Dimension 20’s latest venture Never Stop Blowing Up reinvents the TTRPG actual-play as a high-octane summer blockbuster. Though the dome’s action-packed outing may recollect genre staples like Die Hard, its behind-the-scenes origins more closely resemble a romantic comedy as Game Master Brennan Lee Mulligan crafted Never Stop Blowing Up as a gift to his wife, Isabella Roland.
In honor of Never Stop Blowing Up kicking off its adventure this week, Roland took to Instagram to grant fans insight into how the Dimension 20 season found its blood-soaked theme and aesthetic. “Brennan says he did this season as an homage to me,” Roland wrote, disclosing that all her favorite films are action comedies. Though Mulligan has both Game Mastered for and role played alongside Roland in many past Dimension 20 entries, Never Stop Blowing Up marked a special milestone for the pair as Roland was far along in her pregnancy with the couple’s first child while the season was being filmed.
“I laughed so hard everyone was scared I would go into labor,” Roland continued in her Instagram post about Never Stop Blowing Up, which she cited as her favorite career project. During Never Stop Blowing Up’s production, Mulligan and Roland’s pregnancy news was still publicly under wraps. Though the couple’s justifiably kept their newborn out of the spotlight, they’ve now publicly opened up about becoming parents and the technicalities of filming Dimension 20 while pregnant. In a subsequent post shared to her Instagram story, the comedian offered a further peak behind the curtain of her Never Stop Blowing Up pregnancy, complete with a massage-gun-wielding Mulligan.
Though Roland’s stage of pregnancy certainly represents a novelty in the dome, she and Mulligan were not the only cast members to join a Dimension 20 season on the precipice of parenthood. Burrow’s End roleplayer Jasper William Cartwright welcomed a baby shortly after the family-oriented Dungeons & Dragons season, opening up about the sentimental experience afterward on social media. When Mulligan and Roland’s news first went public, Cartwright commented: “Burrow’s End hits different AGAIN huh?” (via X).
As for Never Stop Blowing Up, the action comedy’s off to as raucous a start as Roland promised. The season’s stunts are coordinated in a version of the Kids on Bikes TTRPG system, one familiar to fans of past Dimension 20 outings Mentopolis and Misfits and Magic. Dome regulars Ally Beardsley, Ify Nwadiwe, Rekha Shankar, Alex Song-Xia, and first-timer Jacob Wysocki join Roland as a collection of average Joes transported into explosive VHS stardom.
Published: Jun 29, 2024 07:57 pm