Tag: Steam Highwayman

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Rand Roll Interview Illustrates Steam Highwayman’s Niche in a Giant Gaming Ecosystem

I was recently invited to give an interview by email about Steam Highwayman for Duncan Thomson’s Rand Roll site, and it’s just gone up. Some of it is history long-time members will have heard before, but there are a few tidbits about upcoming projects and my writing that might be new to you buried in there. The format was nicely convenient – I was sent questions and had time to respond to them, feeling a bit like writing a post here – and I thought Duncan’s questions intelligent and provocative – in a good way.

So it’s been no surprise to explore his site and discover an absolute wealth of gaming materials. There are his own works – he specialises in random event and encounter tables for tabletop roleplaying games, which can also be found on his Instagram in a handy format. These are really quite fun – each one prompts me to think of ways I could adapt them into gamebook quests.

But he also has a bank of more than 70 interviews with creators and gamers from across a wide swathe of the gaming and rpg community. Remember fantasynamegenerators.com? Interested in city map generators? World map generators? The site is an incredible directory of gaming and writing resources and I’m only just getting into it. I particularly enjoyed reading about Ithai’s work on Hexroll 2 – I used to work with a few hex-based maps and still have a bit of an internal cartographer who works on multiples of 60 degrees.

Duncan came across Steam Highwayman a while ago after rediscovering gamebooks and tracing a path from Legendary Kingdoms to Fabled Lands to my own work. This isn’t the rarest route at the moment: Spidermind’s reach out into the gaming community with their big Kickstarter campaigns has done a lot to expand the gamebook – especially open-world – readership. That said, there’s a lot of risk with expansion at that rate, and it hasn’t been easy for Jon, Oliver and their team to fulfil their promises. New readers come to Steam Highwayman in a trickle, and typically after some other experience of gamebooks – often Fabled Lands, Legendary Kingdoms or even Destiny Quest. The world of tabletop roleplaying games is probably several orders of magnitude greater than the worldwide gamebook community – you’re talking millions of online hobbyists, as opposed to thousands – and there people, not just within solo rpg-ing, who are clearly attracted to what gamebooks offer, so I’m grateful to people like Duncan helping bridge that gap.

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Decapod distractions

No, I’ve not been obsessed with lobsters for a whole month. But it is a full four weeks since I have been able to put any time into Steam Highwayman IV: Princes of the West, currently in draft. Since Delemand the Bull, I’ve been busy with my other work, ministering at church, raising my family and taking some holiday.

But today I’m back with a vengeance. A rest is good: by the end of March I was getting dry and rather frustrated with the difficulties of structuring a project as large as Steam Highwayman IV. A view weeks without directly thinking about it has allowed some things to rise to the surface – and one of those is lobster-potting.

Steam Highwayman was never meant to be simply a combat-based robbery simulator: the name was the best fit for an adventure within a realist Steampunk world. Originally I planned parallel tracks, a la Fabled Lands, for your main character: you could be a gambler, a rat-catcher, a chimney-sweep, a detective etc… In the end, each of these has become a minor quest within the Steam Highwayman world – and to be honest, I doubt Steam Ratcatcher would have grabbed as committed an audience or proven to be as sustainable a project.

But Cornwall isn’t Cornwall without the coast, and the coast isn’t the coast without fishing. Or lobsters. Taking Steam Highwayman to sea, not just along a river, like in the first three books, will prove to be a big piece of work. Fabled Lands and Legendary Kingdoms have both done it, with varied success – some of which I mean to mimic. But unless the Steam Highwayman can skipper a craft out beyond (or below…?) the Imperial blockade and bring back contraband, I’ll miss the greatest opportunity of a Cornish gamebook: smuggling. And the flipside of smuggling is fishing.

So lobster-potting – which is a little more about patience, rather more static, and certainly as luck-based – is my starting place. And to be honest, isn’t there something very steampunk about lobsters? I just read The Swordfish and the Star here in the library, which was really a sort of third-person collected memoir of Cornish life, and a great deal of it was about the hard lives of western Cornish fishermen.

It’s also been a bit of time to take stock. My self-built website shop, the Highwayman’s Hamper, has begun to make profit, and I’ve been sending off the remaining copies of the Gormley-Watt Touring Guide. I’ve invested some of those takings (each sale makes me double what an Amazon or bookshop sale makes me) into a trader’s spot at the upcoming Fighting Fantasy Fest 5 in Ealing, hosted by Jon Green. At this rate, I might not have too many remaining Touring Guides to sell, but I have a lot of loose maps, and it’s always great to be present in person at this event: it is really the only convention for gamebooks anywhere. Two years ago, I was bringing samples of Saga… Back at Fighting Fantasy Fest 2, my first, I was dropping flyers for the Kickstarter for Steam Highwayman: Smog & Ambuscade and giving free samples to influencers…! I’m very grateful to Jon for all he’s done to keep the flame burning in the recent decades, as he bridged the gap between the first golden age of gamebooks and the current renaissance, as well as running the convention.

In fact, if you fancy supporting him and the subject takes your fancy, he is currently kickstarting the most recent in his series of Ace Gamebooks: Shakespeare Vs Cthulu: What Dreams May Come.

But I’ve got to get back to lobsters before I can get onto Kickstarter again. I love running a crowd-funding project – I’ve discovered that they’re a part of this career of being an independent author that I actually really enjoy – and I’d love to get SH4 up there before the end of the year… So I’d better finish with the lobster-potting, the smuggling, the ambushes, the main quest, the inter-book links, the beer descriptions, the illustration briefs, the cover illustration brief, the marketing preparations, the playtesting, the issuing to playtesters, the editing and correcting…

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The original and best

I’ve been working hard on Steam Highwayman IV over the past months – having reached about 50,000 words last week. Some rearrangement in my work schedule means that I can now spend around 5 hours on both Monday and Tuesday in the library at East Ham, where there is a ‘silent study’ (‘work-from-the-library’) zone with a great, productive atmosphere. My daughter and I take the bus up to her school, I drop her off, take a fast fifteen-minute walk and set down to work until it’s time to collect her. Some days I even manage to eat lunch.

But looking ahead to your adventure through Cornwall and Devon doesn’t mean I should ignore the beginning of this whole saga. I was recently reminded of the biblical ‘law of first mention’ – that where an idea is first mentioned in scripture is the best place to start with your understanding of it. Well, the Steam Highwayman was first mentioned in Smog & Ambuscade, as was the Ferguson velosteam, Dr Smollet, many of my mechanisms and much of the world-building. In short, this is where it all began.

So I hope you can forgive me if I don’t yet think that enough people have met the Steam Highwayman, or realised that they themselves can don the tricorne and spend an evening robbing the rich and riding the midnight roads. If they did, surely many more would put aside their mesmerising devices, stop scrolling and start rolling!

In an attempt to boost sales, I’ve decided to make a short-term, limited offer. I have multiple A2 maps and some custom dice remaining from Kickstarter rewards, so increased printing costs have forced me to increase the price of the gamebook, I think I’ve made a great package in the Steam Highwayman Starter Pack. And who knows, perhaps this is a great opportunity for you, my long-established supporter, to buy a book, map and dice for that friend you’ve wanted to share the adventure with for all this time?

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Steam Highwayman IV progress

Does that sound as if it is written from personal experience? Ha! Sleepless nights and runny noses are a bigger part of my life as a father than ever before.

Three years ago, when snow lay on the ground and my daughter went outside with the cry ‘Dig, dig!’, my last Kickstarter for Steam Highwayman III was still in progress. It feels like far too long since I rode that particular pony… But then two years or so developing a Viking-themed adventure will do that for you.

Steam Highwayman IV: The Princes of the West has just reached 40,000 words in draft. That’s about 4/15 complete – call it a bit more than 25% written. That’s taken me 30 writing days, spread over a complete project length of 122 days, although I began planning looong ago. Even back when there was snow on the ground and my daughter spoke in mere monosyllables.

What are the standouts for SH4? Well – the interplay of several key characters, their rivalries and power-play is one. I committed to that with the plural ‘Princes’ back when I drafted the titles of my six book series in 2016… But Cornwall is proving excellent fun to write. I’m also seriously considering adding submarines.

The map for SH4 is wonderful. I’ll draw up a giant one, like I published for SH1, 2 and 3, and probably some smaller, regional ones too.

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The Atlas of Harkuna

Over the last couple of weeks I have mapped the original and best open-world gamebooks, Fabled Lands. These choice-maps are now compiled in the Atlas of Harkuna, here on my website. You might be interested to see how they compare to my maps for Steam Highwayman I and II, available here.

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Chasing my lost ruthlessness (and nimbleness, gallantry and engineering): Steam Highwayman playthrough

In October I began a new playthrough across the three completed Steam Highwayman volumes, but got caught by my old enemy, the Coal Board before really getting very far, and was forced into a year of servitude with serious attribute penalties.

Well, to keep myself in the mode, I’ve been continuing to dip into that playthrough in the last few days while feeling a bit under the weather. Steam HIghwayman was always meant to be as fun to fail as to win, so I picked myself up, shook off the coal dust and made a plan: I would find the in-game ways to regain my attributes and boost them even further!

Freed onto the dirty streets of Camden, I rode down to the Pineapple at Lambeth, where I remember explosives fetch a good price. The Coal Board were more interested in punishing me than confiscating my stuff, you see, and after a year in storage my explosives were still valuable goods in someone’s eyes. They might end up reaching Flat Billy, the crimelord, but I shan’t worry about that for now. Someone told me about the street gang who mudlark on the north bank, so I rode through Southwark, grabbing a cold pork pie on the way, popping over to Spitalfields to buy a new pistol and sabre, and then dropping in on the boys corner of the muddy foreshore. After a little repetitive mudlarking (amazing how many Constables’ whistles the silt can cover) I met the Waterside Boys themselves and, with my abysmally low GALLANTRY, mud-smeared clothes and, crucially, fresh Southwark pork pie, I won their hearts and their allegiance.

Another trip to the outskirts saw me stop the Coal Board once more, grab some loot and a handy codeword, report to the Telegraph Guild at Bloomsbury and claim a fairly paltry reward, considering their hatred for the other faction. I was bleeding in a couple of places after fighting off some stokers in the ambush, so I headed to Hampstead and took at room at the Holly Bush – very much out of the way.

While trying to heal my wounds there, my low INGENUITY really became a problem, so I gave thought to my long-term prospects. If I am to succeed as a highwayman, I will be getting wounded, and if wounded, I will need a reliable way to heal myself. There are a very few ways to heal wounds without resulting in scars, which inevitably lead to retirement and the dreaded epilogue, but self-help is more effective with training… So I set off on a new mission. First, I would buy medical supplies in the reeking metropolis, before heading west into the first two books… I got a cheap bottle of whisky down in the docklands too.

So once on the road to Smog and Ambuscade, I resolutely ignored any temptation to ambush anyone else and rode straight to the Red Lantern in Maidenhead, where I stocked up on one of the rarest, and most game-changing, of medical items. Pink pills (NIM + 2) [_] [_] [_] A boost to your NIMBLENESS just as you are drawing your sword can be very, very helpful in surviving a duel – particularly when you are still carrying the scars of a year’s servitude.

Then it was up to Lane End, where the good Dr Smollett can be found. He was one of the earliest characters I wrote, one I really enjoy re-reading, and one I would love to explore a bit more. I met him, let him rant at me (I really haven’t hurt or robbed anyone he would have patched up… I think!) and then returned to Marlow where, surprise surprise, he turned up in the parlour of the Ship on a dirty night wanting a ride…

So off we went to Bullocks Farm, where I assisted in the delivery of a fine baby boy. Which, incidentally and not at all the entire reason for the escapade, gained me a level of Medical Training (greatly increasing the efficacy of self-treatment – at least in SH3 onwards…).

I returned to Lane End with that bottle of whisky and we sealed our friendship over a drink, the good Doctor and I. Now on to book 2 to gain that other boost…

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Merripit Barn and Dartmoor: Writing from an old map

I build my Steam Highwayman open-world gamebooks from the map upwards. Since discovering the National Library of Scotland’s georeferenced historical maps, I’ve used the OS six-inch 1888-1913 as inspiration and reference, and for the last couple of weeks I’ve been poring over Dartmoor.

It’s a place of legend and myth, prehistory and geology, industrial archaeology and military remains. There’s simply too much of interest to include everything in Steam Highwayman IV: The Princes of the West.

So I’ve begun by creating the navigational network underneath the events. This means planning and writing around eight key locations that are linked together to represent the vast expanse of Dartmoor itself. However, things become more complicated following that.

I don’t mean for the reader to simply be able to steam up onto the hill and tear about: Dartmoor is too treacherous for that. Neither do I want a constant series of MOTORING checks – particularly as the skills of riding a heavy velosteam over the moor, navigating across the various watersheds and steaming over the uneven ground are unlike the classic road-focussed skills I normally represent with that attribute. So instead I’m using secret links and tickboxes: on the first arrival at some of these locations, details are given about them. Returning to that passage, the book will presume that the reader knows what is going on and where they are… if you remember! After exploring for long enough, you may even be able to gain a knowledge of Dartmoor good enough to unlock secret routes across it, opening up much greater options for fast travel and getaway.

But I’m still leaving space for events and quests to happen here. Perhaps a certain glow-muzzled dog might track you in the mist, or one of the several stone circles prove to hold more than moonlit grass within it. But these can come later. For now, the navigation has to work and then onto this backing the extra events can be embroidered. I’m toying with the idea of using visible options unlocked by a variety of common-to-rare possessions.

One knot of passages is formed by the base you can build at Merripit Barn. Hideouts are going to be ever more important in SH4, and having one tucked away in the west may be just what you need. Some of the options here are generic, sending the reader off into what Brian Hazzard called a ‘subroutine’ loop when he interviewed me about this some time ago (warning: contains unpopular opinions about the repetitive nature of Fantasy gamebooks!). And these are crucial to preventing bloat within the gamebook while allowing the game part to really flourish – essentially the idea that you should be able to do the same thing at different locations. At Merripit Barn you can rest, treat your wounds, mend your velosteam, train your pet raven and all the other things a self-respecting road pirate does on their day off.

And Merripit Barn is just the right place at the right time: I needed a location that was on the edge of a location on the edge of Dartmoor, isolated but only a turn or two from one of my busier routes. Some time poring over the NLS’s maps and I found what I needed.

I’m hoping that before publishing SH4 I’ll have a good chance to revisit Cornwall and West Devon – and if I do, I’ll go and see what is actually going on at Merripit Barn.

If you haven’t seen the video revealing the draft SH4 planning map, here it is again… this time, with music courtesy of  @ramonsole5729  and Cubus Games.

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Let’s Play… Steam Highwayman

Brian Hazzard, the nice fellow behind the Instadeath Survivors Support Group Podcast, is beginning a new YouTube Let’s Play series premiering later today. He’s chosen to feature a playthrough of Steam Highwayman.

Will this be the classic opener, rolling down the hill into an unnamed gin shop and getting ambushed by violent drinkers? Will an army of commenters and watchers manage to steer our luckless host away from misery and punishment? I suppose the implicit invitation in ‘Let us play’ is to participate like that, so here I need to cry something like, Who is the Steam Highwayman? WE are the Steam Highwayman.

A follow-up podcast episode is due out tomorrow too. We recorded it some time ago and I remember waffling dreadfully, so if you want to hear what decisive editing sounds like, you can give that a go too.

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A Year’s Sales

I’ve just completed my review of last year’s online sales: I sold 582 books – or 1.59 every day. I’m not rich yet, but I’m very happy to think that every day, on average, someone out there in the world chose to spend their money on my work. Adding in the sales in-person at events, that just tops 600 – a considerable increase on 2020’s total of around 180.

What are people buying? Well, chiefly my three Steam Highwayman books, although a very small number are interested in Write Your Own Adventure: Choice-Based Fiction in Schools. The exciting number here is that I have sold over 260 copies of Steam Highwayman: Smog and Ambuscade, the first in my series, which each represent a reader new to the midnight road, and to my work.

And does it pay? Well, I’m proud to say that these sales have made me a gross income of around £2400, spread over the year. After expenses and tax (I already have a full-time job), it’s not a great deal of money. A large proportion of my sales in the second half of the year were seeded by an ongoing advertising campaign on Facebook, which isn’t cheap. Yet to be making a profit at all is validating and encouraging: the four years since I began Steam Highwayman are beginning to pay me back.

So what next? I’m keen to increase my sales, both to share the world I’ve created and, clearly, to profit from my work. So I’ll be continuing to invest income into advertising. But I’ll also be taking opportunities to write for contract, which was always part of my intention for the Steam Highwayman project: that it would serve as a display of my ability and allow me to pitch ideas to other publishers.

And maybe I’ll look back at this post in a year’s time with an entirely different perspective.

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Brewman’s Fury

With every glance back at Number Four grinding up the slope, Brewman was more convinced that her water was foul.  He chewed at his lip furiously.  Blast Grint for not paying closer attention to the filling!  Blast the Guild for leaving the tank at the North Cut three-quarters empty.  Blast this shoddy coal - all he'd been able to secure at the last yard - which was boiling so slow.  He looked out at the rising country around him and fixed each rowan and pine with an angry glare.  Blast them!

But it was his own fault, and that was where the fury was sourced.  He had known that Grint needed closer supervision.  The man was fair enough for local runs, but on a trip like this he didn't have the sense to think further than the next milestone ahead.  Steerbridge was laid up and Macklemore was taking the Beast down to Manchester with a four-car train.  That job needed two good men, so young Horrocks had gone with him, leaving old Horrocks to handle the local work in Number Five for the time being.  They were both well past their prime - old Horrocks could only really stand when clutching onto the regulator wheel and Five, well, she spat cinders whenever she was driven further than four mile.
And that had left only Grint and the boy to accompany him on this trip.  He'd known he would need another hand for the stretch past Yarthwaite, and thank God, the man he'd taken on at the Crown didn't seem to be an idiot, but it was Grint, his own employee tasked with the responsibility of driving the second engine, that frustrated him.  A steamsman needed more caution.  The big engines were temperamental - Brewman wasn't ashamed of admitting that.  They needed coaxing up the long slopes, warming gently in the morning, talking to, reading.  Every gauge and valve told you their needs.  Number Four had always been thirsty.  It couldn't be called a fault, no.  That would be a deeply ungrateful, even unfaithful thing to say about a steam-powered road locomotive.  It was simply part of who she was.  And a good driver took account.

It was a dirty tank, though.  He hadn't filled at North Cut for years, but he should have known the water was going to be muddy.  It was his own fault more 
than Grint's.

"Mester Brewman," said the lad.  "They's two engines a-coming up from the Cut."

Brewman turned about on the footplate and wiped the sweat out of his eyes.  He could see the two dirty plumes of engines burning coal and accelerating up the road, clearly meaning to climb Hammer Hill the same evening as himself.  He unclipped the monoscope from its mount above him and handed it to the boy.
"Take a good hard spy on 'em," he said.  "Who is it?"

The boy peered away while Brewman concentrated on steering his own engine over the uneven road.  The mighty Carocall locomotive didn't mind where she rolled, but the two wagons behind were piled right high, lashed tight over with canvas and cord, but still at risk.  He let a little more steam in and immediately felt the pistons surge and the wheels pick up pace.  

If it were a local firm, they'd have climbed the hill in the morning.  So they were making the same run he was: up Hammer Hill by twilight, a rest at the filling station just over the crest and a run down into Finchwick in the morning.  And probably on into the city after that...

"I think they's Guild engines, Mester," said the boy at last.  "Red with gold bands."

"Hop back onto Number Four and look from there," growled Brewman.  "Then light on up here as fast as you may.  Go on - get!"

He'd stoke and drive for the next stretch.  The hill didn't really steepen for another mile and Spadille, his own Number One engine, was singing and steaming as sweet as she ever did.  It was Number Four that worried him, and he longed to coax her up the slope himself, but that would mean changing places with his man and he'd rather go blind than trust Grint to drive Spadille.

Brewman settled into his rhythm.  Scoop and toss, scoop and toss, toe the door, look about, choose a line, check the pressure, feel the wheel.  Scoop and toss, scoop and toss.  Spadille was older than all of 'em, except Number Five, but she was tough.  She was tough and she rode smooth and she never complained.  She liked a hot fire and a long run and she lit quick again in the morning.  A real steamsman's engine.  His kind of engine.  He allowed himself a grim smile and began to build the pressure a little more in anticipation of the climb.

The boy scrambled up again beside him.  "Red and gold bands, Mester Brewman."  He didn't have to say anymore.  Brewman handed him the shovel and it was the boy's turn.  Scoop and toss, scoop and toss, wiry muscles standing out through his thin cotton undershirt.  Scoop and toss.

The boy knew not to ask questions, but Brewman liked him.  Another three-four year and he could be of real use to Brewman and Son, Haulier.  And if he were to drive, he needed to know the lay of the land.

"It's like this, son.  We need water after the climb.  Hammer Hill station has enough for both our engines, but maybe not for four.  And the Guild fill first, see.  Because it's their tank."

It hadn't always been their tank.  Old Master Brewman had been one of the seven or eight hauliers who had seen it built, replacing the very unreliable roadside pool, but the Guild had bought it out more than ten year back.  That rankled too.  Because it was really Brewman's own water - at least in part.

"But we're going to be there first, Mester, ain't we?  And they can't fill if we's already taken what we need."

"You think we'll be long ahead of 'em, Shawn boy?"  The lad looked up into his master's face.  He wasn't often called by his given name.  He had hoped that the master liked him - he tried to be good - the tough, reliable roadsman he wanted to be.  "You think we'll be filled at the rate Number Four is goin'?"

They looked back.  The gap between their own rear wagon and the following locomotive had lengthened even since the boy had scurried between them.  Brewman shook his head.  He could see it all ahead of him.  Half-filled, the Guild drivers would arrive upon him and claim their privilege.  Four really needed a full flushing.  He'd be stuck, waiting for the tank to refill at its trickle, until at least midday, or have to split his train of four wagons and take two on and deliver half the consignment.  But he'd contracted to bring it in by the night of the eighteenth and the bounty wasn't a prize: it was his firm's lifeblood.  They couldn't compete with the Guild's margins, so he had to get every delivery in on time.  No penalties, no mishaps, no smirches on the Brewman name.  That was the only way he had managed to keep the firm alive.