Talking ‘Dungeons And Drag Queens’ With Brennan Lee Mulligan

Welcome to the table,

Few voices in the TTRPG space are as influential as Brennan Lee Mulligan. I had the opportunity to sit down with him and talk about gaming, drag queens, my epic mother-in-law, and the power of role-playing.

The whole time I laughed, smiled, and reveled in the opportunity to talk with someone who loves the hobby, the community, and storytelling in a way that transcends station or platform or influence and speaks to how deeply humanizing and connecting the hobby can be.

Brennan’s verbosity and explosive charm feel like the delightful byproduct of the boundless well of passion for the way role playing can connect us all and give us all the agency to find our place in the world, and in each other’s lives. I can say with life-affirming certainty that our community and pop culture as a whole is better for having him as a part of it.

In a world where so many have such far-reaching influence, Brennan is a lighthouse that creators, hobbyists, and those new to the hobby can look to because when it is all said and done, it’s about connecting with each other, learning about ourselves, and the love of the game and Brennan Lee Mulligan is an avatar of that sentiment in the best possible way.

 

Anton: Hello, this is Anton and I’m here with the wildly talented Brennan Lee Mulligan. Thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me today. This is a thrill and a pleasure. Now, you are a writer, comedian, storyteller… You are one of the most influential voices in tabletop roleplaying. With every new campaign, you seem to up your game.

Your most recent Dimension 20 campaign at Dropout, Dungeons and Drag Queens, came out recently, and my feed has been filled with nothing but praise for it. I was one of thousands that tuned in, and I was absolutely delighted from start to finish of episode one.

How did this campaign come about?

Brennan: Thank you for all the kind words. It is deeply meaningful to be able to talk about this season. The genesis of Dungeons and Drag Queens kind of came (about) in a very mutual way. Everyone who works at Dropout is an enormous fan, not only of these four queens in particular but of the entire drag community, RuPaul’s Drag Race, and beyond. A ton of D20 cast members go to see live drag shows in Los Angeles, which is an incredible city to go do that in.

Whether they’re big (in the community) or smaller drag venues and shows in the city. I was introduced to Drag Race by my wife Izzy many years ago, and I fell in love with Alaska (Thunderfuck) and Bob (the Drag Queen) and Monét (X Change) and Jujubee. Sam Rice is a big fan as well. As well as Paul Robalino, one of our development executives. There’s this huge love of that sort of entertainment cosmos over there.

Simultaneously, within the Drag Race community, there are a bunch of Dimension 20 fans. So we would start to go out between these two communities, and at some point, last year, the connection finally clicked. Emails started flying, and we had a show on our hands. There’s a lot of mutual respect and admiration.

Anton: I love that! My wife and I have watched Drag Race since it started. We actually just took my Mother-in-law and her wife to a drag show for their anniversary, which was super rad. And my Mother in Law has started to get into R.A. Salvatore recently.  She will text me and ask me about, like, mind flayers and The Under Dark, and I get to exist in this space. Most people complain about their significant others’ families…

Brennan: Your Mother-in-law is texting you about mind flayers?

Anton: Oh yeah, it’s super cool. She is a phenomenal human being. She’ll just message me and say “I just got to this part of the book. What are these things?”

And I get choked up because, like “Thank you for asking me.” I love it. We have this wonderful relationship where we’re able to talk about that kind of stuff as she is discovering it.

One of the things that I think is so cool about Dungeons and Drag Queens, and I don’t know if this is design or not, is that it feels like it’s an introduction to the gaming space. It feels like I could show this to my Mother in Law, to somebody who might be intimidated by all the rules, by the libraries worth of book, and it feels like a primer. Like a lesson to get started in the game.

Was that by design?

Brennan: In a sense, it had to be. But… that was not our intention. In other words, we want to put the cart and the horse in the right order. The number one priority I had was working with these queens. We love these performers. We wanted to work with them. That came first.

And then, learning that they had never played D&D before, we went “Oh! This is going to be a lot of their first session.”

And then, there was intentionality and mindfulness. We didn’t start with the idea of “Let’s make a primer.”

First, it was “Let’s work with these incredible performers.”

And then seeing that their schedules are very tight, and this would likely be a four-episode miniseries, we looked at their prior experiences. So we were able to go to them, and I sort of asked did they want it set in a known world? Did they want something sort of set in the Drag Race style environment? Did they want something else?

And I had a hunch, dollars to donuts, we’re going to go to these queens and we’re gonna say, “Do you want something set in a magical New York, magical Drag Race?” and they’re just gonna say “I just want to be an elf” or “I just want to be a wizard.”

And lo and behold, of course, drag is this beautiful, incredible world they’re a part of, but it’s also their day to day. It’s a job. So the idea of just “No, I want to play D&D. I’ve seen it in pop culture. Put me in a classic fantasy world. I want to go to the underworld. Fight monsters. I want to be a sorcerer. I want to be a barbarian.”

It was so wonderful to watch them all have that thing that I think all of us recognize and remember from our own first times playing. So the primer-ness came up as a totally natural byproduct of people engaging genuinely for the first time in role-playing. I kind of love that, for people who want an actual introduction to play, they’ll be able to point to our show and say, actually these four performers are providing one of the best “holding of the hands” into D&D as a classic thing.

So, you’re totally right. This is a great thing to recommend to people who are going to want to see actual play.

Anton: It’s so good. You spoke a little bit about world-building. The lore is really good. I want to know more about the Temple of Wraith. The Gallows Road is so cool. I mean, the way that the mists are wrapping around the mountains. The indigo and violet shades, and there are things in the eldrich forest… It just feels so… AD&D.

Brennan: You nailed it! That’s exactly what we were referencing!

Anton: And you captured that feeling so well!

As someone who has gamed from a young age, it was a way to level the playing field. I’m disabled. I use a wheelchair. As a kid who couldn’t throw a ball or run around, I grew up with a lot of kids who were trying to navigate that space, in hospitals and stuff. Gaming was very equalizing. It helped me to understand who I was as a kid in relation to other people.

You came to gaming early as well working at these wonderful camps where you got to help people explore improv, not as a means of comedy, but as a means to explore empathy in the world. Can you talk about that a little bit? Because that’s wildly important to me, and I think it’s so rad that you did it.

Brennan: I’ve been really fortunate to be able to teach improv performance under a number of different circumstances. I worked a lot with kids on the spectrum, both as an after-school counselor and also as a camp counselor, within programming that was specifically designed for kids with ASD.

That has always been very meaningful to me. The power that it has, both for neurodivergent and neurotypical people to foster empathy, to socialize… It’s incredibly significant for youth and young people to have access to games like this.

One of the things I always talk about with teenagers and children with what role-playing games can do, is foster agency and choice. For a lot of reasons, you can’t give kids actual freedom over their lives. It’s irresponsible. You can’t have a six-year-old go “I’m moving to Boston. I’ll see you guys when I see you.”

But, on the other hand, it’s also harmful to have someone get to be 18 years old and have never made a meaningful decision in their lives. Having never experienced a consequence. Never made a mistake and learned from it.

So how do you afford agency and freedom to young people so they get practice at decision-making by the time they become an adult, but do so in an ethically responsible way? Role-playing games, L.A.R.P., tabletop… has this incredible ability to have people learn consequence in a way that feels really impactful. You make a bad decision in a role-playing game, your whole party dies.

That is felt, and it’s consequence-free for you as the kid. Nothing bad has happened to you. But oh my god, that lesson totally changes your brain forever. And I think that’s an incredibly valuable thing across the spectrum for all the kids I’ve worked with as a teacher, as a counselor, as a tutor. It’s an incredibly valuable teaching tool.

Anton: I love that and I appreciate you talking about it for a second. I feel like it’s an unsung part of the hobby, and I know that, for me, the ability it has to give that agency is so powerful.

I’ve been running games since I was eleven or twelve, and currently, I still run a weekly game with my friends who work in very public spaces. It’s our game. It’s where we get together and have a good time just for us. I’m curious about that, too, with all the production and the writing and everything, do you have time to actually just enjoy a home game?

Brennan: Anton, I am still running my 14-year-old home game.

Anton: That makes me so happy! You do so much for our community. I’m a Games Director, and I’m constantly directing kids who are coming up and they’re like “I have an RPG. I’m fresh out of college and I have this concept” and I’m always kind of pushing them to Dimension 20. Places like Critical Role, and I’m like “Watch and learn.” Watch to see worldbuilding, and how players interact, but it’s different for players at a table than it is for players in front of the camera. They’re two vastly different games. You have to understand both if you want to make games.

I always get kind of worried that guys who are working so much in the public space don’t really have a chance to just enjoy yourselves at a table, because it’s fun! It’s why we do it. It really warms my heart that you’re still getting to play. That makes me happy.

Brennan: You’re running a weekly game? God damn. That’s a monster.

Anton: I have a guy who works on comics. He sometimes does 2-3 pages a day. He’s a powerhouse for some of the big guys. He still drops everything to show up every week. We have a great time. We’ve been doing it for years and years. We have a voice actor who’s amazing and busy, she still shows up.

The whole table, we just get together. It’s what we do. It’s our free time. We used to record it, and then along the way we just kind of decided we wanted something to be… not public. Just for us. So that’s what we do.

Brennan: I love that. That’s really important, that’s so awesome!

Anton: Now, do you workshop stuff in your home game for things that you implement later? Like game mechanics?

Brennan: The home game’s still 3.5. So it’s very crunchy old dinosaur land over there.

Anton: I love 3.0/3.5 so all good.

Brennan: It’s so good! It’s so busted. There are so many classes.

Anton: So good.

Brennan: I miss prestige classes. I miss prestige classes from 3.5 and I miss weapon speed from AD&D. Those are the things I miss. And they have a weapons feat system in 5e, but it’s a variant.

Anton: I get it.

I know we are running close on time. Is there anything you can tell us about that is on the horizon. No spoilers. Is there anything that is coming up you can give us insight on? 

Brennan: There are a couple of sidequests we have already shot and a core season that I think are some of the best things we have ever done and I can not wait.

Anton: I’m so excited. Thank you so much. Thank you for taking the time today. Thank you for everything you do. You are truly one of the best.

Brennan: Anton. A delight a pleasure and an honor talking to you my friend. Really awesome getting to meet you. Thank you

 

Until next time, go watch Dungeons and Drag Queens on Dropout. If you are not subscribed to Dropout yet give it a chance. There are so many fun shows there and it really is a delightful departure from some of the same old same old hum drum streaming platforms.

Also, know from me to you, Brennan is the real deal. He loves gaming and cares about world-building and storytelling in a way that makes me proud to know he is part of the vanguard of our community. In my world, you do not get a lot of chances to sit down with people who absolutely love the game and the culture and do it for the joy of it all and when you do it’s so fun to just connect over something that means so much to both sides of the conversation.