Tag: sh4

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Update 28: Print Proof Ordered

Now we’re really steaming.  I completed all the corrections earlier this week and I’ve uploaded the first digital files to Ingram so that I could order a print proof.  It should arrive in the next couple of weeks and you’ll be treated to a photo of me holding it in the next update, if all goes well.

Here’s a screenshot of the print order.  You can see that the print cost of the book implies a large volume…  We’re looking at 438 pages and 2250ish passages.

The book isn’t quite finalised – there are a few gameplay edits still pending, but I want to have a think about these while turning the real pages, and I’ll take the time to have a playthrough as well.  You can always catch a few more errors in print too.

However, having digital files ready is a crucial catalyst for the project: it allows me to get a final print cost and book size and weight, which I need to proceed with the shipping preparations.  I’ll explain more soon, but rather than use the Kickstarter pledge manager, I’m going to be collecting shipping costs directly through Stripe.  It means I can tailor the costs a lot more finely, hopefully keeping shipping to a minimum for all of us!  I’ve begun looking at the costs and overall it seems my estimates were fairly good, despite the time that has passed.

But there is one particular shipping option I want to draw your attention to: collection.  The final costing of the book and extras has shown that the project is within budget and therefore then there is nothing more to pay if you collect your rewards.  When and where?  Howabout at Fighting Fantasy Fest 6, on Saturday 5th September, in London, UK?

If you haven’t been, the Fest is the premier convention devoted exclusively to gamebooks – including, of course, the Fighting Fantasy series.  However, it has also become a haven for the independent authors of the gamebook renaissance and a great place to meet heros of the medium both past and present.  It’s organised by the stalwart Jon Green whose work bridges both the original Fighting Fantasy books and modern independent gamebooks.  What a legend.

COLLECTION FORM

If you mean to be there, then use this form to register to collect your rewards in person.  Please try and use the same email that you used for your pledge so that I don’t lose your response!  

If you can’t make it to the convention but would like to arrange collection in London, UK on a date following 5th September, just put a note in the form.

Otherwise, I’ll be sending out links to collect shipping payments and arrange final addresses in about a month for everyone who wants their rewards delivered to their door.  I’ve put a lot of work into shipping costs but they aren’t quite finalised yet.

It was late last year when I first wondered if this was all going to come together in time for FFF6 and I’m pleased to say that I’m on schedule for a complete set of physical rewards by then.  The extra adventures may take a little longer or may also be ready in time – I’m not sure.

So what else needs doing?  Here’s a longer list of the remaining jobs of the project.

– Acknowledgements

– Complete 2 maps (Plymouth and the siege of Tintagel)

– Write short adventures (Dark, Satanic Mills and Harvest of Death) 

– Complete shipping estimates and plan

– Digital decorations for boxes, frames etc

– Look over / improve character sheets

– Codeword check (partly done!)

– Create companion (partly done)

– Order maps

– Complete Touring Guide 2 (about 20 pages to do)

– Draw pubs (at least 3 to draw)

– Order guide folders

– Order guidebooks

– Assemble folders

– Order packaging

– Assemble TG2s

– Order TG1s

– Assemble TG1s

– Chase Wanted Posters

– Create remaining wanted posters

– Set up stripe links for shipping payments

– Update SH1-3 companion

– Update SH1

– Update SH2

– Update SH3

– Update errata

In the next fortnight I’ll be keenly awaiting that print proof, doing the taxes for my wife’s small company (an home education hub) and trying to survive in the heat.  I may get to the drawing of the maps or work on the guide – pretty much all of the remaining jobs are pleasant ones and I’m not pressurising myself now.

What’s in the Steam Highwayman’s tankard?  A pint of Marston’s Pedigree.

Next update due: 2.7.26

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Update 26: Editing Going Well

I’ve just managed to put two full days into editing Princes of the West and it is exciting to feel the draft nearing a finished state.  I’ll give you a window into the process…

I sat down on Monday at around 9am – after tidying away breakfast for the family – and began to work on the Introduction.  These pages take a lot of focus – they need to be clear while setting the atmosphere, cover all the crucial systems while not boring a player.  For some readers, they’re the first thing they encounter – for others, they’re a reference to find answers for rule queries.  Some of you will no doubt skip them, having played Steam HIghwayman before – and then have to return to them to see what exactly they say about the Devon Music Tour…

It took me most of the day to get the Introduction how I wanted it.  I also corrected some small issues at the front of the book – typos in the copyright section, a missing icon on one of the maps – while crunching celery and raw carrot to stave off my sugar craving.  I incorporated a change to the combat rules that I hope will make fights less punishing after a recommendation from one of you with a background in statistics and responded to a set of thoughts from the first playtesters who saw the draft in April and May 2025.

I’ve begun an investigation into strange grey lines that accompany some of the spot illustrations…  These are pesky, spoiling the monochrome clarity of the pages, and unpredictable.  Why do they appear in some places and not others?  I’m not sure yet – but they also turned up in the previous print of The Reeking Metropolis, so I think they’re an artefact of the conversion into pdf…

While pursuing this, I began formatting the acknowledgements section of Princes – and would have liked to simply copy and paste the formatting from Metropolis – except that – now I reveal a secret – I lost the print-ready .pub file of The Reeking Metropolis some time ago…  The version I have is some way off the final printed version, with errors, placeholder images and no paratexts at the back – including acknowledgements.  That’s one reason I haven’t released an errata and revised edition of The Reeking Metropolis before now.  All my searches on the old laptop – and my various googledrives – turned up blank.

But with the focus of a sunny Monday morning and an empty house (my wife and children had left to go to a home-education meetup), a faint bell rang in my head…  Didn’t I use a USB stick for a while?  I dug around to see which ones I could find and unearthed a few from odd places – bedside drawer, spare wire pot, spare board-game-piece box.

And there amongst teaching resources was SH3.5 – and my heart leapt with gratitude and joy!  I’d just read the parables of the lost sheep, the lost coin and the lost son in Luke’s Gospel to my children, so I had to rejoice.  And make multiple copies of the file.

I’ll be releasing a tidier errata list for all previous volumes of Steam Highwayman when I fulfil this project as well as making sure any corrections are incorporated in newly-printed versions.

And many of you actually backed The Reeking Metropolis and are named in the acknowledgements.  So – here’s an important point – unless you tell me otherwise, each backer will be acknowledged in the book by: previously-chosen backer name; or Kickstarter provided name.  That’s the plan, anyway.

I’ve messaged those of you who are looking to have a Wanted Poster created as a frontispiece for your book (s) and already received the first image in reply – a fearsome, but somewhat foppish, Italian claimant to the title of the Steam Highwayman.  If anyone is thinking of the upgrade, it’s not too late.  I think these are a great way to personalise your books.

And among the corrections I completed was an inconsistency in the naming of the Cornish revolutionaries.  You know how those splinter groups are – barely able to agree on a name, let alone a coherent policy – but in this case I still had fragments of older names betraying my own struggle to give them a name.  Were they to be the Free Defenders of Kernow, or the Defenders of Free Kernow?  I even found myself referring to them as the Free Forces of Kernow at one point.  And then there is the tin of fruit / tinned fruit fiasco.  Boy oh boy.

That’s about one day’s work, finishing at 5pm.  Then on Tuesday I began at a similar time and focused on the main gameplay passages, screwing myself into the seat until I had reached 500 of the 2250 or so…  The sort of mistakes in here varied from typos (nice and easy) to missing passages…  For example, passage 147 was entirely absent from the draft but I reckoned I had written it as I had a vague memory of some of the dialogue.  I found it in the gdoc draft, pasted it in, matched the formatting, shuffled nearby passages, removed whitespace, replaced larger spot illustrations with smaller ones, renumbered the page tops and sighed in relief that I hadn’t needed to increase the page count.  Then there was a broken link that sent me back to the very first part of Princes I planned and wrote in October 2023.  Images follow.

The notebook is labelled up for reference, so I found it exactly where it should be and found the original flowchart/network sketch – with annoying gaps in the numbering.  But I was able to reconstruct and correct the flow.  This is a location that can be reached from two directions and can bounce the player back the way they came, but in the interest of saving passages I used a noted passage mechanic to identify the direction of travel…  It was all such a good plan except that at 278 I had instructed a player Wanted by the Haulage Guild to proceed directly to…  278.  Doh!

There was a passage I had already passed dealing with the event, but it spat the player out in the wrong direction…  And oh yes, another passage with the right orientation.  Phew.  Plug it in.

The other day on the Discord chat someone came to me with a broken link – they knew it was possible to meet acrobats somewhere in Smog & Ambuscade because I referred to the encounter in later books – and in fact I’ve used the codeword you gain early in the main quest of Princes – but they couldn’t see how to get there.  I investigated and discovered that back when editing Smog, around a decade(!!) ago, I had cut a link to save passages – and inadvertently isolated the acrobat encounter, meaning that no-one has ever been able to honestly access it and gain either the fun codeword or the NIMBLENESS +1 bonus…  Doh!

Needless to say, I’ll be fixing that.

These wiring issues are almost unavoidable in my writing process.  I track my ins and outs and links as best I can but I have to recognise that my method is not infallible.  Another reason I’m so grateful for the help provided by readers and playtesters.

I’m sometimes recommended software to try and write in, but even a platform as resilient as Twine struggles with a 1000+, let alone a 2000+, gamebook with the density of variables I use.  I’ve certainly improved since writing Smog and I’ve realised that modelling sections on paper is the most reliable thing I can do…  So the next two books should be easy to write, eh?  And have no errors.

I also began work on the final map that will be included in the Touring Guide – a map of Plymouth – so that feels nice.  2 of the 4 are complete.  There’s a bit more drawing to do for the guide itself, particularly some pub illustrations.  But I’m certainly nearing the end of this phase.

Which will give me chance to get to the standalone adventures I’m still aching to write – Harvest of Death and Dark Satanic Mills.  I had originally thought I could do these while the book was out with playtesters but that hasn’t been how it has worked!  You’ll get them, don’t worry.  I’ve even referenced two other standalone adventures buried in Princes – they’ve been spotted by at least one eagle-eyed playtester.

What next?

  • More editing of the main text
  • More work on the Guide maps
  • Writing of acknowledgements
  • Creation of the first Wanted Posters

Next update due: 5.6.26

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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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Update 21: Proofreading and Playtesting Underway – Extras in digital production

We have a team of around fifteen keen playtesters and proofreaders currently at work, already exploring Devon and Cornwall through the passages of Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West.  It was a great feeling to have other eyes – and enthusiastic ones at that – on the text again, after many months of solo endeavour.

What’s the point?  Well, along with getting some feedback on macro gameplay like difficulty and pacing, I hope to squash as many of these as possible…

The dreaded broken link – every gamebook enthusiast’s nightmare.  In a book of 2251 passages with almost 10,000 links, there is a lot of opportunity for mistakes.  

The proofing and playtesting window is two months, which gives me time to work on all the other parts of your reward bundle.  This week I have been working on the Adventurer’s Logbook…

That means revisiting Highways and Holloways and writing out a Hints and Achievements list like I did for Smog and Ambuscade.  It’s not a quick job but it’s very enjoyable – I get to enjoy reading all the quests I wrote in 2018, many of which I’ve forgotten.  I mean to do something better than a simple printed list – perhaps a table layout for one or more dates or ticks to say, yes, I achieved this on this date during my fourth playthrough or something…  It’s not quite certain yet.  For the sake of originality, I was looking at a fun paper size (eg long and slim, like DL) and maybe ringbound, but due to cost of both postage and printing, I’m more likely to go for a stapled A5 booklet at the moment.  But we’ll see.

Perhaps something like this – this was the DL layout.  Either way, the list of achievements is a great way to advertise the book.  What can you do in a Steam Highwayman adventure?  A lot more than defeat some fantasy monsters, rob a dungeon and defeat a wizard, that’s for sure, in both variety and length.  These lists of achievements don’t tell the whole story of the adventures in the books – both the prose and the gameplay are needed for that – but they give a great flavour.

What next?  In the next fortnight I mean to…

  • Complete the Adventurer’s Logbook

And that will be plenty to get done!

Next update due: 27.3.26

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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 â…“ 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.