It’s been a momentous month for the big name actual plays. Critical Role just ended its third Dungeons and Dragons campaign with a massive eight hour finale. Dimension 20 is coming off a sold out live show in Madison Square Garden.
Both shows are also taking their stories on the road this year. Critical Role has stops planned in Chicago, Sydney, Melbourne, Indianapolis and New York City to celebrate their 10th anniversary. Dimension 20 is bringing their best characters to Hollywood, Seattle and Las Vegas after conquering New York city last month.
I was at Gauntlet In The Garden and was able to interview some of the members of the cast before the show. I spoke with Brennan Lee Mulligan, Ally Beardsley, Zac Oyama and Lou Wilson about their beginnings in playing Dungeons and Dragons and how New York City is a perfect fantasy role playing game setting.
Mulligan chose The Unsleeping City as the storyline to use in the show. This blended the high fantasy of D&D with the real life history and locations of New York. Worlds like this can be more fun to explore but they can be difficult to balance real world experience with fantasy adventure.
“The germ of the idea,” said Mulligan, “of blending fantasy and reality together, was the love I have for New York borders on reverance of the magical to begin with. Describing that literally is the best way to decribe the depth of the feelings I have.”
Mulligan is a central figure in bringing D&D into the lives of his fellow cast members. His theatrical Dungeon Master style has grown Dimension 20 into one of Dropout’s most successful shows. But it’s also show him to be willing to run with wild ideas while also nurturing players that have never rolled a 20 sided dice in their lives before.
“My D&D story starts with improv like everyone on this team,” said Beardsley. “I’m working my first LA comedy job. My co-worker was like ‘I want to make a D&D show, will you be in it?’ I’ve never played before and Brennan said ‘It will be fine. You’ll be truly great.’ So my first ever game of D&D is recorded and that’s the first episode of Dimension 20.”
“I wanted to play D&D my whole life,” said Wilson. “I used to go to Barnes & Noble and look at the Monster Manual. I had no ideal what was going on but I loved the pictures. When I moved to LA after college I got serious about it. I found one DM, we got together and played. Pretty quickly, I was having philosophical conversations about slavery, because it existed in the world, with a buch of white guys at the table and that was not it. I walked away from D&D for a bit. Then I asked a girl out on a date. She said no but asked to join her improv team. I met Brennan Lee Mulligan on that team. I told him about my dream to play. He said he would love to run it for me and all I had to do was bring snacks.”
“I was at a birthday pary, Siobhan [Thompson’s] birthday party,” said Oyama. “Me and Siobhan had been working at College Humor for a bit. She knew other people from New York comedy scene that were at this birthday party. I turned around into a conversation with Brennan, Siobhan, Emily [Axford] and Murph [Brian Murphy] talking about playing D&D. It seemed intriguing. We started a home game with that crew. I was shocked that I had never played before. I liked fantasy stuff and grew up playing RPGs like Final Fantasy VII. I probably played the first half of Final Fantasy VII like 30 times. When we started playing this home game it was just hitting all my interests. I couldn’t have a better first DM than Brennan.”
