Whoops! I missed my schedule and didn’t post last night – funny, since I’ve had a draft of this update for almost the full fortnight…
And it’s been a good one. I’ve managed 4.5 days on the project, so progress looks like this:
- I completed the Quest Survey! Princes of the West contains 167 quests and encounters, ranging from the mighty Quest 1 to the diminutive fleeting encounter with a Welsh Druid.
- I worked for several hours on the Codeword chart, and trimmed 3 unnecessary codewords. Yes!
- I completed the Room Survey, and then standardised the options you have when staying in pubs, out-of-the-way farms, country houses and caves. Rooms are crucial to the model of rob-flee-rest, and not every room gets the same options…
- I spent quite a bit of time thinking about baths – one of the new systems I added into The Reeking Metropolis, but never really tidied up, meaning that it is quite possible that your character may still stink (GAL-2) after 5 years… There are now plenty of places to bathe in the west…
- Seeing a gap in the far west, I created a new room in St Ives, which might yet get a spin-off quest (168?)… As I re-wrote the pub, I joined up the passages with a sequence governed by the key codeword Dictatorial – you’ll remember this one. It was one of the first modules I wrote for Princes of the West, almost two years ago (October 2023), and the smoothness of the narrative flow made me laugh aloud in glee. You probably won’t notice a seam in the story, but there is an enforcer and friends who seem to move across Cornwall even faster than you…
- I worked on the Shop Survey, which showed me I need to be very careful, as this risks becoming repetitive, wasteful and even broken! There are more than 300 items in Steam Highwayman, and exactly where and how you can buy and sell them is crucial. So I am considering some new buying and selling rules, including suspicious items*, item classes and an item gazette printed in the rear of the book.
- This meant I had to look at the Item Survey, so I updated my master spreadsheet to reference all the current instances of items. This is crucial to standardising their spellings, stats and prices… But it can also be a creative process, as it prompts me to consider which items are currently under-utilised… Perhaps that auto-rifle prototype you created for the Great Exhibition would be of interest to the Cornish rebels?
- Following this, I worked on the Defeat Cycle for a few hours. One of the inspirations behind this is the ‘chumbawumba’ loop in Sid Meier’s Pirates! Gold, which I began playing in around 1996 and is my essential standard of sandbox/open-world/roleplaying game. I’m a hard enemy of permadeaths, really – I’ll cheat to avoid them and improve the story – so in Steam Highwayman when you are finally defeated in a battle, arrested or left at the roadside for dead, there are always a few routes open to you… Friendships are key here – I really liked the way these were written back in Smog & Ambuscade and in The Reeking Metropolis I loved the idea that the Waterside boys might repay you with a rescue. So there are several loops to get you back up again, both in Cornwall and Devon.
- I’m closing in on completing a key quest that opens up when you are arrested by the Constables. It was an early sketch but I’ve never been quite happy with it, so it’s a priority.
- And Ben submitted drafts of four full-page illustrations… A tiny part of one is below, to whet your appetite.
And what next, in the next fortnight? Or where next?
I’ll be in Devon and Cornwall for most of the next two weeks, visiting a few locations that have stubbornly resisted inspiration, gathering real ideas to turn into story content. It’ll be a family holiday-cum-business trip, and steam trains profit both.
I might manage to actually write while I’m there, but I’m not putting any pressure on myself. If it happens, it’ll happen, and if it doesn’t, I know I’ll be all the more efficient once back at home.
And what else has been taking up my time? This is less relevant to the project and more of interest if you want to know what sort of things influence me and…
- Reading online:
- Rand Roll – including a recent interview with Joseph Fry, whose excellent Lost in the City I read in draft last year, and which I recommend as an atmospheric and original modern gamebook.
- A series reviewing the Usborne Puzzle Adventure books – these got into my head at the same time as Pirates! Gold and Fabled Lands.
- The excellent filfre.net posted an article about… gamebooks! This is one of my regular fortnightly reads, as Jimmy Maher’s history of computer games is exciting, nostalgic, well-researched and fluently-written. His archives include a fantastic 10-part study of Civilisation.
- I’m circumnavigating the works of Patrick O’Brien for the sixth or seventh time – currently in The Far Side of the World.
- I’m reading Judges with my family… My children are just encountering the biblical, unwatered-down account of Samson.
- I’m reading the Gospels – particularly to inform my Sunday preaching at church – usually twice a month.
- I recently read and enjoyed Robert Macfarlane’s children’s picture book The World to Come – if you have children under ten, take a look. Rob went to my school and then taught me at university, so I have an interest in his writing.
- I’ve been watching two fantastic youtube series, each of which have reached some recent highlights:
- Tally Ho has set off on her long-awaited voyage back to the UK!
- John Plant built a 2.5m draft furnace to smelt bacterial iron from Australian mud!
- I’ve been listening to Eric Clottey’s UCB mixes, particulalry while working.
- I’ve been editing a book of poetry.
Next update due: 26-9-25 from Newquay, Cornwall.