I'd like to make a "dungeon" for my party to explore, but it needs to be something other than an old-school "dungeon". Underground hallways and rooms with creatures in them have been overdone for us. What else could we try?
Some criteria:
- It needs to be a place you can explore. These players love exploring dungeons and mapping them out as I describe what they see.
- It can't be too interconnected. For example, a town is too interconnected — you can easily get to anywhere from anywhere else. Streets in the town go everywhere. But in a dungeon, there are only a few routes available.
- It can't be underground. We've done a lot of that lately.
- It has to work in a human-centric Iron Age setting. Think Celtic tribes and ancient Germania. Castles in those days were still hillforts — not too exciting to explore.
An answer that works for a no-magic setting would be great. It's easy to add magic into a realistic environment, it's hard to take magic away from a magic-requiring environment.
Best Answer
Your options are sort of limited here. You're asking: "In an age where people have not built any large above-ground structures, what sort of large above-ground structures are there?"
You need to either reach out to fantasy or think outside the box.
Natural, mazelike terrain
Natural obstacles to make crossing land hard
This section isn't comprehensive - other answers have provided locations that could fit here and I'm not sure I should pilfer them for the sake of making this list comprehensive.
Dwellings created by others who can build big things
Send them elsewhere entirely
This is definitely cheating, but can let you have some fantastic structures that can't exist in the real world. Whatever those would be. Like the Maze of Tzeentch.