Over the last week, I finally cleared my podcast backlog and dove head-first into Dropout TV. I’ve seen tons of great clips, heard many great things, and wanted to get into the channel for a long time, but I’ve been in a position where I wasn’t really spending a lot of time watching things. I had a massive video game backlog, so most of my non-video game media consumption was listening to podcasts while driving, working out, doing chores/cooking, and playing video games. Something I could enjoy while my attention was moderately occupied elsewhere. Now that I have more attention to give and fewer video games to give my attention to, I loaded up my tablet, logged into the account I share with my sister, and started watching Dimension20 from the very beginning. Sure, I could have watching Fantasy High: Freshman Year for free on YouTube, but I figured I might as well use the account while I’ve got it. I’ll also admit that I dragged my heels on starting any new actual-play visual media because I got super burned out on Critical Role and have never really gotten hooked on any of the other video-centric actual play shows despite really wanting to. I was worried the same thing would happen here.

Turns out, I didn’t need to worry. The more-produced/edited nature of Dimension20 keeps the show in smaller chunks. There doesn’t seem to be as much production and editing in this first season, but I’ve heard there is more as the seasons go on since there’s more and more effects beyond what is mostly just drama shots on the maps the the DM uses. It probably helps my quick investment in this series that I know most of the players in this game from other things (I’ve been a fan of Not Another D&D Podcast for a while now and everyone else involved in this season except Ally Beardsly has appeared there at one time or another), but it’s been incredibly engaging to watch, especially knowing that it was probably going to be fewer than twenty episodes and maybe about thirty to thirty-five hours of media in the whole campaign. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve gotten pretty tired of massive, long-running things that never end and I just really want to reiterate how much I appreciate the relatively modest run-time of the entirety of this first season of Dimension20.

I’m also listening to Worlds Beyond Number, a podcast starring four frequent participants from Dimension20, which has a Patreon-only off-weeks show where the group gets together to discuss what happened in the latest episode and answer questions posted from their patrons. They’ve mentioned many times how most of their experience as players and GMs in a show-based format (and much of their recent tabletop experience as a whole) comes from appearing in limited-run campaigns, usually in the context of talking about how deep their current roleplaying experience is. This group of people I expect I’ll be seeing a lot of as I watching through Dimension20 frequently talks about how nice it is to have the time and space to do a longer format game, to take their characters on a journey that doesn’t need to fit into the relatively small campaign format of shows like Dimension20, where each character gets maybe one significant plot moment and has to either wrap their character development into that moment or find a way to shoehorn it in as they work through the somewhat more plot-focused campaign they need to play to make the show work. As I watch through Dimension20, I think I understand their perspective a bit better.

I mean, first of all, as a player and GM, I love longer games. As someone who wants to fit a little bit of a show into their busy schedule, though, I prefer shorter stuff. I know that you can pretty easily turn a longer-running session into a couple episodes of a podcast or a stream (I mean, there’s definitely points where I can see hints at the cutting being done in actual play podcasts and pre-recorded video streams, though sometimes only when someone in the podcast or video comments on it) and I generally prefer it when that’s being done for videos, but I get how that can be stifling to the people making the show. I understand how adding the “keep it short” pressure on top of the “make sure it’s entertaining” pressure can make it difficult to really enjoy yourself. I’m sure I’ll see it more and more as I watch later seasons of Dimension20, where they’ve got a schedule to keep and runtimes to consider. Sure, some of this type of stuff can probably be worked around, but there don’t seem to be a large number of sequels in the Dimension20 catalogue yet, aside from Fantasy High, which is getting its third season in literally two days. I expect some of this will change in the coming years as the company has not only recovered enough to start expanding their list of shows, but to drop the College Humor branding that is pretty much all that remained from its past (aside from, you know, all the old videos and stuff that they keep up on YouTube and Dropout).

I don’t really have a lot to say about the shows as shows at this point. I’m still rushing pellmell toward the end of Fantasy High: Freshman Year (as I’m writing this, anyway), so I’m saving my conclusions and thoughts about the show until I’ve had time to finish a full campaign and digest it a bit. Once that’s done, I’ll probably write more about Fantasy High, the way it makes me want to run Dungeons & Dragons again (for the first time in almost a year at this point), and the story telling they manage to do in this comparatively much shorter format. I’ve already got a lot of thoughts, but I had enough to talk about with just the entire premise of Dimension20 and my first foray into Dropout TV. Nothing wrong with NOT producing a two to three thousand word blog post about adults roleplaying teenagers and the juxtaposition of typical D&D adventures with a modern-adjacent marginally functional society while also commenting about the service that story is being told on. It’s fine to focus on one thing at a time. Which is why I really appreciate that Dropout TV will let me pick a show and just watching my way through it in release order with minimal fuss. It’s really pleasant, considering that this relatively small company has essentially homebrewed their own streaming platform. My only gripe is that I can’t watch it on my PlayStation, so I’m just watching it on my tablet instead. Which, to be fair, is giving my tablet more use than it has ever had since the whole “use it for running TTRPGs” thing fell apart six months after I bought it when my Sunday campaign fell apart and then the pandemic ended any need for me to have a highly portable screen at my fingertips.