Unique dungeon ideas

[ASBERON88]

I find it rather creative to come up with cool ideas for unique dungeons that are different from the usual cliche (although the usual is always fun as well). I'm trying to keep my creative juice flowing and was wondering if anyone had any ideas or any links to go to, for a unique dungeon crawl.

[DrMotives]

Kaiju corpse. If the kaiju ate a Macguffin and died, it's half-buried body could be colonized by all sorts of oozes, vermin, whatever to leave a populated area that potentially hides said Macguffin.

[Tvtyrant]

Kaiju corpse. If the kaiju ate a Macguffin and died, it's half-buried body could be colonized by all sorts of oozes, vermin, whatever to leave a populated area that potentially hides said Macguffin.

There used to be a dungeon floating around of a colossal purple worm which was petrified by a medusa and had become a dungeon. The head was just out of the ground and the rest went into the earth.

[danzibr]

Depends on the level of technology, but I'm a fan of the war museum. Think Demolition Man.

Also, a hospital.

[hiryuu]

Ran a campaign where dungeons could be made out of -anything-. Adventurers had a magic item that looked sort of like a mystic keg tapper and you insterted and twisted and it became a door handle, no matter what you were opening, and you could go inside. Get to the "core" and fight the boss/take over the dungeon, and you could modify the properties of that thing.

It led to all kinds of cool stuff - dungeon-tapping a gravestone to speak with a dead person, dungeon-tapping a sick person to cure him, tapping magic items, tapping forges, and so on.

Psychic geography? Mind-mazes and the like - physical metaphors and traps and so on.

I have always been a fan of the crystal dungeon, the element-focused dungeon, and the weird technology dungeon.

Also the dungeon that is a giant walking construct. I am totally going to put one of these in my next campaign. It'll be a huge ruin-turtle thing covered in moss and such.

[Karl Aegis]

Nothing really stands out as unique. Eventually the flying fortress made entirely out of walls of force in the middle of a hurricane becomes pretty bog standard.

[Inevitability]

Ran a campaign where dungeons could be made out of -anything-. Adventurers had a magic item that looked sort of like a mystic keg tapper and you insterted and twisted and it became a door handle, no matter what you were opening, and you could go inside. Get to the "core" and fight the boss/take over the dungeon, and you could modify the properties of that thing.

It led to all kinds of cool stuff - dungeon-tapping a gravestone to speak with a dead person, dungeon-tapping a sick person to cure him, tapping magic items, tapping forges, and so on.


So going to steal this. Thanks for sharing!

[Ephemeral_Being]

Every thirty minutes real-time, the players switch bodies with someone in the same room. They could end up in monsters, in someone else's body, you get the idea. Mental stats are swapped, physical stats remain the same.

Make it a will save to resist. And have them obviously go back at the end, if they survive.

Monte Cook did a bunch of GREAT weird dungeon ideas for 2e/3e. You should check some of them out. This one was adapted from a room in Labyrinth of Madness, which is a brutal module.

[bekeleven]

Every thirty minutes real-time, the players switch bodies with someone in the same room. They could end up in monsters, in someone else's body, you get the idea. Mental stats are swapped, physical stats remain the same.

Would kinda suck to be the fighter in the wizard's body while he gets all your strength and con in addition to his 30 int and spells...

For my contribution: Why wait for the monster to die before it's a dungeon? Want to kill a tarrasque-knockoff at level 10? Hang onto the flying carpet and get ready to get your hands dirty, because I'm aiming for the gullet!

[Saladman]

There used to be a dungeon floating around of a colossal purple worm which was petrified by a medusa and had become a dungeon. The head was just out of the ground and the rest went into the earth.


Still is...

Edit: Oh. Can't link directly to Google Drive files the way I thought. Anyway, original is Dyson Logos - Into the Worm's Gullet (http://www.onepagedungeon.info/2011/). Sequel is Dyson Logos - By Esophagus Brood (http://www.onepagedungeon.info/2013/). Another take on the concept, with an even cooler (but unstatted) map is Luka Rejic - Deep in the Purple Worm (http://www.onepagedungeon.info/2012/).

In fact, the whole One Page Dungeon (http://www.onepagedungeon.info/) contest site is worth checking out if you haven't seen it yet.

The closest I've gotten to original was a haunted castle, not only filled with spirits (acting out their last moments, and mostly non-hostile unless you screwed up), but where the castle itself was only solid at night. During the day only the foundation remained.

[Geddy2112]

Shamelessly rip from Legend of Zelda Ocarina of Time
Dungeon in a volcano
Dungeon in a giant tree
Dungeon in a giant fish
Dungeon in a hedge maze
Water Temple-Your players will hate you.

[WeaselGuy]

I don't even remember why we were there, but when my wife was DMing, we were adventuring through this elemental cavern complex type thing. Basically, after going through some tunnels, we reach a circular room of sorts, more of a balcony type thing, and in the middle is this glowing sphere. Obviously a McGuffin that we need. Unfortunately, it is protected by an impenetrable barrier. Upon inspection of the banister type railing separating the balcony from the glowing orb, we discover some runes that correlate to several planar elements (think Shadow, Fire, Water, Light, etc). Across from each rune is a door, inscribed with the same rune. We go through one of these doors and enter a short mini-dungeon consisting of a few thematic baddies, followed by a not quite BBEG (mediocre bad evil guy?), and then a stone on a pedestal. For example, the Shadow room, we fought a couple shadow mastiffs, something else, and then a Shade or something. Since this was the first room we inspected, I (a Beguiler/Rogue) volunteered to grab the shadow stone in an Indiana Jones type maneuver. Wasn't trapped, for the record, but upon touching the stone, I obtained "a shadowy pallor", which rather substantially increased my effective stealthiness. Basically, for each of these runes, was a correlating dungeon, which bestowed a watered down template to whoever snagged the stone at the end.

[Necromancy]

Portal dungeon. Every tunnel or doorway crosses to a room in a different plane. Magic items, spells, and other things will behave differently

Imaging rubbing your hands together, waiting for some poor fool to toss a fire spell without knowing its variables and dimensions all triple in the current room

[Jay R]

I once designed the ruins of the Palace of the Mathemagician. It had been carved out of solid rock with unique spells that removed rocks - but in various shapes. So there were rooms that were tetrahedrons, octahedrons, etc.

The mathemagician was a mad wizard who believed that all magic was mathematical, and this was where he did his experimentation. One level opened into a triangular room, with door in each wall, leading to rooms that were 30', 40', and 50'. I had some Pythagorean-based trap or puzzle in it.

I involved the harmonics and the universe revolving about the central fire, but I forget how. (I created this in the 1970s.)

Further down were five "levels" that extended into more than three dimensions. You drop into a room from a hole in the ceiling. It's a 30' x 30' room, with doors in the center of each room. Each door leads to an identical room, but without the trap door in the ceiling. Going through a door feels weird, in a way you cannot define. Any dwarves with you are getting slowly sick to their stomach. If you go straight for two rooms, you are in another such room that does have a trap door in the ceiling. Two more, and you are back in the room you started with. eventually, a dwarf will realize that north changes by 90 degrees with each door. If you go north from the original room, in the next room north feels like it's up.

Eventually you should figure out that you are exploring the surface of a cube. If you take the second trap door, which appears to be in the ceiling, you will stick your head through and then fall that direction (which felt "up" a minute ago) into a triangular shaped room, and you are on the next level, based on an octahedron.

I also had a tesseract built into it, and several math-based puzzles.

[Segev]

A shopping mall gone feral, with creatures living in the various stores.

A middle school at night, abandoned except for one lone security guard. And, just maybe, the 7 mysteries of the school.

A "dungeon" where the rooms are tree-house like structures and platforms in a jungle, and the "corridors" are the swinging bridges between them. Leaping and flying predators can attack from "outside" the dungeon. (Becomes less challenging when the party has a reliable means of flight.)

A tunnel warren excavated by a Beholder, and as such which has very few (if any) decent places to stand. Shafts and tunnels frequently connect chambers with no means of navigation save flight (or really, REALLY clever climbing).

[Necroticplague]

So going to steal this. Thanks for sharing!

Ditto. Sounds like an awesome combination of Pychonauts and Disgaea (lets be honest, you spend more time in the item world than anything else).

[Sian]

Once ran a party through a dungeon that was partially corrupted by Limbo, so a small part of it was as out of M.C Escher with selective gravity.

Later on the group shifted to another DM, and he one-upped me with a dungeon being a 4 dimensional dice, with gravity depending on what way you entered the next room (unable to change gravity within a room)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/8-cell_net.png/220px-8-cell_net.png

[sakuuya]

Once ran a party through a dungeon that was partially corrupted by Limbo, so a small part of it was as out of M.C Escher with selective gravity.

Later on the group shifted to another DM, and he one-upped me with a dungeon being a 4 dimensional dice, with gravity depending on what way you entered the next room (unable to change gravity within a room)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/8-cell_net.png/220px-8-cell_net.png

I've always wanted to do a tesseract dungeon! How'd it go?

[WeaselGuy]

I also had a tesseract built into it, and several math-based puzzles.


Later on the group shifted to another DM, and he one-upped me with a dungeon being a 4 dimensional dice, with gravity depending on what way you entered the next room (unable to change gravity within a room)

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/60/8-cell_net.png/220px-8-cell_net.png

Yeah, I had to google a tesseract, cause I couldn't remember what exactly it was. My brain still hurts from trying to comprehend it.

[Sian]

I've always wanted to do a tesseract dungeon! How'd it go?

surprisingly well, but you'd probably have to have a group where at least one (other than yourself as DM) have a solid understanding of advanced A-level Math (or being fond of 3 dimensional puzzles at the very least) so it doesn't fall flat with the party never figuring out the 'joke' wandering around aimlessly, trying to call you out on random dungeon not making sense.

it also helped that i got a set of 8 cubes where i noted each connecting flat piece in a recognizable color (and notation which direction they should connect), and calling each cube a number so i could just note which cube they were in (with which cube where in turn on top of it) and which of the 4 doors they left, and then i could grab the corrosponding cube, place it in the proper direction, and go from there

[sakuuya]

surprisingly well, but you'd probably have to have a group where at least one (other than yourself as DM) have a solid understanding of advanced A-level Math (or being fond of 3 dimensional puzzles at the very least) so it doesn't fall flat with the party never figuring out the 'joke' wandering around aimlessly, trying to call you out on random dungeon not making sense.

it also helped that i got a set of 8 cubes where i noted each connecting flat piece in a recognizable color (and notation which direction they should connect), and calling each cube a number so i could just note which cube they were in (with which cube where in turn on top of it) and which of the 4 doors they left, and then i could grab the corrosponding cube, place it in the proper direction, and go from there

The physical cubes are a good idea for keeping the orientation straight, thanks! I still don't know how well it would work with my friends, though. My group's Math Guy is basically Jim from Darths & Droids (http://www.darthsanddroids.net/episodes/0143.html).

[Lightlawbliss]

My favorite dungeon I ever ran in was a "test" we were given. The rooms were all conected to a central hub with symbols on the door. Each time we defeated a room, an effect related to the symbol happened in all remaining rooms. For example, one room gave all other rooms haste, another room gave all other rooms DR, and so on.

[atemu1234]

Kaiju corpse. If the kaiju ate a Macguffin and died, it's half-buried body could be colonized by all sorts of oozes, vermin, whatever to leave a populated area that potentially hides said Macguffin.

There's a template or two for that. Just be wary of PC necromancers making Corpse creatures.

[ezkajii]

I'm not well-versed in higher-dimensional mathematics but I found this (http://img.4plebs.org/boards/tg/image/1383/35/1383351777854.png)and it looks like a great place to start, but actually two clusters short of a true hypertesseract.

Also, that dungeon-tapper this is amazing! Stealing it forever and ever sorry byeeeee

[nedz]

Most of my stuff is thematic, but occasionally I run something more theoretical.

I once ran a dungeon on the surfaces of a Rubics Cube. Every so often I would spin the cube towards completion. The mission was to stop the BBEG from completing the cube. Very silly, but the added time pressure helped.

Another one was a simple inter-planar corridor which had been twisted over time into a complex knot as the planes moved relative to each other. Where the knot crossed itself the corridor would join itself and form a junction. Someone had added a few rooms at some point. Being inter-planer the geometry was non-euclidean. The Knot I chose (Carrick Bend Re-woven, and then tweaked a little) meant that turning left seven times leads you back to where you started, as did turning right seven times and going straight ahead seven times did this also. The dungeon was empty until someone opened a door into the Abyss. A few demons, and mass-fears, later and the party are scattered, and lost, in a maze that they didn't really map. Hilarity ensued.

[bloodystone2]

Magic went crazy haywire. Have most rooms seem normal, but change rooms. Normal looking rooms have one or a few of the following:

The walls are sentient and will non stop bother the player (with questions or attacks)
Zero Gravity
Extreme Gravity
Teleport to a random part of the dungeon (can only occur once per party)
The floor is lava. If they fall through, they sink, take some fire damage, and appear at the start of the dungeon.
There are alternate versions of the players going around. (5 total parties, CE, LE, TN, CG, and LG)
All weak monsters are incredibly powerful.
All strong monsters have 1 HP