kickstarter – martin barnabus noutch.com

Update 17: Formatting and Fitting Cornwall In

A happy new year to each of you faithful backers! Thanks for your support and patience through 2025 🙂 Here’s a New Year and an approaching end to this project. What have I done and what is still to do?

Since last update, I:

– recovered from the flu. Thanks for all the messages of sympathy and support, the prayer and wishes for our recovery.

– completed the massive item survey which lists every instance of each item used in Princes of the West. There are 321 unique items so far in the series and keeping them in order is an ever-growing challenge! Some are one-use quest items, gained in a single location and tied to a specific event, while others are useful for both quests and trade, can be collected in different places and have importance differences in prices or availability tied to the story of your adventure. I have tried not to bloat the book with more stuff for the sake of it, but a certain amount of crucially Cornish and Devonian content has crept in…

– completed two black-and-white internal maps for the book. These are adapted from the large map that flew as a background in the adverts and videos for my Kickstarter, but it has taken some time to get them right. It goes like this.

Every gamebook needs a map, but an open-world gamebook needs one even more. While I, the author, know exactly where I am at any given time, feedback from readers tells me that navigating the world of Steam Highwayman is both challenging and rewarding – but certainly a big job. Very well. That means that a map has to be clear and unambiguous.

A black-and-white version of the large map (which is not completely finished) would be hard to read – least of all, due to the need to shrink it. In fact, the shape of Devon and Cornwall is also an issue – I struggled for a long while before landing on the current solution – which is an idiosyncratic re-arrangement of the Cornish peninsula, proudly skewiff. I hope it doesn’t end up being too confusing to navigate with.

I took the outline from the big map, chopped it up, relabelled the towns and other crucial locations and then sent it back over to the ipad for bordering… Then I did the same for Devon, which didn’t need spinning by 45 degrees and added in a few scrawled notes for flavour.

I think they are what I need. Legibility is key – a map that fits on a 10” x 8” page simply can’t hold as much as a big A2 spread – and that means that there is certainly a benefit to ordering the big maps beside their beauty. Some more playtesting will, I hope, reveal whether there are other changes that need to be made or more information that should best be added.

– completed a skill survey to see which attributes are tested most frequently and to try to balance their difficulty. This is not my speciality but I have had some good advice in the past which is getting baked into this stage.

– fitted and formatted the first 50 passages into the document that will produce our print copies of Princes of the West. This means fiddling with all the margins, the arrangements for tables in shops, dice rolls and other options, ordering the early pages for the introductions and maps and getting it ready to import the other 2200 or so passages.

That brings me to a couple of things I need to tell you! Firstly – the book is going to be bigger than expected. Probably nearer 400 pages than 300… The increase in print cost is covered by your pledges and the contingency built into the funding, but it might make some of the postage costs increase. I’m looking into this.

Secondly, I’m several months behind where I had hoped to be. I could rush and try to get the books to you by the end of February or March, but it is very likely that they will contain errors that we will all regret. No-one wants a big page of errata to look at on a website when they’re trying to play a paper gamebook.

My current thinking is – press ahead with the formatting of the pdf and squash as many bugs as possible; use placeholder images where necessary – although Ben has completed the illustrations, some of them need re-formatting before I can use them; get a pdf copy to any of you who would like to playtest it as soon as I can. This is different to how I’ve done things before and it would not be a real release of an e-book – but it has a couple of upsides. Firstly, anyone who wants to get started on the adventure can do so, importing a current character or continuing a current game. Secondly, that means more eyes spotting problems – whether typos, broken links or other issues. How does that sound?

I really want to do the book justice after more than 2 years of writing, so rushing it out now is not a great option. I also need more time to complete the other pieces of the project, such as the logbook and the two standalone stories I promised you! I thought I’d be able to write those while the book was in playtesting, but all my writing time has been taken up with finishing Princes of the West and tying up the many loose ends I had left.

So what’s next? I can answer that directly. In the next fortnight I mean to:

– Continue importing the draft into the publisher document and making corrections where necessary.

– Triple-check (I’ve done it twice already!) the codeword list

– Check all connections to other Steam Highwayman books – written and unwritten

– Fix the rumour engine (I’ve had to write a lot more rumours since I first did this – so some need to be unplugged and some need to be plugged in)

– Write a little roadkill passage for section 51 (which turned out to be almost duplicate 😉 )

Next update due: 30/1/26

December 19

Update 16: Struck by Influenza – the Indomitable Highwayman Steams On!

A painful fortnight. Last Monday (8th December), I spent several hours planning the sequence that has given me the greatest amount of trouble in the whole book: Lundy. It is based around some real history and a couple of nice gameplay ideas that have been with me for over two years, yet I’d not completed them on account of the complexity of the idea, my dissatisfaction with my various attempts and something doggedly frustrating about the whole section. But I collated all my previous drafts, cut some pieces out of the main draft, replanned some flowcharts and prepared to write.

Then on Tuesday, I wrote solidly for around six hours, putting down more than three thousand words. And as I steamed into the final passage – which is actually a fortuitous reuniting with the Ferguson after a long velosteamless sequence – I felt a heaviness come upon me. It was the flu.

Rather than being able to celebrate that the final piece of a very troublesome draft had at last been completed, I rang up everyone I was committed to for the next few days, cancelled everything and battened down the hatches. It got me – it got my wife – it got three of my four small children. Think of sleepless, feverish toddlers who can’t say what they need or want – frustrated parents who can hardly keep their own tempers – a writer kept from his draft – a mother soldiering on for the sake of her loved ones.

It was tragic. And no choice was involved whatsoever.

In the last two days I’ve been recovering. Today I managed to renumber all the passages from that blitz last Tuesday and import them into the main draft – which now stands at a colossal 2271 passages. Then after doing that, I’ve begun the final item check – testing that each of the items is where it should be. This is prior to setting the shops right – more than 50 of them – where you should be able to offload your loot and buy supplies for mending your vel and keeping your fires stoked. As well as crucial stuff like cough medicine.

I’m considerably behind where I wanted to be: I hoped to be able to release a late-playtesting version to you before Christmas – there has already been some playtesting since April this year – and I had hoped to be well into the formatting of the main book, as well as further along in the production of the extras. Nonetheless, I’m happy with what I’ve managed to do – particularly considering the flu.

Will this effect my completion date? Realistically, I think that February would be miraculous – but I don’t think it will be long after. I will need to look back at my main project timeline with fresh eyes and book in the time for everything before I can be more specific. Ben is in the process of drawing the final spot illustrations – his main pages are finished – and the main map is close to completion too – it just needs a little more labelling.

I won’t be doing anything else on the project now until the New Year – I’m taking a break from the saddle – so next update is due 16.1.26. Thanks for all your support and patience – Princes of the West is going to be a gamebook for the record books.

December 5

Rhinos and Pills

I’ve put in several solid days and a few evenings this fortnight. What’s happened to the draft? I have…

Begun to reorganise and check the rumours
Complained about the quality of some copper
Added some rhinos, filling in a great Cornish location, connecting up a mechanic that I had pre-written and creating a new friendship. The rhinos even get an illustration.
Put a trap in an otherwise-helpful location…
Written a party in Barnstaple
Created a network selling performance-enhancing pills… This has quite a backstory.
Written the final beer – with some choices in exactly how you receive it, which was fun.
Continued the list of achievements for The Reeking Metropolis.
Worked on the touring guide to accompany Princes of the West.
Filled in a brewery,
Used a quay.
Removed some flowers.
Cut a fishing trip (there’s already plenty of fish)
Checked and corrected the border crossings
Checked and corrected the Solidarity Point systems
Cut rabbits

That means I haven’t completed some of the tasks I wanted to last update. Lundy is still to complete, although several of the modules listed above relate to it directly. I haven’t corrected anyone’s inconsistent accent. That’s all to come. But I’m getting closer and closer to the moment when I can stop.

Right now there’s a crying baby on my lap, so I’m going to stop here.

Next update due: 19.12.25

August 15

Kickstarter Update 7: At the keyboard on a hot afternoon

Here’s an update on progress so far on the Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West project. What’s happened in the two weeks since the campaign ended?

– Pledges have all been collected and I’m awaiting the transfer of funds to complete – it looks like it’s in process, but my bank hasn’t notified me yet.

– I’ve followed up where I can with late backers and a few people whose payments didn’t come through.

– I’ve also had a flurry of sales of my old stock of the maps for Smog & Ambuscade, Highways & Holloways and The Reeking Metropolis – so these have been sent off in the post.

– I’ve been working on the codeword check Codewords are a key component of the logic sequences in the quests, so they have to be right, and that also means checking codewords from other books that become relevant here in Princes of the West. If your previous playthrough has ticked Amalgam, Amphibious or Bolster, then you’ll have some nice bonuses coming your way.

– I’ve spent a large amount of time on a quest survey – essentially, working through the entire draft, checking which passages are parts of which quest or event, and building up to checking that each one is a) finished and b) good. I’ve already cut out a few orphan passages (without any inward links) that survived from earlier drafts of quests, freeing up about 5 passages’ worth of space. This is also directly linked to the codeword check.

– The Item check – this has begun. It’s a huge piece of work, like the codewords. There are more than 300 unique items in the four books so far – some linked to quests, some purchasable or good for trade, and many that are both! I love creating fun items, but I have to limit myself…

– I’ve begun creating and formatting the .pub document that will become the submitted print .pdf. In the name of consistency, I’m using the same software and even the same old laptop for this that I did with the previous volumes: an old edition of Microsoft Publisher which formats things exactly how I like it – but once SH5 and 6 are done, I think it’ll probably be time to move on! This document is key – I can reuse portions of previous documents – especially for paratexts like the copyright page, titling, introduction and epilogues – but everything needs careful changes – from as small as a change of title, illustrator and ISBN on the copyright page, right up to re-written epilogues.

There’s also been a lot of other stuff going on, including my son’s second birthday and a three-day visit from my brother and his family.

– I was meant to begin drafting Harvest of Death but it hasn’t happened yet, due to the big editing jobs described above. Don’t worry – when the time is right, it will simply fly off the keyboard!

In the next fortnight, I hope to…

– Complete the quest check

– Complete the codeword check

– Look at my fight mechanics

– List and standardise the rooms

– Check links to the other books

– Be getting my hands on the funds at last!

– Possibly write up Harvest of Death

– Follow up some more backers who dropped out

If you have any input about the codewords, quests, fights or other mechanics, please get in touch. My game design has improved a lot since the first book, but it’s by no means perfect, and this is one area I really want to improve for Princes of the West.

Next update due: 29.8.25

July 31

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.

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July 1June 30

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!

June 23

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.

June 11June 10

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.

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!

June 3

A Bright Future

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.

To the Kickstarter!

To the sample!

May 21

Amuse Bouche, anyone?

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.

More soon!