Comment on “The Dungeon's Front Door”

This reads like a lead-in to a discussion of dungeons that DON'T have these "mythological" features (eternal traps, monsters despite no signs of life, etc). I think that maybe the only sacred cow here is treasure (whether literal valuables, or lost knowledge or other resources); as you said, a DM can only introduce a treasure-free dungeon at his own peril, and maybe that's OK. What seems to be the way to solve the other parts of this tired setup is to think of the dungeon as integrated into the wilderness, and considering trap longevity, treasure "trickle down", etc. from that perspective.

It may be dramatically useful to still consider the dungeon separate, in some way, from the wilderness proper. This is why I say "integrate into [wilderness]" but not "reanalyze as part of [wilderness]", above. I mean that at the threshold of the dungeon, and in the shallower areas of its depths, there should be evidence of the wilderness around it; similarly, nearby wilderness may show signs of dungeon-ness (but not always, because sometimes you want the players to take a piss and discover a secret stone slab...) However, I think that the deeper into the dungeon one gets, the stranger it should be relative to its wilderness surroundings. This makes sense since there's literal distance between the two. There may also be entities using that literal distance to maintain some separation, as well, such as in the case of a hideout, a cult site, an apex predator, etc. Finally, deeper areas of the dungeon having weaker relations to the shallower areas or to the wilderness creates a similarly "deep" unknown for the players.

Pick me apart if I'm incoherent anywhere, this is one quick burst of thinking.