Dimension 20 Raises A Banner For D&D At Madison Square Garden

New York City is a place full of unique sights, sounds and experiences. This gives residents a reputation of having seen it all and rarely being surprised or taken off guard. That wasn’t the case for the New Yorkers who asked the people gathered in line outside Madison Square Garden last Saturday about what they were waiting to see.

It was not a concert nor a sporting event, though it was maybe a little bit of both. It was a live experience featuring one of the Dropout network’s most popular shows. 20,000 people gathered to watch the cast of Dimension 20 play a game of Dungeons & Dragons in the same venue that’s hosted championship games, Wrestlemanias and legendary rock bands.

For those readers who have been trapped under a rock (or potenially inside a gelatinous cube) for the past ten years, Dungeons & Dragons is the most popular it has ever been. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is the rise of actual play shows that demystify the game as a social activity. A game once threatened to be doomed by the Satanic Panic is now played by talented performers and embraced by celebrities.

Dimension 20: Gauntlet At The Garden was the biggest indication yet of how far Dungeons & Dragons has come in popularity and accessibility. Dungeon Master Brennan Lee Mulligan led players Emily Axford, Ally Beardsley, Brian Murphy, Zac Oyama, Lou Wilson and Siobhan Thompson through a session connected to The Unsleeping City season in front of a raucous crowd. The roar of the crowd for a natural 20 (the best roll you can have on a twenty sided die central to play in D&D) was just as loud and intense as a last second buzzer beater by the Knicks or the Rangers.

(Light spoilers for Gauntlet At The Garden follow. Dropout has said they will air the event at a date in the future for fans who were unable to attend the show.)

The Unsleeping City is a setting of modern urban fantasy. The players live in New York City and are connected to a mystical sixth borough that has all the monsters and magic one might expect in a game of D&D. This was a great fit for the NYC crowd who ate up all the local references with gusto.

The story added in a slight element from Dimension 20’s Time Quangle shows. The crew had to deal with some multiversal threats appearing from other Dimension 20 series. They had help from some well known characters from each of those storylines who were randomly determined by a website the audience could use to roll dice.

Mixing and matching characters let the performers make callbacks and bring back beloved and despised personalities from across the show’s history. The character introductions caused to crowd to pop in a manner similar to when a band plays the first few bars of one of their most well known hits.

Being on a big stage also allowed the show to make its dramatic moments that much larger. The Box of Doom brings players out of their chairs to make an important roll in a lavish dice tower. This aspect of play was enhanced with a dramtic florish of light and sound plus a larger version where the players rolled a d20 the size of a beach ball.

The cast did a wonderful job hitting dramatic moments as well as firing off jokes that are the hallmark of the show’s style. Shows like this offer a unique challenge where they need to honor the storylines for long time fans while still being accessible for folks that have never seen the show. Fans who get all the jokes and references are the target but the crew did a great job being absolutely entertaining.

Even in the middle of all the firepots, sound cues and animated character intros, the players still had time for an impromptu WWE wrestling match to pass the time while the producers readjusted the lighting for the second half of the show. That’s one of the things that makes Dimension 20 such a hit. Mulligan takes his characters and his storylines seriously but he leaves plenty of room for playfulness and isn’t afraid to riff with his players if they bring a more engaging idea to the table.

Dimension 20 has announced three additional live shows this year in Los Angeles, Seattle and Las Vegas. Dimension 20: Gauntlet At The Garden feels like the beginning of a new era. If D&D nerds can sell out the Garden, then anything seems possible.