There's a lot of temptations to betrayal, too - and a lot of treachery around you. Then there are the perennial Steam Highwayman preoccupations with freedom, social responsibility and getting rich.
This is interview two with Martin Barnabas Noutch, author of Steam Highwayman. A year after the first Steam Highwayman Interview and marking upcoming fourth book in the series. Latest in series of solo gaming interviews.
Disclosure - I'm a DriveThru RPG affiliate.
Chat with Martin Barnabus Noutch of the Steam Highwayman Gamebooks
Steam Highwayman is a series of open-world gamebooks set in a steampunk Britain, riding a steam motorbike, stealing from the rich and whoever else is around, and (maybe) helping the common people. The Kickstarter is running for July 2025.
We have choosing Devon & Cornwall, new options, running a kickstarter, research for the book and the writing now compared to the start. Among other questions.
What are the themes of Princes of the West?
I suppose in Princes of the West, I was thinking a lot about Nationalism and patriotism, which you can explore pretty seriously.
There's a lot of temptations to betrayal, too - and a lot of treachery around you. Then there are the perennial Steam Highwayman preoccupations with freedom, social responsibility and getting rich.
Why did you choose Cornwall and Devon as one of the places to set Steam Highwayman?
I planned the six volumes of Steam Highwayman back in 2016 - locations and titles, anyway.
Why exactly Cornwall and Devon... I'm not entirely sure.
It felt a big change of atmosphere from the first three books, and I have a smattering of local knowledge from several holidays over the years. I also wanted an excuse to explore them more. And then, as I thought about it, other possible links and themes came thick and fast - most of which are in the book.
What new options open up in Princes of the West compared to the first 3 books?
Smuggling is thematic, so I had to work out how to do it - or who to do it with.
There's also quite a lot of coast and sea to deal with - and at one point I went full Fabled Lands with a plan to allow you to run a ship and crew - but that was going to be about 800 passages just by itself, so I cut it.
Instead there's quite a bit of wrecking, some fishing and some good nautical quests.
The distances travelled on land are a bit bigger too, so I've included some thematic travel mechanics, include toll gates and some fuel and water gameplay that would have interrupted things in the earlier books. I think these will be mechanics I use again in 5 and 6.
What have you learnt about running a successful Kickstarter over the four books?
It's far better to under-promise and over-deliver - despite the temptation to make your project seem as flashy as possible, potential backers see through that pretty quickly.
Slow growth means committed readers. Although my audience is (still) small, I have personal contact with a massive proportion of them, and they come back because I've earned their trust.
You have to be really disciplined with handling the money. Plenty of people struggle with this, but until the project is fulfilled, you just have to keep the production funds and a healthy contingency ready.
Money spent on illustration is well-spent. I can do a lot of different things - even up to designing maps and character sheets - but I can't do illustrations. I seek out the best artists I can afford and make sure we respect one another and the project.
It's been a privilege to work with Ben May, Piotr Jamroz and the late Russ Nicholson. In fact, Steam Highwayman: The Reeking Metropolis was Russ's final published work - sadly.
Which was your favourite part to write in Princes of the West?
A lot of the book has given me pleasure to re-read, but there's a travelling fair with an encounter that touches me deeply when I read it.
It isn't big or flashy, but I was proud of writing it. I don't often feel that. I've also really enjoyed writing some new mechanics, pubs and secret links. They tickle me.
What did your research look like for Princes of the West?
Haha. What you're hoping for here, I'm sure, is that I spent 2 months in Devon and Cornwall... I wish I could have afforded it. If the Kickstarter goes well, I might take a two-week holiday there in late September.
But I have done a lot of online reading: I use the National Library of Scotland's digitised Ordnance Survey maps a great deal - the landscape itself brings a lot to mind - particularly when coupled with that yellow man you can drop into googlemaps, to get a sense of whether you can see the sea from that particular rise in the road.
I've read a couple of libraries' entire Cornwall and Devon sections - I still read physical books - including modern travel writing, history etc. Probably about 50 or 60 books.
How different is writing the first book and fourth book in an Open-world Gamebook Series?
Very different!
Writing Smog & Ambuscade was a pleasure, but also very confusing. It challenged me to work in the open-world structure and I was really rediscovering the techniques, as no-one else was working in them at the time (as far as I knew).
I was also trying to write something a bit richer and more literary than Fabled Lands, and sometimes it worked, but sometimes it was just wordy. Then again, when I re-read that first volume, it feels fresh - particularly some of the characters and locations.
By now, I've established most of my main mechanics and I have to guard against serious feature creep! I am always coming up with new ways of doing cool things and I simply can't include them all. I have become a lot more ambitious, but I need to ensure that the core gameplay is at least as rewarding.
Where do you find the time to fit in writing an open-world gamebook alongside a full time job and family?
I actually have two part-time jobs: I work for my church as an assistant pastor, and I tutor private students.
That means that over the last two years, I've been able to give on average two days a week to the project - but the availability comes and goes. When things are busy, I don't get to write for weeks at a time.
When I am writing, I probably have to work in the evenings as well - but many people have harder situations than that. At least I can be flexible around my family's needs! I have four small children and my wife and I are actually home-schooling the eldest... So really, I have had to do a lot at night or in the early mornings.
Is there anything else you would like to talk about?
The current Kickstarter is going pretty well, and I'm exploring something different with my stretch goals.
I'll be writing short, standalone Steam Highwayman adventures that I mean to publish (to backers first, of course) as pdfs and in a nice clickable twine format - something I tried doing way back at the start of the project in 2016. I'd love for more people to come on board so that I can deliver a lot of these!
Finishing Up
Take a look at the Kickstarter for Princes of the West or the Steam Highwayman website.
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