feature image photo by Kate Elliott
“It is what it is…it is what it could be,” says Sofia Bicicleta Lee in The Unsleeping City: Chapter II, a season of the actual-play online show Dimension 20. Set in a magical realist NYC, Sofia (played by Emily Axford) is one of six player characters (PCs) fighting a legion of urban-flavored monsters like frat bro Jersey Devil, vampire businessmen, pixie mobsters, and undead NYPD.
The quote is said in response to the season’s antagonists’ mantra of complacency in the face of danger. I have it written on a pink Post-It note that hangs above my desk, amid trinkets like a felt heart the color of the lesbian flag and my orange Rx bottle of Prozac. This quote has provided me with pause, peace, and a sense of potential for how to live my life. It could easily be the tagline for Dungeons & Dragons as a whole: The world isn’t made for you, but you can make the world through your choices. The world, and you by extension, is always what it could be.
It’s no surprise D&D’s bloom of popularity coincides with its ripe worldbuilding opportunities for diversity and inclusivity, especially in relation to queerness. While old-school perceptions of the game conjure incel-adjacent men in dark, damp basements of the 1980s, contemporary iterations recall casts like that of the video game Baldur’s Gate 3 or the program Critical Role — actual-play featuring stunning voice actors portraying hijinks and high-stakes adventure. Fans of such media have proven to come from a wider background than just those matching the profile of the Stranger Things boys: young and old, gay and straight, trans and cis, etc. It’s as if finally D&D is fulfilling its promise of true fantasy and creation.
For those who don’t know, actual-play refers to a genre of podcast, show, or live performance in which a cast plays a TTRPG (table-top role-playing game) for an audience. The most popular TTRPG used is D&D, though others can be implemented. These programs weave between the story of characters being role-played, and the “above-board” interactions between cast members. While there are countless programs that each mean something to someone, for me, no actual-play does a better job of mixing meaning and escapades quite like Dimension 20. Produced by the streaming platform Dropout, the phoenix from CollegeHumor’s ashes, Dimension 20’s 7-year run has seen 26 seasons, in locations from a Games of Thrones-ified Candyland to steampunk Treasure Island. Guests outside of the Dropout sphere sometimes appear, including for the special season Dungeons & Drag Queens featuring Jujubee, Monet X Change, Bob the Drag Queen, and Alaska Thunderfuck.
While each season is its own ecosystem of world, characters, and players, nine of the 26 seasons feature the “Intrepid Heroes,” the inaugural and most consistent recurring cast: Emily Axford, Brian Murphy, Siobhan Thompson, Zac Oyama, Lou Wilson, and Ally Beardsley as PCs, and Brennan Lee Mulligan as the Dungeon Master. Also known as the DM (or Game Master, GM, for non-D&D games), the Dungeon Master is at the helm of the story, providing narration of the adventure’s details, settings, goals, and playing the role of NPCs (non-playable characters) who supplement the world by acting as allies or enemies. More often than not, this is the cast people have in mind when discussing the show: since 2018, this particular crew of seven have come together again and again to portray every flavor of found family for a 20-episode run of narrative and combat. In 2024 and 2025, they took to new heights as they sold out an arena tour across the US, including iconic venues like Madison Square Garden and the Hollywood Bowl.
I was lucky to see them this past summer in Seattle for their show at the Climate Pledge Arena. It was a surreal and fantastic experience to see a venue used to seeing Seattle Kraken or Storm games absolutely packed with cosplaying nerds watching a group of improvisers. While one may think D&D’s “theatre of the mind” would translate poorly to a live show, it was in fact one of the most exhilarating examples of fandom I have experienced. Fans were transforming beloved characters into complex costumes, regardless of the comfortability of their dress in squished stadium seating. Each PC (and the DM’s NPCs) were represented across the board.
One Dimension 20 player in particular, Ally Beardsley, inspired the most costumes worn by fans, at least from my angle. I sat beside a Margaret Encino, Beardley’s character who is a high-femme corporate executive with an auburn bob and a pencil skirt. On my girlfriend’s side was Fantasy High: Junior Year’s Kristen Applebees, another Beardsley character, yellow tracksuit tied at the waist with a purple sports bra, buff arms, and a question mark-shaped staff. It was evident from this small sample that Beardsley’s characters strike a particular chord with viewers, likely due in part to their complex portrayals of queer and gender identity.
Beardsley has been routinely commended for their portfolio of genderplay when it comes to their character designs. In addition to Margaret and Kristen, there’s Pete Conlan, a trans man; Olethra, a trans woman; Liam Wilhelmina, an aro-ace adolescent peppermint boy; and more. Beardsley also hosts Gender Spiral alongside Babette Thomas, a podcast whose “quest [is] to explore the modern experience of being a human in our gendered world.” Through both of these efforts, Beardsley has placed the exploration of gender presentation (both their own and others’) at the heart of their career interests. While not the only player to portray queer characters, they are the most consistent, and admit part of the fun of the D&D space is the exact opportunity for that play.
“The reason my characters and a lot of the characters specifically on D20 stand out is because we have this white blonde hero in our mind when it comes to fantasy,” Beardsley says to me over a glitchy Zoom screen, “but really, fantasy just allows you to make an insert-character.”
While other members of the Intrepid Heroes have been playing for much longer (Murphy and Axford are the husband-and-wife duo behind the equally successful Not Another D&D Podcast with comedians Caldwell Tanner and Jake Hurwitz), Beardsley’s first foray into the game was onscreen. Not only that, but much of Beardsley’s transition has been public as well — their portrayal of Pete from The Unsleeping City was partially a behind-the-scenes exploration long before they began transitioning.
“I got to do research where I was like ‘this is research for the character,’” Beardsley chuckles, “I’m watching YouTube videos of ‘My First 90 Days on T’ for the character.”
Context (and spoilers) for those who haven’t seen: The Unsleeping City, the second Intrepid Heroes season and third season of D20 overall, opens with the introduction to Beardsley’s character Pete. Pete Conlan, also known as Pete the Plug, is introduced to us as he consults with his backdoor doctor regarding his top surgery recovery and drug abuse. After leaving the office, he falls upside down into a large puddle that takes him to a magical void, though he mistakes this as a bad trip. He then has an encounter with his transphobic father who, about to call Pete his deadname, begins throwing up bubbles before being lifted away into the sky. For the rest of the season, Pete’s transness is rarely called into question — rather, the conversation regarding his top surgery is an establishing shot, understanding his transness as integral to his character, but not as much as his inherent magical powers as the Vox Phantasma, a Wild Magic Sorcerer (arguably the coolest D&D subclass).
Much of the queer characters’ identities in the D20 universes are treated this way: as facets, not a whole. Olethra, Beardsley’s character for the just-finished Cloudward, Ho! season, is established as a trans woman in the first episode, mainly to make the joke about her libertarian parents wanting the “government to keep their hands off my daughter’s Spiro pills.” After that, it is never mentioned again. Instead, other parts of her identity are explored, from her misguided desire for adventure to her deep and complex relationship with her grandmother.
NPCs receive a similar treatment. They are described almost offhandedly, with little fanfare to the announcement of their identities. Garthy O’Brien is a non-binary half-orc/aasimar; Queen Caramelinda, wife of Wilson’s King Amethar, was previously in love with his sister Archmage Lazuli; one of the main antagonists of A Starstruck Odyssey is Lucienne Rex, Margaret’s toxically homoerotic best friend. The inclusion of such identities never feels shoehorned or like an attempt to grasp at points; rather, they provide a realistic, complex tapestry of worlds that replicate our own.
When I ask Brennan Lee Mulligan, the main DM behind most seasons, why his approach to inclusion is so casual, he replies simply: “It’s easier.”
“I can’t imagine how exhausted I’d be if the way I wrote seasons of the show was ‘What’s a funny idea?!’ That is hard…there’s infinite good ideas!” Mulligan says. “So instead, you go to your heart. You ask what matters to you.”
For Mulligan, who has often been teased for “capitalism always being the bad guy” in his villain creations, worldbuilding becomes infinitely easier and more engaging when asking yourself what in the real world matters to you. What brings you joy, and what brings you frustration?
“I can plug a little wire into that engine,” he says, “because that engine, which is caring about people, and wanting a better world, that engine never runs out of gas.”
It’s a deep relief to hear someone behind such an influential storytelling machine say the motivation behind their work is as simple as caring about people. Since D20’s first season in 2018, not only has the show exploded in popularity, but so too has anti-queer and anti-trans legislation in the United States. According to the 2025 Trans Legislation Tracker, as of writing this article, 1,009 anti-trans bills have been introduced, with 123 having passed and 504 still pending. Not one but two Trump administrations have sought the dissolution of any and all queer-, trans-, or otherwise DEI-oriented organizations.
It’s also a deep relief, in a world subsumed under an umbrella of apathy — any inkling of joy at risk of being labeled “cringe” — to hear someone plainly say caring about something, anything, is cool. For myself as a viewer, this is a huge attraction to the series. We are living in an empathy crisis right now: Convenience over everything has pushed us to the farthest reaches of one another. The evils we are forced to face every day (specifically in the U.S.) stymie our defenses and render us too depressed to do much of anything about it. Of course, this isn’t true of everyone, but I know for me, it can be atrociously difficult to find reasons to wake up right now. D20, then, is more than entertainment: It’s a lightning rod for giving a shit.
For Beardsley, their visibility isn’t just about being a trans person going through public transition. Back in July, they and their partner had a baby (funnily enough, on the same night in Seattle I was meant to see them perform, which I made sure to make them apologize for missing).
“It feels important to be living the less splashy trans story,” they say of new parenthood, “but it’s the natural culmination of a happy and settled life…It’s a balm to all the headlines.” They describe being a queer elder as a “dream.” To be a “steady lighthouse in the queer community” is an aspiration for them, one that is somewhat fulfilled in this new role as a queer parent.
“I’m not posting photos of my kid, but the fact that I do have a kid feels very important to share, almost in response to how keyed up ‘trantifa’ is,” they say. Being able to be open not just about the “flashy” side of transition (hormones, surgery, name and pronoun changes), but about the domestic, insular reality of parenthood is one they say they are most proud to present to the world at this time.
Having and being a part of a family — whatever shape that takes — embodies much of the show. Like any D&D group, D20’s casts feature found families: an unassuming group of high school freshmen meeting in detention (think Lord of the Rings meets The Breakfast Club); an assembly of New Yorkers brought together by civic pride; rambunctious outlaws manning a hot dog-shaped spaceship. The endless amalgamations of characters inevitably leads to a sense of who we choose to be our family, by virtue of how they choose, rather than feel obligated to, take care of us. What’s queerer than that?
That sense of found family is not restricted to inside the game’s world; often those we play the game with become extensions of family, too. The Intrepid Heroes cast has often spoken about their real-life friendships, and knowing one another very well. Murphy and Axford are married, and Wilson officiated Mulligan’s wedding to his wife (and fellow Dropout comedian) Izzy Roland. While a character is not always a self-insert, D&D’s opportunity for self-discovery allows you, in a safe environment of friends, to potentially explore terrain of self previously untraversed. In many ways, your DM can serve as an orbiter not just of character growth but personal growth.
While Mulligan discourages seeing D&D as “free-range therapy,” he does concede that part of a DM’s job involves delving into something of a psychological profile of the character and the player’s motivations in playing said character. He explains, in the case of D20, most of the seasons’ plots and settings come after the cast brings him their characters. It is less about conforming them to a pre-established set of rules than using them as the motivation for what the world can be.
“You shouldn’t assume that your player is coming to your table for deep, psychological catharsis,” he says, “nor should you assume that you have the wherewithal to safely provide that. But to give that big disclaimer, a lot of people make characters that are exploring something they’re interested in…I think as a DM the more insightful you can be about your collaborative worldbuilding, it is possible you will create meaning that that player can take away. But that’s a byproduct of being a good collaborator.”
In this way, too, I find D&D and D20 to be queer haven: the understanding that to create something Good — be that art, a game, or the neighborhood you live in every day — means collaboration with other beings is essential. Whether that be a tenent the show consciously upholds or not, it is a joy to watch.
In a world so fueled by capitalist gain and anti-queer sentiment (often synonymous ends), being able to plug into a season of D20 is, for lack of a better word, magic. It is a reminder that not everything on the Internet has to be vapid content, or that we must bend our art to the “realistic” pitfalls of the world. A better world is always possible, if you have the imagination and the care to pursue it.
Is playing D&D with your friends going to halt the authoritarian rise of the alt-right? No, but something as simple as that game reminds us we can find joy and possibility in creation, collaboration, art, community, and that the small flickers of hope that come from such places are what ignite into true revolutionary fires.
“There is something very cool about how little we have to do at Dropout to provide the antidote or a safe space,” says Beardsley, “We literally just have to be ourselves, and not get too scared…We have just continued to be ourselves and that has provided a space for people. It’s what you hope for queer futures.”
