Tag: map

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Update 24: A look at the big map

Hello everyone.  It’s been a good fortnight for Princes of the West.  What have I been up to?

  • Checking in on proofreaders and playtesters ahead of their May deadline.
  • Working on the maps and guidebook
  • Unpacking the first printed rewards!

The proofreading and playtesting team have been wrapping up their work and I’m incredibly grateful.  I’ve ended up with … around 700 issues to respond to!  These aren’t all errors or mistakes and very few of them were gameplay problems, but I’m grateful for all the time that has been spent by keen supporters checking my work, both minimising the mistakes that could cause problems for you when you play the books and getting the pages looking their best.

My plan is to begin the editing in corrections and changes in May – so I should have begun by next update.

The original A2 map design I made was just a bit too short for the map design, so I spent a bit of time on a large ipad doing a digital tracing and drawing to extend the map eastwards.  I was pretty happy with that, so I pushed on with the design and ended up with a great-looking design that is nearly finished.  Rather like the map for The Reeking Metropolis, I’m including a gazette of locations on the map itself, with grid references for some of the important ones.  There’s also going to be at least one in-world advertisement filling in gaps and adding to the lore.  Perhaps I can bury a clue in there too?

I also drew up a map for Dartmoor, which is going to be one of the smaller maps in the pack.  Whereas in the first one I had three gamebooks to map and offered three A2 maps, this time I have a single – massive – volume, so there’ll be one A2 map and three smaller ones covering different regions or sections of gameplay – I won’t say more right now.

I’ve also been writing the booklet that will accompany the maps and that has given me the giggles, I can tell you.  The in-world creator of these guides seems to be a bit clueless about the political situation, though reliable on where to find cheap coalgas for the velosteam.

In my previous update I mentioned the arrival of the first printed rewards – the Adventurer’s Log.  The delivery of these was far from simple but I got my hands on 300 copies after ten days or so.  They look great and the responses I’ve had really vindicate my decision to put time into producing them.  In a way, they act as a little ambassador for the whole project, giving an idea of the sort of quest content in the four books so far.

What’s next?

Throughout May, the 100 Endings Book Club, hosted by Duncan Thomson on Discord and Reddit, are holding a playthrough of Steam Highwayman.  I mean to be participating in a couple of AMA (ask-me-anything) sessions as well as hanging out on both forums to advise, hint, tease and generally enjoy my books through other players’ eyes.  You’re all welcome to join in – and if any of you are desperately keen to join in but haven’t actually got copies yet, let me know and I’d be willing to split your bundle.

And on the project?

  • Continue the map pack and guidebook
  • Complete the big map
  • Begin correcting the text of Princes of the West

Next update due: 8.5.26

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Steam Highwayman III: Update 32 live

Over on Kickstarter you can read the most recent update for my Steam Highwayman III: The Reeking Metropolis project.  It’s a while since I’ve linked them up on here, but why not?  You’ll find out which map took me longest to draw, and how soon I hope for the book to be on its way to backers!

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SH2: Highways and Holloways Draft Complete

Calling a piece of writing ‘finished’ is not something I like doing… but I’d better get better at doing it.

This evening, after a marathon 7000+ word day, I finished the second volume of Steam Highwayman.  Highways and Holloways allows you to continue the open-world Steampunk journey that began in Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade.  But it also stands alone, bigger, better, badder.

I’ve written nearly 140,000 words of content.  There are well over a hundred quests and adventures, repeatable events, double- and multiple-entry plotlines, re-occuring characters, strongly-defined and engaging factions, a vast map of road, river and sky.  Five separate airship adventures layer on top of the adventure of robbery and escape, which has been redesigned to make the Constables a more challenging and reactive threat.

There are 1481 passages of interactive text.  This number will almost certainly round to 1500 during my editing process.  You’ll visit some of them many times, but there are some you’d better hope you never read.  There is calamity, tragedy and terror in these pages – as well as intrigue, wealth, surprise, adventure, sky-piracy, sous-cheffery, archaeology, arson, politics, woodsmanship, poaching, exorcism, angling, burglary and croquet.

This is the kind of book I always wanted gamebooks to be.

Ben is hard at work on a new cover for this followup to Steam Highwayman I.  So far, we’ve got all sorts of plans to make this a worthy successor – to match and surpass the first volume.

My plan is to launch a kickstarter later this summer to fund a full illustration and the best editing process that I can.  With the magic of print-on-demand and the wind in my sales, this could be the second Steampunk Adventure Gamebook in the series available this year.