What are some unique dungeon ideas?

What are some unique dungeon ideas?

If you play fantasy what ever Im sure you have been in the typical dungeons over and over. Ruins, caves, crypts, sewers, more caves. Yawn.

What are some dungeons to break up the same old?

Social housing estate.

How about places other than dungeons?

Well-designed dungeons. If the flowchart of "rooms" isn't interesting, no amount of wallpaper will make it truly interesting to play.

I like the idea of Dungeons that have been tamed by civilization and are in the midst of being exploited and converted into cities.

How am I even supposed to define a dungeon in the context of fantasy gaming these days?

They sure as shit aren't just dark, dank holes in the ground designed to keep people in anymore.

An extremely dense urban area.
Evil forces have swept into the city. The streets are no longer safe to walk because of the dark creatures that now stalk them.
The cities population has mostly fled or died, a handful a huddeling undiscovered in their homes.
The party must charts a path across the city from somewhere on the periphery to its center in order to recover the plot important mcguffin.
They can only travel inside buildings, where the evil forces are sparse enough that encountering them will not see them quickly overwhelmed.
Over the course of the 'dungeon' they would traverse a number of different urban environments, starting in a slum, and eventually building up to the palatial residences of the ruling elite.
Also I really like the idea of people tearing holes in walls to define build their own dungeon. I feel like even if it made no material difference to what the DM had them encounter it would increase the players investment in the process.

I remember that in Baldur's Gate II ToB you had a dungeon, the Watcher's Keep, with quite a few original sub dungeons. Each one had some kind of different story.

In one, a guy trapped in a powerful engine summoned creatures who now fight each other for the control of the place. In an another, going back on your tracks would lost you. In some rooms using magic would be subject to a lot of entropy etc.

All in all, making the place looks "alive" instead of just exploring a tomb is quite nice. Also, some magic or strange technology to creep the players out. It makes the place more interactive.

A place where dungeon crawling is done.

While dungeon crawling is the exploration and mapping of more-or-less self-contained areas filled sometimes with traps, sometimes with monsters, sometimes both, almost always loot.

The abandoned palace of a djinn in the clouds can be a dungeon. The sewer of a big city can be a dungeon. Even the innards of a sleeping god can be a dungeon.

Dungeon used here more in a term related to functionality in the game, than the historical etymology.

>Dungeons that are designed as functional places
>Hives of giant insectoid-monsters
>Buried cities
>Necropoli/Catacombs
>Pyramids
>Heavenly or demonic bulwarks
>Dungeons that are actually the corpse of a giant monster or god
>Dungeons that are actually inside the psyche of a divine entity