Tag: sh4

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Update 20 – A Complete Internal of Princes of the West

Since the last update I completed the formatting of the interior of the book.  It is a whopper – currently at 2251 sections and 426 pages.  This took me so long for a couple of reasons:

– To maintain consistency, I’m using the same format and software as for the previous Steam Highwayman books.  These were completed on a copy of Microsoft Publisher 2007 on a laptop belonging to my wife that was bought in either 2007 or 2008…  Once I’m into the swing of things, there are no problems with memory, but I have to treat it fairly carefully to avoid crashes, battery issues and so on!

– I also go through each page manually, editing the layout of the options, spacing the passages in the columns and choosing and fitting spot illustrations (some call them ‘fillers’ but Russ always called them ‘spots’) to make up the space and break up the wall of text.  This is also a chance to edit and improve, either editing my writing or fixing links, filling in the shops and changing values for balance.  To complete the 2251 passages, this took around 10 days – something like 60 hours.

What then?  I have made a first stab at a new Character Sheet (or 3 sheets including the Devon Music Tour) to account for some changes in mechanics.  These are still not finalised.  Then I looked at refreshing the introduction and rules, but, to be honest, I was pretty frazzled by that stage!  These rules may need a bit more attention – and also some inputs.

One of the particular inputs I am thinking about is the fight rules.  I have two alternate fight systems – smalls changes to the essential rules – worked out with help from a backer who knows these books almost as well as I do – and I’m intending to share them with you and with anyone who wants to playtest, to see whether they actually improve the gameplay.

So my plan is to share the electronic interior of the book with any of you who want to proof it or playtest it – in fact, you should have already had my invitation to participate by email, and if not, please check your spam…  This leaves a lot still to do, but it means I can shift mode away from the very focussed writing, editing and formatting into the production of some of the other rewards.  Specifically, I will take a look at the large maps and get them printed as the next phase of the project.  They take a long time to fold, so the sooner I have them, the better!  Then I’ll move on to look at the logbook and a refreshed Companion, and also find time to produce the Harvest of Death and Dark, Satanic Mills that I promised you.

I also get to do some drawing – like the image of the Red Tiller above – perhaps reminiscent of the Blue Anchor in Helston?

Exciting times!

Next update due: 13.3.26

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Update 18: Continuing to format

January has shot by – and progress is good.

– I paid Ben for the finalised internal illustrations.  I’m now only holding funds for the printing of the books and the extras.

– I’ve spent four days and several late-night stints formatting the book – so far, I’m up to passage 722.  This is essentially a long, careful paste-up, as I take sections of 100 passages from my gdoc and paste them into Microsoft publisher, and then work through them in order, checking lineation, reformatting bold and italic fonts, which I use a lot, adding in a lot of invisible tables and setting in the minor and major illustrations.  I think I’m now about ⅓ of the way through this long and painstaking job.

– Rather than correct the rumour engine from the outside, I’ve been correcting it as I go through the formatting: each time I reach a beer or other rumour passage, I can select which of the rumours to link in from a list of nearly 60.

– Likewise, as I’ve reached shops and places to trade, I’ve logged the items to be bought and sold so that everything needed can be accessed somewhere.  Prices are high in parts of Cornwall, cut off behind the Imperial blockade – but there’s money to be made if you know where to offload your loot!

– I’ve checked the codewords to passage 700, but there are more to do.

– I’ve checked the inter-book links and written a missing link that takes you on a railway journey to London.

The plan is to continue working at this pace until the book is formatted.  It’s taking longer than I had hoped because the book is … longer than expected.

But being so careful as I go does have the benefit of giving me the chance to comb my way through the passages.  I’ve made plenty of corrections as I’ve gone along – typos, bad links, duplications and so on – but also edited and improved the clarity of the writing in some places and, I think, improved the game in a few minor ways.

It’s been pleasant to re-read sections that I wrote a long time ago and enjoy the story from the inside as well.  There is a broad distribution of sections across the map too – passage 300-399 in one area and 400-499 in another – so it’s a bit like travelling across the region as well.  Coupled with memories from our trip to Cornwall and Devon in September, I’ve really been in the saddle in my mind.

What next?

– I’ll be continuing to format the document!  This is probably another 10 days work – so it may be March before I’m ready to send or share it with proofreaders.

Next update due: 13.2.26

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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.

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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

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Update 10: Steam Highwayman Goes West!

I just returned from a trip to Devon and Cornwall to help ‘colour in’ the last portions of the map where I still hadn’t got enough content – if you can believe that a gamebook of 1800 passages felt a bit empty!  This is one of the challenges of writing in an open-world – creating a map that feels broad and exciting – and then having to make sure the places you go all have things worth doing!  The emptiest bits were the toes of Cornwall – St Ives, St Michael’s Mount and the Lizard – and a few other corners.

Well, I found plenty of material to stuff the sock with.  You’ll find quality content all the way down now!

While there, I also found the time to work on:

  • Writing the end of the main quest – the showdown between Imperial and Free Cornish forces – with you in the middle!
Plotting the burning of Bude…  Sorry, Bude.
  • A new character based on genuine Steampunk history to appear in Bude.  I had heard of him before but had forgotten about him, and when I was reminded of what he did, I had to include him…
Sir Goldsworthy Gurney, Cornish inventor of the steam road car and other stuff.
  • I dutifully investigated some genuine Cornish and Devon beer… and notes will be included in the book.  I brought back another 5 bottles to research.  Special mention to Sharp’s Sea Fury – an absolutely cracking Special Ale I drank on our last night in the West at a pub that will feature in the book.  Think rich, roasted, balanced – moreish!  But my children had finished their fish and chips and we had to get them back to the caravan after just a single pint.
  • The earlier part of the trip took us to some special Devon places too, and we stayed for one night in a pub near Lydford on the side of Dartmoor…  Pure Highwayman stuff!
My daughter in a moody Dartmoor mist at the Nine Maidens above Okehampton…  You’ll want to remember this spot!
  • I’ve been re-building some of the trackers that measure your impact on Cornish freedom – previously, the different Princes each had their own power, but I think this is going to be rolled together into a Support for the Rebellion number – points gained when you help the Cornish prepare for an Imperial assault or when you stoke support for Arthur – and then the same metric will help decide what happens in the final sequence of the main quest.

I’ve been in contact with Ben some more too, and will be getting the next batch of illustrations underway soon.  In the next fortnight I hope to:

  • Finalise the main quest!
  • Return to the fight mechanics
  • Plan the next batch of illustrations with Ben

Next update due: 11th October

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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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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

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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.

← Back

Thank you for your response. ✨

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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!