“Alas!” answered Agostino mournfully, “no other career is open to me, and I am more to be pitied than you suppose. I am the only one left of a band formerly as complete as yours; the executioner has deprived me of my brave comrades one by one, and now I am obliged to carry on my operations entirely alone – dressing up my scarecrows, as your friend calls them, and assuming different voices to make believe that I am supported by a numerous company. Ah! mine is a sad fate; and then my road is such a poor one – so few travellers come this way.”

–Captain Fracasse, Theophile Gautier

This is a great little tragicomic encounter. PCs are ambushed on a dark road. They are surrounded by shadowy figures, demanding the PCs’ money or their lives. (Several of the bandits talk; the DM should use a variety of funny voices.)

When the PCs inevitably attack, they will be cutting down inanimate scarecrows which are armed with wooden swords.

The only real bandits are Agostino and his ward, a half-wild and thuggish little girl. (In Captain Fracasse, Agostino says he wants money to “buy a decent cloak for poor Chiquita besides; she needs it badly enough, poor thing!”)

If the PCs take pity on the bandits and give them money, Chiquita will be grateful, in her primal way.

She fixed her sparkling eyes on Isabelle, and said in a low, earnest voice, “Oh! you are very, very good, and I will never, never kill you.” Then she ran swiftly back to the pine grove.

If the PCs befriend the bandits, they’ll be getting a valuable ally. The next time the PCs are in real trouble (captured, for instance), an eerie and bloodthirsty little girl may come to their rescue.

The roof, of dark red tiles, was disfigured by many large, leprous-looking, yellow patches, while in some places the decayed rafters had given way…

The apartments on the ground floor contained nothing but a few bundles of straw, a heap of corn-cobs, and some antiquated gardening implements.

Captain Fracasse, an episodic 1863 adventure novel, has given me more inspiration for D&D adventures than any book since African Civilizations. And it started on page 1, with a description of a ruined chateau.

I’m reminded of the sample dungeon in my 1983 Red Box DM’s book, which had comparable readaloud text:

As you approach, you see that the walls are jagged and full of small holes, and a few large stone blocks have tumbled to the earth, lying around the ruins. A gateway in the center of the front wall stands empty, and the massive outer doors now lay rotting nearby…

The room is 30’x30′, with doorways in the north and east walls; the doors are missing. The room is filled with boxes and crates of many shapes and sizes, and looks like a storage area.

Furthermore, I’m certain that the “leprous-looking yellow patches” in Captain Fracasse are patches of Yellow Mold, which also featured in the Red Box dungeon.

My guess is that Fracasse‘s bundle of straw hides a valuable bracelet, and the corncobs mark the lair of some monster (perhaps a cabal of hideous pig-men?) The gardening implements are just gardening implements.

That’s page 1 out of the way! Later on in the book, there will be fencing, fighting, giants*, true love… you name it. I’ll post more later.

*In Captain Fracasse, unlike in The Princess Bride, the giants are just guys on stilts.

The Land of the Thomas Covenant books is filled with little magical conveniences. One is a council room with great acoustics, so that everyone can hear everyone else and no one has to shout.

This would actually be a good gimmick for a dungeon. The party could split up, if they needed to, and the players could still talk to each other around the table. This would remove an annoying restriction that usually plagues groups where some party members are away (or dead).

For every convenience, there’s a complication. The dungeon would contain a rival adventuring group. They’d be able to hear every word from the PCs’ mouths. Conversely, the PCs would be able to hear every word, grunt, and shout from the rival party.

The DM would have to prepare a few set-pieces to narrate: the rival party encountering a puzzle, a battle, a crossroads, or just talking trash to the PCs. Some of the rivals’ words would, of course, be calculated to deceive.