Latest news with #Dimension20
Forbes
05-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Cloudward Ho! Takes The New Dimension 20 Season On A 'Damn Adventure'
Spoiler warning: the following article contains light spoilers for the first episode of Cloudward Ho! The new season of Dimension 20 takes to the skies this week. Cloudward Ho! leans into a steampunk vibe full of steam powered gadgets, airships and tomb raiding. The opening scene shows a cast prepping for a great adventure in a newsreel style segment that introduces the characters. Then everything changes when the story jumps forward and we find that many of those bright and shining faces are now weathered by time and failure. Will the old heroes heed the call to adventure and bring the new generation of heroes with them? We spoke with Brennan Lee Mulligan, Ally Beardsley and Siobhan Thompson about their latest actual play series. The first episode sets up a search for a lost continent as well as a chance to see adventurers who are not all at the start of their adventuring career. It offers a chance to look at the bright side and the darker elements of the steampunk genre. The cast was excited to try something new. 'I always approach the cast,' said Mulligan, 'usually with seven to ten ideas that I'm excited about, or genres that we haven't explored, or things that are interesting to me. Of that list of seven to ten a couple will hang around and morph for the next time we're planning a season. Some of them will become Side Quests or other projects. The wonderful part of our core seasons is that it's so clear what the mission brief is. What are my players psyched to do? We've just come off of Junior Year and Neverafter. We just did a sequel season. Let's do something brand new. The last thing we did was horror, darker themed. Let's do capital-A Adventure. Something pulpy and brightly saturated. We want new locations, thrills and battles. Let's go on a damn adventure.' 'Brennan sent us a huge lore document that was just about the world,' said Thompson. 'It was about the vibes of the different continents, islands, towns and cities. Everyone is going to be connected to the professor. We all came in with a few different ideas. We all sat in Brennan's office and discussed what the best build of the party is. And then almost all of us went away and came back with 'actually, I don't want to do that, I want to do something else.'' 'I like that this felt kind of blank slate,' said Beardsley. 'We're doing steampunk, which is hilarious and there are a million ways we could go. It could be Indiana Jones, it could be Miyazaki. One of my favorite things about this specific group of seven people is where everyone's brains go. Sure, we're doing old wooden ships and air travel but then we get Brennan's brain with different countries that he's created with their warped corruption that happens at a government level. Everyone's telling extremely sophisticated stories. I cannot wait to see jadedness come up against up-and-coming adventure hungry people. My character had read all of their books and was ready to meet her heroes. Should you meet your heroes?' While the adventure is grand, the drama is personal. Some of the characters are disillusioned with the choices they've made in previous expeditions. Others have been raised on the legends spread by everything from their own legacies to the trashy pulp novels that stretched the truth of their experiences. 'It was a conscious choice to be related [to] the next generation,' said Beardsly. 'With the way the first episode tees everything up to the rug pull moment where we are young adventurers and are going to meet our heroes. When we do they are all washed up, they are completely disillusioned with adventuring and they don't like what they do. That was a very fun misdirect that we wanted to set up with these two factions where they meet in the middle with a love of adventure.' 'In the world building,' said Mulligan, 'we found this natural shape where the lore touched character creation and people's character ideas. Our aeronaunts are eccentrics and criminals. The advent of aviation in this world was something for crackpots and dreamers at the edge of society to do. But, we watch as it changes and moves from pure science and experiment to being sucked up by the wheels of industry. That occurs over a period of time that creates this interesting generational gap. Who was doing this when it was an expressive, cutting edge creative science thing? Who's doing it now? The PCs needed to straddle a divide. The people who began this are now older. Who are the PCs that are one the younger side of that divide?' 'First and foremost,' said Thompson, 'it's just so much fun to go on a rollicking adventure. That is what this season is. Wish fulfillment makes it sound trite but it's so delightful. Everything that Brennan and the art department has come up with. It has the vibe of Voyage of the Dawn Treader, which is my favorite Narnia book or The Odyssey. You're finding a whole new world, a whole new civilization, a whole new way of thinking and feeling things that opens your eyes and opens your heart. That felt delightful, like something we haven't really done.' Cloudward Ho! begin on June 4th, 2025 streaming exclusively on Dropout. New Dimension 20 episodes debut every Wednesday throughout the summer.
Forbes
03-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
Dimension 20 Brings WWE Superstars Out Of The Ring And To A D&D Table
Professional wrestling and new media often find themselves united on the same frontiers. Pro wrestling programming helped sustain cable television for many years. The Rock'n'Roll Wrestling blitz of the early 80's made WWE Superstars like Hulk Hogan and 'Rowdy' Roddy Piper into MTV personalities with artists like Cyndi Lauper. This pioneering tag team reforms with Titan Takedown, the latest Side Quest from Dimension 20. This miniseries brings four WWE Superstars into the D&D world: Xavier Woods (aka Austin Creed), Kofi Kingston, Bayley and Chelsea Green. Creed, creator of the popular UpUpDownDown gaming content channel, was the key to getting this crew together. 'The process started in a way a lot of our Side Quests have,' said Brennan Lee Mulligan, Dungeon Master for Titan Takedown. 'Conversations just started bubbling up amongst the cast and crew of the show. These four wrestlers have so many fans among Dropout staff and Dimension 20 crew. Talking about the mini seasons we have to do for the year. Austin [Creed] The plotline of mashes up mythological figures with Wrestlemania flair. The heroes have come to ancient Athens to battle in a fighting tournament to entertain the Gods of Olympus. It soon becomes evident that each player character has their own agenda for joining the tournament, be it sibling rivalry, atonement or vengeance. One of Mulligan's great strengths as a performer is his ability to effortlessly shift from drama to comedy and back again. The first episode is full of dramatic backstories but also plenty of off the cuff moments thrown back at him by the players. Both sides of the screen are talented in the art of improvisation which was a key selling point in deciding who would star in this series. 'Reaching out to people in the Dimension 20 orbit we started asking around,' said Mulligan. 'There are a lot of people who might be interested in potentially working with us. Here are some names we've gotten. Are there people here that we should focus on? We don't want to invite everybody and say no to a bunch of people. We want to be thoughtful about who we invite. It came back to Bayley and Chelsea. They've got the chops, they're incredible performers, comedically they are right in the pocket where you want them to be. From there it was delightful. Absolutely delightful.' As actual plays grow larger, the shows and their fans are often accused of not playing 'real D&D.' They often attract the same critics on-line who love to try and deflate wrestling fans by talking about the pre-scripted nature of the event. While it may be a different experience than playing the game with friends at a dining room table, the passion for the game remains an important element. 'The amount of work,' said Mulligan, 'it would take to fake this is so outlandish. It's like the people who say they faked the moon landing and they describe a series of [events] of what would have had to happen. Then you say ' that's way harder than going to the moon, man' The idea that we would write scripts for these two and a half hour shows, memorize them and then perform them…why would we leave so many pauses? The proof is in the pudding. You are either entertained by what is happening or you are not.' While fans of Dimension 20 were excited by the initial trailer, many of them wondered wher Brian 'Murphy' Murphy, an avowed wrestling fan and cast member, was during these proceedings. As a slight spoiler, he does make his mark on the show in an after credits segment. Mulligan took the opportunity to show his love for Murph in the most wrestling way possble: by cutting a promo on him. 'The idea that I'm Heismanning Murph away is so insulting,' said Mulligan. 'I live in a tent outside of Murph's house. Every morning I wake up and I bang on the door. 'Please, Murph, please! Won't you come do something with me?' Murph, in a cloud of darkness, feverishly working on NADDpod, working so hard to make more content for you. He hears the door slam and he just says 'Leave me. Leave me to my dark work.' That happens every day. This idea that I'm not blowing up Murph's phone all day every day is outrageous. I've had it!'' Titan Takeover begins on April 2nd, 2025 on Dropout and airs every Wednesday thereafter. The WWE Superstars head into Wrestlemania season this month.
