Thinking more on your post from yesterday, do you think there's a way to make "exploring + discovering the use of + dismantling" an ancient super weapon (perhaps in the shape of a ring-world) into an anti-imperialist dungeon?
I think so! I mean, destroying the Death Star is in fact an anti-imperial action. I remember a few years ago a great conversation with @Your-Grandma in a discord where we ran through different kinds of power relations that player characters could have with NPCs in a space/place. That was really important for me because it helped me see that you have to be really clear about what an NPCs relationship to “the dungeon” is, and what the PCs relationship to the dungeon and the NPCs is to boot.
I have to commend you on this example. I think it’s really good. The enemy fortress/super weapon is a great start to shaking the dungeon artifact out of the cruft, because liberation from the gun pointed at your head is not a get rich quick scheme. It’s too far a reach to call taking a super weapon from a state an action of dispossession in any meaningful sense.
I think the challenge coming towards this approach to finding new contexts for the dungeon crawl is going to be like, critiques that the desire for a dungeon is about making a guiltless dungeon, guiltless mapping play, guiltless violence, but I’m hoping I can get something started where there’s a dialectic then people can make a dungeon crawl where they learn more about how hvac systems work or whatever.