Few megadungeons are quite the smack in the face as Jason Sholtis’ Completely Unfathomable (2022). It actually collects two previous publications, Operation Unfathomable (the underground) and Odious Uplands (a wilderness), and translates them to the DCC system. Everything about this is bold and clear — the writing, the design, the art (by Sholtis himself, as well as Christ Brandt, John Larrey, Stefan Poag and Skullfungus). The art in particular does a lot of work here — strong line work keeps things comic bookish and cartoony, which is a nice contrast to how unrelentingly deadly the book is.

I’m not even sure the cave complex here counts as megadungeon. The maps seem rather reasonably sized, and a lot of the material is dedicated to bespoke encounters rather than detailed room descriptions (it feels more like a collection of hex descriptions, actually). It is an unrelentingly strange place (so are the Uplands, honestly), but I hesitate to call it gonzo, a term that for me evokes the flailing and shouting of Kermit the Frog — gonzo games are just explosions of chaos, one right after another. This is a deeper sort of weird, with odd characters wandering on and off screen in a way that implies a larger sort of ecosystem, but one that remains inscrutable to me. Similar to the way aliens in many ‘60s science fiction novels are just bizarre, and even when you get them explained, they never entirely make sense. Or, like Voyage to Arcturus, where humans grow new organs upon arrival and no one freaks out about it. That’s the vibe here (I mean, the name of the book IS Completely Unfathomable). There’s a strong sense of near-psychedelic wonder as well; granted, the party is probably too busy dying repeatedly to truly appreciate those wonders, but still.

The bestiary is A+ and worth the price of the book alone. So many odd creatures. I particularly like the decapitants (humanoids with aerials and satellite dishes instead of head) and blind antler men (fungus-headed people), but honestly every monster in the book brings something new to the game.