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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 Open-air passageways through an icy tundra, or cracks in its ice. Effectively a ...

The traditional dungeon is really a literal 'node-path'. There are encounter locations represented by rooms connected by linear hallways. Really, the rooms are just physical places where combat, plot-points, or background color / descriptive bits can be handed out. The hallways are just the way you get the players from one node to the next. With this ...

Some ideas: I built a city in a ravine. The ravine was about 300m across and twice as deep. A town had been cobbled together inside the ravine. It was a maze of stairways, catwalks, multi-level plazas, rooftops, and arcades. A river flowed through the bottom of the ravine providing food, water and sewerage disposal. Two cranes at the top of the ravine ...

Here are some suggestions that would be different enough that they might make things interesting: Swamps. This works best if they are bog-like and have islands of solid ground linked by pathways that are surrounded by quicksand/mud/water. This also allows for unexpected surprises if they get too close to the edges. Rooftops of a city. Say, for whatever ...

Several come to mind without violating the Fantasy level of tech. Forest platforms (ala the Ewok City on Endor in Return of the Jedi, or the Wookie cities in Christmas in the Stars). Maze-like canyons and cave systems with open ceilings in parts. island-cities like Venice or pre-conquistador Tenochtitlan. Hanging cities like some of the abandoned Anasazi ...

You walk into a giant cave, floored with clouds. There is a single golden platform, floating in the sky near the precipice you stand on, like a boat docked on the shore. Engraved on it is the arcane rune XIII. A short distance further you see your destination: another platform extending out into the clouds. The platform is large enough for ...

Wizards.com itself has a massive collection. Finding exactly what you need can be tedious, but for sheer volume it's hard to beat the wizards.com galleries and archives. The Art & Map Gallery and the Map-A-Week Archive are both free, and give access to most of the maps published in D&D 3.5 physical volumes and adventures (though not the content ...

This specific question might be too localised, but I can easily answer the more general question. Even if there was a problem with that setup, that's no so much a problem as an opportunity to ask, "why?" Why is Creature X and Creature Y cooperating when normally they wouldn't? Creating unusual situations, then asking yourself how the heck that came about, ...

Dungeons are often man-made, so why not try something with a more natural feel, like an overgrown forest, jungle or swamp? If it's sufficiently wild and untamed there'll be more than enough vast thickets and fallen trees that effectively block off routes and reduce the connectivity. Mist or fog can be used to reduce visibility and it can be very easy to ...

How about a high-altitude mountaineering adventure? Maybe the heroes need to find a lost city, or rescue someone from mountain bandits, or simply find a route from point A to point B (for trade, or scouting for a military maneuver). Once they're on their way, they'll be naturally constrained in which directions they can go because of the nature of the ...

While the question is tagged as dungeons-and-dragons, my answer is tailored toward AD&D as the OP references that game as the one being played. The basic concept can be applied to any version but the analysis may well be too AD&D specific for all versions. Justifying why monsters are working together is important to a degree. Sadly, in most cases, ...

Some possible ideas: Dimensional wormholes; connections between planes need not be just a simple "pop in pop out" affair; you can wander twisting space/time tunnels and fight star vampires and the like as you wander. Similarly - a cross planar dimension. The "ether" is often used as a parallel dimension where creatures such as undead and the like reside in ...

What about the "boat towns" like those on the Yangtze or in the port of Hong Kong? Here is a little write up for my long-defunct Pulp campaign. See also this pic for inspiration. To get back to the "dungeon" feel the actual place should have been deserted, or the inhabitants have been dead for a long time, or whatever... you still get a set of ...

I learned most of my lessons on this topic from action and drama films. I've found that one of the best ways to introduce comic relief in an otherwise tense campaign is to introduce sometimes hilarious events into combat descriptions. For example, let's say one of your party member's gets a critical success on his attack roll and obliterates an enemy. All ...

Cartographer's Guild has a wide selection of maps, some of which are gridded for tabletop gaming. Paratime Design released 100 Creative Commons licensed, black and white dungeon maps in the style of old D&D.

I'd recommend the 5x5 method which discussed on the in detail on the critical-hits.com blog in the context of both adventures and campaigns The basic idea of this technique, is that you take 5 ideas: Overthrow the evil empire Prevent the sorcerer from ascending to demon-hood and 3 more... and so on, and then for each idea create 5 milestones that will ...

I would recommend that you also consider taking a look at the dungeonmorphs products. Rather than a map, they are like Legos for building maps in a moment or two. The dungeonmorphs are classic old-schoolish square-grid maps with exits from each tile at the same locations. So you can use the dice, cards, battlemat images, or fonts to create dungeons at high ...

The website for a National Geographic show called Doomsday Preppers provides a lot of potentially useful material. The shelter section talks about how a survivalist would select a location for their compound, and other sections talk about security, food supplies, and so on. While I couldn't find any plans, the episode Taking from the Haves looks like it may ...

Some links: Memorializing the Mount Carmel Center This includes pictures of a model and maps of the besieged buildings in Waco at the time of the siege. It also includes a lot of information about what has happened since. A secure compound, off grid Description of everything needed in a compound. Go Underground 6 ready-to-buy now bomb shelters

So this doesn't help with writing humor, but this is where I draw the line for comic relief: Characters should tell jokes. They shouldn't be jokes. If you have a character whose very existence is comic relief, the game will be impossible to take seriously. See: Jar Jar Binks.

Might I recommend nests or a hive? If you really want to bend their brains, how about something Escheresque? You've likely seen the optical illusion of stairs that converge (drawn by MC Escher). Think crazy things like that. Then go back to using a castle.

A cliff city. Inhabitable areas are carved out and connected by a FEW paths, not heavily interconnected like a normal city is. Of course magical flight could bypass these limits and let you go anywhere. Alternately, a very jagged version of the Himalayas. There are small valleys that are flat enough for people or monsters to live in. However, mostly ...

It might be a few thousand years later, but something like Chichen Itza or Machu Picchu. But the complexity of structures in Egypt (e.g. the Pyramids) lend itself to the idea that with enough slave labor anything is possible.

If we could write consistently funny dialogue to order, we'd be publishing it, not wasting it on a few players. But a couple of rules of thumb are important: Make sure you separate the comic relief from the serious characters. Sounds obvious, but if the grand vizier sees an opportunity for a great pun just after the Big Fight Scene, when you are looking to ...

It's been a long while since I played Little Fears and I never did GM it, but from what I remember Belief was a child's main defensive thing. It also had it's negative side such as holding your breath when riding through a tunnel, or lifting your feet when riding over rail road tracks, or not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk. All of which have some form ...

Not outside fantasy, but... Pendragon (esp. 4e or 3e with Knights Adventurous) Pendragon supplements tend to be either setting books with a few adventures, timeline sourcebooks with lots of adventures in schematic form (Pendragon Campaign, Boy king, Great Pendragon Campaign), or adventure collections (2-4 big adventures, and a half dozen smaller ones ...

Role-playing games sources: Fading Suns is a game of futuristic passion play. It is a dark medieval space fantasy setting that encourages Everyman type adventures. Some of the pre-written adventures are directly allegorical, and the rest, though more focused on social and physical action, also have a moral layer. Also, there is a short story collection, ...

It's pretty simple but it is challenging if you haven't done it before, here is my advice. An adventure is solving a problem, so come up with a problem, that problem will be the basis of a quest so let's say "The Earl's daughter has been kidnapped." that is the problem, then you come up with a villain so let's say " Cultists of Orcus (I'm using him because ...

Here is a basic approach that will carry you through about 2-6 months of campaign games. Make a simple starting town The purpose of this part of the campaign will be to provide the players a couple of modules to become comfortable with their characters, learn the game mechanics and outwardly express some personal goals. Ingredients A name and theme for ...

Lucky me, you asked for resources for adventures, not specific adventures! Well, lucky me if you count core rulebooks as resources. If not... the following are worth a mention anyway, as published adventures for these systems might give you what you're looking for. (I almost never use published adventures myself, so I can't really recommend any for them.) ...