Misfits and Magic

Misfits and Magic is the tenth season of Dimension 20, an actual play tabletop role-playing game show. It was aired from June 30, 2021 to July 21, 2021 on Dropout with two specials released in December 2021 and August 2022. Inspired by Harry Potter, the show features Aabria Iyengar as the game master and Erika Ishii, Brennan Lee Mulligan, Danielle Radford, and Lou Wilson as Americans who are invited to a Hogwarts-like school to study magic. However, the show also deviates from and criticizes the source material for perceived bigotry, making modifications to some aspects of the material and highlighting the absurdity in other aspects. In addition, Misfits and Magic sought to rebut Harry Potter lack of diversity in its central casting, making its own cast and characters majority-black. The season was reviewed favorably.

Cast and characters

 * Aabria Iyengar as the game master
 * Erika Ishii as Karen Keiko Tanaka, a.k.a. XxBrokenDreamxX, who goes by "Dream" and later "K"
 * Brennan Lee Mulligan as Evan Kelmp
 * Danielle Radford as Samantha Butler, who is also known by her streamer name Sam Black
 * Lou Wilson as Whitney Jammer, who goes by Jammer

Production, synopsis, and analysis
Misfits and Magic departed significantly from other seasons in Dimension 20 in terms of production. Rather than Dungeons & Dragons, Misfits and Magic uses the Kids on Brooms system. Rather than Dimension 20 's regular arrangement of minis, battlemaps, and heavy editing, this season mostly utilizes theatre of the mind. The season was Brennan Lee Mulligan's first season as a player – he regularly serves as the show's game master.

Misfits and Magic is inspired by, and is a reaction to, the Harry Potter series and contemporary changes in its public perception. The reputation of the Harry Potter series slipped in the decades after its release, as various new analyses shone a light on elements of the series – and public statements of its author, J. K. Rowling – that have been criticized as bigoted. Creative director Orion D. Black told The Daily Dot that the season sought to counter Harry Potter 's lack of diverse representation in its central cast. At the same time, Black and Aabria Iyengar both felt that the series still had a meaningful impact on them, and wanted to tell a story that captured that. They also sympathized with those who chose not to watch the season because of its connection to Harry Potter.

To that end, Misfits and Magic emulates many aspects of Harry Potter, sometimes as a tribute, sometimes in mockery. In a similar line to Harry Potter, the season follows four Americans with no prior magical ability as they attempt to navigate the culture of Gowpenny, a secret school of witchcraft and wizardry meant to serve as the parallel to Hogwarts. But the characters also rebel against the source material – for example, during the sorting ceremony, they disrupt the scene with criticism of Gowpenny's (and implicitly, Hogwarts's) tracking of students into "houses", and particularly the existence of the "evil" house. The setting itself did also deviate from the source in some ways: the kitchen, for example, was not staffed by slave labor akin to the house elf. And in what the creators and actors saw as a departure from the Harry Potter series, Misfits and Magic focuses primarily on actors and characters of color, with the season featuring a majority-black cast and a non-binary character.

Reception
Michael Crider of PC World reviewed the season favourably, complimenting Brennan Lee Mulligan's performance as Evan Kelmp and his character's arc, which foils Dream's. He also wrote that the show's format makes it "a great introduction to the actual play format". Theo Kogod of Comic Book Resources recalled Misfits and Magic when Wizards of the Coast, the company that publishes Dungeons & Dragons, released a supplement for Harry Potter-based gameplay in D&D called Strixhaven. Kogod noted that Misfits and Magic had seen the need for a Harry Potter actual play system well before.