The Snowflake Dungeon Part 13

Step 6 in the Snowflake Novel writing method involves expanding the plot even further. Honestly, that is not very useful to us as adventure writers. At this point, it seems we have created most of the ingredients we need and we just need to start putting them together in an intelligible way. Step six onward is going to diverge pretty heavily from the original method, as our goals are quite different.

So my step six is going to be a lot more boring. I’m going to go through everything I’ve written so far and collect it in categories. This also allows me to see what I’ve missed from earlier steps of this that need to be developed further.

I made a few categories to organize my notes. For this inaugural go around, I used the following:

• Characters

• Factions

• Locations

• Stats

• and finally, tables.

I don’t know if it was reasonable to have characters and stats – those could likely be combined into a single section, but some characters shared stats. Using Obsidian, I have those notes nested inside of each other so that if I changed it for one, it’d be changed for all.

It’s not a very exciting step, but it needed to be done.

I did, however, find a few things I missed. One was treasure. I had mentioned treasures early on but did not place them in specific rooms. I made a list and I think I can integrate them in a future step.

Being as the main dungeon is an abandoned temple, I figure I can also spread minor treasures around it. A gold candlestick here, a religious idol there…

As a DM, I often forget about treasure and XP. It’s an odd weak point. The thing is, players love treasure and xp. Perhaps I’ll make a loot table or two for the adventure as well. 🤔

I do have two treasures that will need stats. Magic items, if you will – the Forever Stone and The Holy Symbol of St. Vaciscous. Those probably should have been done in the step where I stated all the monsters, but that’s okay.

Finally, I came across a character that I didn’t develop. The stats will be easy – it’s just a common monk. I had mentioned that the monastery had a betrayer in it’s midst – Brother Benadrine. I took some time to flesh him out a little further.

Brother Benadrine

• Young Monk. Parents lived in Riverbend Mills, died due to plague when he was a child.

• Has taken care of the Shrine of the Repented since they took him in 15 years ago. Walks there every day (one hex away).

• Was attacked by Lugpopple there in her early days of immortality. Promised he could give her more victims if he was spared. Has been a spy ever since. Lugpopple promised to make him very powerful once all the monks are delivered. The goblin doesn’t have any special ability to do this, as the mutations she grants are random, but she’s not about to tell the monk this.

Standard Monk

And there we have it. Not a terribly exciting step, but it firmed up the groundwork needed for all the future ones.

Next up, we’ll be going back to the room descriptions and changing them from summary blurbs to their final format. We’re getting close!

One thing I’m stuck on is a name. If anyone has been following this for a while and has thoughts on what I should call it, leave a comment below.