The Brief

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.

Vintage game modules from the role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons on display at The Dungeon Hobby Shop and Museum in Lake Geneva, which is located in the old offices of TSR, the company Gary Gygax created to sell the game.

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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.

Brennan Lee Mulligan holding a 20-sided die backstage at Climate Pledge Arena in Seattle after Dimension 20's performance there in July of 2025.

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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.

Cast members of Critical Role, Ashley Johnson, Taliesin Jaffe, Sam Riegel, Travis Willingham, Laura Bailey, Liam O'Brien, Marisha Ray and Matthew Mercer attend a screening for "The Legend of Vox Machina" in 2024. The show premiered on Amazon Prime and was based on Critical Role's actual play.

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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."

Dimension 20's main cast performing at Madison Square Garden in 2025. From left to right: Brian Murphy, Siobhan Thompson, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Lou Wilson, Emily Axford and Zac Oyama. Not pictured: Ally Beardsley.

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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 eye patch, 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.'"

Hundreds of fans line up outside Seattle's Climate Pledge Arena to watch Dimension 20's live show in July of 2025.

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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 Pontillo, 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 OK to be silly and have fun and continue to storytell and fantasize and dream and create.'"

Ayla Wallace, Suz Pontillo, Miki Murray, and Rylie Latham — four friends who dressed up as their favorite Dimension 20 characters to attend the live show in Seattle — all play D&D together, "when we can make the scheduling work," Murray said.

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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 No. 1 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."

Copyright 2025 NPR

It’s about the size of a park bench and made of steel and wood. The bench’s arm rests are formed by the letters “L” and “A” in a design that’s unmistakable to any sports fan. But the welder-artist who created it says it’s not a Dodgers bench.

“This is about civic pride, L.A. pride. I made a design statement saying that it has nothing affiliated with the Dodgers,” said Steve Campos.

Campos grew up near Dodger Stadium, raised by parents who were die-hard Dodgers fans. So much, that they named him after Steve Garvey but that legacy doesn’t keep him from confronting how the Dodgers benefitted from the mass displacement of working-class people from Chavez Ravine after World War Two. That’s why he calls it an L.A. Bench, and not a Dodgers Bench.

The logo may be synonymous with the city's beloved baseball team, but the design of the interlocking letters was used by the L.A. Angels minor league baseball team before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958.

“The monogram was here before the Dodgers,” Campos said.

A second-generation welder

Welding is the Campos family business. His father created gates and security bars for windows and doors for L.A. clients. That was the foundation for the work Campos has done for two decades since graduating from Lincoln High School, L.A. Trade Tech College, and enrolling in a summer program at Art Center in Pasadena.

The inspiration for the L.A. Bench came last year while he was playing around in his shop creating versions of the L.A. logo. A friend he hangs with at Echo Park Lake asked Campos to make him a piece of furniture.

“I was trying to figure out what my friend Curly wanted. He liked Dodgers and drinking and getting into fights, so I was like, 'Let me make something with the LA monogram,'” he said.

Welder-artist Steve Campos created whimsical steel sculptures with the LA logo.

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It didn’t design itself. He said he had to lengthen the legs on the “A” and lean the back of the “L” in order to make the bench functional. In the process, he’s made a piece of furniture with a ubiquitous logo that he’s embedded with his own L.A. pride, as well as city history past and present.

LA civic pride travels to Japan

Campos vacationed in Japan the last week of April and took advantage of the trip to reach out to people who may be interested in the L.A. Bench. He was caught off guard by people’s reaction when he showed them pictures of it.

“They look at it and they go, 'Oh, Ohtani bench,'” he said.

For them, it’s still a bench embedded with pride, he said, but centered around Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani, an icon in his native Japan.

Campos has made four L.A. benches and is selling them fully assembled, he said, for $2,500 each — taking into account his labor and how costly the raw materials have become. For now, he’s offering the metal parts as a package for $500, which requires the buyer to purchase the wood for the seat and the back — an easy process, he said.

While he has no plans to mass produce the L.A. Bench, he does have one goal in mind that shows how hard it is for him to separate L.A. civic pride and the Dodgers.

“I would love to get a couple of them installed at Dodger Stadium,” he said.

The Venice Boardwalk after sunset has generally been a no-go zone for tourists and locals alike, as the beachside bars and restaurants close on the early side and safety is often an issue. Now, a group of artists is out to bring some vibrancy to the creative neighborhood with a series of new installations that will include live evening performances – and even a “Venice Opera House.”

“Let's play with light and let's play with sound and give people a reason to come to the Boardwalk after sundown,” said artist and entrepreneur Stefan Ashkenazy, who is curating the project and owns the buildings housing them. “I mean, let's just be open 24 hours a day.”

The concept doesn’t have an official name yet, but he’s been calling it “See World.”

Artist James Ostrer's space looks out from a bed through the fence to the ocean at Venice Beach.

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William Attaway, a longtime Venice artist, created a gallery space filled with various paintings and sculptures.

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The pair of modern buildings on the Venice Boardwalk at Thornton Ave. – with their big balconies, floor-to-ceiling glass windows, and seven open garage-style retail spaces – have sat mostly empty since Snapchat vacated their beachside offices in 2019. Ashkenazy recently bought the building and recruited artists to fill those front-facing spaces with creative work until a full-time tenant comes in.

Over the past several weeks the installations have been created in real-time, in public.

All of the projects are loosely along the theme of “home,” with each artist claiming a “room” in the two buildings that stretch across a full block on the Boardwalk. Several local Venice artists are featured, including William Attaway, whose intricate mosaic work is recognizable on the Venice public restrooms along the beach. Attaway’s space features a floating larger-than-life-sized statue and various works in a mini-gallery. In the next room is Robin Murez’s pieces, featuring carved wooden seats from her beloved neighborhood Venice Flying Carousel.

Ashkenazy is no stranger to wild (and wildly successful) art ideas. He’s the owner of the Petit Ermitage hotel in West Hollywood, a longtime haven for visiting artists, and the founder of the decade-old Bombay Beach Biennale, where artists install all kinds of work in an annual event near the Salton Sea. Many of the artists from that community are featured at the Venice project.

A "Venice Opera House" will host pop-up music events throughout the summer.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny's paintings on the wall of his Venice space.

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New York-based artist Greg Haberny and London-based artist James Ostrer have brought some of their work in the Bombay Beach Biennale to the Venice project. Their windows on the Boardwalk both speak to a child-like sense of wonder and creativity.

“I think it's just kind of exploring and playing a little bit, to have the freedom to be able to do that,” Haberny says of his imagined child’s bedroom space, which includes a fort made out of puffy cheese balls. “It's a big space, too.
It's beautiful.”

Ostrer is experimenting with a performance art idea where he sits in bed amongst a room full of his own artwork, which he describes as “happy art with an edge.” Looking out at the ocean from the bed, he’s invited passersby to sit and have chats with him about his work or anything else they want to talk about.

“It’s a very intimate space, so you have a different kind of conversation,” he said. “I use art to channel human creativity, and [talk about] dark things.”

While there are open fences that block off the spaces, they aren’t sealed up at night. Both Ashkenazy and the team of artists seemed open to the idea that anything could happen and that the installations are a conversation with the public – and with that comes some risk.

Greg Haberny (right) works with his assistants on an installation featuring kid-inspired graffiti art and a "cheesy puff" fort.

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“I don't really know if I [would] say worried, but I guess it's just the cost of doing business,” Haberny said. “I don't really make things to get damaged or broken, sure. But I have done [things like] burned all my paintings and then made paint out of ash.”

While he’s felt safe – and even slept overnight in the installation – Ostrer has been collaborating with a local female artist who performs in a pig mask in front of his installation some nights. Watching her perform, he said, has taught him about the vulnerability of women in public spaces like the Boardwalk. “I've started to, on a very fractional level, have seen how scary that is. Because I've sat in the bed behind her performing at the front here… the way in which men are approaching her and shrieking at her … it's shocking.”

Ashkenazy says he will keep the artists in the space, potentially rotating new ones in, until a fulltime tenant takes over.

“This is an experiment … and after acquiring the building, the intention wasn't, ‘let's open a bunch of public art spaces,’ he said. “It is kind of …what the building wanted and listening to what the Boardwalk needed. Let's play, let's have the artists that we love and appreciate have a space to play and engage and give the locals and the visitors to the Boardwalk something to experience.”

A new trail across the beloved natural area of Elephant Hill in Northeast Los Angeles is officially opening this weekend.

The route is years in the making, and it's a big milestone in the decades-long conservation efforts to preserve this local jewel in the community of El Sereno.

The hiking trail connects one side of Elephant Hill to the other — from the corner of Pullman Street and Harriman Avenue all the way across to Lathrop Street.

It's 0.75 miles in total, but packs a punch.

"It's a pretty straight shot, but because of the terrain — the trail is kind of twisty and curvy. There's switchbacks — and great views," Elva Yañez, board president of the nonprofit Save Elephant Hill, said.

People have always been able to access the 110-acre green space, but Yañez said the new trail provides a safe and easy way to navigate the steep hillsides.

The El Sereno nonprofit has been working for two decades to preserve the land. Illegal dumping and off-roading have damaged the open space over the years. And the majority of the 110 acres are privately owned by an estimated 200 individual owners.

Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority (MRCA) joined the efforts in 2018, spurred by a $700,000 grant from Los Angeles County Regional Park and Open Space District, in part, to build the trail. The local agency received some $2 million in grants from the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy to add to the 10 acres of Elephant Hill it manages and conserves. This year, MCRA acquired an additional 12 parcels — or about 2.4 acres.

And the spiffy new footpath — with trail signage, information kiosks and landscape boulders — is not just a long-sought-for victory but a beginning in a sense.

"We know that it means a lot to the community," Sarah Kevorkian, who oversees the trail project for MRCA, said. "We're wrapping up the trail, but it really feels like the beginning of all that is to come."

A hint of that vision already exists — for hikers traversing the new route, courtesy of Test Plot, the L.A.-based nonprofit that works to revitalize depleted lands.

"They're able to see at the end of the trail, at the 'test plot' — exactly what a restored Elephant Hill would look like," Yañez said.

Here's a preview:

A coalition of residents from across the San Gabriel Valley are mobilizing over a battery storage project and possibly more industrial development in the City of Industry they say could pollute communities next door.

A protest is scheduled today in neighboring Rowland Heights, targeting a 400-megawatt battery energy storage facility sited on about 9 acres that was approved by the City of Industry leaders in January.

Such Battery Energy Storage Systems, or BESS, are used to keep the power grid stable, especially as output from renewable energy sources like solar and wind fluctuate. But fires involving lithium batteries at some sites have heightened environmental and public health fears.

Because of the City of Industry’s unusual, sprawling shape stretching along the 60 Freeway, it borders on more than a dozen communities, meaning what happens there can have far-reaching impact.

“Pollution does not end right at the border,” said Andrew Yip, an organizer with No Data Centers SGV Coalition. “Pollution travels.”

Some local activists with the Puente Hills Community Preservation Association have challenged the approval of the battery facility under the California Environmental Quality Act.

Beyond environmental concerns, locals have also been frustrated with how decisions are made by officials in the City of Industry, a municipality that’s almost entirely zoned for industrial use and has less than 300 residents.

Organizers say they’ve struggled to get direct responses from city officials whom they say have replaced regular meetings with special meetings, which under state law require less advance notice.

A city spokesperson has not responded to requests for comment.

The so-called Marici Energy Storage System Facility would be run by Aypa Power. The fact that the battery storage developer is owned by the private equity giant Blackstone, a major investor in AI and data centers, has only fueled concerns that a battery storage facility would lay the groundwork for data center development.

A request for comment from Aypa was not returned.

Today’s protest is taking place at Peter F. Schabarum Regional Park in Rowland Heights across the street from the Puente Hills Mall, a largely vacant “dead” mall, which activists fear could be redeveloped into a data center and bring higher utility costs and greater air and noise pollution.

Yip pointed out that industrial developments make a lot of money for the City of Industry.

“But none of these surrounding communities receive any of those benefits,” Yip said. “Yet we have to put up with all the harmful effects and impacts from this city that does all this development without really reaching out.”