For years after it was invented in the 1970s, Dungeons & Dragons remained a niche game that people – stereotypically, nerdy boys – played at home with their friends.
But in the past decade or so, D&D has emerged as a popular form of spectator entertainment, with comedians, actors, and podcasters playing the game for other people to watch. "Actual play," as it's known, has attracted millions of viewers online, and has even spilled out into the real world, with D&D shows playing in movie theaters, touring globally and selling out stadiums.
One of the most iconic examples of this phenomenon came earlier this year when the show Dimension 20 sold out Madison Square Garden in New York. Roughly 20,000 fans showed up to watch seven comedians perform D&D, with a few rock show flourishes – like gouts of butane fire around the stage to simulate the wrath of the dragon Kalvaxis, the big villain of the night.
"Kalvaxis breathes in," actor and comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan narrated: "'Trifle with me at your own peril. BWAAAAAH!'"
But the performers are still just playing an analog tabletop game: rolling dice, checking rulebooks, and using their imaginations. And the makers of D&D themselves say that actual play and its diverse audiences are helping to fuel a broader golden age of D&D right now – including the kind played by friends at home.
What is D&D?
Brennan Lee Mulligan, who was introduced to Dungeons & Dragons in 1998, owes his exposure to his mom. Many parents were wary of D&D after it was swept up in the "Satanic Panic" of the '80s and '90s, when anti-occult campaigns like "Bothered About Dungeons & Dragons" alleged it drew kids to devil worship and suicide.
But Mulligan's mom Elaine Lee, a comic book writer, playwright and actress, was familiar with D&D from her creative circles. She hadn't played it herself, but she saw that her 10-year-old son Mulligan "was a nerdy, nerdy kid" and thought he'd like it.
Lee had taken Mulligan out of school in upstate New York and decided to homeschool him.
"I was getting very badly bullied," Mulligan said. "I was hiding under picnic tables at recess reading animal fact cards."
Lee enrolled Mulligan in karate and found a group of college kids who agreed to teach him D&D.
Here are the basics of the game: You and the other players are on a quest. One person narrates the story, and each player improvises their part. Chance often decides how things unfold. When you climb a wall or swing a sword at a goblin, you roll a 20-sided die.
The higher you roll, the better you do. On a 20, you strike a killing blow or bound over the wall. Roll a one, and you trip or mess up so badly your character gets injured. The dice control whether you live or die: In his first two D&D sessions, Mulligan got stepped on by a giant and turned to stone by a Gorgon.
But he was hooked. He recruited his friends, played through college and into the beginning of his career as a comedian. Mulligan had a special knack for being the "game master" – the narrator and referee, who leads the players through the world, calls for dice rolls, and plays the villains or side characters.
In 2018, Mulligan and six other comedians launched Dimension 20 on the streaming platform Dropout. The stories they tell are mashups: Game of Thrones meets Candyland, Lord of the Rings meets The Breakfast Club, Jane Austen meets A Court of Thorns and Roses.
"As the clouds part, a flock of gulls flies over the Marigold River, heading down to an area of wealth and expansive taste. It's Downtown Elmville," Mulligan begins in the show's first season, "Fantasy High," before asking the other players to introduce themselves.
That first episode, which is nearly two hours long, has 7.7 million views on YouTube. A representative for Dropout says its subscribers number "in the mid-6 figures," and that Dimension 20 is one of its most watched shows.
But while it's one of the more popular actual play shows, Dimension 20 is far from the first or only.
The rise of actual play
Fans of D&D started recording their games in the early 2000s, but actual play didn't pick up as a genre until around a decade later.
The Adventure Zone, which launched in 2014, featured the hosts of the popular advice podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me playing with their dad. In 2015, a group of voice actors started posting their home D&D games online as the show Critical Role. The first episode of Critical Role on YouTube has nearly 25 million views today.
As of 2021, there were hundreds of actual play podcasts and web shows like these, Stephanie Hedge at University of Illinois Springfield wrote in Roleplaying Games in the Digital Age.
And they're far from niche. They've spawned bestselling graphic novels, and launched as an Amazon Prime animated show.
They're also touring globally – Critical Role has performances scheduled at London's The O2 and Edinburgh Castle in Scotland next year. Fans who can't make it can watch the live games in around 800 movie theaters in North America. After Madison Square Garden, Dimension 20's tour continued on to Los Angeles and Seattle. A show is planned for Las Vegas later this year.
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Why has watching and listening to D&D become so popular?
When Lou Wilson, one of the stars of Dimension 20, was first approached about joining the cast, he had no idea why anyone would watch it. He'd become friends with Mulligan through the improv comedy scene, and played D&D with him for fun, but couldn't imagine its potential as entertainment for others.
"That sounds fun for me," Wilson remembers thinking, but "I don't know who [else] that will be fun for."
Once the cast of Dimension 20 started actually making the first season, though, that changed: "Watching how brilliant as writers and actors the other people at the table were," Wilson said, "that's when it finally hit me… Oh, this is something that people would like to watch."
The people who make actual play shows – and those who watch or listen to them – have different answers to explain why the performances are so popular.
At a recent Dimension 20 live show at Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena – seating capacity 18,000 – Emily Lopez came dressed as Wilson's character Fabian Seacaster, complete with an eyepatch, scar, and a crab-festooned crown.
"Honestly, I really like the diversity of Dimension 20, and other D&D shows," Lopez said. "Nerd culture in general, it's just kind of hard to find diversity like that. And I'm like, 'Oh my gosh, there's a nonbinary person in this group. Oh my gosh, there's several people of color, and there's women in this group, and also, they're all hilarious.'"
This reflects a broader trend in D&D – for the first time in D&D's long history, as many women play as men, according to D&D executive producer Greg Bilsland.
Aabria Iyengar, a frequent guest and game master on Dimension 20 and Critical Role, thinks the diverse tables on some actual play shows are pulling in new audiences. She was introduced to D&D about a decade ago by her husband's friends.
As a member of the improv comedy scene, she soon started performing games on a smaller online roleplaying game network. Iyengar still remembers the first time she received a letter from a viewer.
"There was another Black person that reached out and was like, 'I don't see people like us out here,'" Iyengar said. "'You just make me feel like I always belonged here.' I still have the note…It makes me cry probably once a month. And I think that was the point where I realized actual play could do more than just sort of be niche entertainment."
Suz Portillo, another attendee at the Seattle show, said what drew her to watching actual play is the same thing that drew her to play D&D: it lets her return to her childhood, playing pretend with her friends.
"D&D gives people a platform to do that again as adults in a way that it's like, 'Oh, it's okay to be silly and have fun and continue to story-tell and fantasize and dream and create.'"
Brennan Lee Mulligan also thinks the popularity has to do with the hanging-out-with-friends feel of these shows. The people he plays with on Dimension 20 are his good friends in real life – Lou Wilson officiated his wedding. Their relationships and personalities come through on-screen. And he thinks it's telling that Dimension 20's popularity exploded during the pandemic, when people were isolated and craving human connection.
"You are watching a reality show while you are watching an epic sci-fi fantasy saga," Mulligan said. "And it has all the best parts of both, because while you are getting engrossed in the fate of the galaxy, while you are shocked and devastated at the sudden betrayal of the Archduke of some faraway fantasy land, you are also here with your friends, and it's their relationships and their patterns that you know and love, just like with everyone's favorite podcasts and their favorite streams."
"This is the age of Dungeons & Dragons"
As more people watch D&D for entertainment, more people seem to be playing it too.
Though an exact number of players is hard to track, Bilsland said something like 85 million people have engaged with the game, associated video games, and the movie Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves over the past few years.
The biggest drivers, Bilsland said, are shows like Critical Role, Dimension 20, and others.
"It's widely agreed that [the most recent edition] is the most successful edition of D&D ever, and that is largely accounted for from the success of streaming and live play," Bilsland said.
That newest edition of the game emphasizes fun over following the rules to a T, and actual play is a great demonstration of how that looks at a game night, said Justice Arman, managing game designer of Dungeons & Dragons.
"The actual play players are very comfortable," Arman said. "They often need the rules less, because they have that chemistry and are very funny and good actors."
And Mulligan says that the number one question Dimension 20 gets from fans isn't about their show – it's "How do I start a D&D group?"
"I don't think Renaissance is an appropriate word anymore, because we're not even, like harkening back [to a Golden Age]. It's bigger than it's ever been," Mulligan said. "This is the age of Dungeons & Dragons."
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