Fantasy High’s Junior Year is actual play’s teenage rebellion

polygon.com:

When Dimension 20’s hit Dungeons & Dragons actual-play series, Fantasy High, first premiered in 2018, the medium itself was just starting to come into focus. A decade after Penny Arcade got things started with Acquisitions Incorporated, the format had three distinct expressions: livestreaming weekly content in the style of Critical Role, a regular drop of podcast episodes à la The Adventure Zone, or prerecorded, short-form, gimmick-forward productions like HarmonQuest. Others had tried to get traction with fickle audiences, but long-form, prerecorded tabletop role-play — akin to the more familiar mediums of TV and film — failed to make a lasting impact.

“It was all untested, right?” game master Brennan Lee Mulligan told Polygon in a recent interview. “Before, infreshman year [Fantasy High’s first season], you’re trying something new. Now we’re making a season of Internet Actual-Play Show Dimension 20. We walk into a dome that is bolted to the floor [rather than temporarily constructed] because Dimension 20 produces so many episodes a year that it has its own dedicated set at the Dropout studios.”

Fantasy High Junior Year is the third installment of the multifaceted coming-of-age story. It stars the Bad Kids — Emily Axford, Ally Beardsley, Brian Murphy, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson, and Lou Wilson — chaotically discovering who they are and who they want to become. But it’s not just the characters that are coming of age. It’s also the medium of actual play itself. Junior Year celebrates what brought them all together, while understanding the future of this cast — and actual play more broadly — holds even more potential.

And for good reason. Each season of Fantasy High has marked a transition for the medium. That first