Quote Originally Posted by SirKazum View Post
One idea that came to me while browsing OD&D (the very first books that started D&D back in 1976) is that dungeons are kind of like a disease, an infection of the world. That they grow of their own accord, new tunnels and rooms sprout like the branches of a fungal infection, and even monsters are spontaneously generated by it (similar to the old discredited theory that flies sponteneously sprout out of garbage left unattended). That if you do something like remove a brick from an existing dungeon and bury it in a (currently) dungeonless place, it will "sprout" a new dungeon there after a while, like a seed. So I guess this "dungeon world" thing ties well into this. Maybe the "ordinary" world's dungeons have portals into it, or you end up in Dungeon World if you explore long enough. Or maybe not, but the regular world's dungeons were created when seed material was brought back from Dungeon World by planar travelers.
I like the idea a lot. I'd maybe tie it to ideas of corruption. Older fantasy is full of races who turned from morality/god/the gods/the light/righteousness/etc. and became twisted, ugly and evil. Dungeons might be something similar, but for places. Wherever evil happens, nature becomes more dangerous. Darker, at first, with bad weather, dangerous or rotting vegetation and hostile animals, then eventually, the landscape twists and dungeons begin to form.