A fantastical escape

Examining the Wisconsin roots, popularity increase, and emotional utility of “Dungeons & Dragons.”

At the Barrymore on September 14, a palpable sense of anticipation coursed through an audience of hundreds. Excited small talk abounded as everyone took to their seats. Before long, four people took the stage, and an explosion of cheers went on for a considerable amount of time. A response fit for rock stars. Everyone onstage fed off the energy, beckoning for the cheers to continue at increasing velocity, before finally settling into play. But none of the people onstage were musicians. They’d all come to play Dungeons & Dragons.

That initial crowd reception—genuinely one of the most emphatic and memorable I’ve seen in about 15 years’ worth of attending shows in Madison—felt indicative of the game’s enduring popularity. And it also felt indicative of the way that popularity has transformed through endeavors like the players’ podcast—Not Another D&D Podcast—as well as through the personalities of the players/performers themselves—Brian Murphy, Emily Axford, Caldwell Tanner, and Jake Hurwitz. It got me thinking about how I, a person who has literally never played a single second of Dungeons & Dragons, wound up at that show in the first place.

Dungeons & Dragons has always been of at least some interest to me, a person born and raised in Wisconsin, because of its roots in the state’s history. And I’ve always been drawn, in some respect, towards elements of fantasy in narrative storytelling. I think part of this is inherently tied to being from a small-ish Wisconsin town. Speculating that the state’s winters drive a need for routes to escapism is not a new or novel observation, and that’s because it holds weight. For many, that route is a direct line that feeds into the state’s reputation for incessant alcoholism. For others, the path is more winding.

The late Gary Gygax, the co-creator of D&D and a Lake Geneva resident, seemed to prefer his escapism via board games and an intentionally playful version of revisionist history. Eventually, his interests would manifest in a series of decisions that brought about the public introduction of Dungeons & Dragons, Gygax’s (and Minnesotan Dave Arneson’s) signature game. It took less than 10 years for Dungeons & Dragons to be embroiled in controversy, as the satanic panic of the 1980s fed into a series of baseless accusations linking the game to a number of suicides and murders. Ultimately, the public response enhanced the long-term mystique surrounding the game and further solidified its cultural mark, even as sales diminished.

Sales would continue to diminish through the 1990s and 2000s, before the game started experiencing a resurgence in popularity. Many have theorized its resurgence in popularity was due to a number of coinciding factors, including depictions of the game in popular media (Freaks & Geeks, The Big Bang Theory, Community, Stranger Things), breakout successes of high fantasy series adaptations (Lord Of The Rings, Game Of Thrones), the fifth edition version of the game that made it more accessible to newcomers, the massive success of role-playing video games, and the blurring-to-indistinguishable line between “nerd culture” and the mainstream. At some point in the midst of all of that, a show called Critical Role—which features little more than a tight-knit group of voice actors playing D&D—would heighten the game’s popularity even further, as it proved certain players could find success and interest by broadcasting their sessions.

As the game was seeing an uptick in representation, sales, and interest, the COVID-19 pandemic hit. No one can dispute the horrific tragedies that the pandemic wrought, and for a time, how we conducted our lives was fundamentally altered. Most pivoted to working from home, in some fashion or another. Instead of real-life physical contact with friends, there were remote meetings. Dungeons & Dragons became an even truer form of escapism in those times, allowing its popularity to hit a new high.

Players turned to remote sessions as a respite: to connect or reconnect with their friends, to feel a sense of normalcy, and, occasionally, as a tool to help contextualize the stakes of the world. It’s also when I finally—after years of well-intentioned cajoling from friends—came around to developing a more focused interest in the game. But it didn’t come as a result of Critical Role or any of the other shows mentioned, it came about as a result of another actual-play show rife with actors: Dropout’s Dimension 20.

Towards the start of the Covid shutdowns, my partner picked up a subscription to Dropout—an extension and evolution of CollegeHumor—based on both the online streamer’s strong social media presence and our enjoyment of what we’d seen of a show called Game Changer. Before too long, we’d rifled through most of Game Changer‘s available seasons at the time, and turned our attention towards Dimension 20.

I doubt either of us knew at the time we hit play on the first episode that we’d be embarking on a viewing adventure that has extended to well beyond 1,000 hours. Dimension 20 differs from a good deal of other Dungeons & Dragons actual-play shows, in that it always presents its core narrative with a twist (and an explicitly leftist bent). In the show’s first season—which premiered five years ago this week—that twist was (accurately) marketed by Dropout as “John Hughes meets D&D.” And the core cast assembled to carry it out was a murderer’s row of professional improv comics with an innate understanding of story structure and narrative, with the incomparable Brennan Lee Mulligan leading the way as the show’s resident Dungeon Master. (Mulligan may be one of the most gifted storytellers I’ve seen, in any medium.)

Dimension 20 quickly became one of our constants through the pandemic, providing us an abundance of laughs, some genuine tears, and a source of comfort in the face of both personal and societal struggle. As a byproduct of our love for the show, we took an interest in the main players’ other projects. Two of those players are Not Another D&D Podcast‘s Brian Murphy and Emily Axford, who married in 2014. Watching the two of them play off each other was always a joy on Dimension 20 and was just as endearing on Not Another D&D Podcast (NADDPOD). I’m not sure any couple in entertainment has entertained us more than Murphy and Axford. So when NADDPOD announced a Madison stop, attending felt like a way to honor an invisible contribution that helped carry us through a difficult time.

My partner secured our tickets shortly after they went on sale, and we were among those providing a rapturous welcome at the Barrymore on a Thursday evening in the middle of September. Watching Axford, Murphy, Caldwell, and Hurwitz (all four of whom have worked for CollegeHumor) high-kick, air-guitar, and triumphantly strut their way around the Barrymore’s stage as an ocean of cheers washed over them was a moment that felt affirming, not just for Dungeons & Dragons, but also, in a small way, for us. What followed was a performance that was heavy on comedic riffs, light on game play, proudly absurd, surprisingly musical (one of the more plot-focused game mechanics involved singing), and teeming with references to the 1995 film Casper. We both left with wide grins and sore ribs.

After decades of tumult, the game seems to have found its firmest footing in pop culture to date, nearly 50 years after the first copies of the game were being sold out of a Lake Geneva basement in 1974. And while I still haven’t actually played a moment’s worth of D&D, there’s little doubt in my mind that if I ever do, I’ll feel at home.