Dimension 20 played Madison Square Garden on January 24, 2025.
New York City is a place full of unique sights, sounds and experiences. This gives residents a reputation for having seen it all and are rarely surprised or caught off guard. That wasn’t the case for New Yorkers who asked the people lined up outside Madison Square Garden last Saturday what they expected to see.
It was neither a concert nor a sporting event, although it was perhaps a bit of both. It was a live experience with one of the network’s most popular shows Dropout. 20,000 people gathered to see the cast Dimension 20 play a game of Dungeons & Dragons the same venue that hosted championship games, Wrestlemanias and legendary rock bands.
For those readers who have been trapped under a rock (or potentially inside a gelatinous cube) for the past ten years, Dungeons & Dragons it’s the most popular it’s ever been. There are many reasons for this, but one of the biggest is the rise of current game shows that demystify gaming as a social activity. A game once threatened with Satanic Panic is now played by talented performers and embraced by celebrities.
Dimension 20: Gauntlet At The Garden was the biggest indicator 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 related to The sleepless city season in front of a wild crowd. Crowd noise for a natural 20 (the best spin you can get in the center of a twenty-sided head to play D&D) it was as loud and intense as a last second blowout by the Knicks or Rangers.
(Light spoilers for Gauntlet At The Garden follow. Dropout has said they will stream the event at a future date for fans who were unable to attend the show.)
The sleepless city is a modern urban fantasy setting. Players live in New York City and are connected to a mystical sixth borough that has all the monsters and magic one would 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.
History added to a small element from Dimension 20Time Quangle Shows. The crew had to deal with several multiversal threats emerging from others Dimension 20 series. They had help from some well-known characters from each of those stories, who were randomly determined by a website that the public could use to roll dice.
Mixing and matching characters allows the performers to call upon and bring in beloved and despised personalities from throughout the show’s history. The character introductions got the crowd going in a similar way to when a band plays the opening bars of one of their most popular hits.
Being on a big stage also allowed the show to make its dramatic moments much bigger. Box of Doom gets players out of their chairs to take an important spin in a luxurious dice tower. This aspect of the game was enhanced with a dramatic flourish of light and sound plus a larger version where players rolled a d20 the size of a beach ball.
The cast did a wonderful job hitting dramatic moments as well as cracking jokes that are hallmarks of the show’s style. Shows like this offer a unique challenge where they have to respect story lines for long time fans while still being accessible to people who have never seen the show. The fans getting all the jokes and references are the target, but the crew did a great job of being absolutely hilarious.
Even in the midst of all the firecrackers, beeps and animated character introductions, players still had time for an impromptu WWE wrestling match to pass the time while the producers adjusted the lighting for the second half of the show. That’s one of the things it does Dimension 20 such a blow. Mulligan takes his characters and his stories seriously, but he leaves plenty of room for play and isn’t afraid to challenge his players if they bring a more compelling idea to the table.
Dimension 20 has announced three more live shows this year in Los Angeles, Seattle and Las Vegas. Dimension 20: Gauntlet At The Garden it feels like the beginning of a new era. whether D&D nerds can sell the Garden, then anything seems possible.