At last, the Kickstarter for Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West has gone live! Over the next thirty days, I’ll be accepting pledges from backers who want to take part in seeing the book printed, illustrated and published – all those who want to make their own impression in the worn leather of the Ferguson velosteam, and each of those desperate heroes keen to see the flag of St Piran flying proud and free over Cornwall.
The fourth book in the series has been a joy to write and I’m really excited to share it: it’ll make a great starting-place for new players, with better game balancing, an engaging main quest and forgiving gameplay. But for experienced readers, it’ll also tie in with dozens of choices you’ve already made in previous books, allowing you to feel the consequences of your actions. Smuggle, steal, rob, defend, explore, put jam on a scone – you can do the lot! If you haven’t tried the sample yet – what are you waiting for?
Every backer in the first 48 hours can choose to receive the Adventurer’s Logbook as part of their pledge absolutely free – getting their gauntletted hands on an achievement-and- hints booklet that will allow them to track their progress through all four volumes, pointing out those corners and encounters that even the most experienced reader has yet to discover.
Not only that, but with enough support, we’ll reach stretch goals that will allow me to share a series of one-off, standalone Steam Highwayman adventures in a print-and-play or digital format, ready for you to enjoy as part of an existing playthrough or to whet your appetite while waiting for your books.
I’ll also be live on youtube from just before the launch, ready to greet any backers who join in, and sharing a read-through of part of the new book.
It’s going to be a great ride – as long as you’re involved. After all – YOU are the Steam Highwayman!
Unlike an internal combustion engine, a steam-powered motor can’t simply be switched on. The fire has to be carefully built, warming the machine from the inside so that metal parts expand gently, gases flow smoothly and the temperature increases gradually. In the old days, it made for a whole career for those engine-shed firemen whose job it was simply to ready the great locomotives for their day’s work, rising early and stoking the fires of the particular engines they knew and cared for before handing them over to the driving team.
In my world, many of the road engines must need the same care – and I fancy that big Guild engines aren’t allowed to cool overnight or on stops, in order to prevent wasted time and fuel. In the case of the Ferguson velosteam, well, I created the ‘friction igniter’ – some sort of kick-start mechanism, hahaha – and I presume that a coal-gas system must have a bit less expansion in it… Or something. Anyway – that’s what fiction’s for, isn’t it? To gloss over the difficulties of reality and escape into a world of fun and adventure.
Some time ago I came across this fantastic video shot at the Colorado Railroad Museum. The detail is just great and it assured me of a couple of things: firstly, I do love the technology of steam engines! The weighty components, the awesome engineering and the primal urge to master a fire – a furnace, no less – are all part of the appeal. On a recent trip to the East Anglia Railway Museum outside Colchester, I even found myself enjoying the handiwork of the century-old door latches and wishing I could fit a few into a house I’d love to build.
And secondly, I realised that life as the Steam Highwayman could never work if you needed an hour to get your machine up to temperature before riding it away! The invention of the Ferguson is key to the adventure actually working – structurally speaking, as a gamebook, and technologically speaking too. So God bless Mr Ferguson, whoever he was – presumably an ancestor of Harry Ferguson, whose Antarctica-crossing tractors I so enjoyed learning about in this other (excellent) video. Alternate history is really powered by anachronistic technology, whether it’s the Guns of the South or the Guns of Spain… In my case, that’s not a weapon, but a mode of transport.
That’s a long metaphor for the current situation. I’ve been spending the last few weeks preparing for my upcoming (fourth!) Kickstarter and now I’m looking at the fire and beginning to add fuel to it. This morning I completed estimated shipping costs – phew! – for the various rewards and regions, which is a major piece of work – and one I’ll probably need to give a lot of detail about in another post. The world is not what it was, back in 2020 when I last ran a crowdfunding campaign. Why, the world isn’t even what it was last week…
So despite international tensions, I’m continuing with my project. Who knows what tomorrow holds? Whether we’re on rails to a doomed destination or have an open network of roads before us, it’s better to get moving, rather than to become frozen by fear. In the micro, trying to estimate shipping costs and publish them to backers is the sort of thing I hate: what if my estimates are all wrong? What if people complain? What if it means far fewer people choose to back my project? Will it turn off all my European backers – including some of my most committed fans? That’s why, I think, I left this task until so close to when my platform review deadline – when I have to submit the campaign page to the Kickstarter team for checking. Because I’ve never liked this bit and the submission to a world of unknown variables.
But in the macro, I’m not personally worried by the chance of a global war, although I can see it is possible from where we stand in late June of 2025. Part of that is no doubt due to the distance between me and Tehran or Tel Aviv or Kiev or Vilnius or Taiwan – although I know I have readers far, far closer. Partly it’s my own personal outlook: if I acted as if the worst were going to happen, I don’t think I’d be typing this. I’ve a faith perspective and a historically-informed one, yet I don’t believe that I will be somehow shielded or insulated from any potential imminent conflict about to kick off. But war and disaster have never been as far away as we like to think – just hidden, or not thought about. And there’s a time to think about them and a time to get on with the job, I think.
That’s quite a serious meditation for now. What I’ve got before me is this small project – not one that seems to have much relationship to the real world – but it is mine and I feel led to it. So I’ll keep working at it with all I can. So tell me – anyone been to the Colorado museum – or the Colchester one? Or both? Now that would be a very Steam Highwayman thing to do…
The Adventurer’s Logbook will be a real must-have for seasoned players, completionists and anyone hungry to unpick the secrets of the Steam Highwayman series. And it will be ENTIRELY FREE in the first 48 hours of the upcoming Kickstarter campaign!
Last year I was prompted to create a list of 94 things to do in Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade. It was offered as a hint list for those struggling to make progress and as a set of achievements for anyone keen to feel they had made the most of the first volume.
Now with the Adventurer’s Logbook, you’ll be able to record your adventures, tracking which events you have experienced and edging ever closer to “completing” the books. Much as a modern crpg will give you a percentage tracker, indicating how much of the map you’ve explored, or how many side-quests you’ve finished, the Logbook will allow you to tick off the quests, the events, the friendships – and even the beers drunk – in each of your playthroughs.
The exact design of the Logbook isn’t set yet, but I want it to be a notebook that sits alongside the Touring Guides, with separate sections for friendships established, beers drunk and encounters met. There’ll be a rarity indicator of some kind to show what’s harder to accomplish or rarer to find, and probably some other bells and whistles included. I don’t think it will be a full replacement to the Player Companion, which is really a glorified Character sheet, but rather a record to look back over, maybe with the dates of your playthroughs and sessions.
And what do I mean by free? If you order Princes of the West with the new map pack (The Touring Guide Number 2) within the first 48 hours of the campaign, you’ll be able to get the Adventurer’s Log bundled in for no extra cost. Look out for the Earlybird Committed Villain and the Earlybird Mastermind to take advantage of the offer. When the time comes for fulfilment, the Log will be shipped along with your Touring Guide, with no increase to the shipping cost.
Earlybird Committed Villain reward tier
Essentially, I want this to be a real thank-you to everyone who has previously supported the project. Perhaps it will also encourage people to join the campaign early on, and help us reach – and surpass – the funding target…
So please share this opportunity with friends who haven’t yet discovered life on the midnight road, and are yet to taste the adventure found astride the Ferguson velosteam. They’re all welcome to back the Kickstarter in the first 2 days and receive their own free Adventurer’s Log!
Finally, make sure you’re following the Kickstarter to get a notification as soon as it goes live. I’ll be updating again here too. After all,
Ben has completed his design for Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West, and at last I’m able to share this vibrant and adventurous cover with you. The West awaits!
Over the next month I now need to get this image everywhere I can – together with a link to the Kickstarter campaign that will run through July, raising funds for the publication. The largest cost (after the printing of the books themselves) is Ben’s fee for the internal illustrations, and once raised, these are also the most time-consuming part of the process. That means I’ll be able to use the time while he works on the pictures to complete the editing and bring the book up to the best standard I can.
I’ve also been having a lot of fun working on the large map for Princes of the West. This isn’t completely finished yet – and I will wait until the book is totally complete before declaring it done, as I may need to add in further locations or notes – but it is ready enough to provide me with some great backgrounds and textures for splash images.
The Kickstarter is already being followed by around 150 people – which is very encouraging – and I’m working hard on making sure it reaches as many as possible. Any help you can give, as readers and supporters, would be greatly appreciated.
If you haven’t yet had a peek inside the draft of Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West, take a look at the sample, which can be read online or downloaded here – now with a nice, bright new cover.
I’ve just completed a little taster (70-ish) passages of Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West as a downloadable pdf – but it also works on this rather nice pdf viewer I’ve installed on my website. This will be a sample available to backers for the Kickstarter in a few weeks’ time – and I hope it’ll answer that immortal question – who is the Steam Highwayman?
If you haven’t yet, do follow the Kickstarter. You’ll get notified directly when it goes live, and a slowly-increasing indication of interest helps attract others who haven’t yet ridden the Ferguson over the midnight road.
I’ve been in contact with Cubus Games recently and I’m happy to share that they are again working on the Steam Highwayman app, which they originally released back in 2021. I was very happy to partner with them in producing a full digital adaptation of Steam Highwayman, as Jordi and Quim are great at what they do and have a real interest in gamebooks and interactive fiction.
Cubus’ Steam Highwayman app – looks great!
However, despite a fabulous quality of design, the difficulties of translating such an ambitious gamebook into a digital format, with the hundreds of variables that Smog and Ambuscade uses, meant that the resulting app was buggy and struggled to take off. It’s been hard to find the time to hunt and correct mistakes in the intervening few years – on my part, because of a steady stream of young children arriving, the need to earn a living and the other gamebooks I’ve been trying to write, and on Cubus’ because of their need to produce profitable software to keep their business growing. But the time has come to do justice to the project, and I’m reaching out because I would love to have help from any of you who did purchase the app or would be interested in a digital version of the Steam Highwayman adventures – I appreciate that that’s not all of you.
I’ve created a new buglist spreadsheet to share with anyone who wants to contribute in the interests of getting the app to its best possible state. One of the difficulties is that when correcting a physical gamebook, passages are easily identified by their number, but in an electronic format, this is one of the paratextual details that is removed… So how to identify a passage with an error? My simple solution is to identify the passage by the first three written words.
People frequently ask me whether there is an electronic version of Steam Highwayman available, and I normally explain that, firstly, the large amount of interactivity prevents a simple pdf conversion, and secondly, I’m very wary of pdf piracy and, thirdly, a full digital conversion would do better. So my hope is that now Cubus are able to devote time to improving the app, with your help (and some more hard work from me), the app could soon be in a state that allows people to really enjoy it. I have no hesitation in recommending Cubus’ other work – for example, I’ve really enjoyed their adaptation of Dave Morris’ Necklace of Skulls. Cubus also find great artists and musicians to work with; I love Ramon Sole’s theme to Steam Highwayman, which Cubus have been good enough to allow me to use. It really captures a sort-of Sunday afternoon tv serial vibe – just the right side of cheesy, melodramatic, adventurous and catchy!
Cubus’ Necklace of Skulls app
Another treat about Cubus is their commitment to regional culture. The app of Steam Highwayman was in part funded by a grant to translate new works into Catalan, and I think the Steam Highwayman would certainly approve. Self-determination and independence are very much part of the brand… Perhaps one day there will be a Cornish translation of Princes of the West, which is coming to Kickstarter in July.
So if you bought the app and wanted to see it in a better state, or have never had a look but like the idea, please join in using this link. The app is available on the Play and the Apple stores. Otherwise, do watch out for more posts here on my site. I have a few more things planned to share with you before I launch the Kickstarter for Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West in July…
Writing an open-world gamebook – a how-to series
Creating an open-world gamebook map – an analysis of Legendary Kingdoms: Pirates of the Splintered Isles
Creating the maps for Princes of the West
Earlybird rewards for backers of the July Kickstarter – watch out for this one!
Open-world adventures are all about the map. Poring over a good map, planning routes, finding features and potential interactions between them – these are the precursors to many a real adventure and a fictional one. Don’t you love a story that comes with a map?
I love creating the maps for Steam Highwayman. For the previous three volumes, I’ve worked directly from a old Ordnance Survey maps – but for Princes of the West, which covers all of Cornwall and most of Devon, I’ve had to work at a greater scale. I actually began with a map of the coast and then chose (painfully!) which towns to include, plotted a Guild Highway and added in other precious locations from there.
The result is a big map with several zones to it. There are key nodes, barriers to overcome (the border between Free Cornwall and Imperial Devon along the Tamar particularly), secret routes and hidden areas. At this rate there will probably also be some detailed maps for smaller areas – probably one around Tintagel, another for Dartmoor, and one for North Devon.
The map I’m sharing here is a draft of the version that will be printed into the book. The rather annoying proportions of Cornwall make a North-South orientation a bit annoying, so I have been wondering about something odd and NE-SWish that fits the peninsula onto a folio size page (8″x10″) better. Hmm.
I’ll produce a map pack for the Kickstarter as well, which will include a large version of the whole map and any smaller maps I end up making, as well as a touring guide and some other goodies I’ve been thinking of. And when will all that come available? Well, I’m planning to run my kickstarter campaign in July, and it will take a little while after that for everything to be printed and sent, so tune here until then.
Yesterday I reached a milestone of Steam Highwayman IV: Princes of the West: I told myself that I had ‘completed’ my draft.
What does that mean? First question from interested parties (eg my wife). “Is the book finished?”
No, it isn’t finished. It won’t be finished until it has been edited, improved, illustrated and printed. We’re a little way off all that. But I would say that I am now at the beginning of the end.
Why did I call a stop to drafting? I actually have around 100 passages still reserved to write, but I recognise that at the current rate, I would keep expanding the book. That’s a problem for a few reasons – one being, that eventually this volume will need to be printed, and I think we could be looking at a whopping 1800 passages, or around 300 pages, already. I also could tell that at my current rate of writing, I would exhaust myself badly. And the next stage of the writing process is a one I badly need to get some perspective: sharing the draft with early readers for their opinions and ideas. After that, there’ll be a good deal of corrections and edits to write, and when I do those I’ll also finish and finalise the last loose ends.
So I’ve begun to reach out to people who have been committed readers of Steam Highwayman and stepping back from the coal face. I need to do some other work to get the project to succeed, so it’s time for a change of mode. I think that there’ll be a few months of long conversations, tweaking around the edges, and then a big editing sometime in the late summer or autumn – maybe at the same time as a trip down to Cornwall myself.
Ben has been working on the cover and I hope to have some things to share very soon. The big thing I’m waiting on is a colour draft of the front cover – with that, you’ll start to see a regular posting that points towards my next Kickstarter campaign. I have a plan something like this:
April-June – Preparation for Kickstarter, production of marketing materials, drawing of the map.
[April/May – birth of fourth child…]
July – Kickstarter campaign to publish Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West. It’s going to be great.
Presuming the Kickstarter succeeds in raising enough funds…
August – January – Ben creates the illustrations, I edit the book, proofreading and further playtesting, layout and preparation for printing, creation of extra reward materials…
February 2026 – Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West sent to backers and available online.
How does that sound?
So what is Princes of the West like? Well, early readers are already favourable about improved, modern mechanics, atmospheric adventures in the West Country, and a continuation to the epic tale of the Steam Highwayman (that’s you, then…). It covers a large area – probably about as large as the first two books together – but uses efficient networking to save on repeated passages and cram in as much content as you can. You’ll be able to go mining, tame Dartmoor ponies, find hidden gold, assist wreckers, join smugglers, blow things up (a lot of that), take a musical tour of the pubs of Devon, use all your velosteam customisations, negotiate with multiple factions and leaders, help lonely people fall in love, rescue cows from the mud, eat Cornish pasties, smuggle clotted cream, drink a lot of beer in many pubs and lonely inns, find places to stay, get a black eye, sleep under hedges, bribe guards, take airship rides, impersonate an orchestral conductor, defend the poor and marginalised, ally with a visionary (mad?) King, join a fishing crew, play croquet (again), meet old friends, play cards, fix the stock market, use steam computational engines to decode messages and secretive notebooks, use your special skill of haute cuisine (you know, the one you gained in Highways and Holloways when you had to distinguish between different heritage vegetables while in an airborne kitchen) and rob the rich, give to the poor and steam off into the night. It is great.
Current draft is about 1630 passages long. I think I’ll probably cut around 100 and I might add in another 200 or so – I expect it’ll round out around 1800 passages. I’m toying with the idea of producing a lengthier book with more quests as stretch goals… Four extensions, say, of 50 passages each? It’s an idea.
And the break from working on the draft is good for me. I’ve already experienced a massive difference in my focus and no longer have an over-full head. There are several things I’ve been putting off reading – and writing – over the last months that I can now get back to.
So watch this space! I’ll be on here pretty frequently until July, I think, although there may be a hiatus while child #4 appears. And then we should all get to enjoy the pleasure of a lively crowdfunding campaign together. I know I can count on you all to join in.
Until then, may your boilers stay ever at pressure! YOU are the Steam Highwayman!
Adopting the noted passage mechanic allows me to weave sequences of story together independent of their location. I first invented this method while writing the ambush sequences of Highways & Holloways and my recent work writing the ambushes in Princes of the West illustrates how they work.
First, there are eight major locations where you can ambush passing steamers: five in Devon and three in Cornwall. These are not the only places where you can stop a carriage and rob the occupants, but they are the major, repeatable locations that generate large numbers of victims, which makes sense thematically, since they are all somewhere on the Haulage Guild highways – the major road network connecting the larger towns of the region.
Once committed to making an ambush in one of these eight ambush locations, the player records a noted passage specific to that ambush location – one of eight passages that function as the end of the ambush sequence. With this information reserved at the side, the ambush sequence can then continue independent of the location, meaning that generic passages can be used to tell a story that can take place multiple times or in different places.
It works like this. After noting that passage, the player rolls to see what sort of vehicle is encountered – or, with the right equipment, the player lies in wait and chooses what type of vehicle to ambush. The distribution of various Guild road trains and private carriages varies across the eight major locations, partly dependent on the location of the several Guild bases. The Haulage Guild are universally common, but the Telegraph Guild use the highways closest to their towers, while the Coal Board are more common closer to the large mines and the Atmospheric union are only really encountered near their airfield at Harrowbeer, north of Plymouth (in our timeline, the location of a RAF base during the second World War).
Say that a player encounters a private steam carriage – the highwayman’s preference, surely. Rich passengers travelling for pleasure are certain to have good loot aboard, and rarely fancy a fight. The player is then sent to one of four passages (two for Devon, two for Cornwall) that each offer subtly different methods for an ambush, depending somewhat on the actual landscape surrounding that part of the highway. Within these passages, there is also a condition checker that can take the player off on a specific ambush sequence should they be attempting to rob someone in a rainstorm.
There are more common methods (usually relying on RUTHLESSNESS or MOTORING) and unique ones (typically depending on the possessions a player has), which should mean that a player who returns to a spot could specialise in a particular type method, if their skillset supported it. Each of these methods typically includes a skillcheck and modifies the diceroll if useful equipment is possessed or relevant conditions are met.
If you fail one of these skillchecks, you might be spat out in a generic failure passage – for example, a passage that tells you about your failure to terrify the driver of the carriage, which can include a random roll chart with slightly-annoying or much-worse outcomes. A passage like this, which might be met many times in a playthrough, needs to be both simple (not strongly-flavoured) and variable (hence the chart). It then sends the player into their noted passage – more on this momentarily – or might even give them the opportunity to prepare another ambush. This might be riskier a second time if the player has suffered damage or a wound as a result of their choices.
But say that a player succeeds in their chosen method and terrifies, or rides alongside, or impersonates a Constable and waves the carriage to a halt. Then the sequence will send the player to a passage dependent on their broad location, in Cornwall or Devon, as the travellers on either side are slightly different. Cornwall is known to be a wilder place and more of the travellers there will defend themselves. The rewards, however, are higher. This passage selects a passenger for the player to encounter, and in their passage they might immediately surrender their goods or put up a fight.
Once a robbery has taken place, the player can be sent to their noted passage, just as if they had failed their skillcheck and decided not to attempt another ambush. This passage (dependent on the whether Constables or other enemies are nearby) will decide whether or not the player must proceed onto the fleeing map, and escape a pursuit. Perhaps not, and instead they have a choice to make about where they will rest that night – in a the house of a nearby ally, in a warm pub parlour or under a dripping hedge.
I wrote large parts of the ambush sequence early in the project – over a year ago – but for some reason, parts were uninviting. One downside of using these systems is that they can feel repetitive when written under pressure: when I have the time to come up with ideas, these can be some of my favourite passages, with the strongest flavour of all. After all, this is the core activity for a Steam Highwayman, isn’t it?
But I have just been finishing up the final choices and links in this sequence. The ambushes for the guilds have been finished for a while. An ambitious plan to include a range of independent steamers has been eliminated as unnecessary, and I have been correcting and splicing together the ambush sequences for the private steam carriages. The passengers were completed some months ago.
This is another benefit of the ‘subroutine’ style of planning: I don’t have to write things in a linear sequence. I do, however, have to read through to ensure that it all makes sense! Is it all too much? Well, that depends on a few things: the feeling of choice, the flow of the text and the rhythm of decisions. My playtesters are going to have to tell me their thoughts soon… Applications welcome.
In my very first iteration of Steam Highwayman, which was formatted in Twine (and a bad build of which can be found here), I included two trackers that each counted down from 100, subtracting 1 for each passage you read labelled as a location. They were, of course, the fuel tank and the water tank of your Ferguson, and I hoped that a minor part of your roleplay as a dangerous villain astride a steam-powered machine would be the need to refuel and rewater it.
I’m not pretending that micromanaging a multiplicity of trackers is necessarily a great fit for a gamebook. A good eurogame with its coloured cubes, or an extended solo roleplay campaign might benefit from them, but there was clearly a tension between needing to track a fuel gauge with its tiny increments and maintaining any kind of narrative flow, so I abandoned a fuel-and-water-tracker when I moved into paper.
The thing is, I’ve always wanted to include it, as the thematic elements are so strong, and the need to have a good supply would clearly be a real restriction on any outlaw trying to survive under the noses of the authorities. So far, in volumes I-III, I’ve always let the reader assume that this minor matters are entirely under control, a bit like their need to eat or use the toilet. Such things can make good narrative content, but not necessarily good gameplay.
But recently, as you’ll know if you’re following along, I’ve been thinking about specific and generic journey encounters. What sort of events, I’ve wondered, should be happening again and again, in an extended campaign, as you ride up and down the roads of Cornwall and Devon? Bad weather? Absolutely – that was an easy one. And then it came to me… rather than accurately track how far a reader has travelled, as a computer could, this was the place to thematically introduce the need to refuel, or the consequences of running out of water. This is where the tiny need to refuel or rewater could interrupt, annoy or reward a reader, deepening the simulation and using some of the ideas I had previously. Some time ago – I think it was in Highways and Holloways – I introduced the customisation of the pump and filter – and there are one-off places to use it. But it was intended to be something that would allow you to regain water on the move, and now it can. Likewise, the enlarged fuel tank might help in MOTORING rolls (its main use to date), but it could also extend your range before needing to buy coalgas. The need to buy coalgas and find water give you more reasons to visit freight yards and forges, more opportunities for conflict and reward.
So I’ve planned out repeating (generic) encounters for low water and a lack of coalgas that can populate the empty roads and journeys. I’ll need to add a couple of tweaks into the adventure sheet (!), but other than that, the mechanics are all in place. And hopefully, without becoming boring.
Post-script: The Cubus app of Steam Highwayman: Smog & Ambuscade is in fact written in twine and compiled from there into the very attractive-looking game they produced. It was the difficulties with exporting a paper gameplay (with its reliance on the reader’s ability to fill in gaps and act in character) back into a digital, computerised format that revealed and created the bugs that plague the app. One of my long-terms aims is to work with Cubus to squash and fix all those bugs – some of which are minor, but some of which need input from them which is beyond me – and to see the app re-released in a much more playable, rewarding version.