The Big Picture

Dimension 20 features a rotating circuit of players and game masters delivering wildly imaginative TTRPG stories. Aabria Iyengar, the game master for the 20th season, drew inspiration from classic literature like Watership Down and The Secret of NIMH for Burrow’s End. The story of Burrow’s End explores the theme of family and the dangers of a big scary world, adding complexity to traditional family dynamics.

Dropout’s wildly successful Dungeons and Dragons TTRPG series, Dimension 20 is heading into its 20th season on the streamer. Formerly College Humor, the company recently celebrated Dropout’s fifth anniversary, and with the occasion changed the entire brand to Dropout. A cornerstone of Dropout’s success has been the ever-evolving series of DND campaigns held in the dome, featuring a rotating circuit of players and game masters delivering wildly imaginative TTRPG stories. Returning to the table as the game master for the 20th season, titled Burrow’s End, is Aabria Iyengar, the mastermind behind previous campaigns A Court of Fey and Flowers and Misfits and Magic.

Ahead of the premiere of Burrow’s End, I sat down with Iyengar to discuss what goes into creating such a campaign and what fans can look forward to in the upcoming season. Iyengar also spoke about the classic literature she took inspiration from for this season including Watership Down and The Secret of NIMH, how they leveled up the graphics inside the dome for an extra layer of immersive storytelling, and how the whole adventuring party got in on cosplaying their characters for Burrow’s End. She also teased her favorite NPC from this season and spoke about participating in August’s DND Day in support of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. You can read our full one-on-one conversation below.

COLLIDER: Congratulations on the new season. What’s it like to be GMing for the 20th season of Dimension 20?

AABRIA IYENGAR: It’s such a crazy honor. I remember when I was told about it – didn’t know in any of the development, didn’t know ‘til the day we began, and we got into the Burrow’s [End]. I was just like, “Why am I doing it? Brennan [Lee Mulligan] was available. He’s here for this. What?” [Laughs] It was just such a nice moment to have this beautiful, like, “Oh, Dimension 20 is a lot of things, and it’s not that we don’t care it’s 20th season…” but it was just a tremendous show of faith and love and respect to be allowed to take part in that. It’s just very cool, and I’m still sort of stunned that I got to do it, and I just really hope people like it. It’s so neat! It’s so stinkin’ neat! That’s all.

I think you’re a great fit. You’re such a good storyteller.

IYENGAR: Oh, thank you.

Image via Dropout

What was your inspiration for this season? Am I correct in assuming there are big Watership Down vibes?

IYENGAR: 100%. I think the heart of this story will always be the family. The story serves the thing it does with the table and the characters that are there and their relationships, but the foundation of the story, the thing that I wrote and worked on before ever knowing who the cast would be, ever knowing what the characters would be, was really centered around– This is a season for the kids that absolutely flourished during silent reading in elementary school, Scholastic Book Fair stans, and any kid that when your teacher announced, “We’re gonna do a class-wide reading a challenge, and if we read enough books we get a pizza party,” that one kid that was like, “Let me solo her. Y’all can read one book, I will mop the rest.” Yeah, the early comps, very specifically, are Watership Down and The Secret of NIMH, a little of Redwall, and The Animals of Farthing Wood. But the genre, as it often does in Dimension 20 seasons, does curve over time, and it tells more of a story.

I really wanted to play with a sort of very specific time educationally that usually happens around middle school—voracious readers, I think, encounter a little earlier, people who didn’t get raised around just heaps and heaps of books might hit it a little later in schooling—but that transition time between the stories that you read for fun that even the school would assign, but that were entertainment. As that sort of gives way to the books that are important to read when you move from kid-lit fantasy and adventure books to To Kill a Mockingbird, 1984, and Lord of the Flies, books that have meaning to them, that have points to them, and sitting there as a kid going, “Well, are books and our stories for entertainment or are they supposed to be teaching me something?” Are they propaganda for adults because they’re secretly about all of these themes and treatises that my early literature I don’t remember having and holding as a North Star, but it seems like books for adults all seem to have that sort of propaganda of storytelling for adults? And then reaching that point where you’re like, “Maybe that was also a part of stories for children.” I wanted to sit in and around that and then all of that informed what we came in [with] and what the story of Burrow’s ended up becoming.

Going off of that, do you have a book that you remember being the one that inspired you to love reading?

IYENGAR: Oh snap, that’s a good question! I don’t know if there’s a specific book. I do remember being a fairly voracious reader as a child. My mom definitely was very into series of things because I would just chain through them. So if I have to land somewhere, I think it’s that early-to-mid-’90s where we had The Boxcar Children and Goosebumps and The Baby-Sitters Club and Sweet Valley High, those things that you were like, “I can consume 37,000 of these. You have to give me a library card because we simply haven’t the room in this house for us to own all of these,” because each one of them, when you get into the vibe of reading them, that’s two hours. “We don’t have space on the shelf,” like, “Here’s a library card.” It was just so funny because my dad’s the sports one and my mom’s the reading one, so my dad would be like, “Let’s go do sports in the park,” and then my favorite library was attached to my favorite park, so my dad would run me ragged, and then my mom would be like, “Great, now that you’ve run all your energy out, let’s go sit in the library for three hours. You’re gonna read 36 books and then come home with a bunch more.” I think it’s the ritual of that more than any specific book is the thing that made me love reading.

I love that! When creating a story that’s somewhat inspired by an existing IP that you’ve loved or IP that you kind of want to fix a little, what do you look for from those sources, and then how do you make sure that you make them completely your own?

IYENGAR: I think it’s looking at the things that you like and the ideas that you like, even if you’re like, “Oh, maybe that execution doesn’t land as much anymore,” because some books sort of fall out of favor just because of the time period that they’re from, that you’re like, “Okay, not all of those lessons, not all of those themes resonate anymore.” So sometimes it’s about being at the heart of something and updating it for modern sensibilities.

I know some people have clocked the moment in Worlds Beyond Number where Erika [Ishii] mentions cyberpunk Watership Down, but the ways in which we deviated from that as I was creating the story and the background and backbones of what Burrow’s would be was realizing that cyberpunk is a very specific thing from the ‘80s that addressed a bunch of fears at the time, and not all of those resonate anymore. So let’s talk about the fears of a time period and, “What do we do if we want to tell a story and Watership Down and The Secret of NIMH?” And then what the characters all built was so family-oriented about the dangers of a big scary world to a family that loves and cares about each other. Then that becomes the important pieces, and all of those comps and all of those things that you’re pulling from, you just start pulling to get to the heart of that. If we have family and a big cruel world, let’s talk about what it means to be family, let’s talk about the struggles inside of that. Lots of those stories treat the family as sacred and unimpeachable and the family unit is strong, but that’s not an accurate reflection of how families actually feel. A lot of us, especially as adults, start to struggle and bump up against the expectation of family and what they actually end up meaning, so let’s add some complexity there. When we talk about a “big scary world,” it’s not just, “You walk through the woods and a giant falcon swoops down for you.” The world is scary for a lot of different reasons, and some of them are the dangers of the state of nature and some of them are the dangers of society and culture.

So all of that serves to become the things that you pivot away from and start to tell something new, and then you start grabbing new comps. Once you run the Watership Down and NIMH and Redwall of it down, you start pulling new things. Without spoiling anything, you’ll see some very obvious grabs as the world gets bigger, and we start talking about new things, but they are still very landed in the sort of common canon of literature from that time period, like late middle school, early high school.

Image via Dropout

When you’re creating a new campaign, how do you choose what DND system you use, and what makes 5E a good fit for Burrow’s End?

IYENGAR: Once you start with, “What’s the story I want to tell?” then I think you start to treat the mechanics with, “How do the mechanics serve the story, how do the mechanics serve the theme, and how do the mechanics give agency to the players as they move through the world?” Because different stories do different things. Different levels and complexities of scaffolding do different things with how they suggest gameplay, how they suggest the ways in which you look at the world and look at the story. I do not presume to have a perfect view of all of the systems, but sitting down with the ones that I know and the ones that I’ve heard of but hadn’t engaged with yet, and doing my research at the end of the day, there was something so specific about pure DND.

I love a mashup. I will mash things into other things and do my best to create exactly the set of circumstances and abilities to give agency and allow for all the things that players do in shaking up the world to be as seamless within the story as possible. There’s a couple things inside of pure DND 5th Edition that deal with personal agency and how you can affect the world and the lens through which you look at the world when the environment is adversarial that felt very right. As we were getting into the combats in the game, it felt right to say, “Yes, this is your kit, and if you have a couple minutes to think about why your kit is this, what is the world telling you about how to view it via the systems and mechanics you have access to?” You always enter into a season or a story or a table, even at home with your friends, with some ideas and a bunch of ways that things can go. You want the world to feel full, you want themes to be across the board, and not everything gets picked up in the same way a table or a player will alight on some things more than others. But having a sense of, “The mechanics are actually intentional,” is important if you want to lean in. “There’s something to say here.” It’s the same thing as there’s something to say in the style of art that we use in postproduction. There’s something to say about the way everyone is sitting at the table and looking and all the dynamics. All of it is intentional. And I hope that people will see by the end why 5th Edition was the right call for this.

Speaking of the visuals that you created, we got sort of a taste of the upgraded dome with Mentopolis, but having watched the first episode of Burrow’s End, you really elevate that experience and make it really super immersive. Can you talk about creating those, and what went into that?

IYENGAR: My favorite thing in the preproduction for Dimension 20 is sort of sitting and looking at the last things that any other GMs, and specifically Brennan and the art team and Rick [Perry], have put forth in a season and going “Oh, that’s fun. Alright, how can I push that a little farther?” It’s the most delightful arms race of “Oh, you gave Brennan what? Interesting. Well, now…” and then coming in with a list of “What if we have full Disney animation everywhere?” They’re like, “Aabria, that’s not happening.” You’re like, “Okay, let’s talk about where we can split the difference.” There’s just always that sense of “I wonder what new things are possible given the previous asks.” It’s just so cool getting to work with the production crew and everyone being so game to be like, “I don’t know if this is anything but let’s see what we can figure out,” and just having that sense of play, and never being too worried. If all of a sudden everything in the dome broke and we were sitting with a bunch of flashlights being held by (2nd unit DP) Kevin Stiller on each one of us and we told a story on the iPhone 4s, it would still be an excellent story because everyone there, both in front of the camera and behind it, are the best storytellers in the game. So all of the new fun things become that joyful dazzle where you’re like, “I don’t need any of this. This story is great in its minimum viable product, but if we’ve got it, let’s see what we can do.”

I really was excited, especially once we knew we had the kids in the group, to treat this storytelling within the story as that opportunity to reach back towards some other fun aesthetics that we’ve seen in this genre of fiction, specifically the vibes and style of the Watership Down animation from the ‘70s and Don Bluth and his very dark tone stories for children that are always a little creepy but good, and puppetry and animation and where those things meet. All of that tells the story of how we tell stories, and it was very nice to be able to reach and grab that and throw it on the wall, and kind of give a little, “Your move now, Brennan,” [laughs] as he goes into the next system.

Image via Dropout

It comes off really cool, and I’m so excited for people to see it. Going off visuals again, you have such a cool makeup journey every season that you DM, and watching the first episode, it looks like everybody’s sort of in a little bit of character cosplay for Burrow’s End. Can you talk about that aspect of the game?

IYENGAR: That’s such a fun, nice thing to say. When we were looking at all the ways in which you tell a story in a season of Dimension 20, it is the story we tell at the table. It’s the maps and minis and the aesthetics of all of that that Rick and the art team put on; it’s what we do to the walls; it’s what we do to the lights; it’s what we do to the edit and the art, and even down to fonts. But there’s also what you look like as a player at the table, and especially, I think, for me as a GM. You have to look at my face a lot because I’m sort of the nexus from which the story spews forth until the players jump in, so it was like, “Well, if you have to look at me this much, let’s make it interesting.” Having such big things for ACOFAF [A Court of Fey & Flowers], and much chiller in Misfits and Magic, I wanted to tell the story of the progress of what the family was up against at the table.

So I think it is very funny, but in the trailer and in Episode 1, everything looks very chill, but if you look at the publicity stills and the group shots that were sort of released in the media, I do look very different. That is absolutely intentional in telling the story of the world and the world that they will eventually reach and find and build. So yeah, it was very fun. By the end, we were just in this full Bauhaus, anti-surveillance makeup beat, and it was just so cool and fun. I’m so happy that everyone really got in on the game, especially Rashawn [Nadine Scott] and Jasper [William Cartwright] who were leaning into the things of their character. Viola being– these are stoats that aren’t little Redwall animals that wear little outfits and little doublets, but knowing the things you learned about Viola when you realize, “Yeah, of course, she puts a little flower in her hair. Of course she understands, without knowing what clothes are, the concepts of ornamentation and what that means and what significance that has.” And the same with Jasper always reminding you about his scar, about his connection to lightning, and who he is, and again, what that kind of ornamentation and presentation means to himself and what it means to people around him is so cool and important. Then everyone getting in on it. By our finale, the kids had stuff tied around their foreheads and everyone was just very in and game and into it, and it was so stinking delightful.

That’s so fun because DND, RPG, and cosplay overlap so heavily, so it’s fun to see those elements come into the dome. With this campaign, you have such a cool mix of people who are very much D20 regulars and a couple of newcomers. What’s your favorite thing about GMing for people who you’ve both played with before and for people who, this is their first D20 season?

IYENGAR: There’s always a sense of “anyone can surprise you at any point.” Very good people, people that you know really well, pointing very specifically at, I’ve played a lot with Erika and Brennan, and just because I know them well doesn’t mean they lack the capacity to surprise me. So with that being said, having interesting mixtures of people that you are familiar with their play style and their choices and their priorities and the lens through which they view story and engage with it, and people that are like, “Oh, I don’t know you that well. I know you’re an excellent storyteller,” no one in the dome is anything but an absolute killer in that regard. Like, “You are good at story, but I’m curious to see what you’ll alight on.” And I think that was some of my favorite things about Rashawn and Siobhan [Thompson], who I’ve never played with, but know through the storytelling. I’ve seen Siobhan on D20 and some sketch things and improv things, and Rashawn through her wealth of sketch and all of her appearances on Dimension 20, and all of her improv stuff out in the world in LA. You know that these are people that all know story, but, “I don’t know what you’re going to alight on the quickest,” feels so cool and so good.

And then there’s people that I have played before, that I have seen play. Izzy [Roland] is just one of the funniest people that’s ever existed all of the time, which it truly staggers me. It’s just like, “Oh my gosh, you’re brilliant,” and it’s not like a, “I gotta spin up so I could do it on camera. When we’re hanging out and just watching TV, you’re also the funniest human being in the world. It’s crazy that you’re this all the time and an excellent storyteller and you understand beats and moments and how to tie things together often for humor, but can also put that to drama and can effortlessly drop yourself into so many things and have it be grounded and believable and reliable in such a beautiful way.” And Jasper is a TTRPG bet that you’re like, “Oh cool, I know you know the shape of this system and style of storytelling so well, and I’m so excited to introduce you to…” It’s nice to be like, “And I’m the one that introduced him to Dimensions 20!” He’s a big deal in his own regard already. He’s the dungeon master for Rotating Heroes with Zac Oyama, so he’s already a thing, but it’s very fun to be like, “Cool, I’m the one that got you in here first, so I get the referral fee, and all of the praise for being the one that discovered you.” [Laughs] That’s not at all what that was.

Image via Dropout

With Burrow’s End, do you have a favorite NPC that you are particularly excited for players and fans to meet this season that you can share?

IYENGAR: Yes. It’s Lucas, and it’s not even close. Lucas is just absolutely the guy. There’s a lot of me in Lucas, and I don’t wanna explain why. I will once everything drops and you meet him. There’s always just that one silly thing that you’re like, “Cool, I have stacks and stacks of NPCs and people that are critical to plot and people that are just seat-fillers.” If you ask me, when you walk into a room, who’s there, and Lucas is one of the, like, “who’s there,” and they were like, “That one. That one goes here now,” and you were like, “Great. This is gonna be so much fun.” And it never felt like a burden. Sometimes you get those NPCs that you’re like, “I hate that the party has this, and now I have to do this crazy thing for too long, and I think half of the reason they won’t let this NPC drop is because they know they’re tormenting me by keeping them around.” Lucas is a joy. I remember after his debut and highlight, I was like, “I hope he gets to come back. I like him a great deal.” So I’m excited for Lucas.

You’ve created so many characters already in existence from other games that you’ve played yourself, what do you bring from all of those experiences and those characters to a new game?

IYENGAR: There’s a lot of—and not in a way that’s “Oh, if there’s something that I built that I didn’t get a chance to get to in another campaign, here’s a new chance to shoehorn it in,”—it’s never that, but there’s always that sense of “What do you wanna talk about?” Obviously, from season to season and story to story, the things you want to talk about transform over time and everything feels very different. A Court of Fae & Flowers doesn’t feel like Misfits and Magic; Burrow’s End doesn’t feel like A Court of Fae & Flowers, truly at all…at all. But there’s always a common throughline of “I want to say something about relationships. I wanna say something about relationships when you consider yourself in isolation and there is a legitimate fear of the vulnerability of bonds,” which was a big throughline in A Court of Fae & Flowers, taking the chance on having a bond.

Even in the inverse of that, with Burrow’s End, they are a family. This is three generations of a family; they’re all the same thing, they’re all stoats. They all are together and the bonds are there, but I still want to say something about what it means to be in that vulnerable situation of who knows you better early in your life than your family and how much of who you are is a legacy of what you’ve learned from your family, and how do you engage with that? How do you break away from it? How do you ask for something different or for something more from people who have known you and may struggle to recontextualize you, a person that you know that you’re growing and changing over time and should be treated differently based on who you are at different times in your life? So much of stories about generational trauma has to do with “If you’re not seeing who I am now, you are regarding me with the same priority and paradigm that you did when I was a child or when I was a baby when I needed certain kinds of protection and development and coddling and care, but the care has to be different now.”

So I think there’s a lot of interesting reckoning. You see little moments of it in other campaigns and other games, and you go, “Okay, that’s not for now, but maybe that can be useful later,” and it’s never castoff or runoff, but it becomes another couple strands of hair in the braid of the stories that you put out into the world. So I don’t know if I answered your question at all, but yeah.

Image via Dropout

That’s an even better answer than my question, so thank you. The writers’ strike just recently made a deal, which is amazing, but you guys last month had a really awesome DND day in support of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes. Can you talk about that experience?

IYENGAR: It was really fun because I wasn’t originally going to be in town for it, so I remember seeing everything as it was spinning up and I was like, “Oh, I feel so bad. I’m not gonna be able to be there and be a part of this thing that’s such a perfect intersection of the thing I care about that’s real and vital and important in the world.” We’re out here, I’ve got tan lines from being out and striking, first in support of the WGA and then as a SAG-AFTRA member. So when it worked out that I got to be in town and I saw everything that everyone was putting in and building, it just felt like it was such a raw, fun, wonderful day of meeting a bunch of people who are also in support, meeting other people that you’re like, “Oh, you’re also a guild member,” and this fun thing that we do. And there were a couple of fans it rocked up that were like, “I don’t have a dog in this fight, but I am supportive and it’s nice to be out and give solidarity and show solidarity.”

Then of course, we’ve got Brennan coming in and running the craziest, dopest game where we have just piles of people representing different classes and being able to tie everything down to the base story we tell in DND, in this high fantasy setting. A group of people coming into their power, knowing what the stakes of the world are, and being the heroes the world deserves felt like such a nice parallel to “We’re out here. It’s been over 100 days. We know what needs to happen. Continuing this fight is what is good and healthy and supportive and will keep us alive and keep our art alive. We feel the support, now let’s have a moment where we can treat the high complexity situation as a monster to be slayed, and let’s do it and use that to bolster our resolve.” It was so beautiful and so fun, and just deeply funny and silly, too, that it was a joy and an honor to be a part of even though I was, for the most part, just sort of watching and heckling my friends from the side. If I appear anywhere in anyone’s video, it’s mostly just being kind of near Brennan yelling questions about how hot the monsters were, as is my right.

[Laughs] As you should, absolutely. Building off of that a little, in the last five years, DND has had such a huge resurgence, in part thanks to D20, Critical Role, and things like Stranger Things. What’s it like to be such a crucial part of bringing the game to so many people and spreading that sort of found-family experience of playing a DND game?

IYENGAR: Well, thank you. There’s a surrealness to it because I think when you’re inside of it, you’re like, “Oh, I don’t really think of it in terms of ‘I am the steward of this out into the world.’” You’re just sitting here like, “I want to tell a story that I care about. I want to tell a story that this group cares about.” That’s the thing, but it also feels very much, taking the wider look at it, it feels like paying it forward. I came to DND as a full adult shortly after 5th Edition dropped, and right around the time of the TAZ [The Adventure Zone] Balance arc and Critical Role’s first campaign. I grew up as a DND player specifically, and a TTRPG player watching them, and then got to expand my horizons beyond that. So, I think it feels very good to be part of this widening of purview. If I can do anything to bolster this, I think I just want to keep trying to push the bounds of the kinds of stories that we can tell. This isn’t just a vector for the sort of table entertainment and fantasy of getting to be the heroes in a certain kind of fiction, this is a storytelling vehicle. We can tell stories that mean something, that people connect to beyond, “I’m watching people that I like do a silly little make-em-up.” These are real and vital stories. This is a storytelling method, and it’s new, and it’s in its infancy, and in that early adoption and early phase, but the more we push it, the more we try to tell different kinds of stories and different kinds of systems, the more this transitions from game to vector for art, and I love that.

I love that so much. What advice would you have for a first-time player and a first-time game master?

IYENGAR: First-time player, I would say in as much as you have that consent and commitment from the table, always make a choice. Just make a choice. Sometimes we get burdened with trying to make the perfect choice or the right choice, treating stories inside of RPGs as puzzles with correct answers, but it’s a story, and the best stories are not a person doing a series of correct things. So, do the thing that you think is the most interesting, and if there are negative consequences, you deal with those, too, and they’re fun. Embrace that it’s fun.

And I think my advice for GMs is, hoo boy, trust yourself. I still suffer from a ton of anxiety around getting games spun up. There’s always the panic before you begin, and you’re like, “Great, this is what we’re doing, and it’s fun and good, and it’s gonna be great.” Trust yourself in the things that you do behind the scenes, and then when you’re at the table, when you’re at the group, listen and just care about what your table cares about.

The first episode of Dimension 20: Burrow’s End is now available to stream on Dropout, and it will be available for free on YouTube on October 11. The remaining episodes will hit Dropout every Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET.