Finally, Dimension 20 fans can Never Stop Blowing Up at their own home tables

6 days ago 41

It would be low-hanging rhetorical fruit to say that Never Stop Blowing Up, Dimension 20’s “’80s Action Movie Meets Jumanji” actual play game, was the most explosive season in the history of the show. But it remains true: Game master Brennan Lee Mulligan and castmembers Rekha Shankar, Ify Nwadiwe, Isabella Roland, Alex Song-Xia, and Ally Beardsley met the mandate to never stop blowing up, and then blew up some more.

But can that wild energy — a street race where cars must reach the speed of 5,000 miles per hour, a dog fighting ring where the dogs are humans dressed as dogs, slapping someone so hard it makes them better at skull crush brain surgery — survive at the home table?

You can find out for yourself today. Polygon can exclusively reveal that Never Stop Blowing Up, the homebrewed version of Hunters’ Entertainment’s Kids on Bikes system that Mulligan et al. crafted, is now available for free on the official Dropout store.

“We’re not game designers,” Dimension 20 producer Carlos Luna told Polygon via email, “This is not a system that will stand the test of time. Hell, you’d be lucky if it lasted one whole session. But, I will say I think that would be a really fun session.”

Luna told Polygon that the priority behind the Never Stop Blowing Up rules was more about good television — simplicity, entertainment — than about game balance. But it was all in service of creating “a love letter to all those games we made up on the spot as kids. The stuff you invented on the fly when you and your friends were bored.”

Image: Dropout

The game was playtested twice before production on the season, Luna shared, “and those tables were so rowdy and had some of the most insane game play. We knew the system would be great to film. Afterwards we asked for feedback and a game designer proposed adding some rules that would balance out the game and slow down the pace, I just remember being like ‘That would be such a great and reasonable addition, and I’m sure it would lead to a more balanced and cohesive game, but it would stop us from blowing up and this system only cares about 1 thing: NEVER STOP BLOWING UP!’”

The free PDF includes rules and descriptions for character creation, abilities, group suites, tokens, and, of course, blowing up, and is available right now at store.Dropout.tv.

“We are beyond excited to share the Never Stop Blowing Up system with the world,” game master Brennan Lee Mulligan told Polygon via email, “and can’t wait to see what everyone does with it!”

A customized version of the Kids on Bikes system, and the very same rules that underpinned the first season of Dimension 20’s Never Stop Blowing Up actual play.