Say hi, intrepid heroes! Critical Role’s Matt Mercer is making his way to Dimension 20 for its 17th season, The Ravening War. Dropout released a new trailer for the upcoming season earlier today, and we’re already excited for the first episode to premiere on May 10. Like previous Dimension 20 seasons, new episodes will come out every following Wednesday.
What’s Dimension 20?
Dimension 20 is an “actual play” show, meaning it’s an unscripted show about a group of people playing a tabletop roleplaying game (TTRPG). In Dimension 20’s case, the TTRPG in question is usually Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition, or a variant thereof.
CollegeHumor first produced the show in 2018 as one of the flagship titles for its then-new streaming service, Dropout. Since then, the show has released 16 seasons, each with its own campaign and story arc. Brennan Lee Mulligan, who created the show, has been the Game Master (GM) for the main seasons so far, but several guest GMs have run smaller side quests, including Aabria Iyengar, Jasmine Bhullar, and Gabe Hicks.
Dimension 20’s latest season, which ended on April 12, 2023, was called Neverafter, a horror take on popular fairy tales like “Sleeping Beauty” and “Little Red Riding Hood.” It was a main intrepid heroes season, featuring Brennan Lee Mulligan as the GM and the original six Dimension 20 cast members (Brian Murphy, Zac Oyama, Lou Wilson, Ally Beardsley, Emily Axford, and Siobhan Thompson) as player characters.
Because Dimension 20 films months in advance and rotates between GMs and cast members, it’s able to produce a pretty steady stream of content, with weekly episodes and only about a month in between seasons.
The Ravening War: the important details
The Ravening War will be six episodes long, airing weekly starting on Wednesday, May 10 at 7 p.m. ET. A corresponding Adventuring Party, the Dimension 20 talkback series with the cast, will air every Thursday.
Matt Mercer will be the GM, and he will be using Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition. This season was filmed in person and will use physical battlesets.
A Crown of Candy‘s character designer, Samir Barrett, is returning for this season.
There is currently no new information on what the next season after The Ravening War will be.
New Dimension 20 season plot
The new Dimension 20 season is The Ravening War, a spinoff of A Crown of Candy, which was an intrepid heroes season that aired in 2020. A Crown of Candy was a gritty, Game of Thrones–like medieval fantasy show—set in a world that looked like a game of Candyland.
The Ravening War takes place 20 years earlier, during the war that established the Concord as the ruling power over all of the six kingdoms of Calorum. However, where the player characters of the previous story were all candy people from Candia, this season’s players are from some of the other kingdoms: The Meat Lands, the Dairy Islands, Fructera, and Vegetania.
A Crown of Candy was a darker season than the comedic Dimension 20 usually airs, notable for multiple player character deaths and a constantly raising stakes. It’s currently unclear whether The Ravening War will have a similar body count or will take a slightly lighter tone.
While The Ravening War takes place in the same world as A Crown of Candy, it’s a prequel, so it does not require any knowledge of past seasons. If you’d like to catch up, all 17 episodes of A Crown of Candy are currently streaming on Dropout. As a bonus, you can also watch Lou Wilson gift his character’s sword, Payment Day, to actor Chris Pine on the set of Jimmy Kimmel Live! on Hulu or YouTube.
New Dimension 20 season cast
Critical Role’s Matt Mercer will be taking the GM seat for Dimension 20’s 17th season, and joining him at the table will be the “scrumptious scoundrels”:
Anjali Bhimani as Lady Amangeaux Epicèe du Peche, a mango and the king of Vegetania’s widow
Aabria Iyengar as Karna Solara, a chili pepper from Fructera
Brennan Lee Mulligan as Bishop Raphaniel Charlock, a radish from Vegetania
Lou Wilson as Thane Delissandro Katzon, a meat man from The Meat Lands
Zac Oyama as Colin Provolone, a stinky cheese man from The Dairy Islands
While Aabria, Brennan, Lou, and Zac are familiar names to Dimension 20 viewers, this is Anjali Bhimani’s first time in the dome. You might recognize her voice as Symmetra from Overwatch or her face from Ms. Marvel, but Critical Role fans know her as Fy’ra Rai from Exandria Unlimited. She was also in three episodes of The Legend of Vox Machina on Amazon Prime Video.
Who’s Matt Mercer?
Matt Mercer is the GM for Critical Role, an independent Dungeons & Dragons actual play show that hosts livestreams on Thursdays. Critical Role has seen massive success in recent years, generating several spin-off comic books and (at least!) two seasons of an animated show, making it Dimension 20’s main competitor.
Instead of a rivalry, however, the two shows often borrow from one another; Brennan Lee Mulligan has run a short season of Critical Role (Exandria Unlimited: Calamity), and the two shows have shared cast members before, including Marisha Ray, Lou Wilson, and Aabria Iyengar. But Matt Mercer has never run a season of Dimension 20 (although he has appeared as a guest player twice), which is why this upcoming sidequest is so exciting to fans of both shows.
How to watch the new Dimension 20 season
The new Dimension 20 season will only be available to Dropout subscribers, although CollegeHumor will post the first episode for free on YouTube on May 17.
You can gain access to Dropout shows like Dimension 20, Game Changer, and Um, Actually by subscribing directly to Dropout through its website or app for $5.99/mo. or $59.99/yr..
Pro tip: As of April 19, Dropout is running a limited-time promotion where new subscribers can get 20% off their first year with the promo code FULLYEAR20.
If you don’t want to download a new app, you can alternatively subscribe to Dropout through CollegeHumor’s members-only section of its YouTube channel. (That’s the “Join” button next to the “Subscribe” button, if you’re unfamiliar with this little-used YouTube feature). This option is $4.99/mo., and while it doesn’t provide members with access to the Dropout app, it does allow members to view all of Dropout’s content through YouTube. The advantage here is engaging in live chat and comments sections, which is something the Dropout app lacks.
If you want a taste of Dropout content for free, Dropout always offers a 3-day free trial to new subscribers. Although if you’re going this route to watch The Ravening War for free, we recommend waiting a bit, since the new season doesn’t start until May 10. As a reminder, Dimension 20 airs weekly, not all at once, so you have to stick around for more than three days to watch the whole season unless you wait until it ends on June 14 (and risk spoilers).
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What’s Dropout?
Dropout is CollegeHumor’s streaming service, originally conceived as an addition to CH’s YouTube channel, although it’s since become the exclusive home for most content produced by the company. Its content is perhaps best described as reality TV for nerds: Its currently running shows are mostly unscripted, each falling somewhere on a scale between game shows and improv comedy. Dimension 20 falls furthest on the improv comedy side of the scale, but most of its other titles are closer to game shows.
Dropout is $5.99/mo. or $59.99/yr., and you can subscribe through the Dropout website or app, or by paying for membership to CollegeHumor’s YouTube channel.
Olivia Bono loves entertainment, and she’s never going to shut up about it. Here at CableTV.com, you’ll find her writing about the wild world of streaming. Her specialty is animation—you can find much of her work at our anime hub page. Olivia previously wrote for the Cornell Daily Sun, where in addition to television, she reviewed movies, albums, and video games. Outside of work, she loves to listen to audiobooks, make art, and spend time outdoors.
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