What is up with all these poison needle traps?

[raniE]

So I've been reading some old TSR and some newer OSR adventures recently (in preparation for trying to get a new Lamentations of the Flame Princess game off the ground when restrictions are lifted sometime in the hazy future, but more on the campaign idea in a different thread), and apart from treacherous NPCs making the most sensible decision PCs can make being to set fire to every inn they find, refuse all offers of aid and always sleep in tents in the woods with double guards, I've noticed a super abundance of fairly average people (townspeople, thugs, assassins, merchants etc) having stored their valuables in chests with poison needle traps. Why? Where did this idea come from? Is it based on anything in reality? Who would trap their own hidden chest with a lethal poison? And what kind of poison stays dangerous indefinitely? Why both lock the chest and put in a trap that only activates if someone fiddles with the lock rather than say breaking the thing open with a crowbar or smashing it with an axe? It just baffles me, more so than the "pit trap in a well-travelled corridor" thing even. Does anyone know the origin of the locked chest with poison needle trap thing? Can anyone explain its popularity?

 

[TristramEvans]

It's not really based on anything in reality, as a poison trap would be incredibly impractical - the poison would dry up or evaporate most likely long before use and would be more expensive and risky to constantly maintain than whatever it was theoretically guarding.

Spring-barb locks for chests in and of themselves are found as far back as the 1st century, and though no one knows the origin, they were popularized along asian and middle eastern trade routes for protecting valuables.

Bu the concept of "booby traps" in general is actually mostly a product of the 20th century. The term originallly referred to schoolboy pranks and didn't take on its more sinister/lethal connotations until WW1. Traps before that point were largely associated with hunting animals, and while the concept of a "mantrap" existed, these were almost always variations on hunting trap devices, mostly repurposed to theoretically deter burglars and poachers.

So, I don't know if there was any precedents in fantasy literature, but I suspect that most of the traps in D&D were specifically developed for D&D, and thus would get frequent reuse.

 

[raniE]

Yeah I figured there wasn't much precedent in fantasy because I can't recall seeing it anywhere. Did something like it appear in a film or book from the 60s or 70s that could have influenced early D&D? Regardless of genre? I can't think of anything like it in Bond.

Certain other lock traps make a lot more sense. An ampoule of sleeping gas that operates if the lid is opened or removed without opening the lock first seems like a device that could be built, is unlikely to accidentally kill the owner, would need replacement of the poison less often and would have an effect on someone who decides to just force the lock or break the lid. These seem far less common than the poison needle trap though.

 

[BigJackBrass]

Certain other lock traps make a lot more sense. An ampoule of sleeping gas that operates if the lid is opened or removed without opening the lock first seems like a device that could be built, is unlikely to accidentally kill the owner, would need replacement of the poison less often and would have an effect on someone who decides to just force the lock or break the lid.

If you're considering a sleeping gas trap likely then you may as well just go with persistent poisons: it's almost impossible to knock someone out with gas in that way. If you managed to dose them with something that actually did render them unconscious then doing so in such an unmeasured and uncontrolled manner could quite easily kill them or cause serious harm.

Better perhaps to go for something like the "Skunk Lock", a real bike lock which releases a blast of noxious chemical when cut or interfered with, causing vomiting.

 

[raniE]

If you're considering a sleeping gas trap likely then you may as well just go with persistent poisons: it's almost impossible to knock someone out with gas in that way. If you managed to dose them with something that actually did render them unconscious then doing so in such an unmeasured and uncontrolled manner could quite easily kill them or cause serious harm.

Better perhaps to go for something like the "Skunk Lock", a real bike lock which releases a blast of noxious chemical when cut or interfered with, causing vomiting.

I don't think it is actually physically more likely for the substance to exist, but assuming we have a magical poison and a magical sleeping gas, then the gas trap that triggers if the lid is opened without unlocking it first just seems logistically much more usable and less dangerous to the actual owner than a needle with a deadly poison. Even if the mechanism fails and the trap goes off when it shouldn't, the gas will just be a temporary inconvenience while the needle will result in, well, death.

 

[Winterblight]

Wow, the last time I read anything that had a needle trap was in one of the Dragonlance books, where Tasslehoff dreams that he is killed by one.

 

[Fenris-77]

They wouldn't need so many needle traps if adventurers weren't constantly sneaking about stealing peoples stuff. The next time a PC eats a needle, just tell them its all their fault anyway.

 

[Tulpa Girl]

There's poison needles in Dune, but they're not part of any trapped chests or anything like that.

 

[raniE]

There's poison needles in Dune, but they're not part of any trapped chests or anything like that.

If you squint hard enough you can probably see the pain box and the Gom Jabbar needle as a trapped box, albeit a human activated one.

 

[raniE]

Wow, the last time I read anything that had a needle trap was in one of the Dragonlance books, where Tasslehoff dreams that he is killed by one.

Yeah, as I've said I've been reading a lot of old TSR stuff and some newer OSR stuff. Haven't seen too many poison needles in WotC stuff.

 

[Torque2100]

*Snip*

This is something that has bothered me to. So many of these traps seem like they would be more dangerous to the owner of a chest filled with valuables than to anyone trying to break into it. The later Elder Scolls games have actually had some pretty sensible trap designs: a simple chord connected to the lid which, when opened, will trigger a ball and chain to swing at head height for anyone who opens the chest without disabling the trap. No poisons to dry out or gears that might rust in place. Too bad Bethesda insist that all of their dungeons be so well lit that the trap may as well have flood lights pointed at it.

Then again, there are so many things in RPGs that we accept because they're fun so I've learned to accept them. Why do this same group of people risk death every week? Because they're characters in a game and the game is fun. Why does the evil Wizard just hole up in his tower fortress with a massive hoard of treasure and not, like found an investment bank and loan gold to kingdoms to make even more money or found his own empire or something? Because kicking in the door and looting the place is fun! Why is this huge, anachronistic and illogical collection of weapons available from a village blacksmith? Because shopping is fun.

At some point you just have to ask "do you want to play DnD or not?"

 

[raniE]

I can barely remember what unmodded Skyrim dungeons look like, but with the correct lighting mods, going in there without darkvision or a light source it's pretty much pitch black.

As for fun, I guess I just never found poison needle traps particularly fun. They're illogical and they're not particularly innovative since they keep cropping up. After the first one, you just know to bash any chest open and not go near the actual latch with your hands. I've never seen one on a door either, where just bashing it open or removing it to open in a safe place may be a harder proposition than with a box or small chest.

 

[Shipyard Locked]

They wouldn't need so many needle traps if adventurers weren't constantly sneaking about stealing peoples stuff.

Another reminder that a homeless, masterless wandering adventurer is a really tricky ahistorical factor to build a simulated world around. They really should be viewed with constant suspicion and fear everywhere they go, not simply warded against with strange trap habits.

 

[raniE]

Another reminder that a homeless, masterless wandering adventurer is a really tricky ahistorical factor to build a simulated world around. They really should be viewed with constant suspicion and fear everywhere they go, not simply warded against with strange trap habits.

They actually fit really well into a lot of historical times and places. It's the same reason why you tend to get a lot of pirates after a big naval war ends. You've got all these mercenaries who've gotten used to being paid for fighting, and suddenly the war is over. No more getting paid to fight by the government. Time to take those skills to the private sector.

edit: For example the war of the Spanish succession was a huge deal that pitted Great Britain, the Dutch republic and Spain (plus others) against France and Spain (among others). After the war ends in 1714 you get ten years of quite massive piracy with names such as Calico Jack Rackham (who had Anne Bonny and Mary Read on his crew), Black Bart, Blackbeard etc.

 

[ffilz]

I think this kind of trap may have featured in a Conan story or some such.

I think the proliferation of traps like that is in part a response to the introduction of the thief class which always felt to me like it introduced reasons for the thief to justify the need for a new character type. Like dungeon exploring was just fine without thieves, but add the thief and we need to make sure he feels useful...

 

[Fenris-77]

Oh he's useful alright, it means no one who matters gets a poison needle in the face. I lose more Thieves that way...

 

[Tulpa Girl]

I think this kind of trap may have featured in a Conan story or some such.

From The Hour of the Dragon -

Along the rim of the lid seven skulls were carved among intertwining branches of strange trees. An inlaid dragon writhed its way across the top of the lid, amid ornate arabesques. Valbroso pressed the skulls in rumbling haste, and as he jammed his thumb down on the carved head of the dragon he swore sharply and snatched his hand away, shaking it in irritation.

"A sharp point on the carvings," he snarled. "I've pricked my thumb."

He pressed the gold ball clutched in the dragon's talons, and the lid flew abruptly open.

...

"The dragon's fang!" shrieked Zorathus. "Steeped in the venom of the black Stygian scorpion! Fool, fool to open the box of Zorathus with your naked hand! Death! You are a dead man now!"

 

[Tommy Brownell]

Another reminder that a homeless, masterless wandering adventurer is a really tricky ahistorical factor to build a simulated world around. They really should be viewed with constant suspicion and fear everywhere they go, not simply warded against with strange trap habits.

I assume this is why Forgotten Realms made reference to things like registering your adventure company and the like: to separate legitimate law abiding (if not heroic) adventurers from murderhobos and brigands.

 

[Lofgeornost]

I'm not a big fan of poison needles either. I think they are first mentioned in Greyhawk, which introduces the Thief class, but as a passing example of the sort of thing thieves can remove. All the actual traps mentioned in that book, and in the L.B.B.s, are a good deal more interesting.

As for where the idea comes from, you do occasionally run into poison-needle traps in genre fiction--but not a lot, as far as I know. So there is a watch which extends a poisoned needle when it reaches a certain time in Chester Steele's Diamond-Cross Mystery (1918), and a poison-needle trap features in "Murder by Atom" by Joseph Skidmore, which appeared in Amazing Stories in 1937. The latter trap makes a good deal more sense than the poison-needle chest trap--it's actually a bag of poison with something like a hypodermic needle placed into a mattress, so that someone lies on it they will receive an injection.

Poisoned needles as weapons or means of suicide are more common in literature--and maybe reality, for all I know--for pretty obvious reasons. They show up in spy stories, though I can't think of any examples off the top of my head. Maybe the most famous poisoned needle in the days when D&D was being invented was the one Gary Powers was supposed to have been issued for his U-2 flight, which got a lot of coverage at the time.

Dwight Swain's Techniques of the Selling Writer mentions a doorknob with a poisoned needle in passing, as part of a thought-experiment on how to use a doorknob to commit murder. The book was first written in 1965, so he couldn't have been drawing on D&D.

 

[T. Foster]

From The Hour of the Dragon -

Along the rim of the lid seven skulls were carved among intertwining branches of strange trees. An inlaid dragon writhed its way across the top of the lid, amid ornate arabesques. Valbroso pressed the skulls in rumbling haste, and as he jammed his thumb down on the carved head of the dragon he swore sharply and snatched his hand away, shaking it in irritation.

"A sharp point on the carvings," he snarled. "I've pricked my thumb."

He pressed the gold ball clutched in the dragon's talons, and the lid flew abruptly open.

...

"The dragon's fang!" shrieked Zorathus. "Steeped in the venom of the black Stygian scorpion! Fool, fool to open the box of Zorathus with your naked hand! Death! You are a dead man now!"

Beat me to it - I was literally just about to post that same quote. Considering The Hour of the Dragon is in many ways sort of a compilation of Howard's favorite elements from his other stories (because he was trying to break into the UK market and had been told the publisher wanted novels, not story collections) it may appear somewhere else too, and he may have picked it up from somewhere (like a Harold Lamb story, maybe), and of course other later authors then likely picked it up in their Conan-pastiche stories so it was an established genre trope by the time Gygax added it to D&D.

 

[T. Foster]

I think this kind of trap may have featured in a Conan story or some such.

I think the proliferation of traps like that is in part a response to the introduction of the thief class which always felt to me like it introduced reasons for the thief to justify the need for a new character type. Like dungeon exploring was just fine without thieves, but add the thief and we need to make sure he feels useful...

Proliferation, but not introduction. Without the thief class something like this would be rare and significant and likely telegraphed with clues (similar to the Conan story). But once the thief class was around to deal with it the "trap arms race" meant they could become much more common, just like locked doors and chests became more common and nobody bothered to place keys for all those locks, because it was assumed the thief character would be able to pick them.

Old-school DMing/dungeon-designing tip: traps and locks shouldn't be placed based on the assumed presence (or absence) of a thief PC. A party without a thief should still be able to deal with the (fairly rare, and logically-placed) traps and locks in the dungeon - by avoiding the former and either finding keys to or smashing the latter - and if the party does have a thief it shouldn't be assumed that there will always be tons of traps and locks for them to deal with in order to guarantee spotlight time and protect their niche. It should be just as hard for NPCs to get ahold of instant-acting, never-evaporating poison as it is for the PCs; and nobody installs locks unless they have keys to them (though admittedly keys do also get lost over time - which also means that treasure hoards should occasionally include unidentified keys...). Design dungeons as locations in the fictional world that make sense in that context first, and as game-level challenge gauntlets for the players second.

 

[Tulpa Girl]

A little further searching shows that Leiber's "Two Sought Adventure" mentions the possibility of a 'poison trap or snare', even though it's not actually present.

 

[raniE]

Clearly I need to re-read my Conan and Lankhmar collections.

 

[T. Foster]

Clearly I need to re-read my Conan and Lankhmar collections.

I just did that this summer, while on lockdown. They both hold up!

 

[zarion]

I'm going with...cause it's part of the "implied setting" featured in all D&D editions...

...I'll show myself out...

 

[ffilz]

I think RuneQuest adventures struck a good balance with traps. They are there sometimes, but pretty rare. AND every PC has at least some chance to deal with them, close to the same chances as a 1st level D&D thief, maybe better since most RQ PCs have at least some Manipulation bonus.

 

[ffilz]

I'm going with...cause it's part of the "implied setting" featured in all D&D editions...

...I'll show myself out...

Yep, and as mentioned, a significant enough feature in the fiction that inspired early D&D to make sense. Yea, D&D dungeon adventuring really doesn't occur in fiction at the degree it does in D&D, but it's a logical thing to focus a game on.

 

[Tulpa Girl]

Oh yeah, it's much more of a game thing than a fiction thing, I would say.

When I first searched for 'poison needle trap in fiction', the first thirty or so hits were all from rpg sites.

 

[zarion]

Yep, and as mentioned, a significant enough feature in the fiction that inspired early D&D to make sense. Yea, D&D dungeon adventuring really doesn't occur in fiction at the degree it does in D&D, but it's a logical thing to focus a game on.

Definitely don't agree that's logical to focus a game on dungeon crawling. Have yet to meet peeps who are brand new to TTRPGs that think this. All of the ones I've met in the last 20 years want something more akin to what they see in movies or TV shows. The only players I've ever met that think dungeon crawling should even be a thing are peeps who've already been playing D&D.

 

[T. Foster]

A little further searching shows that Leiber's "Two Sought Adventure" mentions the possibility of a 'poison trap or snare', even though it's not actually present.

I was struck when re-reading that story recently how many D&D tropes are direct extrapolations from it - both the things that actually happen in it and things that don't happen on-stage but are mentioned and implied. There are freelance adventurers following a treasure map; there are other rival adventurers looking for the same treasure; there are random encounters while traveling; there are weird mundane villagers living near the "dungeon" who have rumors and information about it (some true, some false); the adventurers scout the location carefully because they're wary of traps and monsters of various types; when they do venture into the place they bring a bunch of gear along - ropes, pickaxes, torches, etc. The first half of the story really reads almost exactly like the beginning of a traditional D&D dungeon adventure. The only difference is that in D&D the "dungeon" would've been bigger and more of the traps and monsters they thought might be there actually would have been (and the party probably would've been bigger).

 

[ffilz]

Definitely don't agree that's logical to focus a game on dungeon crawling. Have yet to meet peeps who are brand new to TTRPGs that think this. All of the ones I've met in the last 20 years want something more akin to what they see in movies or TV shows. The only players I've ever met that think dungeon crawling should even be a thing are peeps who've already been playing D&D.

Well, new players today probably didn't grow up reading the same fiction the early D&D players did (I actually didn't start reading Conan and stuff in earnest until after starting to play D&D. So that is a factor, the interests in gaming will depend on the fiction one has been exposed to. But I see plenty of young folks today being interested in old school dungeon exploration. It still makes a great game, so yea, I think it IS still logical and relevant. But understanding where the inspiration came from, and THEN understanding how that inspiration translated into a game that DIDN'T play out quite the same as the fiction that inspired it is worthy.

 

[raniE]

Yep, and as mentioned, a significant enough feature in the fiction that inspired early D&D to make sense. Yea, D&D dungeon adventuring really doesn't occur in fiction at the degree it does in D&D, but it's a logical thing to focus a game on.

I mean, in the fiction it seems to be at least something that some dude with an ominous name has. Not a random moneylender in a small village (which has three inns despite only having 300 inhabitants, that's way too many hotel rooms per person) which is more often the case in old TSR modules.

 

[raniE]

Definitely don't agree that's logical to focus a game on dungeon crawling. Have yet to meet peeps who are brand new to TTRPGs that think this. All of the ones I've met in the last 20 years want something more akin to what they see in movies or TV shows. The only players I've ever met that think dungeon crawling should even be a thing are peeps who've already been playing D&D.

I've seen people describe The Fantasy Trip as a classic dungeon crawling game. When I played it as a kid, with an adult GM, we never went into any dungeons (except partly once, if "wine cellar converted to temporary prison to house one of our guys before the trial" counts as a dungeon"). We had plenty of adventures, but they took place mostly outdoors, with a few excursions into regular buildings. It can still be a fun thing to do, but it isn't a necessary component of old school gaming.

Not that it matters in this case since most poison needle traps are nowhere near dungeons in the first place, they are the domain of moneylenders, assassins posing as inn guests and corrupt innkeepers mostly, less so dungeon inhabitants.

 

[ffilz]

I was struck when re-reading that story recently how many D&D tropes are direct extrapolations from it - both the things that actually happen in it and things that don't happen on-stage but are mentioned and implied. There are freelance adventurers following a treasure map; there are other rival adventurers looking for the same treasure; there are random encounters while traveling; there are weird mundane villagers living near the "dungeon" who have rumors and information about it (some true, some false); the adventurers scout the location carefully because they're wary of traps and monsters of various types; when they do venture into the place they bring a bunch of gear along - ropes, pickaxes, torches, etc. The first half of the story really reads almost exactly like the beginning of a traditional D&D dungeon adventure. The only difference is that in D&D the "dungeon" would've been bigger and more of the traps and monsters they thought might be there actually would have been (and the party probably would've been bigger).

Yep, translation of ideas from fiction into a game. Larger dungeon means longer engagement. Larger party means more players. And recall that in the early days, players were stampeding the GMs looking to get into a game. Look at what happened the first time I GMed at a convention, by the time I finished registering and paying and made my way to the table they assigned me, there were already a half dozen or more players and by the time the party started to enter the dungeon there were 16 players. And only one of those players had any idea of who I was, and probably only a few of those players knew THAT guy who did all the recruiting.

 

[raniE]

Well, new players today probably didn't grow up reading the same fiction the early D&D players did (I actually didn't start reading Conan and stuff in earnest until after starting to play D&D. So that is a factor, the interests in gaming will depend on the fiction one has been exposed to. But I see plenty of young folks today being interested in old school dungeon exploration. It still makes a great game, so yea, I think it IS still logical and relevant. But understanding where the inspiration came from, and THEN understanding how that inspiration translated into a game that DIDN'T play out quite the same as the fiction that inspired it is worthy.

Eh, this varies. I grew up with my dad reading me The Hobbit, The Lord of the Rings, A Princess of Mars and similar as bedtime stories, and had read my first Conan collection (one with a lot of L Sprague de Camp additions, but still) by age 8. And my dad was my first GM and he came out of that tradition of stories. Still didn't see much dungeon explorations in my early games, either the ones I played in or the ones i GMed, except for the ones that came with published adventures, and I had more of those with wilderness adventuring than with dungeoneering anyway.

 

[ffilz]

I've seen people describe The Fantasy Trip as a classic dungeon crawling game. When I played it as a kid, with an adult GM, we never went into any dungeons (except partly once, if "wine cellar converted to temporary prison to house one of our guys before the trial" counts as a dungeon"). We had plenty of adventures, but they took place mostly outdoors, with a few excursions into regular buildings. It can still be a fun thing to do, but it isn't a necessary component of old school gaming.

Not that it matters in this case since most poison needle traps are nowhere near dungeons in the first place, they are the domain of moneylenders, assassins posing as inn guests and corrupt innkeepers mostly, less so dungeon inhabitants.

Dungeon exploration doesn't work so well with TFT... We spent some mildly agonizing months trying to clear out a dungeon in the TFT campaign I played in...

Modules may have lots of traps in the towns, but there's plenty in the dungeons, or at least there were plenty in the dungeons I ran...

And true, old school gaming doesn't equal dungeon exploration, but it was a major feature in the early days. To the point that in the late 70s, people would say "I'm off to play in Charle's dungeon" even though the adventure may not have been a dungeon... But yea, gamers started breaking out of the dungeon and playing other kinds of campaigns.

 

[raniE]

Dungeon exploration doesn't work so well with TFT... We spent some mildly agonizing months trying to clear out a dungeon in the TFT campaign I played in...

Modules may have lots of traps in the towns, but there's plenty in the dungeons, or at least there were plenty in the dungeons I ran...

And true, old school gaming doesn't equal dungeon exploration, but it was a major feature in the early days. To the point that in the late 70s, people would say "I'm off to play in Charle's dungeon" even though the adventure may not have been a dungeon... But yea, gamers started breaking out of the dungeon and playing other kinds of campaigns.

Fights, and many other things, are really too deadly for the kind of dungeon delving you'll see in mid-level D&D to work for a TFT party, yeah. There's a reason the dungeon programmed adventure is called Death Test after all.

As for traps in dungeons, yeah those are there too in old modules, but they tend to be more pits or bigger architectural traps, not so much poison needles on chest locks. Basically, traps can be interesting, but the poison needle trap seems so over-used when one considers how specific and dangerous to its rightful owner it is. The only trap more used than it is pit traps, and those are often made more interesting by adding various different elements (like a swiveling top, or a swarm of rats that will appear when the trap is sprung, or something nasty at the bottom) and are also some of the most basic traps imaginable.

Basically, I'm not railing at traps in general, I'm railing at poison needle traps in particular.

 

[ffilz]

Basically, I'm not railing at traps in general, I'm railing at poison needle traps in particular.

Sure, then there's no reason to debate where they are seen more... :-) They are kind of obnoxious and probably do get overused, and yea, overuse outside a fun house style dungeon is more of a problem. Chalk part of it up to trying to make that treasure in the town harder for PCs to acquire...

 

[T. Foster]

The idea of going down into a dark labyrinth looking for treasure - and having to avoid or defeat tricks, traps, and monsters (via cleverness, luck, and daring) to get it - is compelling, and very simple to understand. It doesn't exactly reproduce any particular movie or book, but it echoes some of the most exciting parts of many different movies and books - when they're in dark tunnels and they don't know what's around the next bend but they know it's dangerous and sooner or later they're going to encounter something horrible and the tension keeps ratcheting further and further up. A game that allows you to experience that same sort of thrill and tension is fun!

[EDIT: In the books and movies that characters are always in those tunnels for some other reason - usually trying to get from point A to point B or to find specific objective C - so it's a brief scene that passes quickly, but they stick out in the readers'/viewers' memory. The game-structure of D&D focusing in on that aspect and giving the players an open-ended reason to keep coming back (to look for more and bigger treasure) is clever to the point of genius. That's not enough of a dramatic hook to work in regular fiction (Leiber's "Two Sought Adventure" being an exception - but even that's just a single short story) but the demands of a game are different from fiction (something that should be obvious but has gotten weirdly blurred over the decades) - plot and characterization matter less; tangible in-the-moment action matters more. We're sitting around a table reliving the thrilling, expectant feeling of the fellowship in Moria, John Carter groping through black pits, Conan under the Scarlet Citadel, the final sequence in It (presumably without the weird teenage orgy...), Katniss in the sewers under the Capitol, the last couple chapters of the first Harry Potter book, the original myth of Theseus that pretty much all of those are calling back to, and dozens of other similar scenes - and we get to do it every week for a couple hours. And yeah, after a few months of that when it starts to feel stale and we're no longer getting the same dopamine hit from it we move on to other stuff - what's going on outdoors, and in town - but the lure of the dark labyrinth is what drew us in and got us hooked in the first place.]

 

[raniE]

Yeah, lots of the great foundational works of fantasy has parts that are set in underground labyrinths. Conan has one where he's running around inside an underground burial place in pseudo-Egypt and meets a female vampire who has nothing to do with the rest of the plot, then finds and interrupts a dark ritual (might be from The Holur of the Dragon too, I think it came from the novel length story) plus probably others (The tower of the elephant is a tower crawl, but those happen too). The Hobbit has both the goblins under the Misty Mountains and Smaug's lair while Lord of the Rings has Moria. There's a labyrinth of tunnels Taran and Eilonwy use to escape in The Book of Three. Probably more to, these are just off the top of my head.

There's also a bunch of stuff set above ground. But then there was in D&D too. There were always wilderness rules, and B/X had that interesting idea of introducing underground adventures first, then graduating to wilderness adventures (and then you'd combine the two in whatever ratio you like).