Steam Highwayman Volume I: Smog and Ambuscade is a new steampunk gamebook from Martin Barnabus Noutch – the first volume in a series of six books exploring the world of the Steam Highwayman: a world of airships and steam-carriages amid a steam revolution where the actions of the privileged breed social inequality and injustice, and sow the seeds for murderous reprisal and rebellion…
Who is the Steam Highwayman? You are the Steam Highwayman.
Whatever brought you here, you now stand on the verge of an exciting adventure. Within this book you can explore a world of different choices and consequences, puzzles, mysteries and quests, discovering your own story as you turn from passage to passage. Your decisions will be matters of life and death, not just for yourself, but for many others too.
Steam Highwayman Volume I: Smog and Ambuscade is an adventure gamebook in which the reader explores an alternate 19th century England on a steam motorbike. You can choose to rob the rich, give to the poor, or to pursue and punish evildoers. Will you side with the Compact for Workers’ Equality and work to bring about revolution in England? Will you find a place in high society and become famed for your gallantry and style? Will you find your own path through the smog of the cities and beneath the branches of the quiet woods?
Steam Highwayman is planned as a series of modular, open-world gamebooks. Quests begun in one location may lead you far abroad; tales of your deeds may follow you to the valleys of Wales or along the length of the Great North Road; you may find that your hard-won reputation in one region is worthless to the rebels of Cornwall or the new nobility of the Imperial Capital. Your adventure is only limited by your success in pursuing your own goals. You have no single quest to complete and there is no fixed ‘story’, but you will encounter many quests, missions, puzzles and mysteries throughout the books. Your journey through these becomes your ‘story’ and when it comes to an end, you can begin once more and explore what might have been.
The Kickstarter campaign for Volume 1 is currently live, seeking the funds necessary to produce a 200-page illustrated paperback book, featuring hand-drawn art from illustrator Ben May.
Steam Highwayman Volume I: Smog and Ambuscade promises exciting, atmospheric adventures aboard your customisable two-wheeled velosteam as you steam into the night!