Long-time player unsure if you’ve done all you can do as the Steam Highwayman? First-timer looking for a little help in finding an adventure? Stuck and unable to find a key item to complete a quest?
This new list of achievements (also available to print as a pdf) might help you if you’re looking for more.
Looking through the entire volume to create this hint / achievement list has been pretty fun: it reminds me of the feeling of writing Smog & Ambuscade for the very first time. There are some great adventures in there.
I’ve been thinking about how someone meets Steam Highwayman. It’s not through a suggestion on Kickstarter anymore: it’s by reading or watching about it online through a blog like Dave Morris’s Fabled Lands or the recent playthrough video by Lone Adventurer. When I was personally recommending the adventure, there was a simplicity about promising people a particular kind of experience – but the problem was, that the experience I wanted to share was my own solo roleplaying adventure from my very specific experience and knowledge.
For example, the map of Smog & Ambuscade is burnt into my cortex: I can draw it by heart, and know exactly which direction to turn at any junction. The other day I took my family for a summer evening drive through Steam Highwayman Country: Handy Cross (second, minor, exit on the roundabout when driving west on the M40), down to Marlow, across the Thames, through Bisham, up through Inkydown Wood, past Furze Platt, into Maidenhead and, actually, on to Windsor, all by memory and without reference to a real-world map, satnav or even my printed book map. It helps that I rode these roads on my Yamaha back in 2008-2012 – the road to Windsor particularly for my continuing teacher training frequently hosted there.
But the map I first provided in Smog & Ambuscade proved harder to use than I hoped. That was one serious reason for drawing the big A2 maps that I sell as part of the Touring Guide: clearer, larger-scale mapping with better labels.
Yet even armed with a good map, I realise that it is quite possible to explore Smog & Ambuscade for some time and not feel that you’ve got stuck into an adventure. Yes, it is an open-world gamebook, populated largely with shorter quests, and yes, it’s a roleplaying experience, in which the imaginative adventure of experiencing the world is a big part of the payoff, but when people have complained that there isn’t enough to do, I have to listen. It’s a tension in the design and planning that I’ve tried to deal with in the following volumes, but it’s not simple. And Smog & Ambuscade was the first time I did anything like this – someone charitably described my writing as ‘improving in game design’ over the course of the first three volumes.
That’s why I’m working on a hint sheet – or achievement list – or something between the two. A prompt of all the adventures that are hidden inside the relatively slim volume of Smog & Ambuscade, to whet the appetites of the newer reader and perhaps even to challenge the veteran. I don’t mean to provide full solutions or complete spoilers, but light walk-through or directions, to provide work-arounds to compensate for an unintentionally challenging level of difficulty.
Another option I’ve considered is to make a full revision of Smog & Ambuscade – correcting all known errors, of course, but also improving the gameplay with better signposting, eliminating loops, deepening quests and updating mechanics to stay in line with the newer volumes. But since I’m still working on The Princes of the West and will have two more to write after that, I think it might be premature. Instead I wonder about completing the series and then creating a fully-revised and expanded version of Smog & Ambuscade – and perhaps even revising the other books – before publishing a limited run as a collector’s hardback edition, as well as updating the standard print-on-demand paperbacks.
I wonder what my most-faithful readers think. Some are more aware of the problems and issues within my writing than anyone else – and yet are gracious enough to focus on the good points and encourage me to keep going. But, honestly speaking, is the first book a poor spokesperson for the entire team? I’ve been re-reading Smog recently and feel that it has some of my freshest, most original writing in it, although it is probably the book that needs the most patience.
The hint sheet looks like it’s going to be a large piece of work in its own right, though. I’ve only got through about 30 passages of the book and I’ve had to write three pages of notes… Here’s a taster:
Have you…
Built a hideout in High Wood or Windsor Wood?
Earnt some coins playing the piano?
Exacted vengeance on a rich playboy at Boulter’s Lock Hotel? (requiring all 3 published volumes)
