Category: Steam Highwayman

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Update 13 – You must never break the chain

That’s the chain of updates, of course.  But also, in a moment of genuine inspiration, I created a unique marker that unlocks several parts of the Smuggling Module (Q1h/Q165) – the chain tattoo that you gain, involuntarily, after completing your smuggling training with the Terror, Terence Kneebone, aboard his steam crester, the Swell Dolly.

Who is the Steam Highwayman?  A free adventurer, bound to no-one, riding wherever you will…  Until you accept something like Penrose’s ring or the chain tattoo and you become associated with a dreaming visionary revolutionary or a ruthless smuggler.

This last two weeks I’ve been working almost entirely on the smuggling module.  I thought I could write a short series of passages, but to balance out the scale of the trade network I’ve already built for firkins of brandy and the like, I have needed some size, length and openness.  In a way, I’ve rebuilt something like the open-sea module, but without as much freedom.  Yet I’ve still needed some passage extensions to the book to fit in what’s needed.

How does it work?  Well, that all depends where you are.  In Devon, you’ll simply need to find some smugglers on the North or South coast, win their trust, hire them to sail with you, head out to a rendezvous on a foreign shore or at sea, buy contraband and then bring it to a depot point, put it ashore, return to your port, head to your depot, get your contraband aboard your velosteam – provided you have your barrel panniers fitted – be lucky enough to escape the attention of the Constables, bring your cargo to a buyer, like a friendly landlord, avoid narks, get a good price and repeat.  Information regarding most of this – rendezvous points, willing smugglers, innkeepers happy to buy and places where you can hide your goods – is readily available as a series of rumours you’ll hear in pubs, freight yards or on the road.

And in Cornwall?  It’s complicated by the Imperial Blockade, which is meant to stop small craft bringing goods into Cornwall, so you’ll need to be lucky in avoiding their ships, or have money for bribes, or a fearless crew ready to fight, or perhaps a craft that can submerge…  And then, once ashore, your sale of spirits is carefully observed by the gangs answering to Bad Percy and the Terror – so you’ll need to pay a share whenever you do sell some barrels, cutting into your profits.

And of course, you’ll need to wear the chain tattoo to gain the trust of anyone in the network.

If it sounds complex, it is.  There are around thirty codewords that track your access to rendezvous and depot locations, the availability of the six different vessels you can sail with and the attitudes of the gangs towards you.  There are around thirty rumours that carry information about it all – and although the module is mostly standalone, it ties in, of course, with several of the key dynamics of the Rebellion.  After all, liquor is not the only contraband you can smuggle into Free Cornwall.

Why bother?  Wasn’t the book almost finished already?  Well, Cornwall without smuggling would be like a pasty without pastry – it would always have been a massive regret.  And to do it well, as I mentioned above, when there is now a network of around forty places wanting to buy your firkins of gin or lace scarves, I needed something semi-open.  I’ve done my best to limit the size and repetitiveness of the strands, but I’ve also accepted that the book will be massively improved by something that is at my standard of ‘good-enough’ – I don’t need to invent new mechanics to solve this.  Hence the proliferation of codewords, when instead some sort of map-based solution has occasionally suggested itself to me.

This is going to greatly alter the balance of the book.  The amount of money that can be made is large – as long as you have capital.  It increases the danger that Terence Kneebone poses and embroils you deeper in his nefarious network.  Who is the Steam Highwayman? In Cornwall, a smuggler of unlicensed brandy, steaming along clifftops with the Constables in pursuit, just as the place demands.

So since last update I have:

  • Fixed a roadside encounter with poor workmanship
  • Written a new pub in Helston
  • Completed Q11 – the orchestral airship quest.  This is a fun one reminiscent of the airship quests in Highways & Holloways.
  • Planned more than 200 passages of the smuggling module
  • Written around 70 passages of the module

And what next?  In the next fortnight I aim to:

  • Finish the smuggling module!

Next update due: 21.11.25

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Kickstarter Update 12: Been doin a little import-export, eh?

Another fortnight of good, steady progress: about four days’ work in total – typically Mondays and Tuesdays during the day, before I do some tuition in the evenings.  I also try to spend every other Friday on the project – but have to accept a half-day.

So what has been done?

  • Quest 1X: the siege of Tintagel is now completely written.  Finishing this quest creates some wide-ranging changed game states, so it’s taken time to write these into various locations too.
  • Quest 2: Glo Rhydd is now butted in.  The main part of this quest will take place in Steam Highwayman: Dark Vales & Dark Hearts.  It isn’t necessary to complete the main objectives of Princes of the West, but it will be helpful.
  • Quest 34: Friston’s Mistress has been “reconnected”.
  • Quest 20: Landacre Farm has been entirely written from scratch – there was only a placeholder here previously, as it impacted the next big module and I had not yet worked out exactly what I wanted to do.
  • The Smuggling Module is well underway. Princes of the West introduces a key new velosteam upgrade that allows you to carry two smuggled barrels or packages: these larger items, all associated with liquor or arms smuggling, have their own network, values and exchange rates.  In the absence of the “open-sea module” I cut – about a year ago, I think – I’m creating a more direct series of smuggling voyages, which will nevertheless be repeatable.  Quite a big piece of work.
  • I rearranged and checked all of the subsidiary quests that input into Quest 1 – which includes the smuggling module, which is the last piece in that puzzle.
  • I’ve balanced the Rebellion tracker with inputs across Cornwall.  This is key to the final outcome of the main quest.
  • I removed a redundant set of trackers – I was tracking the individual Power of the several (five!) Princes of the West – but this is better served by a single Rebellion tracker without weakening the story.
  • I removed or repurposed several redundant codewords (including Dancer, Discriminate and Dissert).
  • I added in a successful defence in court, preventing arrest from leading to a short drop at Execution Dock.
  • I removed some passages left over from the interplay between the long-abandoned open-sea module and a major secondary quest – these are saved for another time, since I liked the writing.  They might surface in Dark Vales & Dark Hearts.
  • I have completed another beer description – based on the excellent Sea Fury I drank at Holywell Bay.
     

So why has it taken so long to conclude the writing of the major quest in Princes of the West?  Well, one of the criticisms I’ve received about the first three volumes of Steam Highwayman has always been the lack of a single main storyline – something to draw the reader forward through the vast world.  Of course, this is itself an artefact of the open-world gamebook model I inherited from Morris and Thomson – whose Fabled Lands are often criticised for the same thing.  Now I love the experience of pottering around, making discoveries and stumbling upon plotlines, but for a long time I have wondered whether it was possible to do both: to make gamebook that is an open world but that contains a large, compelling story.


Princes of the West is my attempt to do that.  In an rpg like Skyrim, Baldur’s Gate or Fallout, there is a key quest that moves through chapters, while other smaller quests can be played out of order – independently.  This is the model for what I’ve tried to do in this book – and it is an ambitious one.  Why?  Because to make a main quest compelling, it must change the world around it, and coping with state changes in an open world is complex.


There are around fifteen ‘chapters’ in the main quest of Princes, which largely happen in a predefined sequence, guarded by codewords that track the game condition.  But in the central phase of the gamebook, there are around fifteen spur quests which each effect one key tracker – the level of support for the Cornish rebellion – and the interplay of conditions and states here is complex.

This is what I have been looking over – and it was a good thing I did.  Among the logical errors I found (and corrected) were key characters dying in one branch and simply disappearing in another, and multiple conflicting causes for the same event.  These errors result from a very long (now over two-years-long) writing process and the complexity of the conditions I have tried to include – and I don’t think I’m going to do anything quite like this again!  It has pushed me to the limit of my ability to track, remember and maintain consistency, and that has slowed me down and taken some of the pleasure out of writing the book.  But on the other hand, I am looking at a degree of freedom and responsiveness that I have never achieved before…  I hope you’re going to enjoy what you can get up to as the Steam Highwayman.

All of this hard-thinking has really got me keen to write down my thoughts on the structures and mechanics of open-world gamebooks – and I mean to add to my beginnings with a series of posts once Princes of the West is done.  Coincidentally, Dave Morris has done some of that himself recently, even referencing Steam Highwayman as a development on the Fabled Lands model.

Lots to think about – and lots more to do.  What’s next?

  • Completing the smuggling module
  • Fix the Favour trackers with the princes
  • Correct and streamline the base for one of the Princes
  • Continue to check and correct the other quests

Progress on these seems realistic!  Next update due: 7.11.25

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Update 10: Steam Highwayman Goes West!

I just returned from a trip to Devon and Cornwall to help ‘colour in’ the last portions of the map where I still hadn’t got enough content – if you can believe that a gamebook of 1800 passages felt a bit empty!  This is one of the challenges of writing in an open-world – creating a map that feels broad and exciting – and then having to make sure the places you go all have things worth doing!  The emptiest bits were the toes of Cornwall – St Ives, St Michael’s Mount and the Lizard – and a few other corners.

Well, I found plenty of material to stuff the sock with.  You’ll find quality content all the way down now!

While there, I also found the time to work on:

  • Writing the end of the main quest – the showdown between Imperial and Free Cornish forces – with you in the middle!
Plotting the burning of Bude…  Sorry, Bude.
  • A new character based on genuine Steampunk history to appear in Bude.  I had heard of him before but had forgotten about him, and when I was reminded of what he did, I had to include him…
Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, Cornish inventor of the steam road car and other stuff.
  • I dutifully investigated some genuine Cornish and Devon beer… and notes will be included in the book.  I brought back another 5 bottles to research.  Special mention to Sharp’s Sea Fury – an absolutely cracking Special Ale I drank on our last night in the West at a pub that will feature in the book.  Think rich, roasted, balanced – moreish!  But my children had finished their fish and chips and we had to get them back to the caravan after just a single pint.
  • The earlier part of the trip took us to some special Devon places too, and we stayed for one night in a pub near Lydford on the side of Dartmoor…  Pure Highwayman stuff!
My daughter in a moody Dartmoor mist at the Nine Maidens above Okehampton…  You’ll want to remember this spot!
  • I’ve been re-building some of the trackers that measure your impact on Cornish freedom – previously, the different Princes each had their own power, but I think this is going to be rolled together into a Support for the Rebellion number – points gained when you help the Cornish prepare for an Imperial assault or when you stoke support for Arthur – and then the same metric will help decide what happens in the final sequence of the main quest.

I’ve been in contact with Ben some more too, and will be getting the next batch of illustrations underway soon.  In the next fortnight I hope to:

  • Finalise the main quest!
  • Return to the fight mechanics
  • Plan the next batch of illustrations with Ben

Next update due: 11th October

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Kickstarter Update 9: A Busy Start to September

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:
  • 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.

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Kickstarter Update 8: Snatching a few moments on Friday night

Title explained: the four children go to bed around 7…  My wife puts the baby to bed a bit earlier and stays with him until he’s settled…  I put the older three (6, 4, 2) to bed from about 7, but it can easily take 90 minutes before they each have teeth brushed, pajamas on, stories read, milk in non-spillable cups (not the eldest – she’s happy to just sleep)- the two year-old needs a nappy – and then we talk through the ‘Story of the Day’ and pray before they are ready to be left.  Then, if I’m not too shattered – today I was filling gaps in a 60m2 concrete floor and preparing it for a latex compound pour – I can turn the computer on, check a couple of life admin things, and write you all an update.

It’s not been the productive fortnight I had hoped for, but I’ve long since learned to accept that there are ebbs and flows in my projects.  It just means that I’ll have to adapt my schedule and be hyper-efficient when I next get down to it. Still, my commitment to update you all on progress means I’m not about to hide away – or be ashamed of a slower couple of weeks.  That’s how radio silence happens, and the slippery slope of a month without an update becomes an absent creator who stops seeing their project as a priority or their backers as deserving communication!  I’ve seen it plenty of times, and you probably have too.  Nor have I been entirely away from Steam Highwayman.  So what’s been done?

– The main focus has been continuing the Quest survey in Princes of the West.  I’ve used the opportunity to edit and improve some of the quests as I’ve gone – removing a few unnecessary codewords and other variables, improving the flow of one passage into another and checking that global changes make sense.  There’s still a lot to do on this – particularly the main quest, but you’ll get a sense of the scale of the project if I tell you that there are currently more than 130 quests in the log.

– The codeword check is also still underway.

– The funds came through – at last!  I’ve not spent any yet, though…  

– I’ve followed up with a few more late backers, bringing total supporters to 322.

– There were also quite a lot of non-SH activities – a long August Bank Holiday weekend at David’s Tent (a Christian worship festival in Gloucestershire) with family and quite a lot of time renovating the floor in the space where my wife and I are setting up a home-schooling hub…  All worth doing, but it’s been writing time that has suffered.

I need to be realistic (maybe even conservative!) about the plan for the next two weeks, judging by how much floor I have to get covered, but I do have some days set aside for this work in the next week.  So maybe I’ll:

– Complete the quest log – this is now the priority

– Improve some of the quests

– Look at fixing/finishing the main quest

– Look at those fight mechanics!

– Plan a trip to Cornwall…

Thanks for following along!  Next update due: 12.9.25

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Princes of the West Campaign 153% Funded!

The campaign to fund Princes of the West has just concluded over on Kickstarter. It’s been an exciting month, and a busy one, but I’m very pleased to say that the campaign has raised over £15,000 with the help of 318 backers onboard. As part of the Stretch Goals, backers will be receiving two standalone Steam Highwayman adventures, Harvest of Death and Dark Satanic Mills. A fuller update is available on the campaign page.

Missed the campaign? Send me a message below if you’re interested in grabbing the rewards.

Go back

Your message has been sent

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Nearly Done! Princes of the West Ending Soon

Come on – there’s no way any of you subscribers have managed to miss this piece of news, is there? Still – belt and braces.

Princes of the West is funded on Kickstarter!  Join the campaign to receive your copy, together with bundled extras and a personalised Wanted Poster frontispiece.

In Princes of the West, you will explore Devon and Cornwall, robbing the rich and defying the Guilds as before, but with new and dangerous challenges.  Drawn into a power-play between the rebel factions of Free Cornwall and the machinations of a Constabulary spymaster, the Steam Highwayman’s choices are more important than ever…  Smuggle brandy on the coast!  Explore the wilds of Dartmoor!  Venture underground into mines and caverns!  Take to the skies aboard an airship!  Rob the rich, give to the poor and steam off into the night!

– Open-world adventuring and solo-roleplay in a steampunk land that never was

– Extended quests with wide-ranging consequences

– Enjoy the life of a roadside brigand or a chivalrous hero

– ~300 pages; 1800+ passages

– Rewards include all four volumes of Steam Highwayman, large colour maps and extras

– Free sample available immediately

– KICKSTARTER ENDS 30TH JULY

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Princes of the West LIVE ON KICKSTARTER!

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!

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Warming the engine…

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…

See you all soon.

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Back Princes of the West Early… and Receive a Free Thankyou Gift!

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,

YOU are the Steam Highwayman!

Earlybird Mastermind reward tier