It looks natural enough...

Honestly, my favorite dungeon type is any, but caverns have a certain element of fun I enjoy as a DM.

For mid to higher level dungeons, I would have a xorn or xarn as a wandering monster. Since the caverns aren't stone walls, these two creatures could pass through the walls like air. It is like fighting a ghost.

It demanded our magical weapons and then just started walking straight at us. After hurling arrows and magic, it still just slowly walked straight at us. We retreated down the corridor taking various twists and turns in an attempt to hide from it. But it just walked straight toward us, even passing through corridor walls to do so.

For some of the same reasons, but also to provide a rival for the party, I wasn't afraid to place a dao in the local vicinity. Since the party and the dao were both after gems, it kept everyone, including me, in check. Once, they even teamed up to deal with a common threat. If I ever put a dao in a cavern again, I'll be certain to also include an older dragon as well. I say that because it will be an option for a teamup to split the mother lode of gems or a fight on two fronts.

Sure I could do this in a typical stone walled dungeon, but it just doesn't feel right to me.

The source of this comes from my inability for many years to figure out how or why a metric ton of 13th century underground labyrinths were constructed. It didn't make sense to me, so I put everything in a cave. Caves are formed by nature, so I could imagine them everywhere. In fact, for a recent dungeon I created, I had an alchemist with a lab in a cave complex that already existed in the side of a steep cliff face. I couldn't see him generating a dungeon, somehow, to house his experiments. I also couldn't see local officials allowing him to keep a lab (and various creatures) inside the city walls.

Now, thanks in large part to ACKS, there is a good reason for traditional dungeons to exist. It's something a mage can make to house his or her experiments, easily. There seems to be a magnet for wandering monsters to seek out such places to live.

Seems legit.

Still, I like the texture of a cave and its natural beauty. It doesn't neatly fit squares on graph paper, if you know what I mean.

Still feeling sick, so that's it for tonight. I may give favorite trap/puzzle a pass as I stink at designing them. I mean, if it comes down to it, levitate the target 200 feet into the air and have the spell stop. The target plunges to their death.