I've written before about a world where the dungeoneering was an done by androids who were the remnant of human civilization (all that's here). There's another way to get dungeons crawling with robots, and that's with a future post-apocalyptic world that's been overrun by them. Instead of apes, or fairies, or vampires, let the robots take over something like Screamers (and the Philip K. Dick story it's based on "The Second Variety"), Terminator, or Magnus: Robot-Fighter. Unlike those examples though, human civilization can have been pushed back to pseudo-Medieval levels.
Say the robots have moved mostly underground, leaving humans to limp along on a damaged surface world. The underground bases of the robots would be a lot like dungeons. Robots would have made various robotic or bio-robotic guardians--monsters, of sorts. Maybe the robots are even aliens? A post-sentient, techno-organic swarm that landed and buried itself into the earth, spreading underground like roots, building robotic creatures in a myriad of forms as it went. You'd have a whole underground ecology of robots. Add "magic" (really psionic powers in disguise) and you've got a fantasy world, or close enough.
For a real fantasy world, assume that the alien robotic swarm invaded a fairly D&Dish world (except with maybe less conflict to begin with).
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I was just watching this movie trailer. Seems to be upon somewhat similar lines.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IgJHzRSHn4
D&D is already post-apocolyptic. Re-skinning the dungeons as android bases works.
After seeing Coruscant in the Star Wars prequels, I often wondered about basing a campaign in a post-apocalyptic Coruscant...
According to the old Expanded Universe, there are more than a thousand levels "underground," beneath the base level of the humongous city-sized blocks.
Blow that all up in some sort of Tekumel-style event, mix in the thousands of species of the Star Wars galaxy, insert "magic" for "The Force," let simmer for 10,000 years (a la Trantor, with soil and agriculture and primitive medievalism redeveloped on the surface), and you've got a D&D-style world with a world-spanning Underworld miles deep!
And then you can add in this factor, where the self-replicating droid population is maintaining the subterranean levels (and perhaps the insides of the Great Metal Mountains)...
That's a great idea, James!
They are printing human ears now using cultured bodyfat, some folks are working on printing a functioning human heart. The robots and a lot of their minions could be 3d printed beings.
They are printing human ears now using cultured bodyfat, some folks are working on printing a functioning human heart. The robots and a lot of their minions could be 3d printed beings.
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