28 seasons is a lot. That number alone is enough to make any newcomer close the Dropout tab and go do something easier, like finishing a FromSoftware game. But Dimension 20, the live-play D&D series from Brennan Lee Mulligan and the Dropout network, has become one of the most popular tabletop shows on the internet for good reason. It sold out Madison Square Garden. It has a Webtoon adaptation. Fans have been demanding sequels for years.
The key here is that you do not need to start at the beginning. Season 1 is the opening chapter of the single longest campaign in the entire series. Starting there is a commitment most newcomers are not ready for. The good news is that most D20 seasons are self-contained, and several are available for free on YouTube before you spend a cent on a Dropout subscription.
Here are the 6 best entry points, matched to what you are actually looking for.
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The easiest on-ramp: Escape From the Bloodkeep
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan Players: Erika Ishii, Matthew Mercer, Ify Nwadiwe, Rekha Shankar, Mike Trapp, Amy Vorpahl
Six episodes. All of them free on YouTube. That alone makes Escape From the Bloodkeep the single most accessible entry point in the entire catalog.
The premise is sharp: when the Lord of Shadows gets assassinated by the forces of good, his six closest advisors have to figure out what comes next. It is a Lord of the Rings parody told entirely from the villain's perspective, and it plays less like dark fantasy and more like a workplace sitcom where the body count keeps climbing. The jokes land because the people making them grew up loving the source material.
What most players miss about Bloodkeep is how well it demonstrates the unpredictable nature of tabletop RPGs. Mulligan has said publicly that the campaign did not end the way he planned, because the players made choices he never anticipated. For anyone curious about TTRPGs as a hobby, that lesson alone is worth six episodes of your time.
If you want pure comedy: Never Stop Blowing Up
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan Players: Ally Beardsley, Ify Nwadiwe, Isabella Roland, Rekha Shankar, Alex Song-Xia, Jacob Wysocki
The most common criticism of D20 is that its regular cast are professional comedians, which means every season, regardless of genre, ends up being a comedy. Never Stop Blowing Up leans into that completely and comes out the other side as possibly the funniest season in the show's run.
The setup: the staff of a failing small-town video store gets pulled into the universe inside a magical VHS tape, where everyone becomes a different kind of action hero and physics are optional. It runs on a modified Kids on Bikes system built for maximum cinematic chaos. Once the players figure out how to break the rules, and that is part of the point, it becomes an Expendables movie with an infinite budget and zero consequences.
Wysocki and Nwadiwe compete to outdo each other's body counts. Shankar is at her most unhinged. Roland, who was eight months pregnant during filming, nearly laughs herself sick on camera. NSBU captures that specific TTRPG experience where the jokes start feeding back on each other and something accidentally becomes the funniest thing anyone in the room has ever seen.
For D&D players specifically: Fantasy High Freshman Year
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan Players: Emily Axford, Ally Beardsley, Brian Murphy, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, Lou Wilson
Fantasy High is where D20 began and still arguably the center of the whole series. The pitch is simple: what if The Breakfast Club, but Dungeons & Dragons. A school that trains children to become adventurers, defined here as wandering maniacs who solve problems with violence.
The reason it is not the default first recommendation for total newcomers is the length. Freshman Year is 20 episodes, and it is the opening chapter of a subseries with 3 full campaigns and 6 one-shot specials. Getting current means weeks of watching. That is not a Critical Role-sized commitment, but it is still significant.
If the length does not put you off, Freshman Year is genuinely worth it. A couple of the players were new to D&D when filming began, so the basic systems get explained naturally along the way. The world that Mulligan builds is a loving but merciless parody of the entire D&D fictional ecosystem, and it gets richer with every season.
For horror fans who like their scares camp: Coffin Run
GM: Jasmine Bhullar Players: Erika Ishii, Carlos Luna, Zac Oyama, Isabella Roland
Coffin Run does not get talked about enough. It is one of the more ambitious D20 seasons, and also one of the most underrated.
Four members of Dracula's inner circle are tasked with transporting his corpse back to his castle across hostile territory. Enemy werewolves, vampire hunters, and distant relatives trying to seize his assets all stand in the way. Jasmine Bhullar is the only GM outside of Mulligan to run a full D20 season so far, and she brings Hammer horror energy that the show rarely touches otherwise. Think Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein, not prestige horror.
At six episodes, it never overstays its welcome. If you grew up on old monster movies and B-horror comedies, this is the season that was made for you.
For science fiction fans: A Starstruck Odyssey
GM: Brennan Lee Mulligan Players: Emily Axford, Ally Beardsley, Brian Murphy, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, Lou Wilson
Here is the thing: A Starstruck Odyssey has a backstory that makes it unlike any other D20 season. Mulligan adapted the setting from Starstruck, a space opera comic series written by his mother, Elaine Lee, based on her 1980 stage play. The comic has been published by Marvel's Epic imprint, IDW, Dark Horse, and Heavy Metal magazine. At least one session of the campaign was played with Lee in the room.
The setting is the AnarchEra, the lawless period between the fall of one government and whatever comes next. The players take on the universe as the crew of the Wurst, a team of mercenaries being crushed by debt and bad history who slowly start to turn it around. It is a rags-to-riches story that earns its ending. Beardsley in particular locks in as a player in a way that fans still talk about.
The closest fictional comparison is Iain Banks' Culture novels: a distant future where humanity has spread across the galaxy and used that freedom to become permanently, irreversibly weird. Fans have been asking for a sequel for years.
For former Harry Potter fans: Misfits and Magic
GM: Aabria Iyengar Players: Erika Ishii, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Danielle Radford, Lou Wilson
Misfits and Magic is a pointed satire of the Harry Potter universe, made at the exact moment when the franchise's cultural reputation was starting to collapse. Other D20 parody seasons are affectionate. This one has an edge.
Four American teenagers are recruited to a very British magical academy and immediately start questioning everything about how magical society operates, sometimes because the rules seem wrong, and sometimes just on principle. The first season is only four episodes and is available in full on YouTube. Aabria Iyengar runs it with a confidence that makes her one of the standout GMs in the show's history.
An 11-episode second season followed in 2024, tracking the same characters into adulthood. If the first four episodes grab you, there is a lot more waiting.
Why the entry point matters more than you think
The 28-season catalog of D20 is not uniform. Some seasons are funnier, some are darker, some are tighter, and some run longer than they probably should. Picking the wrong one first is a real risk, and bouncing off an early season does not mean the show is not for you.
What most players miss is that D20 is genuinely modular. You can watch Bloodkeep or Misfits and Magic in a weekend with no prior knowledge and get a complete, satisfying story. The longer campaigns reward the investment, but they are not the only way in.
For more on narrative-driven games and the mechanics that power them, the Diablo 4 Season 14 release date guide and the rest of our gaming guides cover the systems side of things if you want to take your TTRPG curiosity somewhere more interactive. And if character-driven storytelling with meaningful decisions is what drew you to D20 in the first place, the breakdown of Directive 8020 character destinies shows how that same design philosophy plays out in a video game format.
