Brennan Lee Mulligan is the DM of Dimension 20, the Dungeons & Dragons video anthology series on CollegeHumor’s Dropout platform. We talk about games as a storytelling tool, the flexibility of D&D in any genre, and how he is so, so good at emotionally devastating his players.
The Punchbowl is our interview segment about playing D&D in 2020 and beyond. We talk to people who are pushing the game forward—creatively, communally, socially, just doing good work. Catch up on past interviews on our website!
Guest
- Brennan Lee Mulligan is @BrennanLM on Twitter.
- DIMENSION 20: A CROWN OF CANDY airs Wednesdays at 7pm ET. Watch it live on the College Humor YouTube channel or stream it on demand on DROPOUT.tv. If you want to catch up after it airs, go to DROPOUT.tv!
Find Us Online
- website: jointhepartypod.com
- patreon: patreon.com/jointhepartypod
- twitter: twitter.com/jointhepartypod
- facebook: facebook.com/jointhepartypod
- instagram: instagram.com/jointhepartypod
- tumblr: jointhepartypod.tumblr.com
- merch & music: jointhepartypod.com/merch
Cast & Crew
- Host: Eric Silver
- Editor: Julia Schifini
- Mixing and Additional Editing: Brandon Grugle
- Producer: Amanda McLoughlin
- Multitude: multitude.productions
About Us
Join the Party is a collaborative storytelling and roleplaying podcast, powered by the rules of Dungeons and Dragons. That means a group of friends create a story together, chapter by chapter, that takes us beyond the tabletop to parts unknown. In the first campaign, we explored fantasy adventure, intrigue, magic, and drama. In the newest story, we tackle science, superpowers, a better future, and the responsibility to help others.
Every month, we sit down for the Afterparty, where we break down our game and answer your questions about how to play D&D and other roleplaying games at home. We also have segments at the beginning of each campaign to teach people how to play the game themselves. It’s a party, and you’re invited! Find out more at jointhepartypod.com.
Transcript
Eric: Hello. This is Eric, your DM, and welcome to the Punchbowl, our interview segment, on Join the Party, which is back, back, back, back again, again, again. Even on our off weeks, I'm thinking about D&D. Like, if I could run an episode of Yu-Gi-Oh with D&D mechanics, how would that work? Is everyone a druid? I'm not – I don't know. But I'm also thinking about what it's like to be a player in 2020 and beyond. So, I figured I'd put that to good use and talk to those who are pushing the game forward.
When we started Join the Party, it was May 2017. That feels like an eternity ago. And, in terms of D&D media, it kind of was. Our lodestone was the adventure zone. Then rocking and rolling through the balance campaign. And we emulated the goofs and the story arcs because that's what we trusted and that's pretty much all of that was there. Now, D&D media has exploded. And leading the charge is Dimension 20, the D&D video series on College Humor’s Dropout platform. It is truly one of my favorite pieces of media right now, gaming or otherwise. It's funny and emotional. It has some of the highest quality Dungeons and Dragons playing I've ever seen in my entire life. And it is anchored by the dungeon master, a man of a million fantasy accents, Brennan Lee Mulligan. With Dimension 20 dropping their fifth campaign, A Crown of Candy, think Game of Thrones but everyone and everything is food, I needed to talk to Brandon about how he was pulling all this together.
So, I got on the internet to ask him about games as a storytelling tool, the flexibility of Dungeons and Dragons in any genre, and how he’s so, so good at emotionally devastating his players. We spend the beginning of the conversation talking about 3.5, an older D&D system. Don't worry. We remember we're doing an interview after a few minutes. And we stopped nerding out. Also, I think I'm an artificer DM because I take different game systems and craft them onto D&D. And I love homebrewing my own monsters. While I think Brennan is a ranger DM, who's attuned to the paths of the gaming environment and ready to zero in on your weak points. You'll get this when you get to the end of the interview.
Theme Music
Eric: Brennan, hello.
Brennan: Hello. Oh, my gosh. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Eric, it's great to hang out. This punch is delicious. Mmm. Tasty punch.
Eric: I made it myself. I put in some powder and then I switched it around.
Brennan: My compliments to the chef.
Eric: Oh, thank you.
Brennan: Wonderful.
Eric: I, I have to say, you just even being happy to be here, I'm already just like, “Oh, yeah. Fuck yeah, dude. Let's fucking kill some goblins. Like, yeah, dude. I'm ready.”
Brennan: That's always the under – I feel like the underlying thing with anytime you – you have, like, an advice D&D podcast or, like, a world-building D&D podcast, or, like, a honest, like, journalism reporting about the game and about players in the game podcast. Like, there's always an underlying thing of like, “You know, we could just put all this to the side and play some D&D right now. It --
Eric: I feel like restrained a little bit, because this is like our interview that we do within our real-play podcast.
Brennan: Yes.
Eric: So, it's like, “Oh, good, I don't have to plan anything,” because I'm always the DM. I'm just gonna ask somebody else and I'm gonna be like, “Oh, nice. I'm gonna write that down. I’m gonna remember that for later.” But, now, I'm just like, “Yeah. Fuck yeah, dude. I roll to engage with the head – the head goblin. Like, let's make some fucking diplomacy. Like, fuck yeah, dude.”
Brennan: Oh, I love that. Also, I would say two things. Number one, heart to heart from one form of DM to another, you're doing the Lord's work. I feel your pain. It is a – it is a – what a task, my brother. And, second, I will also say I heard you say diplomacy check, which is a sweet call back to 3.5 which I miss all the time. God, there are parts of that edition that I really, really miss. I think 5E is incredible, but you said diplomacy. And I was like, “Oh, I remember diplomacy checks. Damn.” My – Conor Gillespie, one of my players in my, like, long-running home game, they're all, like, 18th level now. And I think he's got, like, a plus 40 to diplomacy or some – some crazy number like that. Bounded accuracy, there's something to be said for it. But, still, what a lovely number to add to a – to a dice roll.
Eric: Amazing. It's like, “Yeah, I'm just gonna – I'm sorry. I have to go find some other ways for me to add shit. Can you – I got to get my Abacus from my other games set.
Brennan: Well, that's the thing we talked about. We – our 3.5 campaign, one of our terms – and I don't know – this is one of those things where it's like, “Did we coin this? Or has this been a well-documented phrase since forever?” It's always risky to assume you coined something, but we haven't – the term we use all the time, which is PC creep, which is that thing in, in a very intense combat or role skill check. And this happened all the time in 3.5 when you would be like, “Okay. The DC is 25. What did you get?” And they’re like, “I only got a 19.” And then you're like, “Okay. Well, you” – your hand slips and they go, “Wait. Actually – but I forgot in my regional homeland that's plus two.” And then you’re like, “Okay. That's still a 21. You still fail.” And they’re like, “Oh, actually, you know, I forgot. I had a plus one who's” – and you just watch as you slowly, after the fact, lose the outcome of the roll, because your PC has just add all these conditional bonuses. So, you know, there's a common thing in my long-running home game of looking around and being like, “Okay. It seems you have failed. Is anyone gonna throw some last-minute shit my way?” I’ll keep – can I curse on the podcast? Is there – is there --
Eric: Oh, for sure. Please.
Brennan: Oh, fuck, yes.
Eric: I get – I know it looks like you're just filtering it. It’s like, “Fuck yeah, dude.” I'm like, “Oh, that's a regular thing people say.” But, yes, you can curse.
Brennan: Fantastic. Yeah. So, fucking PC creep, bane of my life, but a wonderful phrase or concept I feel like of a thing that happens all the time.
Eric: Yeah, but then your PCs look at their notes. And you're like, “Oh, thank you for remembering this thing that I pulled out of my brain for you.”
Brennan: That is true. Actually, yeah, it's always better to have PCs pull some shenanigans and slowly whittle away at your lead than it is to have the opposite, where, if there are certain things where you're like, “Okay. I'm gonna throw this impossible curveball or challenge at them,” but they have this magic item that can totally get around that. And then you watch this. You're like, “Oh, my god, they don't remember they have that magic item. This – we're headed straight for a TPK. Oh, god.”
Eric: That's beautiful. Well, I feel very in – I'm, I’m ready just to fucking rip it up. I was gonna have an introductory question. But, now, I'm just like, “Oh, yeah, I'm – yeah, we got – we got all that stuff together.” I think an important kicking off point for what I've seen you conduct on Dimension 20 and also what you've done in other interviews is using Dungeons and Dragons as a storytelling tool. So, I think the first questions I need to ask – to hear from you is why is Dungeons and Dragons so good for storytelling.
Brennan: Wow, that's a great question. So, Dungeons and Dragons is this, like, wonderful, magical, like, incredible structure that exists as a couple of things at the same time, right? Because there's this old – like, I think it's like a Sufi Islamic fable. Have you ever – it's like – it's called – it's about – the story is called The 10 Blind Scholars and the Elephant. And it's about these 10 scholars in the Golden City of Baghdad, who are all blind scholars and an elephant is brought to them. And they do this thing where, you know, they're each touching the elephant. One touching the elephant's tusk and says, “My brothers, an elephant is like a sphere.” Someone's touching the elephant's leg and says, “No, my brothers, the elephant is like a – is like a tree trunk.” And it's this fable that's all about like, you know, the power of perspective of, like, we can all be describing the same thing but be describing only the portion that we understand, right? And there's this incredible part of that to D&D as well where depending on the attitude you come into the game with, D&D is either basically a strategy board game, right, which is how some people play it. To other people, it is basically a big collaborative writing experience, right? And, to other people, it is Bit City. It's just – this is what we do Thursday nights. We get snacks. We goof around. You know, like --
Eric: That’s the name of my Herald team by the way.
Brennan: Bit City. Oh, I love it. I got to come see you guys. But there is this fascinating – this fascinating thing where it really is kind of all of them. And I think the reason, in terms of your question, which is like, “Why does D&D make such a good storytelling exercise?” I think I would argue that D&D, at its best, is all three of those things. But, at the top of the – of the triangle, there is, like, equal angles on all sides. But the top of the triangle is the storytelling component, right? The, the game portion of D&D is something that I think is sewed into the structure of a group story. And the reason I feel that way is the degree of, like, antagonism between DMs and PCs is always moderated by rules of honor, respect, and playfulness, which are really more about collaboration and storytelling. Like, if the DM wants to, they can drop 100 adult red dragons on a PC and say, “You walked into Dragonville. That's on you. And you're all dead,” right? But what, what keeps a dungeon master from being that cruel? Well, a respect and love for their players and a desire to tell a cool story. So, I think that there's – there's – at least, it's obvious to me that the dominating force of the three parts of D&D is the desire to tell a cool story. And I think the reason that D&D is so good at that is it allows for this seamless movement between those three points that you can have moments of levity and comedy, where you're just sharing good time with your friends. You move back into real strategy thinking stakes, the battle, the combat, and then you move back into storytelling and saying yes to people and affirming their understanding of the world, their understanding of their own characters. The biggest point of why D&D works as a storytelling game is I think that it's the – it's a collaboration – we don't talk about it a lot – which is you got six-player characters in a table, you got a dungeon master. There's an eighth collaborator, which are the dice. And a healthy relationship between a dungeon master and their dice and the dice with the players as well is a classic good cop/bad cop relationship, right? D&D’s strength of storytelling is understanding, as a dungeon master, when to bring the dice in as the bad cop in that moment, when to go, “You, PCs, understand that I am your dear friend. This I love you guys. And I want you to have a fun story.” So, for real fear to matter, for real stakes to come in, we need these little plastic polyhedrons that you know don't care about your feelings and don't care about your love for your character. That's, I think, the strength. It’s its storytelling, where 80 percent of it is managed by storytellers that like each other and the other 20% is managed by a true arbiter of fate. That means that, even as we're trying to tell the best story possible, there are moments where we all sit on the edge of our seats and bite our fingernails and go, “We truly don't know what's gonna happen.”
Eric: Hmmm. I really like that, the comparison between the DM and the dice as the good cop and bad cop, because you can make friends with the good cop, but the bad cop is like, “No, I'm gonna throw the book at you. You're going to jail.” And, like --
Brennan: Correct.
Eric: -- a two or a 19. Not even a one and a 20, but, like, a three and a 16 plus seven. Like, you can't do anything about that.
Brennan: What I try to do, as a dungeon master, is, when we get into those combat encounters, it's almost a change in tone, where you are looking at your players and being like, “Hey, you know, kid, I like you, but, my partner, he's crazy.” You know, like, it’s that element of allowing your player characters to understand that, at a certain point, it is out of my hands, right? The thing that really breaks a table, in my opinion, is when the PCs sense ulterior motive or a thumb on the scale from the DM, either to their benefit or to their disadvantage, right? If they sense that a DM is, like, punishing a choice that they just aesthetically don't like or if they're protecting the PCs from harm that they actually kind of have coming, that begins to break the trust at the table. So, I think that it's really that – that attitude, as the DM, where, when combat starts, a lot of the time, if I don't have reason not to – like, if it's a situation where a PC would immediately know success or failure, I often say the DC out loud.
Eric: Yes, I've noticed that you've done that in Dimension 20. And I find that really interesting, because it's, like, you're gonna do something really fucking hard. And I want you to know, if you don't do it, it's not because I don't like you. It's because this is really fucking hard.
Brennan: Yes, 100 percent. I think that, in a lot of roles, the right thing to do is say the DC out loud. The reason you wouldn't want to say to DC is if the challenge is harder or less hard than the PCs actually have the information for, but especially if a PC has committed to a course of action. If they're like, “I'm jumping. I'm going to try to jump the ledge and grab.” And I, as a DM, have communicated that that is a risky endeavor. Then, after they have locked in their final choice, I have no problem going, “You got to give me a DC 25 athletics,” because then it is a question of, like, they know – okay. I've got to roll an 18, because I only have a plus seven to this roll.” If that 17 comes up and I haven't said what the DC – like, 17 that's pretty high. And I go, “No, you don't make it.” And they go, “Well, Brennan just has it out for me.” It's like, “No, I'm telling you to DC ahead of time.” And especially in a role like that, where the PC would know immediately in the world of the game, whether the role had resolved or not. So, they understand success or failure. It's, like, it's something – like, in an opposed insight deception, you would never say what the other person rolled, because you should walk away being unsure. There's nothing unsure about jumping onto the ledge of a cliff, right? So, that's why I will often announce DCs. It’s for that exact good cop/bad cop relationship we're talking about.
Eric: Right. Well, this – you answered both sides of the question that I asked, which is why is Dungeons and Dragons good within the realm of storytelling and why is Dungeons and Dragons good within the realm of tabletop RPGs.
Brennan: 100 percent.
Eric: And it's – I appreciate that you've done that, because, on Join the Part, we stick with Dungeons and Dragons. We just had like a fantasy style campaign. And, now, we're doing a modern superhero-esque sort of campaign. It set in like a – like a near-future sort of world. And people have powers, which is how they use their classes.
Brennan: Hell yeah.
Eric: Listen, I'll send you the map that we just put. We used A Quiet Year to put the map together. We're starting Episode 1 very shortly. I'm pretty stoked about it.
Brennan: I love free skinning D&D. We did a campaign for Dimension 20 called The Unsleeping City, which is a very similar superhero vibe. Not, not classic cape and mask superhero, but very much like an alternate – alternative; like a Hellboy, that vibe of, like, modern-day powers. And I think D&D works incredibly for that. But I think that the reason D&D works so well as a game is a good DM should know what the rules actually mean. It would be crazy to say that the mechanics of a game have zero impact on the storytelling. That's just not true. I think it's really hard to tell a Call of Cthulhu style story using D&D as the base mechanic, because, if you've got a character that has 100 hit points and divine smite and spells, they're just never gonna feel that scared.
Eric: Yeah. And there's a reason why D&D is not good at madness because it's not necessarily the thing we're doing here.
Brennan: Not the sort of thing we're doing here. That being said, I think that there are people that go too far on the other side and say, like, D&D can only tell high fantasy. And the issue with that is I think the mechanics of D&D limit Dungeons and Dragons as a mechanical rule set to heroic storytelling. That doesn't mean capes and castles. It just means that D&D characters, on the whole, are going to feel, passed first or second level, very powerful and competent, and that's okay. You can put them in Modern Day New York. And they're just going to feel kind of superheroic, right? The flavor of D&D doesn't soak as deeply into the rules as people imagine that it does. When people talk about like sneak attack as a mechanic, what is sneak attack really? It's not that sneaky. You get it if there's someone else within five feet of you. A rogue is not necessarily a sneaky character. It's a character with low hit points, who excels when they're fighting alongside an ally. Like, when does the flavor actually extend into the rules versus when is it just something written into the script of the character sheet that doesn't actually exist in the mechanics? So, that's how I feel about that element of it. And then I think the reason that D&D works as a game as well is that games thrive on stakes. The reason that poker is fun is that you've got your real money on the table. And what Dungeons and Dragons understands is people love fictional characters. People love and get attached to stories really profoundly on a deep emotional level. And you are gambling with the life or death and then, even beyond that, with the success or failure of a hero's journey of a group of characters that you know and come to love. And those stakes are profoundly real, which makes the gambling element of D&D so gripping. That's why it's a good game. It's filled with stakes to me.
Eric: Yeah, that's true. Also, I'm a co-signatory on all of my players’ rental agreements. So, if they fuck up, I'm just like, “Umm. I'm gonna take your security deposit. That's the real – that’s the real gamble.”
Brennan: God, it’s got to matter. The choices have to matter.
Eric: Exactly. Well, again, you've anticipated my question. I was gonna say that Dimension 20 is a Dungeons and Dragons based anthology series, but y'all have been all over the place in terms of genre. The first one, Fantasy High, uses – and I think that this is an interesting way to think about Dungeons and Dragons. You know, what they're presenting you? You have the classes and the races on one hand, which are the, like, fantasy flick but really just, like, your character menu on one – on one hand.
Brennan: Mhmm.
Eric: And then you have the genre of fantasy that they are introducing and continuing from the tradition of Tolkien blah, blah, blah. So, when you are encountering Dimension 20 – and I'm going to do – hopefully, I'll entertain you by explaining the genres of your games back to you. But I – in fantasy high, the classes and the races are the same. You have goblins. You have tieflings. You have half-orcs. And you have barbarians, and, and wizards, and bards. But the genre is like John Hughes 1980s. You have the blood keep sessions, which was like Lord of the Rings. Just like an evil campaign. Something a little more traditional – “traditional” for D&D. Unsleeping City, as we talked about, it really is like an urban fantasy novel. It's like there still are like fairies, and trolls, and goblins, and rat-men, but like the classes themselves are not like – I mean, like, Sophia is not a monk until she literally becomes a monk. But, like, she's been a monk this whole time.
Brennan: Yes.
Eric: And then, of course, Tiny Heist is just, like, all over the place. They're literally tiny creatures that may or may not or something else. And then we're finally getting the Crown of Candy, where you’re doing the opposite of Fantasy High, which is – it is a sword and sorcery genre. It might as well be Game of Thrones. And I kept – I was – literally, at the beginning, I was like, “Oh, man, the King’s gonna die because it's Lord of the Rings. Like, god. Fuck. Damn it.” And I was like, “Lou is gonna have to play somebody else. Like, Jesus Christ.” But, but the – it's – it's food. Everyone has food. So, what my question is how do you decide which you're going to stick towards expectation, the thing that people traditionally think of is Dungeons and Dragons? And when do you decide to go buck wild with – to totally remix with – to subvert expectations, “Oh, I didn't know I could do that in Dungeons and Dragons? When you're put – when you're putting a game together, like, when you approach it, which are you going to be like, “This is going to be safe. And this is going to be like my, my try.”
Brennan: That's a great question. Damn. I think that looking at D&D, I love the analogy of a character menu, right? I would say that, in the character menu of D&D, the entree is your class, right? Because your – your species, in D&D doesn't level up. You're not actually a 20th level half-orc. You're a 20th level fighter. And you happen to also be a half-orc. As the game progresses, those abilities based on species, whether you're an elf, or a dwarf, or an orc, or whatever, begin to quickly – they matter the most at lower levels when your abilities are kind of, you know, limited. And then very quickly – you know, like a high-level wizard has more in common with another high-level wizard regardless of their species or their background than they do with, you know, someone of a similar species or background, whatever. So, I think that the thing we've messed with the least, even though we've jumped around a lot, is the class and level structure. That is really integral. People talk about species all the time in D&D. And I always end up going – in terms of like reskinning that, it's always a thing, to me, where it's like, “Hey, this kind of really doesn't matter. The, the racial abilities in D&D are always very pared down. They're not as powerful as the class features. You can just reskin them. For example, in A crown of Candy, every one of the characters is a variant human, but not really, right? They're – they’re candy people. They’re candy people. But, for us, it's like, “Do we want to come up with new powers for candy people?” Not really. Your powers will come from your class. That's the defining thing, which also kind of – between you and I on, like, a human level, I like what that says about the world anyway of like, you know --
Eric: Oh, 100 percent.
Brennan: You know, like, “Oh, your powers come from what you have chosen. You're – who you are is what you do. Like, I'm a fighter. I'm a wizard. I'm a rogue. That's sort of what I prefer anyway.” I think there's a more humanist message in that, which I really like. But, yeah, they're all variant humans. So, it's two bumps; a skill and a feat is what everybody starts out with in A Crown of Candy. And I think the game really allows that to flourish, right? For Escape from the Bloodkeep, we had Erika Ishii’s character, Lilith, who was the Spider Queen. We just made her a drider. And the reason we did that is all the characters were 14th level. So, having this one character have a species that had, like, a higher speed and a spider climb ability, you go, like, at 14th level, having a species that has a couple more abilities than another one, really doesn't break the game. No one is gonna be like – like, you have, like, spider climb is a racial ability. And it's like, “Dawg, you can fly. You have like a – like, you have a spell that can do that.”
Eric: And this is the Dungeons and Dragons the DMS call, because it's like, “Oh, spider climb is a second level spell. Like, who gives a shit?”
Brennan: 100 percent. And I'm sure you've seen this as well of, like, people – a lot of people online are very quick to call things broken. “That's broken.” And I always want to go like, “You got to take it from the bird's eye view,” right? Like, if a barbarian’s rage class feature didn't exist in the core game or if the fireball spell didn't exist in the core game and someone Home Brewed it, there would be 20,000 comments under it calling it broken. “Half damage from bludgeoning, piercing and slashing. That's broken. It's gonna break the game.” And you're like, “Well, yeah, but the game is all about breaking the game.” It's a good ability. It's – it's the core ability of the class, you know. Or one of the most iconic spells of this spellcasting class. It's okay for some things to be really, really good.
Eric: Listen, I also want to admit to you that I do have roll 20 up. And I had to look up what level better climb was. So --
Brennan: They changed – I think, in 3.5, it was first. And then I think they made it second in 5E. I could be wrong about that.
Eric: No, no, I – they – probably. I was assuming – I assumed it was first level, but I'm like, “I'm not gonna get this wrong in front of Brennan. I'm not gonna do that.”
Brennan: No, you're – you're right on the money. Going back to talking about, like, how can you change the genre of the game a lot and maintain the core game, I think – and this is – this is very easy for me to say and harder to do. The longer you play this game – and I’m – listen, I've been playing since I was 10 years old. I am very wary of being, like, experienced trumps everything. I don't think that's true. I think you can play this game and put a couple sessions under your belt, and understand it intuitively, and rock it off, and then gets great. One of things that a lot of experience does is it has given me, like, a sense of what rules are significant and what rules are not. The home game I've been playing for the past, you know, almost 11 years now. We had a sorcerer that my friend Em plays. And they are playing this character who's a little luck child from this like flying city of like Renaissance kind of people. They totally structured their character around being a sorcerer based on luck and destiny magic, which means that all their spells for a long time barely – even though they were happening. So, Eppolito has protection from projectiles, right? But what that looks like, in our game, is stuff just doesn't hit them. They have grease as a spell, but that's not grease shooting. That is just an area of bad luck. And, as enemies pursue them, they just trip and fall on their ass, because of entropy. And it's really easy to take a set of abilities and go, “What's the mechanical effect on the game? What's our flavor explanation for it?” So, that's what has allowed Dimension 20 to have the genre flexibility that it does. It’s separating the noise from the signal. I’m sorry. That's – that's a very dismissive way of calling it. The wonderful flavor work that people put into the game is not noise. It is actually beautiful artistry, and it really helps people that are starting off with the game. But, if you are with a group of players and you feel like re-flavoring it, I think that you can see, here's what they're saying this is. And then, on a mechanical level, here's what this actually is.
Eric: That totally boils it all down and how you're able to do all of these things. Also, hey, everyone, just go sign up and watch Dimension 20. If anything that we've said is interesting, you should probably sign up and do that. Let's just – let's say that now.
Brennan: Thank you very much. Yeah. We’re over on dropout.tv. Go sign up for a free trial right now. Doing these past couple seasons, there have been such fun romps around these different worlds. And, again, for people listening, we have two seasons of our show Fantasy High, which was our first season of the show. Every other season that we've done is standalone, which means you can kind of just throw a dart at the board start with one of our seasons. And it'll be a brand new story. You know, our – the longest our seasons get is 17 episodes. So, they're like – I think we have done a lot of really fun storytelling that is very digestible, and accessible, and approachable, while still telling like a full campaign arc in a really satisfying way. So, that's my pitch for the show.
Eric: That's beautiful. I was gonna ask you for a plug later, but I'm just gonna replay that exact clip and be like, “Come in Brennan. Hey, Brennan, what's up?” And then I'm just gonna put that in again.
Brennan: Play that exact. Great. Perfect. Perfect. Yeah. Slide that to the end.
Eric: All right. So, I have a question that I've been wondering ever since I started watching Dimension 20 back in Fantasy High, but I think this happened in Unsleeping City. Hey, go listen to this. Go watch this. Unsleeping City is set in New York City. So, there are a lot of New York City rules. And there was this – the magic rule of, if you can make it here, you can make it anywhere. Just like blew my mind out of one side. And I was like – I was like, “He thought of that and wrote that down. And that's very interesting.” But I always wanted to know what did you prep before session one and then how much do you actually prep before subsequent sessions, because I always wanted to know if that was an extension of where characters went or you're like, “I have these things that I've written down. And I'm going to introduce them because it is a story. And they will progress through the story as such.”
Brennan: I prep a tremendous amount before the edited seasons. And a lot of that has to do with a tight shooting schedule because our cast are all awesome and busy and doing a lot of other projects other than just Dimension 20. You know, Siobhan Thompson is a writer for Rick and Morty. Emily and Murph do NADDPod. Lou’s in, like, a Judd Apatow movie this last year. Ally and Zac was doing a pilot. And Ally had just shot something in Atlanta. Like, you know, people are doing a lot of stuff. They're busy. So, we have a tight shooting schedule. We have Rick Perry, who is our production designer, our mini maker, and set maker, who is just a wizard living on the face of the Earth. He's a genius. And he has an entire team of geniuses, Sabrina, Maxie, Shane, Nate, a ton of people that are just really incredible. And Rick needs to start building our battle sets weeks and months ahead of when we actually start shooting. So, I need to have my, my worlds for Dimension 20 more developed than even my home game worlds when I was younger and, you know, running a ton of home games by leaps and bounds, because I have to tell them. It's not just like, “Oh, what are the – what, what are the names of the countries? What are the X or the Y?” It's, like, we need to know the specifics of this battle set that they're going to be at probably two months ahead of time. That means I need to know the major NPCs, the major plot points, the major yada, yada, yada. I try to keep all that stuff as volcanic as possible because I love when PCs contribute to the world-building of the world. So, it's a – it's a juggling act between having enough finished that we can produce the physical needs of the shoot while keeping things volcanic enough that PC contributions to world-building during gameplay will matter as well. For the New York one – and I won't lie. Like, we've produced six seasons of the show in a year and a half. So, my choices about worldbuilding kind of have to be strategic, because, you know what's 18 divided by six? I got like, on average, three months to prepare and execute these worlds. It hasn't worked out that way every single time. But, you know, it's like there's a lot going on. So, when I'm doing world design choices; like going to the Unsleeping City or like, “Cool. I'm from New York. I know a lot about New York history. If I use New York as a template, all I have to add in is the magic stuff. And then I have cut my world-building needs sort of in half, right?” So, it's, like, a lot of times in Dimension 20, because we're just producing it at this breakneck speed and because my favorite D&D streams Critical Role, NADDPod – you know, Matt Mercer has been in Exandria for years. Brian Murphy has been in Bahumia for years. I have to throw all my work away every three months. So, I've had to make a lot of strategic decisions about, like, how do I not lose my mind rebuilding a new world from scratch every three months and doing things like that – of, like, building from the ground up has been very helpful.
Eric: Another part where this blew up in my brain was, when, in A Crown of Candy in first episode, the king who Lou Wilson is playing, goes and talks to the queen and says that the problem that's happening with the Emperor. There was a moment where Caramelinda is just rattling off all of the different kings and queens who are on the different food thrones everywhere. And I'm like, “I don't even know these people's names. And he – and Brennan is just like fucking rattling these off.” Because I, I guess they might be at the tournament that everyone is going to, but also, like, they might not be. And it's just very important that people know what the ruling structure is in all these other places. Like, in Game of Thrones, you're gonna go in there and be like, “Hey, there's that terrible, small boy who doesn't have any nutrients. And he's on the throne. It's, like, you need to know these things in order to have an informed decision.” So, I think it's interesting. I guess, does that prep lend you the ability to have like fun exposition drops for your players?
Brennan: 1,000,000 percent. And, and it's just confidence. Like, going in with prep isn't about never improvising. It's about improvising with a full tool belt. Like, you want the toy chest to be full of toys, because then playtime can happen however it ends up happening. The prepared stuff and the improvised stuff are two hands working in unison. And especially, you know, like, with the A Crown of Candy preparing all those leaders, I remember we made a decision. One of the things I want to do at that season specifically is – and what I love about Game of Thrones is there's not too many big info dumps in Game of Thrones. They kind of just kick it off. I think audiences love and respect starting in the middle. There's a great old, like, acting exercise thing – and, especially about improv – about, like, where you start improv scenes, which is this – this old thought experiment of, if you were eavesdropping on a stranger's phone call and you could only listen to 30 seconds of a 10-minute conversation, would you put your 30 seconds at the very beginning, at the very end, or right in the middle for the best shot at understanding what their conversation was about? And I think most people would say put me in the middle there because that's where I'm going to be able to draw the context from the most smoothly. We're not starting at the beginning of the chit chat. We're not starting at the end with goodbyes. It's, like, put me in the middle and someone's like, “I didn't know it was the guy's dog.” And you're like, “Oh, I know there's no context to that.” But the human mind is great at starting with no context. We're all born into a world where all of history has already happened and have to start putting it together as we grow up. So, I think we're built to be able to do that. So, yeah, starting with all those place names, all those character names, and just dropping them as the characters would is I think the best way for people to feel like they're really in that world.
Eric: Hmm. I like how you – I like the way that you're comparing just the way that you need to figure things out as you are a child and as you learn things because I just like a baby just like getting born and be like, “Hey, roll your character sheet.” It's like, “Hey, baby, can you make a character right now, please?
Brennan: That's what we're all doing. I mean leveling up happens straight out of the womb, you know. So, you start earning XP that first day, man.
Eric: Listen, that's why I've been speedrunning. I just really want to –
Brennan: Yeah, I'm gonna – I'm gonna – one day, I'm gonna walk into my child's nursery. I'm gonna ask them, “Hey, what do you – what do you do with those blocks?” They're gonna look up and say, “Grinding XP.”
Eric: It's amazing. Something I wanted to ask you was that you have a really interesting way of introducing characters in all of your – in Dimension 20. That whole first session really gives each character, like, a scene to come in on. And I wanted to know about how do you hook players with these characters through the initial intro, because, honestly, like, meeting in a tavern is kind of played out at this point and no one really knows what to do. So, what is your ethos I guess on introducing players with their characters to the game?
Brennan: Damn, this is a great question. I saw someone tweet about this the other day. And I'm far from being the first DM to do – tons of people do this. But this is basically a more cinematic way to start your game. What you are fighting against in your first session as a dungeon master is your players not feeling in character yet. I've started plenty of campaigns in a tavern all together. I've done it plenty, plenty of times. And I've been the player in a tavern. And I think, if we're being honest with each other, we can admit that, when the DM looks at you and says, “Okay. You're all in the tavern together.” For me, as a player – not that I played – get to play ever. But, you know, on the odd occasion where it happens, you feel this thing of like, “Oh, god. Okay. I'm in a tavern. What is my character doing? How am I sitting?” It's – it's like that classic cliché of like being on camera and suddenly feeling not seen, but going like, “Huh. What do I do with my hands? Do I put them in my pocket? Do I” – as a DM, forget your story. Forget your plot. If you're running a module, put the goddamn book down. Your number one job in session one is to break your players into character and make them feel comfortable playing. You are sitting on your sofa with a bowl of Doritos asking people to play pretend that are adult people. That's a hard ask. Let's not, again, pretend that, like, playing these characters is something that comes easy to a lot of people. Even trained actors, even people that play pretend for a living still have a hard time just snapping into character especially when you're just, like, in a living room. You're not in a castle. You, like, have a – there’s, like, a TV and a – you know, a desk nearby. Be humble in the face of how challenging it can be for people to get into character. So, give them all the help you can. What gets people into character is rooting them in what their characters want and need. This is like screenwriting 101. This is like story by Robert McKee. This is like Save the Cat. The thing that makes a character livable in, the thing that will make a player character look at their character and go, “Oh, I'm in this person now. I feel that this person have emotion.” This person is provoking an in-character emotional response and taking them from being static to being in motion, right? And we all love the movie beginning. At first shot, you see the thief running across rooftops with the guards chasing after them, right? One of the best PC intros I ever did was my – again, my friend, Conor Gillespie. He had a character that was just like action hero; like, Indiana Jones thing. And we just started on the deck of a ship and a pitched battle in a storm. That was his character intro. And I just started throwing – I was like, “You see like Dr. Tuftings looks at you and says, “The medallion!” We have had no discussion about a medallion or who Dr. Tuftings was, but it allowed Conor to go, “You got it Doc.” And I dive over the side of the ship. And it's just that thing of like you – you start In Medias Res. And what it allows a character to do is start feeling feelings, start understanding what's important to them, and then moving forward. So, I think, you know, in every season of Dimension 20, to your question, we have – session one has six character vignettes.
Eric: I love it. It's so good.
Brennan: I appreciate it. And, and what those vignettes are designed to do is you guys can't be a party until you're all in character. And you can't be in character until your character has had an emotion provoked. So, you've had one in-character feeling that was strong and lets you lock-in. And that we see where your character is in space and time. Where are they? What are their wants? What are their needs? What's driving them? So, the character vignettes are less about like – it's not that I don't emphasize that D&D is a game based on a party. It’s I don't think you can have a party until everyone has settled into their own skin. So, I think what those vignettes are about is honoring the time and attention to detail and process of people getting into character.
Eric: Yes, I think that what's really interesting about this is that sometimes there are characters, NPCs, who show up, and then we never see them again. Or there are NPCs who are very important. I think a really interesting comparisons are Ally Beardsley’s two characters in Unsleeping City and in Crown of Candy. In this first one – first of all, shout out Greenpoint. We live in Greenpoint.
Brennan: Woohoo!
Eric: I was like, “Uh, uh, uh, that's where we live. That's where the weird mob doctor. Hell yeah.” When Pete, who is like – just in – a kind of an insane person who just runs around. They are at a doctor's office in Greenpoint, and there's this mob doctor working on them. And then we’re like, “We never see that guy ever again.” But he was wonderful for the – for what he was doing in the vignette.
Brennan: Yes, I loved Dr. Lugash.
Eric: I loved him.
Brennan: And, and I – here's the funny thing. It’s, you know, people think DMs have control or power I have no control or power. I have to follow the PCs wherever they go. And, if they don't want to hang out with someone ever again, they won't. Dr. Lugash should only interact with Pete. And I realized, after a certain point, that Pete was not going to reach out to Lugash again. And part of that's on me as well. I made a doctor character for Pete, but Kingston was already a nurse. So, kind of like why would you reach out to a kind of, like, Muggle – you know, for lack of a better word, doctor, And then you got a –
Eric: But even mob doctor. When Kingston is a magic nurse and there's like, “Oh, I need to do something to this large Russian man who's gonna need something from me.”
Brennan: Yes, 100 percent. Right. So, I would have loved Lugash to come back. But PCs are actually the ones that make that call. And I know you've experienced this as well. You have an NPC that you have, like, crafted lovingly. And then you have a backstory. PCs throw them right in the trash. You have some weird-ass gnome bartender that shows up in something. PCs are going to bring that character back over and over and over again. They're just gonna fall in love.
Eric: But I think that that's – to the point there, is that, like, Dr. Lugash was very necessary for what you needed in the vignette. And then, at least, like, the vignette is the intro, which is what I love.
Brennan: Yes.
Eric: And then, when Ally’s character, Liam, in A Crown of Candy, when the Squire fucking Limon falling all over himself. Like, he's gonna be someone who continues, because he becomes then, like, a pole for – it’s, like, “Well, Liam is not the saddest person in the kingdom. It’s actually this terrible squire.” So, I like that there are NPCs that are disposable or not disposable, because it's like, intro like in Skyrim, you meet that one – just like that one random guy who says, “You're awake,” and then we never see him again. But, in the same time, it's like Animal Crossing. Like, Isabella is around all the time because we fall in love with her. So, I – what I love about the vignette Is that the characters are important to the vignette. And they may or may not be important to the campaign.
Brennan: I really appreciate that. I think that – yeah. And that's a good way of putting it. Like, Lugash did serve the purpose that he needed to serve. And that's, that's the thing. It’s like characters have functions within the story. It just – this came to my mind because I think it's very similar like a vignette. Like, Hercules, in like Disney's Hercules, you have these two parents that raise Hercules. They're in the first act and then they're gone until the very, like, end of the movie, right? They don't have lines, again, I think throughout the entire movie. It doesn't mean that they're not out there existing in the world. It just means that, for the purpose of pushing our story forward, people come and go. And I think that's very true what you're saying. And it's interesting because I think even a good Dungeon Master can't always predict if their characters are going to serve a long term purpose or not. And that a lot of that has to do with unforeseen twists and turns in the narrative of the campaign.
Eric: Mhmm. Yes. So, I just think it's – it's such a smart and fun way to introduce the campaign, which is so different from the tavern. So, good job, Brennan.
Brennan: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Eric: I just have one more question. It seems to be coming in to me from chat. Hey, how dare you?
Brennan: I get how dare you so – I need to know – I get how dare you so much. It's very funny because I feel very fortunate. Like, I know a lot of other DMs that run actual plays. And people have different fan communities that rally around them. Thankfully, in the people that watch Dimension 20, I have had almost zero experience of people being nasty at me online or saying nasty stuff. And I think part of that is our show has been vaccinated by all the people who love our show, who constantly yell at me to eat my dice, and threatened to eat my ass, which is like threatening someone with a good time, right? There's a protective barrier of people who enjoy the show verbally harassing me to a degree, where, if the show had haters, I don't know how they would break through the wall of screams of people who are enjoying the show and just genuinely – every, every episode, I go online and see people being like, “Brennan turn on your location. I need to beat your ass.”
Eric: I – yeah. I think –
Brennan: And I – hey, you know, like, it's, it's working. I don't know what else to say.
Eric: No, absolutely. I think that there's something to say about, like, what a DM’s best skill is. And I think that this goes to you is that your best skill is devastating your characters in, like, a very emotional way. But I mean I truly think so. And I think that's like the – what – how dare you do this, but please give me more so I could write fanfic about it and explore all of these spots.
Brennan: Right, exactly. Well, no. And I do – I love how dare you. And I think that’s like, you know – to your point, my responsibility. If you want to write the cozy – the cozy log cabin fanfiction, where the bad kids hang out and have a fun weekend together, by all means, write that. My job is to put these characters through hell. And I can't do my job any other way than that. And, also, like, there's – there’s a big psychological study about what – in – when communities of strangers come together, what the most quickly endears someone to everyone else. And I think someone actually said that it was, like, failure. It's like failure, humiliation, torment. Our heart goes out to people suffering more than anyone else. And, if all I do is give you six PCs succeeding and never getting hurt, I challenge everybody that, even if it was the same character, the same personalities, if you saw them in a story where they never experienced hardship, I don't think you'd love them as much. And that is a challenge I put forward to everyone else. There's no way to prove that, but I'm pretty sure it's right
Eric: No. I think that that makes sense. And, from what you always say, watch the first two episodes of Fantasy High, and there you go.
Brennan: Yeah, if you – if you stick into the first two episodes, we feel confident that you will, at the very least, have your interest piqued. Let's put it that way.
Eric: For sure. Well, at the risk of me trying to do, like, assign classes to all of the DMs that I know based on the – like best thing that they're good at and how good they are at doing that, I'm going to – I’m gonna say thank you so much for your time. And it was so great to talk to you, Brennan, truly. I consume so many and recommend so few pieces of Dungeons and Dragons content and Dimension 20 has – with a bullet, is always – is always in my top three. So, it has been so amazing to talk to you,
Brennan: Eric, I am truly honored by that and by your praise. This has been the most – I cannot believe this hour flew by so fast. It is a joy, a pleasure, and honor to talk to you about this game, man. You absolutely rule. Thank you so much for having me on.
Eric: Please plug everything and tell everyone where they can find you and tell them about Dimension 20.
Brennan: Thank you so much for having me. The stuff you can find online, check out Dimension 20 show on Youtube, youtube.com/dimension20show. It has the entire first season of Fantasy High for free. By the time this airs, I believe all of Escape from the Bloodkeep will be up there for free, which is a side quest with guest players. Our main cast Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, Emily Axford, Brian Murphy. Escape from the Bloodkeeps, a bunch of guest players; Amy Vorpahl, Matt Mercer, Erika Ishii, Ify Nwadiwe, Mike Trapp, Rekha Shankar. If you're interested in signing up to support the show, you want to watch all our content. You got to go to dropout.tv. You get a free trial. Binge it all right away. I promise it'll be worth your while. Then you can check out my social stuff. I'm @BrennanLM on Twitter. I'm @BrennanLeeMulligan on Instagram, and follow – you can follow Dimension 20 Show on both of those social media platforms as well.
Eric: Awesome and, because I know our audience, Tiny Heist, which is on Dimension 20 has the McElroys on it. So, go fucking watch it.
Brennan: You got to go check out, you know, dropout.tv, sign up for your free trial, binge it. We played with Jess Ross, Lily Du and all four McElroys. And, baby, it was the hoot of a damn lifetime. Those boys are the sweetest gentlemen in the world. And it was so fun playing with them.
Eric: Yeah, it's the pinnacle of the having the McElroys there and just the wildest. Well, A Crown of Candy might surpass it, the wildest genre I've ever seen.
Brennan: Yeah, that one is Borrowers meets Ocean's 11. That's a pretty wild mashup, but you got to check it out.
Eric: For sure. Well, Brennan, thank you so much. And, you know, you can get away from the punchbowl now. You could go back to your – go get your coat.
Brennan: Thank you so much for having me. It's been an absolute pleasure. Thank you so much. Woohoo!
Theme Music
Transcriptionist: Rachelle Rose Bacharo
Editor: Krizia Casil