Dungeons and Dragons, and tabletop roleplaying gaming in general, have been around for a long time. That said, the last decade has seen the improvisational pastime drastically increase in popularity, in no small part due to the rise of the actual play, the name given to live or recorded TTRPG performances.Critical Role– one of the most influential actual plays – makes its mark by featuring prolific voice actors and long, epic campaigns. But for Dropout’sDimension 20, comedy is the name of the game, with most of its cast hailing from the improv scene and the days of CollegeHumor sketches. And at the heart of thisDungeons and Dragonsactual play stands Brennan Lee Mulligan, comedian and dungeon master extraordinaire.
Game Rant spoke with Mulligan ahead of theBattle at the Bowl– its second arena live show in 2025, taking place at the acclaimed Hollywood Bowl. The comedian shared his experience of being at theground level ofDimension 20’s soaring popularity, and what it feels like selling out shows at iconic venues like Madison Square Garden earlier this year. He also offered insights into what family means to him, both with regard to his personal life with his wife and fellow Dropout comedian Izzy Roland, and the greater actual play TTRPG community as a whole.This interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
The Rise of Dimension 20 and the Actual Play
Q: What is it like seeing Dimension 20 grow from a small project with you and your friends playing Dungeons and Dragons in the dome at a warehouse at 2 AM to a massive show selling out some of the biggest venues in the US?
A:Oh, it’s absurd. It’s a gift. It’s a miracle. I’m staggered and bewildered at the sequence of events that led us here. And like you’re saying, it’s not only the trajectory of working on the show and the show’s popularity and being able to arrive on these stages. It’s also a hobby. I still haven’t gotten over the fact that you may just do this for a living, period!
I remember being 10 years old and playing this game, and being like, “This is a weird, oral culture of sourdough starter GMs moving from group to group and teaching the game.” Now it’s this thing where you can ship a TTRPG publishing company andartisan dice makers. You can do crowdfunding that makes six or seven figures in revenue! The number of fans of this artwork that want to support independent artists, be they designers, dice makers, cosplayers, or whatever. The thriving ecosystem around these games has been staggering to watch unfold, and to be a small part of that is the honor of a lifetime. It’s crazy.
Q: Many media spheres view other shows or games as rivals to compete with, but the TTRPG scene acts more like a family, as one can see by you appearing on Critical Role, and Matt Mercer on Dimension 20. What has it been like being on the ground floor for the formation of those close ties?
A:It’s been unbelievable. I think it’s very funny too. On one hand, the reason we collaborate, and the reason these different organizations lend so much aid and support to each other, at the end of the day, it is actually friendship. We know and care about the people on the other sides of these companies, and we want them to do well. That’s true forCritical Roleand Dropout, andDimension 20, but it’s also true for other comedy things. Sam shouted out and had Zach Kornfeld fromThe Try Guyson, and we have a bunch of Smosh people come on our channel. We do not see ourselves as being in competition with these other people who are engaged in similar content, and even if we were, our friendship outweighs any sense of competition. I think the values we have over at Dropout – you know, we do profit sharing with all of our cast and crew, and we do not see ourselves as being in competition with these other people.
Frankly, even if you were just going to put on your shrewd businessperson hat? My brother said a really funny thing about this that I always come back to. He was like, “Soyou’re doing thisCritical Roleshow, and the guy who does that is going to come do your show, and you guys aren’t competitors?” I was explaining that A, we don’t think about it that way, and B, even if we did, there’s so much audience out in the world that doesn’t even know what actual play is yet. My brother put it this way, and said, “Oh yeah, you guys aren’t really competing with each other, you’re both on the same team competing against people going for a walk.” I went, “That’s kinda bleak! People should go for walks! But, the principle of the thing you’re saying, I do believe in, which is that all of these successes help the larger world of actual play and grow the audience across actual play,” which is how we see it.
Q: That is a wonderful kernel of wisdom.
A:Yeah. Competing against people going for a walk. Please go for walks! There’s nothing wrong with going for walks!
How Starting a Family Shaped Brennan Lee Mulligan
Q: You recently became a father – big congratulations, by the way! How has that major life change affected your schedule, the way you DM, and everything else in your professional career?
A:Well, I’m a thousand times more tired, and a million times happier. And honestly, it’s very helpful. There are certain things you will have to adjust for when you have a rapid expansion of responsibilities in the personal sphere of your life. There are obligations I owe that are greater than any professional obligation I owe. But that’s also something that is very centering on a creative level and on a professional level.
For as much as it’s like, “Oof, I’m coming into this production meeting tired today,” there’s also a great hormonal thing that happens when you become a father. Which is interesting; obviously, my wife has gone through a tremendous number of changes. She will have our child’s DNA floating through her bloodstream for the rest of her life, which is wild! I love those biological wonders of having a child. For people like me, who are the non-birthing partner, there’s a lifetime reduction in their base cortisol level that happens when you have a child. Which is funny, because there’s a thing like, “Why can’t dads get more worried?” Like the culture of the dad being “It’s fine,” which is a positive thing for being less stressed and calmer, which is a good thing for dads to be.
But there’s a reality that I bring to professional endeavors now, which is more quickly triaging the severity of problems. Prior to having a family of my own, everything could come in at an anxiety level of 10, which doesn’t always serve the creative project you’re doing. It might not serve the performance you’re giving at a certain moment, it might not serve the creative endeavor that you’re writing, it might not serve the logistical or administrative task that you’re doing.
In a funny way, we joke about the exhaustion of being the parent of a young child, but having a setting where someone comes in, and they’re like, “There is a five-alarm emergency!” And it hits you, and there’s some kind of shield of the reorienting of your priorities where you hold a coworker or a colleague and say, “Hey. That thing? Is not a real problem.” It’s a little bit exhaustion, but also a little bit of perspective, and a little bit of, “I solve problems more quickly and efficiently, because I’m able to more correctly sort them in terms of their severity as they arise.” I think that’s a positive thing that I’m able to bring in terms of leadership and creative direction to the projects I’m involved in post-becoming a dad.
Q: How long until your child starts playing D&D?
A:Hey, you know what? I’ll give a real answer here. My job is to be a resource for whatever our kid and any future kids are interested in. If they happen toarrive at an interest inD&D, baby, they hit the jackpot. They have no idea. But the enthusiasm and love I have for whatever my child’s interests end up being are limitless. I will just have more in the way of immediate on-hand stuff to offer them if they end up being interested inD&D. But you will not catch any pressure from me to adopt my interests.
Although, I do look forward to the thing that my dad did with me growing up, which was putting together the sampler platter. Here’s the things that I think are cool, here’s music, here’s movies, here’s this stuff. But, it will very much be a sampler platter. If any of this resonates with some inner chime in your soul, then great, we will give you that.
Q: And it turns out, they’ll have hundreds of hours of their dad being a goofball, so there is plenty of stuff for them to watch.
A:I can’t imagine how not into it my children will end up being! They’ll be like, “Oh, great!” If you’re some other content creator’s child? Like, if you’re Martin Scorsese’s daughter – who does TikToks with him – you canwatch every Scorsese movie in a week. You know what I’m saying? Let me be clear: you cannot watch all of my content in a week!
Q: You and your wife, Izzy Roland, get to perform together for improv, Dimension 20, and other Dropout shows. What are some of the challenges and highlights of your incredibly unique partnership for both your personal and professional lives?
A:The only challenge is getting the babysitter. When you’re both on stage, it means one of you is not home. And the rewards, the things that are exciting about it, are limitless. Look, dollar for dollar, pound for pound, Izzy Roland is the funniest person on the planet Earth. There is no one sharper or faster, or weirder, who makes more exciting choices. She endlessly makes choices I never could have predicted or anticipated, and yet, they all feel creatively inevitable because you’re like, “Yes, that’s the perfect creative choice for that moment.” Performing with her is a dream.
And, it’s not lost on me in terms of what it means to be able to engage in a project with your partner. So much of what makes us work as partners, we have the same dynamics that I think every successful marriage has in terms of, like, we’re good teammates. We work well doing the business of life. The nitty-gritty, logistical business of life. If you find someone you like hanging out with, who you are in love with, and who you do life well with, you have to marry that person! That’s crazy; it’s a triple threat. It’s unbelievable.
Dimension 20’s 2025 Live Show Tour
Q: Can you tell us a little bit about what you have planned for the Rumble in the Chungle during the Battle of the Bowl live show? How many members of the Bad Kids do you think Chungledown Bim will drop before the end of it? Will he have a final form like Safer Sephiroth in Final Fantasy 7?
A:I will say, ol’ Bimothy has some tricks up his sleeves that we have not yet seen inDimension 20,any of theFantasy Highseasons, nor have we seen some of these tricks even if you watched the oldDimension 20 Foundrywith me and Lou statting out Chungledown Bim. It’s been some years in canon, so he may have some tricks up his sleeve that you may not have even seen inDimension 20 Foundry. Bimothy, you know, he’s been waiting for this moment a long time, and it’s time that we finally resolve this.
I would go so far as to say that the Chungledown Bim/Fabian Seacaster nemesis relationship… Is it the central hero-villain relationship ofFantasy High? Is Chungle Down, in some ways, thematically, the most appropriate arch-villain for the series thus far? I leave that to fans to decide. All I know is that I definitely planned on this gnome with a beard and mustache and pockets full of spaghetti being this important when I made him up. And that, you can believe, okay?
Q: Do you have any idea when Battle at the Bowl might arrive on Dropout?
A:It’ll probably be a little while for sure. For anyone who needs to know right away what the fate of this showdown is going to be, I would recommend getting to the Bowl if you can, and if not, go to your social media sites and muteBattle at the Bowl, because I don’t want anyone to share spoilers, but baby, it’s the internet. It’s rough out there.
Q: It has to be truly absurd to plaster Chungledown Bim and other Dimension 20 stuff on places like the Hollywood Bowl and Madison Square Garden. How do the staff react to seeing this sort of event at these venues for “normal people?”
A:That is such a great question, and it is one no one has asked me yet. It was so wild to doGauntlet at the Garden! This is where the Knicks play! You know what I mean? This is where Jalen Godd*** Brunson plays basketball! All the staff are presumably looking at the calendar, looking at Billy Joel, the New York Knicks, huge superstars coming in, and they see thisDimension 20 Gauntlet at the Gardenone-off show on a Saturday in January. If you are the staff, you have to assume that this is going to be a quieter night, wouldn’t you? You’d have to go, “This has to be a quiet night. Okay, cool, a night with less insanity. Great.” The people running the merch stands were pulling staff from Dropout, being like, “Who are you? What is this?!” The merch cleared fast, so ravenously. And like, we didn’t know, we’d never done an arena show before! People were like, “What are you guys, is this normal?”
In a funny way, this is an artifact of the age of digital media in which fanbases can accumulate to preposterous numbers, siloed from prestige legacy media. My dad and I were in Central Park eating sandwiches, and we were taking our masks off to eat our sandwiches, and because of that, someone spotted me. It was the first time my dad had seen someone spot me. It freaked him out. He was like, “Oh s***, I knew the show was doing well, but like, are you famous?” I was like, “Any time you want to re-center yourself if we’re out and about, and I get spotted in public, what I do to ground myself, if a fan comes up and is very emotional or moved to have spotted me, I reground myself and re-find humility by noticing the 10 people around them that are super p***** off because they have no idea who the f*** I am.” That is an internet celebrity. Yes, you have built this big audience, but you’ve built it in the shadows. So people are looking at people recognizing you and being like, “I got no idea who the f*** you are!” and that is just really grounding.
That’s what happened at Madison Square Garden. We sold out the show in under an hour. The fans were wearing cosplay, they were excited, they were pumped. They are realizing how big the show has become because there is an entire stadium full of people who are going “Hoot! Growl! Hoot! Growl!” And here’s some 65-year-old teamster from Long Island being like, “What’s this about? Dungeons and what the f***?” And it’s really special to watch those worlds collide, because the internet has created a new ecosystem of information.
It used to be in the 20th century that people had to arrive at a lowest common denominator. There are only so many networks. We have to settle on some kind of thing that we’re all going to watch together. In the age of the internet, everybody gets to watch their favorite thing, and it can be as niche or narrow as you want, because there are unlimited channels. You can go watch what you want! So I think it’s been really funny to watch the staff react, going like “What the f*** is this?” It’s really special. I delight in it.
Q: It really is the Unsleeping City in real life.
A:Yes! Oh my god, what a great analogy! Absolutely! Swoosh, and suddenly you’re in the magic world.
Q: If you could give one piece of advice to Brennan Lee Mulligan right before he recorded the very first episode of Dimension 20, what would you tell him? And do you have any other final thoughts to share?
A:A piece of advice right before he recordedthe first episode ofDimension 20. What would I tell him? Oh my god…
From a place of deep and profound gratitude, I am so lucky to be able to do what I do for a living that I would just tell that person, “Hey man, try to get some sleep if you can.” The gift of being able to work with this cast and crew, what this show has become, the fact that I’m able to take care of my family doing it? I don’t want for anything more than what I already have. And so, I would not have any other advice to give him other than “Hey man, try to enjoy this, because it was very special, and it was not guaranteed to happen.” Just a pat on the back, and get some sleep would be what I’d say to that younger me.
[END]
