Dimension 20 sold out Madison Square Garden in January 2025. Nearly 20,000 people packed an arena to watch a group of performers play a tabletop roleplaying game. That is not a sentence that would have made sense a decade ago.
The show's mainstream breakthrough has brought a flood of curious new viewers to Dropout, and most of them face the same problem: where do you actually start? The catalog spans dozens of campaigns across multiple TTRPG systems, most of it locked behind a paid subscription. The sheer volume is the first thing that pushes people away.
Here's the thing, though. You do not need to start at the beginning, and you do not need to watch everything. These six campaigns cover different tastes, different time commitments, and different genres, so you can pick the one that fits and go from there.
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The free entry point: Escape from the Bloodkeep
Escape from the Bloodkeep is the smartest place to start for one simple reason: it costs nothing. The entire six-episode season is available on D20's official YouTube channel, no subscription required.
The premise is a Lord of the Rings parody told from the villains' perspective. When the Lord of Shadows is abruptly killed by the forces of good, his six closest advisers have to figure out what comes next. GM Brennan Lee Mulligan runs the table with players including Matthew Mercer, Erika Ishii, and Rekha Shankar.
What most players miss when they hear "villain parody" is that Bloodkeep is not dark or mean-spirited. It plays like a workplace sitcom where everyone happens to be a war criminal. The comedy lands because the cast genuinely loves the source material they're tearing apart. Six episodes is a small commitment, and it gives you a clean read on whether Mulligan's GM style works for you before you spend a cent.
If you want pure comedy: Never Stop Blowing Up
A recurring complaint about Dimension 20 is that its casts are too funny for the genres they're supposed to be playing straight. Never Stop Blowing Up leans into that completely and produces something extraordinary.
The setup is 1980s action movies colliding with isekai anime. Employees of a failing video store get pulled into the world inside a magical VHS tape, where each of them becomes a different variety of action-movie hero. The campaign runs on a heavily customized version of the Kids on Bikes system, tuned specifically to reward maximum cinematic excess. Physics are optional. Every gun magazine is bottomless. Consequences only need to last until the credits roll.
Once the players figure out how thoroughly they can break the system, the whole thing becomes an Expendables movie with an infinite budget. Jacob Wysocki and Ify Nwadiwe spend most of the campaign competing to outdo each other's body counts. The result is one of those rare viewing experiences where you feel like you're in on a private joke that somehow got funnier every time someone tried to top it.
For D&D players who want the full story: Fantasy High Freshman Year
Fantasy High: Freshman Year is D20's original campaign and still its flagship. The premise is The Breakfast Club set inside a game of Dungeons and Dragons, and from that single idea, Mulligan and the players build a surprisingly complete fantasy world that also functions as a loving, occasionally merciless parody of D&D's entire ecosystem.
The campaign takes place at Aguefort Adventuring Academy, a school that trains children to become adventurers, defined here as wandering maniacs who solve problems through violence. Several players were still learning D&D during filming, so the season naturally walks through the game's basic systems as it progresses. That makes it a genuine introduction to both the show and the game itself.
The catch is size. Freshman Year alone runs 17 episodes, and it opens a story that continues across two more full campaigns and multiple specials. If that sounds like exactly what you want, it is one of the best possible starting points. If you want something self-contained first, start elsewhere and come back.
For horror fans: Coffin Run
Coffin Run does not get the same attention as D20's bigger campaigns, but it earns a place on this list because it does something very specific very well.
The story follows four members of Dracula's inner circle who have been tasked with transporting his corpse back to his castle across hostile territory. GM Jasmine Bhullar fills the campaign with genuine Hammer-horror atmosphere while the players play it for laughs. The result is closer to Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein than anything actually frightening, and that is entirely the point.
At six episodes, it never overstays its welcome. Anyone with affection for classic monster movies should find it immediately comfortable. It also marks one of the few D20 seasons where Mulligan sits at the table as a player rather than behind the GM screen, which is worth seeing on its own.
For science fiction fans: A Starstruck Odyssey
A Starstruck Odyssey has one of the more unusual origin stories in D20's catalog. The campaign is set in the Starstruck universe created by Elaine Lee, a writer and playwright who published the original comics across Marvel's Epic imprint, IDW, Dark Horse, and Heavy Metal magazine. She is also Brennan Lee Mulligan's mother, and the campaign was made with her direct cooperation.
The setting is a distant future where humanity has spread across the galaxy and used advanced technology to become deeply, permanently strange. The AnarchEra, the lawless period between collapsed and not-yet-established governments, provides the backdrop. The Intrepid Heroes play the crew of the Wurst, a band of mercenaries drowning in debt and haunted by past mistakes.
Ally Beardsley delivers one of their strongest D20 performances as the crew's unlikely new leader, and the season builds toward a satisfying conclusion that fans have been asking Mulligan to revisit ever since. If you've ever wanted a tabletop campaign that plays like Iain M. Banks filtered through a chaotic heist movie, this is it. If you're looking for something to scratch a similar itch in game form, the Solasta II beginner's guide covers another D&D 5e experience worth your time.
For the sharpest satire: Misfits and Magic
Misfits and Magic is four episodes long, the first season is free on YouTube, and it produced some of the most viral moments in D20's history. That combination makes it one of the easiest recommendations on this list.
GM Aabria Iyengar runs a pointed satire of the Harry Potter universe, set at a very British magical academy where four American teenagers have just been recruited as new students. The campaign was made at a specific cultural moment, and the sharpness of its critique reflects that. Where other D20 parody seasons are affectionate, this one has an edge.
The 11-episode second season, which ran in 2024, follows the same characters as they each find their own way into adulthood. If the first four episodes hook you, there is a complete story waiting on the other side.
The key here is that Misfits and Magic uses the Kids on Bikes system, which is rules-light and fast-moving. That keeps the focus on character and story rather than mechanics, which makes it one of the most accessible seasons for viewers who have never played a TTRPG.
Where to go from here
All six of these campaigns work as standalone entry points. None of them require prior knowledge of the show or the game. The two free options, Bloodkeep and Misfits and Magic Season 1, give you a zero-cost way to test whether D20's format clicks for you before committing to a Dropout subscription.
For players who want to take their own tabletop adventures further, our gaming guides hub covers everything from D&D-adjacent video games to build optimization across the genre. And if you want to see how D&D-style class and build thinking translates to action RPGs, the Diablo 4 Season 14 tier list is a good read while you're waiting for your next episode to load.
