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Comparison · Checked 13 August 2026

New Quest vs Campfire Writing

Campfire Writing is a worldbuilding and drafting app built for novelists rather than game masters, and the vocabulary shows it. Eighteen purpose-made modules: Manuscript, Characters, Timeline, Maps, Calendar, Encyclopedia, Magic, Languages, Research, Locations, Arcs, Relationships, Items, Species, Cultures, Philosophies, Religions and Systems. Everything cross-links, the maps are interactive, and family trees and relationship webs are built in rather than improvised out of a notes app. It runs in a browser, on the desktop and on a phone. Pricing is modular: $12 a month for Standard, or buy only the modules you use. It is also completely AI-free, deliberately and out loud: no generation, no assistant, and a stated policy of never training anything on what you make there.

Campfire is the better place to write your world down; New Quest is the place your model can read it from without you retyping it.

Everything below was true on Campfire Writing’s own site on 13 August 2026. If we have it wrong, tell us and we will change it. Their site.

The ledger

The same question, asked of both.

  1. Can my LLM read this while I draft?

    Campfire Writing

    No. There is no API, no MCP server and no integration surface of any kind. Whatever your model needs to know, you copy out by hand into the prompt, every session.

    New Quest

    This is the whole product. New Quest is a hosted remote MCP server, so Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Cursor query the bible directly and get the recorded answer back.

  2. How much of my world can I actually write down?

    Campfire Writing

    18 modules, cross-linked, covering magic, languages, species, cultures, religions, philosophies and arcs, with interactive maps, family trees and relationship webs.

    New Quest

    Characters and stat blocks, locations, items, factions, scenes, timeline and world state, with maps you upload and pin. Narrower, and nothing on our side answers to family trees or a language module.

  3. Can I keep working with no internet?

    Campfire Writing

    Yes. The desktop app writes offline and syncs when you reconnect, and there are browser and mobile apps alongside it.

    New Quest

    No. New Quest is hosted and needs a connection, and there is no offline desktop app.

  4. What does it cost, and can I ever stop paying?

    Campfire Writing

    $12 a month on Standard, advertised as reduced from $19. Pricing is modular, so you buy only the modules you use, and annual and lifetime options exist, which means you can own a module outright instead of renting it.

    New Quest

    $29 a month through the Guild, which includes the Skool community, or $39 for the app alone. Subscription only. There is no lifetime purchase and none is coming.

  5. Will anything tell me chapter 61 contradicts chapter 4?

    Campfire Writing

    Not directly. The modules organise and cross-link what you have written down, but nothing compares an entry against the prose, so grey eyes in chapter 4 and green eyes in chapter 61 both simply sit there.

    New Quest

    A continuity check runs over the recorded state: dead characters walking, spells nobody learned, HP over max. It is deterministic and never calls a model, so it does not invent problems and it gives the same answer twice. It only sees what has been recorded, so an eye colour that lives in the prose and nowhere else is not something it can catch either.

  6. Can I keep levels, XP and skills as numbers that hold?

    Campfire Writing

    You can build stat blocks inside the Systems or Items modules, but they are entries you maintain. Nothing validates a number or carries it forward.

    New Quest

    Levels, XP, skills, inventory and buffs are typed fields tied to the scene that changed them. The whole layer is optional if you do not write LitRPG.

  7. Can I bring in the draft I have already written?

    Campfire Writing

    No Word or Scrivener import. Campfire exports print-ready PDF and EPUB at the other end, but the way in is typing or pasting.

    New Quest

    Word and Scrivener import, and a pasted manuscript lands split into chapters and scenes. EPUB out, plus a pronunciation guide for whoever narrates the audiobook.

  8. How far does the free plan get me?

    Campfire Writing

    Every module opens, then caps: 25,000 manuscript words, 10 characters, 20 timeline events, 2 maps, 1 calendar, 5 encyclopedia articles, 1 magic system, 1 language. Storage, collaboration and private projects are unlimited even so.

    New Quest

    Writing needs a plan: $29 a month through the Guild, $39 for the app alone, with no cap on characters, locations, scenes or events inside it. Enough to run a novel, not enough to run a series.

  9. Will my book be used to train an AI?

    Campfire Writing

    No. Campfire states it does not use anything created on the platform to train any AI system, and it does not accept AI-generated writing or artwork either.

    New Quest

    No. Your work is yours and is never trained on. It reaches a model only when you connect one, on your own account.

Choosing

One of these is probably you.

Choose Campfire Writing if

  • You do not use AI and do not intend to. Campfire has taken that position publicly: no AI features, no AI-generated writing or artwork accepted, nothing you make there used to train a model. New Quest exists to feed an LLM, which is the opposite bet.
  • You want more world than we model. Family trees, relationship webs, interactive maps, constructed languages, religions and philosophies are purpose-built modules there and have no equivalent here.
  • You draft away from a connection, or on your phone. Campfire's desktop app writes offline and syncs later, and the mobile app is real. New Quest is hosted and does neither.
  • You want to stop paying eventually. $12 a month on Standard, down from $19, modules bought one at a time, and the option to own the ones you keep. Against $39 a month, that is not a close argument.
  • You are happy pasting. Campfire plus copy-and-paste into a chat window is a legitimate workflow and plenty of working novelists are content with it. New Quest is worth the difference only when you are tired of it.
Go and look at Campfire Writing →

Choose New Quest if

  • You draft in Claude, ChatGPT, Gemini or Cursor, and you spend the first ten minutes of every session pasting the same facts back in.
  • The series is longer than you can hold. A hundred chapters in, the question is what was true in chapter 40, and a well-organised entry does not answer that. A dated record does.
  • Numbers matter in your book. Levels, XP, skills and inventory as typed fields tied to the scene that moved them, rather than sentences in an encyclopedia article.
  • You want continuity checked rather than filed, by something that never calls a model and so never has an opinion.
  • Your manuscript is already in Word or Scrivener and has to come out again as EPUB, with a pronunciation guide for the narrator.
Join the Guild · $29/mo →Or the app alone · $39/mo
A lamplit workbench where an open book is clamped in an iron vice, a diagram of glowing linked nodes rising from its pages, the wall behind pinned with hand-drawn floor plans and constellation charts.

Questions

What people ask before switching.

Campfire is $12 a month. Why would I pay $39?

You would not, unless you draft with an LLM. That is the entire difference. Campfire is the better place to write a world down and it costs roughly a third as much; what it cannot do is let your model read the thing. If your writing happens in Claude or ChatGPT, New Quest buys back the pasting, and it is $29 through the Guild if you want the community with it. If your writing happens in Campfire's editor with no model involved, Campfire is the better buy and we would rather say so than take the $39.

Can I move my Campfire world across?

By hand. Campfire has no API, so no converter exists, from us or from anyone. Its export is print-ready PDF and EPUB, which are book formats, so what comes out is the book rather than the modules behind it. In practice people paste the manuscript in, which lands split into chapters and scenes, then rebuild the world entry by entry. Start with the characters and places that appear in the next ten chapters and let the rest arrive when you need it.

Can I use both?

Yes, and some writers should. The maps, family trees and language modules have no equivalent here, so keeping the visual side of the world in Campfire and the canonical state in New Quest is a reasonable split. The cost is honest and worth stating: two places to update, and the one your model reads is the one that has to be right.

What happens to my book if I stop paying you?

You export the lot, world and manuscript together, and the whole book compiles to a single Markdown file. Delete means delete, and we never trained on any of it. That is the most a hosted subscription can offer, and it is genuinely weaker than owning a Campfire module outright, where you stop paying and the software keeps working. If that gap is the part you cannot live with, it is a fair reason to choose them.

Does Campfire have AI features I have missed?

No. Some review sites describe AI drafting inside Campfire; Campfire's own pages describe no AI features at all, and its stated policy runs the other way. Those reviews appear to be confusing it with unrelated products.

I write LitRPG. Does Campfire handle stat blocks?

You can build them, in the Systems or Items modules, and they will look tidy. What you do not get is anything that validates a number or tracks it forward, so an XP total or a skill tier is only as accurate as your last manual edit. In New Quest those are typed fields attached to the scene that changed them, which is why the continuity check can catch a stat that moved backwards.