, or small decision points. A mission is therefore not just a destination. It is a structured journey. The conversational part of the mission gives the walk its purpose. A group may be asked to discuss a topic directly, approach it from a particular angle, or imagine that each participant is speaking from a different role. These roles do not always need to be used, but they can help a group move beyond polite first impressions into a more shaped and memorable exchange. A Hitchhiker Mission can also be encoded directly into the mobile app as a geolocated walk. In that form, the mission becomes something closer to an audio trail, a conversational game, and a map-based ritual all at once. As participants move through the route, the app can trigger stories, prompts, provocations, or fragments of previous conversations via GPS location. This means the place itself becomes part of the narrative structure. A corner, doorway, bridge, stair, or café is no longer just background. It becomes a speaking part of the mission. Some missions also include small challenges along the route. These may be playful, reflective, performative, or slightly strange, in the spirit of Hitchhiker LARP. A challenge might ask the group to notice something, ask a passer-by a question, record a short message at a particular threshold, or reinterpret the topic in light of a feature of the place they are passing through. When the mission is app-based, these challenges can also unlock digital rewards. Participants may be able to collect geotagged NFTs or other place-linked tokens when they complete the overall route, reach a specific Way Point, or satisfy a challenge at that point. These tokens can act as souvenirs, proofs of participation, markers of narrative progress, or credentials that unlock later missions. In this way the mission becomes not only a conversation but a layer of locative game play. Missions can be very simple. A simple mission may just be a short route, one question, and one recording point. Other missions can be highly customised by the organising team, with multiple way points, layered prompts, optional branches, triggered audio, symbolic rewards, and specific roles for participants to explore. A Hitchhiker Mission does not have to end with the event that first launched it. A good mission can outlast the inaugural gathering and become part of a wider asynchronous game. People can replay it later, in the same place or a different one, adding their own reflections and extending the Guide over time. In this way a mission becomes more than an event instruction. It becomes a reusable conversational pathway.
# See - Towel Game Walk-and-Talk Towel Station - Way Point and Guide - Hitchhikers App and Hitchhiker LARP - GPS Storytelling and Geotagged NFT