Quote Originally Posted by Eldan View Post
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.
I had that idea in the first place because OD&D treats dungeons (which it generally assumes are connected into a huge maze called "The Underworld, in the third rulebook, "The Underworld and Wilderness Adventures") as not just underground tunnels with monsters, but more than that. The Underworld is a mysterious, twisted place, whose layout can change (secret doors and even the layout of the tunnels and rooms can change if you visit it again after a while), and whose darkness cannot be penetrated by regular characters with infravision like dwarves and elves, but its monsters can see just fine in dungeon darkness as they are creatures of the dark. So I guess that has everything to do with your idea of corruption, of an unnatural place twisted by wickedness.