D&D reveals new official actual play show with all-star cast — and it's good

Dungeon Masters debuts on April 22 with a Ravenloft-themed D&D campaign

If you want to get some friends hooked on Dungeons & Dragons by showing them how the game looks and feels, but don't want to invite them to spectate a session, chances are you will direct them to Critical Role or some other popular actual play show. However, it's been years since D&D had an ongoing, official actual play, produced and managed by the game's publisher, Wizards of the Coast. Things are about to change, as today the D&D brand announced its new official show, Dungeon Masters.

Dungeon Masters is the official Dungeons & Dragons actual play series, designed to give fans a first look at new material while showcasing how the game looks when played at the table. The first season, dubbed Campaign Arc 1, centers around the Ravenloft setting, as presented in the upcoming Ravenloft: The Horrors Within book, part of D&D's Season of Horror. The campaign stars Jasmine Bhullar as the Dungeon Master, Neil Newborn as gnome artificer Professor Crem de la Crem, Devora Wilde as wood elf shadow sorcerer Zora Thornska, Christian Navarro as wood elf winter ranger Eloin Emberleaf, and Mayanna Berrin as drow grave domain cleric Wesley.

The campaign will premiere on April 22 on D&D's YouTube channel with the first two episodes, which Polygon received from Wizards in advance. The story begins with our group of heroes locked in battle in the middle of Baldur's Gate, a popular city on the Sword Coast of the Forgotten Realms. They are facing a terrible foe, a former assistant of Professor Crem who is now wielding dark magics supposedly beyond her power. Just when the fight looks bleakest, the group is spirited away to an even darker place: Ravenloft. Specifically, they are in Sithicus, one of the Realms of Dread that will be featured in the upcoming Ravenloft: The Horrors Within. Interesting, Sithicus was not included in 2021's Van Richten's Guide to Ravenloft, teasing that the upcoming Ravenloft campaign setting will feature locations that are still unexplored in D&D 5e (and its 5.5 revision).

Dungeon Masters viewers should not expect the four-hour D&D marathons that Critical Role is known for. Episodes of the new show are around one hour, and designed to drop you in the middle of the action. Unlike a typical actual play series, the overt goal is to inspire viewers to bring pieces of that experience to their own tables through Play-Along Packs, playable tie-ins that will be included in pre-orders of new D&D products, starting with the Ravenloft: The Horrors Within bundle. According to an official description provided to Polygon, each Season will have one Play-Along Pack and each episode of a Dungeon Masters campaign will have an associated encounter in the Play-Along Pack that drops on Thursday at 9:00 AM PT after the episode airs. The first encounter of every season’s pack can be claimed for free on D&D Beyond.

Still, Dungeon Masters feels meatier than a product showcase. A lot of focus is put on making the game feel suspenseful, cinematic, and vivid, and on making this a good watching experience. Time is not on the cast's side; rather than slowly building a campaign setting through the interactions between the characters, Dragon Masters dives right into the thick of things. It's not necessarily a bad approach, but don't expect extended dialogues as the players slowly unveil the complex backstory of their characters (at least, not in the first episode). Instead, Bhullar often stops the action at a meaningful moment to drop nuggets of backstories and glimpses of a broader lore through visions or memories. I'm not a fan of "the DM narrates for you" approach, but it's one of the only ways to flesh out four characters in hour-long episodes.

Speaking of Bhullar, she's a great choice of DM for Wizards' approach for Dungeon Masters. Among the roster of "celebrity DMs," she's always been the most serious and traditional. She commands the table through her excellent knowledge of the rules and a strong hold on the steering wheel, which is needed if you want to push the story in a predetermined direction, as the short length of the episodes demands. However, this approach also risks ignoring the chaotic, improvisational aspect of D&D. Dungeon Masters feels a bit overstructured and overproduced, which goes against its declared purpose of showing "real table play." As every DM and player knows, real D&D is often a mess, but a fun mess, and turning that chaos into something coherent is often the most entertaining aspect of the game.

Compared to Dungeon Masters, D&D 5e's first and longest-running official actual play show, Dice, Camera, Action!, had a much more spontaneous vibe, which was a big part of its charm and success. Fans of that, or of some of the shows that followed after its cancellation, like Rivals of Waterdeep and Black Dice Society, will find a much different flavor here.

The show steps up in its second episode when, after a long-ish combat session, the party is given the chance to rest in an abandoned tower, and the characters (and players) have the chance to interact with each other. Navarro brings some much-needed mischief to the table, sowing discord between Professor Crem and his wife Zora, teasing more backstory that will surely come into play in the future. This is exactly the type of interaction that the show needs to capture audiences and prove it's more than just product placement for Wizards.

If Dungeon Masters can embrace the chaotic side of D&D amongst the corporate demands, this could easily become one of the more successful new actual play launches. There's great chemistry among the members of the cast, with Newborn and Wilde predictably being the most entertaining. The visual support tools were also excellent, showcasing stats, rules, and spells, and giving great cues that make the game easier to follow for new players. The digital map on the table also allows for quicker transitions and more flexibility compared to the set pieces seen in other shows. I would expect the official D&D actual play to use painted minis, but I guess this is a more accurate representation of a real game.

At its core, Dungeon Masters truly wants to make D&D feel more approachable. Unlike other actual play shows, which are sometimes criticized for not being faithful to the real D&D experience, Dungeon Masters really focuses on encouraging a transition from what you see on the screen to your gaming table. It's fully ingrained into Wizards' new strategy of treating D&D as a franchise whose parts all act in concert. Only time will tell whether this choice will prove an advantage over rival shows.

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Dungeon Masters debuts on April 22 at 9:30 p.m. EDT with a two-episode premiere. New episodes will roll out weekly on Wednesdays.