Dimension 20’s new Mentopolis series is a noir-flavoured RPG mind romp featuring Hank Green and Freddie Wong

Dimension 20 has revealed plans for the next season of its actual play anthology series. Mentopolis uses the Kids on Bikes tabletop RPG to tell a detective noir narrative set inside the mind of a scientist and will bring three new faces to the table, including the internet’s favourite science brother - Hank Green.

Brennan Lee Mulligan returns to the facilitator hotseat to lead Green and fellow players Siobhan Thompson (longtime D20 player); Mike Trapp from Dropout’s Um, Actually; comedian Danielle Radford, writer, actor, and comedian Alex Song-Xia; and Freddie Wong from fellow actual play series Dungeons and Daddies. They will travel inside the brain of Elias Hodge in order to solve murders, track missing secrets and solve a knot of interconnected mysteries.

Mentopolis will premiere on August 9th and run for six episodes, marking it as a smaller interstitial campaign usually sandwiched in between the meatier, Dungeons & Dragons-powered seasons. All of the players will represent different functions of Elias’ brain - Thompson’s Imelda Pulse is a manifestation of impulse, for example - or other anthropomorphised mental constructs. It sounds a bit like a meets-meets between Osmosis Jones and Inside Out with a dead body thrown in for spice.

Dimension 20’s 19th foray into well-produced tabletop roleplay drama will be the second time Kids on Bikes has appeared on their table, following 2021’s Misfits and Magic. Mulligan and a rowdy crew of queens just wrapped the popular Dungeons and Drag Queens season, which featured some of the most influential drag names sharing a table and skewering each other as much as their enemies.

In the trailer, the Dimension 20 table is largely filled by a massive contraption of pipes, wire and angular metal that looks like an exploded pinball machine. This image is further sold by several tracks on which a little metal ball periodically travels. In the middle, we can see something close to a roulette wheel or clock that can be turned by the players or Mulligan. How they will use that in the game isn’t clear, but the show has an established penchant for dramatic set pieces used to enhance things for both the players and the audience.

An FAQ accompanying the press release for Mentopolis explained that this season was shot in-person prior to airing, meaning it likely was not affected by the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and CWA strike against Hollywood executives and the wider film and television industry. The first episode will air on Dropout’s YouTube channel on August 16th, but the full show will be hosted on Dropout.tv, with episodes airing every Wednesday.