For Dimension 20’s next campaign, Burrow’s End, Aabria Iyengar needs you to trust her

polygon.com:

It’s been a challenging month for Aabria Iyengar, possibly the most terminally online game master in the wild world of professional actual play. She’s appeared on just about every major show as either player or GM, but she’s returned most often to comedy platform Dropout’s anthology series Dimension 20, where she was the first-ever guest GM in 2021 and now leads the show’s landmark 20th season, Burrow’s End.

The trailer sparked both surprise and speculation among the show’s biggest fans. Familiar faces Brennan Lee Mulligan, Erika Ishii, and Isabella Roland welcome Rashawn Nadine Scott (also seen on Dropout’s Make Some Noise) and Jasper William Cartwright (Three Black Halflings) to the Dome. But the trailer contained not a single joke. Also, the cast is playing as an extended family of stoats, small mammals that most closely resemble weasels. And it’s all in the service of a game of… Dungeons & Dragons?

Polygon sat down with Iyengar for a conversation about the development of the season, when to lean into audience expectations versus thwarting them, why she chose D&D for this season in the first place, and how the first episode provided hints for only part of what comes next.

To start, one fan wish was granted: WhenDimension 20 DM Brennan Lee Mulligan visited Critical Role to run Exandria Unlimited: Calamity, his opening word was the alarming “fire.” When Critical Role DM Matthew Mercer did a reciprocal guest turn for Dimension 20’s The Ravening War, his narration began with the word “water.” And now Iyengar, who played in both miniseries, takes her elemental turn to start with “earth.” But that, Iyengar says, was where fan service ended: “One audience expectation done, everything else: Just buckle the fuck up and you’re