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

Biotech dungeon. At its core a HR Geiger inspired nightmare. Swords & Sorcery v. Xenomorphs. I used tyranid Miniatures and the map pieces from Advanced Space Crusade.

It’s called Escape from the Nest of the Hive Queen.

Holy shit we both posted about the insides of a god as a dungeon at the same time

Yeah, we did. Because it is not an original idea and has been featured as ideas for unconventional dungeons in quite some "ideas for unconventional dungeons" threats. I just used it as one more example for a dungeon, that is not the typical underground room system of one kind or another.

I took the idea of the god-corpse dungeon and gave it a twist for my current ars magica campaign. The different areas, rooms and buildings of our magus covenant are all themed as analogues to human anatomy. Till now, noone has caught on, but as a mind/earth focused magus, it is my ace in the sleeve to at least try to animate the whole fortified town as one giant golem.

Intestines of a sleeping giantess

Not mentioned by OP: towers. Like wizards' towers. Go up instead of down for a change. Lots of weird shit you can find there too:

>alchemical experiments in progress
>caged mutant monsters
>MC Escher floors
>portals to other dungeon environments
>animated furniture to wreck your shit, Beauty and the Beast style

Something like the planes of Oblivion. An alternate dimension that gets to break any laws of physics or common sense, usually with some theme attached to it. Interesting setting, layout, and monsters.

Also for something more mundane, a series of canyons? Enclosed space, plenty of usual dungeon elements, but techinically open air, and can be done in broad daylight?

Rip off psychonauts.

Each dungeon is actually the mind of one of the characters in the game that the group have to explore to help deal with their psychological issues.

Pretty much came here to say this, only with my own take.

A Byzantine mash of brass, clockwork, and steam. The citizenry are still about, but the peculiar smell of wet iron hangs persistently in the air as shadows flicker and dance in the warm, inviting mists. Peril around every corner; danger dangling overhead at every moment.

You're about 50% right. If your theme is just a coat of paint, nothing has really changed. If your theme informs the layout and hazards of the dungeon, that's where you start to see improvements.

Wouldn't existing inside your own mind and interacting with it cause some nasty feedback loop?

>t. jagex

this is just a description of myreditch and the vampyre questline from runescape

I'd liken it to self-reflection, since you aren't physically inside your mind, it's just how you're visualising the space.

Temple to the evil god. It's shiny and new, and located right in the middle of town.

I liked how Summoner repurposed all it's city areas as dungeons later, first with an enemy invasion then a demonic incursion. Shit got really fucked up in the main campaign.

A half-sunken riverboat casino, infested with swampfolk fishmen and vengeful spirits. Rumors say that the vault's been untouched for decades.