Dungeons and Dragons Launches Official Actual-Play Show

Hasbro’s Wizards of the Coast is putting their trademarked D back in DM-ing with the launch of a new “Dungeons & Dragons” actual-play TV series.

Launching with its first two episodes available on YouTube on April 22 at 6:30 p.m. PT, the new show, titled “Dungeon Masters,” stars Jasmine Bhullar (“DesiQuest,” “Dimension 20”) as the Dungeon Master along with players Mayanna Berrin (“Dispatch,” “StoryQuest”), Christian Navarro (“13 Reasons Why,” “Forgotten Realms: Tears of Selune”), Neil Newbon (“Baldur’s Gate III”) and Devora Wilde (“Baldur’s Gate III”).

For the uninitiated, an actual play show features people who are really playing “Dungeons & Dragons,” or another table-top roleplaying game. The format has become widely popularized in recent years through the web series “Critical Role” and Dropout’s “Dimension 20,” both of which focus on D&D-style game mechanics, but without using the official D&D products or licensing. (Instead of Dungeon Masters, you have game masters.)

Wizards says “Dungeon Masters” is meant “to appeal to a wide audience of D&D veterans, newcomers and everyone in between.”

“We have to court an existing audience. When we look at how ‘Baldur’s Gate III’ and ‘Stranger Things,’ and the ‘D&D’ movie expanded the fandom and the number of people in the hobby as a whole, I know my goal coming into this, and to a certain extend, Wizards’ goal coming into this, is to expand this hobby that we all love,” Bhullar told Variety. “So if somebody who’s never watched an actual play watches ours and goes and says, I want to run my own game of ‘D&D,’ then I think we’ve done our jobs well. Courting an audience outside of actual play is part of our goal.”

Episodes will drop weekly and showcase official, unreleased D&D content, which will be available to play on online platform D&D Beyond directly following each episode. The show’s first storyline will be a tie-in for Wizards’ newly announced campaign product “Ravenloft: The Horrors Within,” which will release June 16.

Per Wizards’ description for “Dungeon Masters,” “The first campaign arc unfolds within the world of Ravenloft, plunging viewers into a dark and atmospheric setting filled with mystery, suspense, and gothic horror.”

As for the cast, the players can only tease so much about the first campaign so far, but did give hints about their characters’ motivations.

“The player characters are not known to the fans, to the people watching,” Navarro. “So I think that that’s a really unique experience as well, is that they might know the characters that we’re encountering, and we might know the characters we’re encountering, but obviously the stories and the characters we’re playing don’t. So that’s a new experience and something exciting and really vibrant.”

“I’m playing a cleric. I’m playing a grave domain cleric, which is very spooky and interesting,” Berrin said. It doesn’t have an official deity, so Jasmine was very kind to help me choose one which is, Auril, which is great because ‘Rime of the Frostmaiden’ is a very close-to-my-heart campaign as well. Wesley’s a spooky lady. She’s intense.”

“I think it’d be safe to say that all of our characters have secrets and quite complicated backstories,” Wilde said. “And it’s gonna be very interesting. I’m playing a hexblood shadow sorcerer elf with things that she’s hiding from everybody.”

“Baldur’s Gate III” actor Newbon added: “Those of us that have been familiar with doing the settings for a long time, there’s a wonderful familiarity of and also sort of genuine excitement, almost like fanning over characters. It’s really exciting, because then you don’t know quite how the DM is going to weave the story with them coming into it, but there’s a certain amount of excitement that comes with the nostalgia of these characters that we’ve grown up with.”

Featuring an original score by Grammy-nominated composer David Arkenstone and a state-of-the-art set (including a dice cam), “Dungeon Masters” is a big bet from Wizards on just how big the actual-play genre will be to the future of “D&D.”

“’Dungeon Masters’ brings a truly authentic and original experience to our fans, with all of the fun, high-tension moments, drama and adventure built from official D&D material,” Wizards of the Coast senior vice president and head of Dungeons & Dragons, Dan Ayoub, said. “In many ways, ‘Dungeon Masters’ is our love letter to the actual play shows that have introduced so many to D&D. Our aim with ‘Dungeon Masters’ is to crystallize all that’s great about actual play – the tension, drama, and unpredictable nature – and put our stamp on it with upcoming official source material. We’re so excited to see how ‘Dungeon Masters’ can inspire even more adventure from our players, and in turn, see how they inspire us to make the show better and better.”

See below for a first look at the “Dungeon Masters” set, the cast, and the characters they will be playing in the upcoming first campaign.

Wizards of the Coast

Wizards of the Coast

Wizards of the Coast

Wizards of the Coast