Magnifcience in Silver is the latest Tales of the Valiant adventure to appear in the Kobold store. We asked veteran designer Scott Moore to give us a look into his process when he was writing this adventure about a silver dragon and the goblins around her. Warning players: there be spoilers ahead!
When I was putting together the proposal for Magnificence in Silver, I wanted to build a story around some of the standard fantasy RPG tropes but take them in an unexpected direction. A cave full of goblins and related monsters? Check. A dragon at the end? Check.
But the goblins aren’t the enemies here. In fact, most of them are pretty well behaved and share the same goal as the humans. The dragon that’s always at the end of the dungeon? It’s at the end, all right, but just the end of Part 1. There’s more going on than what appears.
In mid-April 2024, I put together a general outline of how I wanted the adventure to go—not just the encounters, but who the NPCs would be, details on the surrounding areas, the relationship between the settlements involved, and other notes. I like to start with an overall outline, to make sure I list everything I want to eventually address, even if it’s just with a single line at this point.
The Shape of It
Breaking down the adventure’s roughly 10,000 words, I figured 2,000 or so for the introduction, GM background, descriptions of the human and goblinoid settlements, and a brief explanation of the factions involved in the adventure.
Then I figured roughly 1,500 words for the ending, wrap up, and any appendices. The Player’s Guide and Monster Vault were not yet released at this point, so I was operating off the Black Flag Roleplaying Reference Document and unsure what final monsters, NPCs, magic items, etc. would appear in those books. I went ahead anyway!
That left me roughly 6,500 words for the encounter areas I wanted to put in the adventure. I knew Part 1 (the goblinoid settlement) would be longer than Part 2, so the next step would be to expand my outline with a list of all the encounter areas I wanted in each part.
At this point, I also needed names for the two settlements in the adventure. The human settlement was on a flat plain. The world playa can refer to flat land. A similarly spelled word in Spanish, plata, translates to “silver”, which happens to be key element of the adventure. Playa and plata. Pla-, y and t, -a. Playandta. OK, one town name down!
The goblinoid settlement contains a silver mine, so I start to look at different translations of the phrase “silver pit”. Luakala (Hawaiian), Dweteamena (Akan), and Pollairgid (Irish) were all considered before I settle on Slocairgid (Scottish Gaelic), which I like the sound of.
With the names of the settlements determined and a rough idea of what encounters I wanted in each part of the adventure (roughly 25 areas in Part 1 and 10 areas in Part 2), I drew rough maps for Parts 1 and 2. I put more detail into Part 1, as it’s an entire underground village. There may not be a ton of combat there (depending on how the PCs handle it), but I want to provide an interesting locale that the PCs might have reason to stop back and visit on occasion.
The “Real” Writing
With my expanding outline, rough word counts, list of areas to write up, and rough maps, I figured I was ready to start the “real” writing process. I began with the introductions and background.
Time check: it was April 30. Not bad progress for two-and-a-half-weeks!
May 8: The updated Black Flag Roleplaying Reference Document (v0.2) was out! I quickly looked up the monsters and NPCs I wanted to use to see if they were included or if I would need to stat them out. All of them were in the reference document! Yay! Extra word count recouped! The partial draft sat at 7,250 words.
Time for a quick mathematical exercise: if someone was promised all the silver they could carry, how much would that be? Based on 50 coins per pound, with 50 sp = 5gp, and carrying capacity equal to STR x 15 pounds, that would give 750 gp worth of silver for STR 10 and 1,500 gp worth of silver for STR 20. Now I have reference points!
May 27: First of three deadlines! Outline, NPC descriptions, location descriptions and art briefs got delivered on time!
May 28: I received the Kobold Press House Style Guide and Universal Style Template. At this point, I stopped writing and shifted focus to formatting everything the Kobold Press way so I (hopefully) had everything formatted correctly when I submitted the first 5,000 words (or more) for review on June 24.
Part of the fun in writing is doing the research to verify how things work in the “real world,” when you need to incorporate certain facts. I now know a little more about geology and metallurgy than I did before writing this adventure!
June 11: I’m just over 9,600 words with a good chunk of the formatting per the Style Guide and Template completed. Maps 1 and 2 have been inked and completed. My next steps were to complete format tweaking to match the Style Guide and Template and write a few more blocks of text. I usually put red filler text in areas where I need to go back and “properly write” more material. The completed draft looked like it would be over 10,000 words. Since the adventure will be released as a PDF, I hoped some extra word count would be acceptable, since the cost of printing won’t be a consideration.
June 24: Second of three deadlines! Map briefs and partial manuscript submitted on time!
First week of July: First draft completed and time for an editing pass. I finished up the VTT token list (so you can play this adventure on your favorite VTT) and updated this very design diary.
Second week of July: I wrapped up everything up and sent it in. I can’t wait for it to find it’s way into your (virtual) hands! Happy gaming!
Buy Magnificence in Silver today for only $4.99!