Hi all, today I have an interview with Matt Bohnhoff on Campfire Memories, which is currently on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2! Check out the interesting responses from Matt below!
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What is Campfire Memories, both as a product and as your vision?
Campfire Memories is GM-less one-shot game about families going on a difficult camping trip and then looking back on the experiences fondly later. It’s going up on Kickstarter as a Zine Quest project from Feb 4 through 16. I want this game to be an accessible, light way for people to get talking. In addition to the camping problems in the fiction, it usually brings up real anecdotes from the player’s own trips, which is perfect! Interestingly, after talking with my editor, the safety tool we settled on is the Luxton Technique from your website!
My experiences camping as a kid always had a fair share of troubles to encounter! What sort of troubles do players in Campfire Memories encounter that make their time difficult?
The complications in Campfire Memories are best framed as man-vs-nature obstacles. These can take the form of broken gear, bad weather, animal encounters, or other things. The important part is that they pit the characters against their environment, not each other. Characters can, of course, get upset with each other but that becomes more of a sub-plot than the focus of the game. When a player has their turn setting a scene, it’s the job of the player to their left to come up with the complication.
What do you do, mechanically or otherwise, to provide structure to the camping trip and story for the players and keep them engaged?
There are a couple mechanical widgets that keep players engaged in the game. Players all take turns setting scenes and creating complications. In my experience, most folks are super excited for the chance to do one of those. Also, characters are built with a goal, the kinds of experiences they want to have on their trip. This provides a lot of direction for players to push their characters in during camping scenes. The goal comes back into the play during the reflection phase, as the characters look back on their trip!
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Thanks so much Matt for the interview! I hope all my readers enjoyed the interview and that you’ll check Campfire Memories out on Kickstarter for Zine Quest 2 today!