I’ve just managed to put two full days into editing Princes of the West and it is exciting to feel the draft nearing a finished state. I’ll give you a window into the process…
I sat down on Monday at around 9am – after tidying away breakfast for the family – and began to work on the Introduction. These pages take a lot of focus – they need to be clear while setting the atmosphere, cover all the crucial systems while not boring a player. For some readers, they’re the first thing they encounter – for others, they’re a reference to find answers for rule queries. Some of you will no doubt skip them, having played Steam HIghwayman before – and then have to return to them to see what exactly they say about the Devon Music Tour…
It took me most of the day to get the Introduction how I wanted it. I also corrected some small issues at the front of the book – typos in the copyright section, a missing icon on one of the maps – while crunching celery and raw carrot to stave off my sugar craving. I incorporated a change to the combat rules that I hope will make fights less punishing after a recommendation from one of you with a background in statistics and responded to a set of thoughts from the first playtesters who saw the draft in April and May 2025.
I’ve begun an investigation into strange grey lines that accompany some of the spot illustrations… These are pesky, spoiling the monochrome clarity of the pages, and unpredictable. Why do they appear in some places and not others? I’m not sure yet – but they also turned up in the previous print of The Reeking Metropolis, so I think they’re an artefact of the conversion into pdf…
While pursuing this, I began formatting the acknowledgements section of Princes – and would have liked to simply copy and paste the formatting from Metropolis – except that – now I reveal a secret – I lost the print-ready .pub file of The Reeking Metropolis some time ago… The version I have is some way off the final printed version, with errors, placeholder images and no paratexts at the back – including acknowledgements. That’s one reason I haven’t released an errata and revised edition of The Reeking Metropolis before now. All my searches on the old laptop – and my various googledrives – turned up blank.
But with the focus of a sunny Monday morning and an empty house (my wife and children had left to go to a home-education meetup), a faint bell rang in my head… Didn’t I use a USB stick for a while? I dug around to see which ones I could find and unearthed a few from odd places – bedside drawer, spare wire pot, spare board-game-piece box.
And there amongst teaching resources was SH3.5 – and my heart leapt with gratitude and joy! I’d just read the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son in Luke’s Gospel to my children, so I had to rejoice. And make multiple copies of the file.
I’ll be releasing a tidier errata list for all previous volumes of Steam Highwayman when I fulfil this project as well as making sure any corrections are incorporated in newly-printed versions.
And many of you actually backed The Reeking Metropolis and are named in the acknowledgements. So – here’s an important point – unless you tell me otherwise, each backer will be acknowledged in the book by: previously-chosen backer name; or Kickstarter provided name. That’s the plan, anyway.
I’ve messaged those of you who are looking to have a Wanted Poster created as a frontispiece for your book (s) and already received the first image in reply – a fearsome, but somewhat foppish, Italian claimant to the title of the Steam Highwayman. If anyone is thinking of the upgrade, it’s not too late. I think these are a great way to personalise your books.
And among the corrections I completed was an inconsistency in the naming of the Cornish revolutionaries. You know how those splinter groups are – barely able to agree on a name, let alone a coherent policy – but in this case I still had fragments of older names betraying my own struggle to give them a name. Were they to be the Free Defenders of Kernow, or the Defenders of Free Kernow? I even found myself referring to them as the Free Forces of Kernow at one point. And then there is the tin of fruit / tinned fruit fiasco. Boy oh boy.
That’s about one day’s work, finishing at 5pm. Then on Tuesday I began at a similar time and focused on the main gameplay passages, screwing myself into the seat until I had reached 500 of the 2250 or so… The sort of mistakes in here varied from typos (nice and easy) to missing passages… For example, passage 147 was entirely absent from the draft but I reckoned I had written it as I had a vague memory of some of the dialogue. I found it in the gdoc draft, pasted it in, matched the formatting, shuffled nearby passages, removed whitespace, replaced larger spot illustrations with smaller ones, renumbered the page tops and sighed in relief that I hadn’t needed to increase the page count. Then there was a broken link that sent me back to the very first part of Princes I planned and wrote in October 2023. Images follow.
The notebook is labelled up for reference, so I found it exactly where it should be and found the original flowchart/network sketch – with annoying gaps in the numbering. But I was able to reconstruct and correct the flow. This is a location that can be reached from two directions and can bounce the player back the way they came, but in the interest of saving passages I used a noted passage mechanic to identify the direction of travel… It was all such a good plan except that at 278 I had instructed a player Wanted by the Haulage Guild to proceed directly to… 278. Doh!
There was a passage I had already passed dealing with the event, but it spat the player out in the wrong direction… And oh yes, another passage with the right orientation. Phew. Plug it in.
The other day on the Discord chat someone came to me with a broken link – they knew it was possible to meet acrobats somewhere in Smog & Ambuscade because I referred to the encounter in later books – and in fact I’ve used the codeword you gain early in the main quest of Princes – but they couldn’t see how to get there. I investigated and discovered that back when editing Smog, around a decade(!!) ago, I had cut a link to save passages – and inadvertently isolated the acrobat encounter, meaning that no-one has ever been able to honestly access it and gain either the fun codeword or the NIMBLENESS +1 bonus… Doh!
Needless to say, I’ll be fixing that.
These wiring issues are almost unavoidable in my writing process. I track my ins and outs and links as best I can but I have to recognise that my method is not infallible. Another reason I’m so grateful for the help provided by readers and playtesters.
I’m sometimes recommended software to try and write in, but even a platform as resilient as Twine struggles with a 1000+, let alone a 2000+, gamebook with the density of variables I use. I’ve certainly improved since writing Smog and I’ve realised that modelling sections on paper is the most reliable thing I can do… So the next two books should be easy to write, eh? And have no errors.
I also began work on the final map that will be included in the Touring Guide – a map of Plymouth – so that feels nice. 2 of the 4 are complete. There’s a bit more drawing to do for the guide itself, particularly some pub illustrations. But I’m certainly nearing the end of this phase.
Which will give me chance to get to the standalone adventures I’m still aching to write – Harvest of Death and Dark Satanic Mills. I had originally thought I could do these while the book was out with playtesters but that hasn’t been how it has worked! You’ll get them, don’t worry. I’ve even referenced two other standalone adventures buried in Princes – they’ve been spotted by at least one eagle-eyed playtester.
What next?
- More editing of the main text
- More work on the Guide maps
- Writing of acknowledgements
- Creation of the first Wanted Posters
Next update due: 5.6.26