How Brennan Lee Mulligan Created Never Stop Blowing Up, A Love Letter To 80s Action Movies In TTRPG Form

Today the final episode of the latest season of Dimension 20, Never Stop Blowing Up, wrapped up. This '1980s action movie meets Jumanji' themed season saw the Amazing Action Heroes get pulled into a VHS and face some of the most insane Dimension 20 scenarios ever conceived.

As the series is ending I had a chance to talk to Dimension 20 creator and GM of Never Stop Blowing Up, Brennan Lee Mulligan, about homebrewed mechanics, character choices, and his own favorite action movie.

We also had a chance to talk with other cast members. If you're interested to hear about Ify Nwadiwe and Jacob Wysocki going 'full nerd' or what life lesson Izzy Roland and Alex Song-Xia's action personas took away from Never Stop Blowing Up you can check out our full conversations.

Upon announcement Never Stop Blowing Up was described as an "explosive, high-octane, action-packed thrill-ride unlike anything you've ever seen!" Six employees at a closing Video Rental Store are pulled into a VHS take inhabiting action movie avatars while Brennan Lee Mulligan provides voices and actions to every ally and enemy the party comes across.

Never Stop Blowing Up uses the Kids on Bikes TTRPG system but with an additional twist that every character's stats begin at a d4, then if the dice lands on its highest number it 'explodes' allowing the players to not only roll their dice again, but roll the dice of the next higher value.

How Kids On Bikes Was Tweaked For Never Stop Blowing Up

"I love Kids on Bikes so so much, I've so enjoyed it for Mentopalis and Misfits & Magic, when we were crafting Never Stop Blowing Up as a game system we were heavily inspired by Kids on Bikes with the 'blowing up' mechanic."

In talking about why tweaks were necessary for Never Stop Blowing Up Mulligan explained "The main thing was accommodating the action genre and within the action genre characters say they have specializations but they really don't. You look at action movies and someone's the hacker and someone's the sniper but really they all know kung-fu, they all drive cars fast, everyone is great at everything."

"For the leveling up mechanic we thought the idea of the characters having to unlock the capabilities of their action persona would be a really fun growth arc starting as bumbling bozos and by the end being these action demi-gods." 

"I think that one of the elements of TTRPGs that is always going to stay as a part that players seek out is the power fantasy of improvement." Mulligan continued to expand on power scaling in role playing games "It doesn't need to get to 20th level D&D archmage worldbending power, but because of the choices that I made I got a little bit better."

Does Never Stop Blowing Up Know The Meaning Of "Too Far"?

As Never Stop Blowing Up progressed each of the characters continued to expand their abilities and available dice creating more ridiculous scenes as the adventure went on. For a GM wanting to create an adventure not only entertaining to the players but also an audience watching at home I wanted to know what kinds of checks and balances were in place to ensure the series never took things too far, or if "too far" was even an option?

"We bought ourselves a health amount of cushion with the double dip unreality," Mulligan began explaining that while insane events were occurring for the action heroes the players still needed to keep in mind their 'real world' selves. "You have this nice play space where characters can really do outrageous and surreal things, with the understanding that their real lives are being impacted"

"You fly to space, you stab someone with the Washington Monument, a car gets split in half [...] all of these impossible things are accommodated [...] while the characters get to say 'Yeah this is cartoonish, but if I die here I die in Lake Elsinor.'"

Sharing The GM Chair

One of the many insane abilities that the players were able to unlock was the ability to take over the GM seat if they rolled a natural 20. This power came up a handful of times and was used to successfully obtain powerful items, navigate around fights that the party didn't even know was on the horizon, and with some monkey-paw thinking also opened some entertaining avenues for Mulligan.

"This was my ultimate test for. There's a certain amount of zany you can get to but as a GM don't I always have this last card up my sleeve where I can warp reality to my benefit?" Mulligan began to explain his logic behind introducing this ability. "It felt like if we're really going to honor the premise of this season [...] then we've gotta open up the hot seat, we gotta let people come in here and do whatever the hell they want."

The first example of this ability's use had Ify Nwadiwe become the GM, providing Vic Ethanol and Kingskin with powerful new weapons, and having an entire secret hotel of assassins promise that they would protect the party members from any threat.

"It felt like now not only am I tying both hands behind my back, but I'm also tying my legs behind my back"

Running The Chaos

An aspect of Never Stop Blowing Up that viewers may not notice is that while the game is ongoing on top of running the game and putting on a show Mulligan is also controlling a variety of effects including the explosions that appear at each 'blow up' and coursing electricity around the dome.

Mulligan let me peak behind the scenes to know what his setup looked like while GMing.

Mulligan began by gesturing with his hands, recreating his setup. "My laptop in front of me, tray with dice to my right, usually I'll have some cards with some game stats up in that area, to my left there will normally be some hand props or production elements, snacks — almonds and a drink like coffee scattered throughout the area — right-lower I'll have my computer bag and books, and to my right I'll have my stream deck which is where I move through my effects and stings that I want to trigger on the Dome walls."

To round out our conversation I was interested to finally know, in a season filled with every action trope you could imagine, what was the action film that Mulligan held above them all. While it looked like there would be a moment of pause and contemplation the response quickly came out; Die Hard.

"Favorite action film is Die Hard, it's not close. Me and Izzy's favorite, it's one of the greatest screenplays ever written, it's unbelievable. The pacing of the plot and the story and action. Ya know, 'yippee ki-yay motherfucker' is one of the greatest lines of all time."

Mulligan highlighted that Izzy Roland's action persona character, Jack Manhattan, was very much based on Bruce Willis' John McClain. An additional shoutout was given to Spy with Melissa McCarthy as a favorite action-comedy of the household.