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.
To give you a taste of what it might read like, here is the low-water encounter, formatted in Twine, for old-times sake.
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.
