Tag: Steam Highwayman

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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 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

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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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Update 13 – You must never break the chain

That’s the chain of updates, of course.  But also, in a moment of genuine inspiration, I created a unique marker that unlocks several parts of the Smuggling Module (Q1h/Q165) – the chain tattoo that you gain, involuntarily, after completing your smuggling training with the Terror, Terence Kneebone, aboard his steam crester, the Swell Dolly.

Who is the Steam Highwayman?  A free adventurer, bound to no-one, riding wherever you will…  Until you accept something like Penrose’s ring or the chain tattoo and you become associated with a dreaming visionary revolutionary or a ruthless smuggler.

This last two weeks I’ve been working almost entirely on the smuggling module.  I thought I could write a short series of passages, but to balance out the scale of the trade network I’ve already built for firkins of brandy and the like, I have needed some size, length and openness.  In a way, I’ve rebuilt something like the open-sea module, but without as much freedom.  Yet I’ve still needed some passage extensions to the book to fit in what’s needed.

How does it work?  Well, that all depends where you are.  In Devon, you’ll simply need to find some smugglers on the North or South coast, win their trust, hire them to sail with you, head out to a rendezvous on a foreign shore or at sea, buy contraband and then bring it to a depot point, put it ashore, return to your port, head to your depot, get your contraband aboard your velosteam – provided you have your barrel panniers fitted – be lucky enough to escape the attention of the Constables, bring your cargo to a buyer, like a friendly landlord, avoid narks, get a good price and repeat.  Information regarding most of this – rendezvous points, willing smugglers, innkeepers happy to buy and places where you can hide your goods – is readily available as a series of rumours you’ll hear in pubs, freight yards or on the road.

And in Cornwall?  It’s complicated by the Imperial Blockade, which is meant to stop small craft bringing goods into Cornwall, so you’ll need to be lucky in avoiding their ships, or have money for bribes, or a fearless crew ready to fight, or perhaps a craft that can submerge…  And then, once ashore, your sale of spirits is carefully observed by the gangs answering to Bad Percy and the Terror – so you’ll need to pay a share whenever you do sell some barrels, cutting into your profits.

And of course, you’ll need to wear the chain tattoo to gain the trust of anyone in the network.

If it sounds complex, it is.  There are around thirty codewords that track your access to rendezvous and depot locations, the availability of the six different vessels you can sail with and the attitudes of the gangs towards you.  There are around thirty rumours that carry information about it all – and although the module is mostly standalone, it ties in, of course, with several of the key dynamics of the Rebellion.  After all, liquor is not the only contraband you can smuggle into Free Cornwall.

Why bother?  Wasn’t the book almost finished already?  Well, Cornwall without smuggling would be like a pasty without pastry – it would always have been a massive regret.  And to do it well, as I mentioned above, when there is now a network of around forty places wanting to buy your firkins of gin or lace scarves, I needed something semi-open.  I’ve done my best to limit the size and repetitiveness of the strands, but I’ve also accepted that the book will be massively improved by something that is at my standard of ‘good-enough’ – I don’t need to invent new mechanics to solve this.  Hence the proliferation of codewords, when instead some sort of map-based solution has occasionally suggested itself to me.

This is going to greatly alter the balance of the book.  The amount of money that can be made is large – as long as you have capital.  It increases the danger that Terence Kneebone poses and embroils you deeper in his nefarious network.  Who is the Steam Highwayman? In Cornwall, a smuggler of unlicensed brandy, steaming along clifftops with the Constables in pursuit, just as the place demands.

So since last update I have:

  • Fixed a roadside encounter with poor workmanship
  • Written a new pub in Helston
  • Completed Q11 – the orchestral airship quest.  This is a fun one reminiscent of the airship quests in Highways & Holloways.
  • Planned more than 200 passages of the smuggling module
  • Written around 70 passages of the module

And what next?  In the next fortnight I aim to:

  • Finish the smuggling module!

Next update due: 21.11.25

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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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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!

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Steam Highwayman Moble App Corrections

I’ve been in contact with Cubus Games recently and I’m happy to share that they are again working on the Steam Highwayman app, which they originally released back in 2021. I was very happy to partner with them in producing a full digital adaptation of Steam Highwayman, as Jordi and Quim are great at what they do and have a real interest in gamebooks and interactive fiction.

Cubus’ Steam Highwayman app – looks great!

However, despite a fabulous quality of design, the difficulties of translating such an ambitious gamebook into a digital format, with the hundreds of variables that Smog and Ambuscade uses, meant that the resulting app was buggy and struggled to take off. It’s been hard to find the time to hunt and correct mistakes in the intervening few years – on my part, because of a steady stream of young children arriving, the need to earn a living and the other gamebooks I’ve been trying to write, and on Cubus’ because of their need to produce profitable software to keep their business growing. But the time has come to do justice to the project, and I’m reaching out because I would love to have help from any of you who did purchase the app or would be interested in a digital version of the Steam Highwayman adventures – I appreciate that that’s not all of you.

I’ve created a new buglist spreadsheet to share with anyone who wants to contribute in the interests of getting the app to its best possible state. One of the difficulties is that when correcting a physical gamebook, passages are easily identified by their number, but in an electronic format, this is one of the paratextual details that is removed… So how to identify a passage with an error? My simple solution is to identify the passage by the first three written words.

People frequently ask me whether there is an electronic version of Steam Highwayman available, and I normally explain that, firstly, the large amount of interactivity prevents a simple pdf conversion, and secondly, I’m very wary of pdf piracy and, thirdly, a full digital conversion would do better. So my hope is that now Cubus are able to devote time to improving the app, with your help (and some more hard work from me), the app could soon be in a state that allows people to really enjoy it. I have no hesitation in recommending Cubus’ other work – for example, I’ve really enjoyed their adaptation of Dave Morris’ Necklace of Skulls. Cubus also find great artists and musicians to work with; I love Ramon Sole’s theme to Steam Highwayman, which Cubus have been good enough to allow me to use. It really captures a sort-of Sunday afternoon tv serial vibe – just the right side of cheesy, melodramatic, adventurous and catchy!

Cubus’ Necklace of Skulls app

Another treat about Cubus is their commitment to regional culture. The app of Steam Highwayman was in part funded by a grant to translate new works into Catalan, and I think the Steam Highwayman would certainly approve. Self-determination and independence are very much part of the brand… Perhaps one day there will be a Cornish translation of Princes of the West, which is coming to Kickstarter in July.

So if you bought the app and wanted to see it in a better state, or have never had a look but like the idea, please join in using this link. The app is available on the Play and the Apple stores. Otherwise, do watch out for more posts here on my site. I have a few more things planned to share with you before I launch the Kickstarter for Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West in July…

  • Writing an open-world gamebook – a how-to series
  • Creating an open-world gamebook map – an analysis of Legendary Kingdoms: Pirates of the Splintered Isles
  • Creating the maps for Princes of the West
  • Earlybird rewards for backers of the July Kickstarter – watch out for this one!
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The Princes of the West draft finished… for now.

Yesterday I reached a milestone of Steam Highwayman IV: Princes of the West: I told myself that I had ‘completed’ my draft.

What does that mean?  First question from interested parties (eg my wife).  “Is the book finished?”

No, it isn’t finished.  It won’t be finished until it has been edited, improved, illustrated and printed.  We’re a little way off all that.  But I would say that I am now at the beginning of the end.

Why did I call a stop to drafting?  I actually have around 100 passages still reserved to write, but I recognise that at the current rate, I would keep expanding the book.  That’s a problem for a few reasons – one being, that eventually this volume will need to be printed, and I think we could be looking at a whopping 1800 passages, or around 300 pages, already.  I also could tell that at my current rate of writing, I would exhaust myself badly.  And the next stage of the writing process is a one I badly need to get some perspective: sharing the draft with early readers for their opinions and ideas. After that, there’ll be a good deal of corrections and edits to write, and when I do those I’ll also finish and finalise the last loose ends.

So I’ve begun to reach out to people who have been committed readers of Steam Highwayman and stepping back from the coal face.  I need to do some other work to get the project to succeed, so it’s time for a change of mode.  I think that there’ll be a few months of long conversations, tweaking around the edges, and then a big editing sometime in the late summer or autumn – maybe at the same time as a trip down to Cornwall myself.

Ben has been working on the cover and I hope to have some things to share very soon.  The big thing I’m waiting on is a colour draft of the front cover – with that, you’ll start to see a regular posting that points towards my next Kickstarter campaign.  I have a plan something like this:

April-June – Preparation for Kickstarter, production of marketing materials, drawing of the map.

[April/May – birth of fourth child…]

July – Kickstarter campaign to publish Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West.  It’s going to be great.

Presuming the Kickstarter succeeds in raising enough funds…

August – January – Ben creates the illustrations, I edit the book, proofreading and further playtesting, layout and preparation for printing, creation of extra reward materials…

February 2026 –  Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West sent to backers and available online.

How does that sound?

So what is Princes of the West like?  Well, early readers are already favourable about improved, modern mechanics, atmospheric adventures in the West Country, and a continuation to the epic tale of the Steam Highwayman (that’s you, then…).  It covers a large area – probably about as large as the first two books together – but uses efficient networking to save on repeated passages and cram in as much content as you can.  You’ll be able to go mining, tame Dartmoor ponies, find hidden gold, assist wreckers, join smugglers, blow things up (a lot of that), take a musical tour of the pubs of Devon, use all your velosteam customisations, negotiate with multiple factions and leaders, help lonely people fall in love, rescue cows from the mud, eat Cornish pasties, smuggle clotted cream, drink a lot of beer in many pubs and lonely inns, find places to stay, get a black eye, sleep under hedges, bribe guards, take airship rides, impersonate an orchestral conductor, defend the poor and marginalised, ally with a visionary (mad?) King, join a fishing crew, play croquet (again), meet old friends, play cards, fix the stock market, use steam computational engines to decode messages and secretive notebooks, use your special skill of haute cuisine (you know, the one you gained in Highways and Holloways when you had to distinguish between different heritage vegetables while in an airborne kitchen) and rob the rich, give to the poor and steam off into the night.  It is great.

Current draft is about 1630 passages long.  I think I’ll probably cut around 100 and I might add in another 200 or so – I expect it’ll round out around 1800 passages.  I’m toying with the idea of producing a lengthier book with more quests as stretch goals…  Four extensions, say, of 50 passages each?  It’s an idea.

And the break from working on the draft is good for me.  I’ve already experienced a massive difference in my focus and no longer have an over-full head.  There are several things I’ve been putting off reading – and writing – over the last months that I can now get back to.

So watch this space!  I’ll be on here pretty frequently until July, I think, although there may be a hiatus while child #4 appears.  And then we should all get to enjoy the pleasure of a lively crowdfunding campaign together.  I know I can count on you all to join in.

Until then, may your boilers stay ever at pressure!  YOU are the Steam Highwayman!

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Ambush Sequences and the Noted Passage Mechanic

Adopting the noted passage mechanic allows me to weave sequences of story together independent of their location.  I first invented this method while writing the ambush sequences of Highways & Holloways and my recent work writing the ambushes in Princes of the West illustrates how they work.

First, there are eight major locations where you can ambush passing steamers: five in Devon and three in Cornwall.  These are not the only places where you can stop a carriage and rob the occupants, but they are the major, repeatable locations that generate large numbers of victims, which makes sense thematically, since they are all somewhere on the Haulage Guild highways – the major road network connecting the larger towns of the region.

Once committed to making an ambush in one of these eight ambush locations, the player records a noted passage specific to that ambush location – one of eight passages that function as the end of the ambush sequence.  With this information reserved at the side, the ambush sequence can then continue independent of the location, meaning that generic passages can be used to tell a story that can take place multiple times or in different places.  

It works like this.  After noting that passage, the player rolls to see what sort of vehicle is encountered – or, with the right equipment, the player lies in wait and chooses what type of vehicle to ambush.  The distribution of various Guild road trains and private carriages varies across the eight major locations, partly dependent on the location of the several Guild bases.  The Haulage Guild are universally common, but the Telegraph Guild use the highways closest to their towers, while the Coal Board are more common closer to the large mines and the Atmospheric union are only really encountered near their airfield at Harrowbeer, north of Plymouth (in our timeline, the location of a RAF base during the second World War).

Say that a player encounters a private steam carriage – the highwayman’s preference, surely.  Rich passengers travelling for pleasure are certain to have good loot aboard, and rarely fancy a fight.  The player is then sent to one of four passages (two for Devon, two for Cornwall) that each offer subtly different methods for an ambush, depending somewhat on the actual landscape surrounding that part of the highway.  Within these passages, there is also a condition checker that can take the player off on a specific ambush sequence should they be attempting to rob someone in a rainstorm.

There are more common methods (usually relying on RUTHLESSNESS or MOTORING) and unique ones (typically depending on the possessions a player has), which should mean that a player who returns to a spot could specialise in a particular type method, if their skillset supported it.  Each of these methods typically includes a skillcheck and modifies the diceroll if useful equipment is possessed or relevant conditions are met.

If you fail one of these skillchecks, you might be spat out in a generic failure passage – for example, a passage that tells you about your failure to terrify the driver of the carriage, which can include a random roll chart with slightly-annoying or much-worse outcomes.  A passage like this, which might be met many times in a playthrough, needs to be both simple (not strongly-flavoured) and variable (hence the chart).  It then sends the player into their noted passage – more on this momentarily – or might even give them the opportunity to prepare another ambush.  This might be riskier a second time if the player has suffered damage or a wound as a result of their choices.

But say that a player succeeds in their chosen method and terrifies, or rides alongside, or impersonates a Constable and waves the carriage to a halt.  Then the sequence will send the player to a passage dependent on their broad location, in Cornwall or Devon, as the travellers on either side are slightly different.  Cornwall is known to be a wilder place and more of the travellers there will defend themselves.  The rewards, however, are higher.  This passage selects a passenger for the player to encounter, and in their passage they might immediately surrender their goods or put up a fight.

Once a robbery has taken place, the player can be sent to their noted passage, just as if they had failed their skillcheck and decided not to attempt another ambush.  This passage (dependent on the whether Constables or other enemies are nearby) will decide whether or not the player must proceed onto the fleeing map, and escape a pursuit.  Perhaps not, and instead they have a choice to make about where they will rest that night – in a the house of a nearby ally, in a warm pub parlour or under a dripping hedge.

I wrote large parts of the ambush sequence early in the project – over a year ago – but for some reason, parts were uninviting.  One downside of using these systems is that they can feel repetitive when written under pressure: when I have the time to come up with ideas, these can be some of my favourite passages, with the strongest flavour of all.  After all, this is the core activity for a Steam Highwayman, isn’t it?

But I have just been finishing up the final choices and links in this sequence.  The ambushes for the guilds have been finished for a while.  An ambitious plan to include a range of independent steamers has been eliminated as unnecessary, and I have been correcting and splicing together the ambush sequences for the private steam carriages.  The passengers were completed some months ago.

This is another benefit of the ‘subroutine’ style of planning: I don’t have to write things in a linear sequence.  I do, however, have to read through to ensure that it all makes sense! Is it all too much? Well, that depends on a few things: the feeling of choice, the flow of the text and the rhythm of decisions. My playtesters are going to have to tell me their thoughts soon… Applications welcome.

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READER INPUT WANTED: Fetch Quests in Steam Highwayman IV

An open-world gamebook must contain variety.  If you’re asking your reader to stay with you for hours of gameplay, spread over months of reading, then you have to provide them with short, rewarding actions and longer, more challenging storylines.  I’ve been thinking about this balance in Steam Highwayman: Princes of the West a lot recently, as the length of the book and the number of different things I want to include are both really challenging me.

I have a tendency to inflate even small quests so it’s really important that when I can, I deliver tasty events in as few passages as possible.  This was something I always admired about Fabled Lands, and though I have wanted to create something richer and more atmospheric, I know I can go too far. And if I want to cover the entire map with adventures in around 1500 passages, I need to use them efficiently.

Now one criticism I had of my first gamebook was that there was a reliance on fetch-quests.  Since then I have done my best to avoid using them too much, but I’m coming round again.  There is something steady, predictable and rewarding about completing a simple find-and-deliver, delivering quick success and a boost to the reader’s confidence.  And just because the essential idea is straightforward, doesn’t mean the theme or the manner of the quest has to be…

So I’ve done a bit of work on two types of fetch-quest structures, aiming for the minimum number of passages to make them functional, which means that I can plan to include several in Princes of the West, scattered in among other sorts of quests and missions.

Specific Fetch Quests

The Specific Fetch Quest goes something like this: at Location A, which could be a passage such as an inn parlour or a freight yard, there’s a one-time-only option and an option limited by possession of a certain MacGuffin item.  Choosing the first option introduces you to a character or situation that requires a MacGuffin – you know the sort of valuable and indefinite thing I’m talking about.  A water purification control chip or a pewter falcon or whatever you like.  Perhaps the section includes clues to the MacGuffin’s location, or perhaps it doesn’t.  In the simplest form, you receive an exact location and your job is purely to go and get it, but it with a bit more complexity you can add some detective-work in here.  For example, the quest-giver could give you an approximate location, and you might have to visit several places on a map, or they could tell you that an individual has it, and then you’d have to find that person first.  Either way, a Codeword or a unique item acts as the key to obtain the MacGuffin when you eventually reach Location B.  There a conditional option gets you what you’re looking for, strips you of the Codeword or unique item and sends you back on your way to Location A to hand it over – this time using the second option.

Now the elegance here is in the minimal use of conditions.  Because the first option at Location A is one-time-only, so is the unique item, which effectively makes the conditional option at Location B also one-time only and the second option at Location A one-time-only.  This little fetch-quest needs only 3 passages, one tick-box and two unique items to function.  Nice.

Generic Fetch Quests

Now here’s something even simpler: a Generic Fetch Quest.  Presuming you use pre-existing locations, this only requires two passages and no unique items.  The idea here is that at a location such a market or roadside, you are commissioned to fetch an item – probably something with a bit of rarity to it, but it could be something relatively easy to find.  A tin of fruit or a fur coat or a boondoggle that could be bought at a market at a bit of a distance – not next-door.  Within passage QF2.1, a condition like “If you possess a boondoggle, turn to 801 immediately” responds to your solution of the quest and sends you to a reward passage.  This sort of fetch quest can be repeated over and over – which is more likely to be a problem than a benefit, but which can have uses.  For example, a Devon shopkeeper could tell you of his need to get hold of Cornish clotted cream for a specific customer, meaning that whenever you cross the Tamar, you might bring a pot with you and drop it off for a nice little illegal profit – such contraband being forbidden by Imperial edict, you see.  Perhaps this is prone to spamming, but if a reader is willing to leave all their possessions in a hollow tree or pub bedroom somewhere and fill their saddlebags with clotted cream, I think they probably deserve a multiple reward.

Rewards

And that is really the next part of the equation.  A reward for a specific quest is easier to invent: it could be a valuable item (clearly worth more than the effort of fetching the MacGuffin) or cash, or possibly even something more important like the Friendship of a character, access to further missions or locations, a stat-increase, a modification to your velosteam…  The list goes on. 

When creating something repeatable, it really is tricky not to mess this up.  The net gain has to be valuable enough to satisfy the reader but not so valuable as to break the game.  Sometimes I like a random table here: one time you might get given £2 in coin, but another time it might be a gold necklace, technically worth more but more bothersome as you have to find someone who will fence it for you – which is not that easy in Princes of the West. And how many are too many?  I have something like 120 locations in the current Steam Highwayman volume and really, every single one needs something interesting to happen there – either a mechanic like a repeatable ambush, a quest beginning, middle or end, or a minor encounter.  Empty locations are simply a waste of everyone’s time.  Right now I am actually struggling just to keep on top of what I have written, so I can’t tell you how many simple or complex fetch quests I actually have in Princes of the West. I’ll have to get back to you.

Now I’m pretty sure you have feelings about this style of quest, or the conditional structures I’ve drawn out about, or experiences in the earlier Steam Highwayman volumes that annoyed or pleased you. Perhaps you’ve got a better way of doing things or an idea to improve what I’ve written above.