Tag: ks4

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Update 14: Giving to the poor… repeatedly!

Last week, personal matters took priority.  This week, I hit the project hard – very hard.  What have I managed?

I completed the smuggling module.  This is now built of several sequences: an introductory adventure based around one of the key characters; twenty rumours; six location-based repeatable voyages; six trade destinations; several sub-routine encounters that can affect different voyages; seven locations for stashing your loot, some with chase sequences; and many passages allowing you to sell – or try to sell – liquor to the various publicans.  There are a few links into the main rebellion plot as well as an emergent debt dynamic that I quite like…  Anyway, I now feel confident that I’ve done more justice to the subject.  This could have been a book by itself!

I’ve thought hard about the second part of my Robin-Hood-inspired hero’s mission statement: I do occasionally introduce the Steam Highwayman as one who ‘robs from the rich and gives to the poor… or just keeps it.”  Well, in the first volumes, I don’t think I really gave the reader enough opportunities to give their cash away.  Well, there is now the chance to be charitable in (almost) any settlement, and the potential for it to impact your reputation through Solidarity Points – or, in Cornwall, for it to have another effect.  This is going to effect the balance of the series, but I don’t have a great problem with that.  I think I’m getting closer to the gameplay I always wanted.

  • I removed some old stub passages I created when I was trying to write long, story-style smuggling voyages.
  • I removed a gold-panning micro-game, which might be a better fit in Dark Vales & Dark Hearts anyway.
  • I edited the pony-drifting sequence, limiting it to a single location and event.
  • I added a hotel into Harrowbeer, which is a limited, high-class sort of pub…  Unlike the hotel in Mayfair, they will allow you to enter if you stink (GAL-2), as long as you are heading off for an immediate bath, anyway.
  • I’ve fixed a few churches, some of which didn’t really do anything until now.
  • I created a railway journey that needed some detail.
  • I fixed navigation through Barnstaple, which had become needlessly complicated.
  • I fixed a few pub parlours that hosted some higher-class interactions like trading shares and playing cards.
  • I fixed the Favour dynamic and wrote its brief rule section; this also required me to survey Friendships across the book.
  • I did a little bit of work on the Achievements list for The Reeking Metropolis – which includes measuring the rarity of some of the achievements.  I’ll write about this another time: it’s quite a big subject!
  • I checked and completed the logic governing your interactions with another key character – but not one who is involved with the Cornish Rebellion.  Someone with the potential to be a benefactor… or a malefactor.
  • I even used some of the opportunities presented by improving all of these to do my very first reservations in the Dark Vales & Dark Hearts spreadsheet.

The illustration shows you my current planning preferences: I create flowcharts – in pencil first – then number them, filling in my spreadsheet as I go.  I colour the boxes in the flowchart when I’ve written them, sometimes using different colours if I’m trying to distinguish or remember something, and adding codewords or other keys in red.  It’s nice, when I’ve finished a sequence, to scrawl in felt tip so I know that the page is done and I don’t need to check it.

This is the fourth notebook I’ve filled.  I’ve landed on exactly what I like best: an A4, ring-bound dot-patterned book.

So what’s next?  I’m speeding up and there’s a lot of checking as I go now.  I need to:

  • Check, count and standardise the Solidarity Points
  • Rebuild the rumour engine (I’ve increased the number of rumours significantly!)
  • Fix Lundy
  • Check the accent for one of the main characters: when I began writing her, she had a kind of standard English, but she became more Cornish as time went on.  I need her to be one or the other – but she appears in at least fifty passages.

Next update due: 5.12.25

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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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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