The following contains light spoilers for the first two episodes of Dimension 20: Burrow's End, now streaming on Dropout.
Burrow's End is the 20th season of Dimension 20. In that time, the Dropout TTRPG series has taken players and audiences to ridiculously goofy worlds, like the high school/high fantasy fusion of Fantasy High or the nightmarish fairytales of Nevermore. By contrast, Burrow's End -- DM'ed by Aabria Iyengar -- is a far more grounded story, focusing on a family of stoats who are struggling to survive in a dangerous and mysterious forest after their Burrow is destroyed, and who discover a supernatural presence along the way.
It's proven to be a fascinating challenge for the show's cast, including seasoned players Siobhan Thompson and Erika Ishii. During an interview with CBR for Burrow's End, Siobhan (who plays Jaysohn) and Erika (who portrays Ava) sat down to discuss the most dramatic season of Dimension 20 yet. They also reflected on the evolution of their original concepts into concrete characters, finding comedy in a more dedicated family unit, and teased the long-awaited return to Fantasy High.
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CBR: Siobhan, you've gotten to play a lot of different kinds of characters in Dimension 20, by virtue of the show shifting story and setting so frequently. What excites you about stepping into characters like Jaysohn in Burrow's End?
Siobhan Thompson: The great thing about Dimension 20 is that I can stretch myself as an actor and do things very different from the last thing I did. That's always what I'm trying to do, and really try out as many hats as possible. I really get to push myself, and because it's [a] Dungeons & Dragons [series], I can play a high-class woman and then be an eight-year-old boy. Everybody accepts that and that's great.
What I love about that kind of kid is that they are so in the present. They can be having a good time or a bad time, but that has nothing to do with anything that's going on around them. You can just be full of positivity and excitement and energy, even when you know the adults are having a bad time.
Jaysohn has a Wisdom of 20. The way that I justified that in my brain is just that child's intuition. He notices everything. He's really so quick, in that way that child gymnasts are. That child is doing things with their body that no adult can do. They're just... swinging themselves around because they're very in touch with exactly what their body can do... That's how I defined wisdom for Jaysohn. Not like druid wisdom; it's just really being in touch with what his body can do and being able to react as quickly as possible
Erika, you've been in past seasons of Dimension 20 as well, but this time the inherent dynamic is different. It's not evil co-workers of the Dark Lord or new students at a magical school, it's an actual family unit. What excited you the most about stepping into this kind of dynamic -- especially as the Grandmother as likely to attack as she is to console?
Erika Ishii: Honestly, I was the most excited to have a table full of absolute killers. [People] who I knew could really support [me] and be able to play along with that and make it funny. There's a razor's edge between Ava being truly an upsetting character to watch.
Siobhan: 3 Charisma!
Erika: 3 Charisma. I rolled it and I said, "I gotta keep it." I rolled so high on the [other skills], I had to keep it. Just the fact that I knew that every single person at the table would know how to interact with her, to help push that funny and not take it personally as people. We all have families, we could all sort of play with that. It felt really safe and good at that table.
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How much did you come into this season planning to mess with Brennan as his mother?
Erika: In character creation, it's all of us sitting around a table and throwing out ideas. We were told no hats [Laughter]. It all started to evolve. I think Siobhan was the first one to drill down on a character and it was "Karate Boy."
Siobahn: I came up with the name, and Brennan improvised somebody yelling his name. It was like, yep, that's the character.
Erika: Then we're like, "Okay, where do we go from here?" So it became the family set-up. I was the last one to go. I was like, "Well, you need a third generation. I'll be the grandma." I was probably going through family stuff at the [time]. I was looking at our generation and the stories we tell regarding generational trauma, and how the older generation is doing their best and they love us, but they have a different script than you do... In a lot of other groups, they could think I was too mean. But for this group, it's like, "Oh, I could get in and poke at that." I remember when I was like "I'll be the grandma," Brennan was like, "Am I your favorite? Which child do you like best?" I said "You're not my favorite." We were like, there it is. That's the character.
Something that separates this season from past ones is that Burrow's End is a more realistic and inherently dramatic season of Dimension 20.
Siobahn: I think it's probably the most serious season that we've done. I think that the comedy that we have is very much situational comedy. It's not bits, it's just funny in the way that life is funny.
Erika: That's a perfect way of putting it. We're coming up with [these stories] on the fly, by the skin of our teeth. The temptation is to stop the story and do a bit because these are all just funny people who I like doing little bits with, even outside of [Dimension 20]. But for this one, it was just so immersive, fom the set to Aabria and the way she wove it to everybody's acting jobs. I just had to get carried along with everybody else in the story and the character interactions.
The humor just came from that, because they're all extremely funny people. Even things that in real life would be very tragic [were] very funny for us. It was so interesting to see the trailer, too -- there were no big jokes. It was all that throughline of a children's story. Just Aabria's narration and us living that truth. But also knowing that there are times that I laughed so hard, that I cried on that set.
Siobhan: It's always so amazing to me, as somebody who doesn't really DM, how quickly they manage to build these narratives. Because when we went into character creation, we weren't even necessarily going to be a family. It would have been an entirely different thing. That's something that we came up with in the room.
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Rolling with the wild creations from Rick Perry and the rest of the minis seems like it can be tricky, as evidenced by the bear carcass map in Burrow's End.
Siobhan: Absolutely repulsive.
How do you stay grounded in a scene when that's the sort of thing being revealed on the table?
Siobhan: We as a group have worked really hard to make sure when we're at the table, [we have to] be like, "Okay, this is where we are." If you start thinking this is crazy, this is amazing, look at all this beautiful art [that] this huge team of incredible artists has put an incredible amount of work into, and there are lights and cameras and all of these beautiful backdrops that we have now, and millions of people are watching the show -- you can't think like that. Once you're at the table, you just have to be like, "This is just a normal day. I'm having a normal day with my good friends playing a fun game of Dungeons & Dragons just for me."
What were some of your favorite relationships to play with this season?
Siobhan: I especially love Erika's character in this season. Pulling out Werther's Originals that were warm from their pocket, it was really the full grandma experience... It was the most it has felt like doing a play that I've done on Dimension 20. We shot it very quickly. Somebody got COVID; I don't even remember who got COVID. But we shot [all of Burrow's End] within ten days, I think.
Erika: It was an absolute sprint, because we were caught between safety and health. And then they were starting up a new season right after. There was only a couple of days of turnaround.
Siobhan: It was really fun in that way... Everybody's just a theatre kid. We really let our theatre kid kids out this time around.
Siobhan, with the announcement of Fantasy High returning for a third season -- the first time that's happened in Dimension 20 -- what are you most excited for in getting to come back to Adaine Abernant?
Siobhan: We took a while to do it because we wanted to do it right... But I really love what we managed to do this season. It's a silly, goofy season. There's a lot of spoofs and a lot of goofs. And there's nobody that I like goofing around with more [than this group]. It's just so fun, being silly. And it's nice, with Adaine this season... I enjoyed playing at it again.
The Dimension 20 fans are so incredibly good at scoping [out] clues. I remember the first time it really happened was the trailer for A Crown of Candy. [The trailer] dropped and within five minutes they were like, "Okay, if you zoom in on this timestamp, you can see the top of Lou's character sheet, and you can see that his saving throws bubbled out strength and constitution, which means that he's probably a Barbarian." You watch this detective work, it's amazing.
