My Favourite PC Travel Game: Campfire Chats
In one campaign years ago, the PCs did so much travel it seemed far-fetched to give them an encounter every time they hit the road. However, I still wanted to pace things so the party was not instantly appearing at their destination each time. A fun solution we came up with was campfire chats. This month’s blog carnival is about travel in games, so I thought the campfire chats would be topical.
These chats take only a few minutes real time and are social mini-games that involve roleplaying and character development. Even combat gurus will enjoy these games, and all PCs will benefit, especially the cardboard ones.
Campfire chats represent periods where the party is killing time and telling stories about themselves. This might be done while sitting out dark nights around the campfire. It could also be done during brief exchanges when the PCs clump together on the deck or in their saddles to trade barbs and friendly banter.
The game is played like a trivia contest where players try to guess or remember information about each other. Groups with well-developed characters could use it to work out deeper character motivations and issues.
Here is how the game is played.
1. Create the questions
Before the session create several questions based on information and trivia characters would know about each other.
For example, how many siblings does each character have? Bonus: what are the siblings’ names?
It is not fun if you ask questions players would have no chance of correctly answering. The game is most rewarding if players get answers right.
2. Prepare materials
For each question during the game, players will write out their answers for each of their companions. How do you want answers to be recorded? You might need to prepare pens, papers, and whatnot.
Some options:
- Scrap paper, throw-away answers. Players use any old scrap paper, and after answers are tallied you don’t care about keeping the information and answers are pitched into the trash.
- Spare paper, keep answers. Use good paper you or players can keep and reference later.
- Notebooks. This is my preferred method. I buy $1 notebooks at the dollar store and players record questions and answers in them. I collect the books between sessions and study answers for hooks, spotlight opportunities, and ideas.
- Character sheets. This might be the best answer but requires advanced planning. Have players use character sheets with areas to record personal information about their personalities, traits, backgrounds and motivations.Answers to chats are available on the sheets, and if players don’t flesh out their PCs this way before the campaign starts, you can use the chats to get answers into slots over time. A nice easy way to round out PCs as the game wends onward.
You might also want to have spare pencils and erasers handy for player use.
3. Decide rewards
For every answer the players get right they receive a small reward. This teaches them to pay attention to the little details about their fellow players’ PCs.
For every answer other players get right about a PC, players also receive a small reward. This encourages players to share character details and remind each other about them, ideally through roleplay.
You decide what the rewards should be. Do this before session start, and best before campaign start, so you can establish game balance.
I use XP rewards. At low levels I offer 10 XP for each correct answer, for example.
You might offer other kinds of rewards, such as action points after 10 correct answers, special treasures place in later encounters after 20 correct answers, Pocket Points, bonus dice to future rolls, and so on.
Next, calculate the maximum reward possible after each chat. If a player gets every possible reward from a chat, what is the total? Use this number to see if you are potentially unbalancing the game, and then adjust individual reward amounts down if so.
If the maximum reward seems too small, then increase individual rewards a bit until you hit a sweet spot. Some players might not be too excited by these chats, but a decent reward will get them interested.
4. Start a campfire chat
When you feel the time is right, tell your group they are chatting with each other in-game, and that you’re initiating a round or two of campfire chats.
Try to set the scene with a good description to ease transition from typical gameplay to the campfire chat mini-game.
“You manage to build a small but warm fire despite the wet wood. As you huddle close, touching shoulders, to get the most warmth out of the meagre flames, you start to share bits and pieces of your pasts, taking turns it seems, so the memories might do their part to warm you up on this dark night in strange woods.”
Have your questions ready. Decide how much real time you want to spend on a chat. Often a single question is a great way to switch things up and make travel seem like it took awhile in-game.
A question should take about 10 minutes of game time, depending on group size.
5. Play the game
You ask one of your prepared questions.
Each player writes down their answers, usually one answer per fellow character.
For example, you might ask what each character’s last name is. In a group of five, that means each player needs to write four answers – the names of the other PCs.
Provide a time limit. A minute or two.
When time is up, you start with one player, who reveals the true answer. Go around the table and have each other player reveal their answer. Wrong answers can be funny and their own reward.
Correct answers get the reward you’ve assigned. Each player with a correct answer gets a reward, and each player who has a correct answer about their own PC gets a reward.
Depending on the question and type of answer, you might ask players to weave a short tale behind their true answer, or you can run this as a simple trivia game.
Once all questions and answers are done and tallied, approve the reward totals and resume the main game.
Hopefully the players will have learned more about each others’ characters, and maybe their own as well.
6. Good questions are the key
The true benefit of the game is the answers that come out. Answers will teach players about the characters and the party. This is a great tool to flesh out characters, generate inspirational material, and connect characters with the campaign and setting.
The quality of an answer depends on the quality of the question. So, asking fun and interesting questions is the key to this mini-game.
Here are a few examples:
Trivia
- What deity does each character follow?
- What is each character’s favourite weapon?
- What is each character’s favourite saying?
- When is each PC’s birthday?
- Who is each character’s biggest enemy?
- What food does each character like most/least?
Hooks
- What does each character’s father do for a living?
- What is each PC’s hometown?
- Who is each party member’s greatest enemy?
Character development
- Why is each character a member of the party?
- What does each character want more than anything else?
- What does each PC fear most?
In groups where character stories are important and shared often, you might consider questions like these:
- How did each PC get to be so good at their best skill?
- How did each PC come to be a memmber of the party?
- What was the lowest point in each character’s life and how did they get out of it?
Another way you can use campfire chats is to promote forgotten clues or to celebrate great campaign moments:
- What does each character think the true identity of the villain is?
- What is the best battle fought to date?
- What’s been the worst inn stayed at so far and why?
- Who does each character think has been the most interesting to meet and why?
This mini-game is a lot of fun and gets players thinking beyond the numbers and the rules. If you try campfire chats in your next game, came back and let us know how it went.
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January 22nd, 2010 at 3:04 pm
I am going to have to start doing this. Though when you got a group of mostly new players that have been playing the game as a hack&slash, how do you get them to reveal enough information to make the questions in the first campfire chat answerable in the first place?
January 27th, 2010 at 11:53 am
@ Robert – why not get all the other players to make up answers to the questions out of whole cloth and let the player whose character is “supposed” to be answering the question pick the one he likes best, or even mix and match?
January 22nd, 2010 at 3:16 pm
I had a GM who did this in a Werewolf game I played in, and I hated it. The whole “quiz” aspect didn’t sit well with me. Then again, I am not precisely a “people” person and can’t even tell you facts about my sibling who is all of 2 years younger than me. So… maybe this approach works best with people who are not borderline sociopaths/hermits?
January 22nd, 2010 at 6:44 pm
As always, the best-laid plans of GMs need to bow before the most important question: What sort of gaming do your players want? If hack& slash floats their boat and roleplaying in character is a necessary anchor, then this technique may not be what’s best for your campaign. The question to be asked, of course, is how much did the other players in this Werewolf game get out of it? Sometimes you have to compromise so that other people can have their fun, too. Perhaps the key is for you always to play characters who also don’t like sharing their pasts, are not “people” persons, as you put it?
On the other side of the coin, while games are not a therapy session, this was a safe opportunity to walk the other side of the street for a while and explore. It might not work in Werewolf, which is a bit more live-action by my understanding, but in D&D, a skill roll could be used to do the actual personal interaction if the player isn’t as good at it as the character.
January 24th, 2010 at 12:29 am
[…] My Favourite PC Travel Game: Campfire Chats I’ve always hated hand waving travel time because it robs the players of a chance to earn more XP for their characters. I’ve equally hated the random encounters that serve no purpose other than to pad the XP box on the PCs character sheets. The campfire chats idea over at Campaign Mastery is one of the better ideas I’ve ever heard of for passing the time without forcing the PCs into a fight every third day of travel. var addthis_pub = ''; var addthis_language = 'en';var addthis_options = 'email, favorites, digg, delicious, myspace, google, facebook, reddit, live, more'; […]
January 25th, 2010 at 1:58 am
I also dislike the formal quiz-like approach to roleplaying. Reminds me a bit of the skillchallenge in 4e, somehow.
However, I think it’s a very good idea to let players carve out some more personality about themselves while the other players are listening. Maybe once in a while tell everyone else to shut up and let a single player tell some story from his past. Nice way to guarantee everyone some solo-time in the spotlight.
Anyway; thanks for the inspiring article! I have to think more about this topic :-)
January 27th, 2010 at 8:00 am
I’m totally going to incorporate this into my next campaign. My players tend to be a little self-absorbed, so I think this would be a great way for them to become more involved in one another. Great idea!
.-= Matthew Arcilla´s last blog ..Review: Player’s Handbook Races: Dragonborn =-.
January 27th, 2010 at 12:04 pm
@Robert – another idea is to make a list of the questions you want to use and then ensure NPCs cover them off during roleplaying scenes before they get asked at a campfire chat.
January 29th, 2010 at 8:23 am
@Mike & Johnn – Sweet, both of those are excellent ideas! I will have to try some hybrid of both. If it doesn’t work out and they don’t want to do it, my Dungeon Delve book will be seeing some good use at least!
January 31st, 2010 at 8:14 am
GRRREAT!
I’ve had some trouble getting my players to think on their own but I think this would be a great tool for getting them to use their brain cells. As well as a way to recap essential stuff from the past without shouting out “This is important!”. Furthermore, fastforwarding travelling sucks so this should help with that too.
thumbs up dude!
April 21st, 2011 at 1:46 am
Great idea. I actually do something somewhat similar in my campaigns, just not a quiz-type activity. A small bit of background first – we use Obsidian Portal to keep an adventure log, wiki for each city and NPC, and for fun forum use.
Basically, we meet once a week to roleplay, and we tend to (usually) come to a stopping point when the PC’s rest for the night. Each night that we stop at a point like this, I’ll create a new forum topic on Obsidian Portal called “Around the Campfire – [In-Game Date of that Night].”
This gives players a chance to talk about the events of the day, their plans for the next “day” and talk to NPC’s between sessions via forum posts. It also keeps the players interested throughout the week, gives me a chance to drop plot hooks using NPC’s, and judge what I need to be prepping for the next session. I’ve really been encouraging back-story in these forums lately, I’m starting to get some great content.