Brennan Lee Mulligan at “Dimension 20: Cloudward, Ho!” and brings steampunk to the dome

drop out Dimension 20 Running a series of speculative novel types from Urban Fantasy Sleepless city Go to the space opera An interstellar style odyssey. In the latest season Cloudward, Ho!the Desktop Anthology series jumped into another type: Steampunk.

Cloudward, Ho! From airships and mechanical suits to Victorian aesthetics, there are several familiar steampunk genre traps. But the new type also allows Dimension 20 Take some new risks, usher in new mechanisms, new inspirations and new methods Dimension 20A core theme of anti-capitalism centered on community. Mashable talks with him Dimension 20 Creator and Game Master Brennan Lee Mulligan About What Steampunk brings Dimension 20and what the audience can expect Cloudward, Ho!

What is the guidance Dimension 20 All Steampunk?

back Fantasy High: Junior YearPart 3 High fantasy Series, Mulligan and the rest Dimension 20“Emily Axford, Emily Axford, Ally Beardsley, Brian Murphy, Zac Oyama, Siobhan Thompson and Lou Wilson” told Mashable in a Zoom interview.

“They are like, ‘Let’s do something high-level, bold, colorful and exciting.’ So Steampunk does talk to us,” Mulligan said. “HG Wells and [Hayao] Miyazaki, the golden age of biplanes in the clouds and aviation – it feels like the place we want to be. ”

Therefore, the land of Gaes was born, and with it was Zood’s lost land, Cloudward, Ho!looking for roles. Atlantis and Castle in the sky As the main point of contact Cloudward, Ho! and its central arc, but they are far from inspiration for the campaign. Other Miyazaki movies, including Porco RossoIt has proven useful due to the director’s concern about aviation. Cloudward, Ho! Also borrowed from HG Wells’s work Jules Verne’s Twenty thousand leagues under the seaJames Gurney Dinotopia Series, The Cobweb Chronicle by Tony Diterlizzi and Holly Black. (The latter’s zoological paper elements propose new creatures that are excited ahead.)

With such a wealth of original materials, you can explore from such a vast world – Gath has over 20 continents! – Cloudward, Ho! Also provided Dimension 20Creative teams stretch themselves new opportunities.

“It’s hard to understand how amazing the artwork is in this season,” Mulligan said.[Production designer] Rick Perry and his team really surpassed themselves. ”

This is already obvious in the trailer Cloudward, Ho! Episode 2, with amazing airship models Hefeng.

for Cloudward, Ho!Mulligan also led game designers to formulate the rules and statistical obstacles for air combat this season. Designers Hannah Rose, Mazey Veselak, Dan Dillon and Brandes Stoddard have previously worked with Mulligan to help create witch courses for narrative podcasts The world is beyond numbersMulligan and Dimension 20 Staples Aabria Iyengar, Erika Ishii and Wilson.

Steampunk theme helps build Cloudward, Ho!The leap party.

Brian Murphy, Siobhan Thompson, Ally Beardsley and Brennan Lee Mulligan in “Cloudward, Ho!”
Credits: Kate Elliott

Steampunk adventure metaphor also shapes dynamics Cloudward, ho! ‘Party. Four of the six characters are older experienced adventurers, while two are new faces from the Sky. The youngest character, Ally Beardsley’s Olethra MacLeod, starts at level 2, while everyone else starts at level 6. Candy crownIn contrast to older character 3, Jet, Ruby and Liam all start at level 1 and level 2. )

The decision to balance electricity comes from the idea that some of these characters will age with a strong legacy – Mulligan quotes Terry Gilliam Baron Monkhausen’s adventure As a touch point here – others will join the crew for the first time.

“The staff who must form new members is a true classic moment [genre]. “Murigan said. “Who has this long-standing adventurer relationship, how do you bring new blood?” [That’s] This kind of storytelling classic is really fun. ”

Even the decision to start some characters at level 6 comes from the steampunk type metaphor.

“The raw material we drew from us didn’t have a lot of fantasy to do. Fantasy had a lot of startup powerlessness and quickly became very powerful. Luke’s span from a sc weak nerf shepherd to a movie blow up the Death Star.” “Although for these characters, I think the genre is full of more [people] Begins very capable and continues to get sharper. We do not have these higher levels of demigods in a genre. There are some older game content around “Epic Level 6” which is a lot of things I grew up in the game. So there is an interesting element that wants to say, “Level 6 is where you are superheroes, but you are not superman yet,” which feels like the wonderful point we are. ”

Capitalism is the bad guy (again) Cloudward, Ho!

Zac Oyama, Emily Axford and Lou Wilson in “Cloudward, Ho!”
Credits: Kate Elliott

Dividing Cloudward, Ho!The political party is not only for a period of time, but people’s relationship with aviation in Gath.

“In Gath, aviation was invented, and the person who invented it was the inventor of crime, crime, eccentricity,” Mulligan said. “As time passed, this new technology was swallowed up by empires, capital and industry, so naturally it would create this generational divide.”

The role of capital has shined Cloudward, Ho!The premiere of Longspot Gotch, a father of party member Maxwell Gotch (Murphy), is about to squeeze out the last penny from Professor Olethra MacLeod’s doomed journey. His approach to currency-centric aviation miracle reiterates a common theme Dimension 20: Capitalism is a bad person.

“I love all the memes, ‘In Brennan’s story, capitalism is always the bad guy,” Mulligan joked in a behind-the-scenes video Dimension 20‘ Garden gloves. “It’s like yes, but every time it’s in a cool novel way, like no one is bored, right?”

Steampunk focuses on new technology and uses it, and it seems like just a “cool, novel way” Mulligan can continue to explore the topic.

“Standard punk is a reaction. Aesthetics are the aesthetic of the machine and industrial revolution,” Mulligan told Mashable. “These two flavors tend to appear. There is an extremely dark, breeding Gaslamp steampunk, and then there is more of a dialogue between Miyazaki vein, nature and technology. Miyazaki is indeed trapped in horror in horror, but it is not the basis for the beauty and importance of nature, rather than the attachment that still exists within the scope of nature and importance, and is well known.

He continued: “Raddit is a labour and capital movement, and some machines are smashed, but that’s not to say that machines are bad. It’s about who owns them, our work on them, if we use them to destroy, or if we use them to confirm the wonders and majesty of human intelligence and innovation.”

Balance these flavors of steampunk – destruction and capitalism with miracles and hope – became the key purpose of building Gath. Episode 1 has already made us taste several different landscapes, from the western canyon of Sybil to the waste of rust of debris. (“You have to hit them with the legend,” Mulligan said.

“I want to make Gath so huge because if I created a world with only darkness and empires, would I breed a sense of despair in the world that I don’t want to reflect it at work?” Mulligan said. “So the thing with GATH is, let’s create a world with elements of the gaslamp Steampunk empire that have some resistance to, but also the continents that are not touched by it.” If we imagine where we imagined it successfully regained the imperial endeavor, it was a huge, wild world filled with many different things, full of imaginary boundaries. ”

With the entire toolbox of the steampunk type, look forward to it Cloudward, Ho! These boundaries continue to be widened as the season flies.

Size 20: Cloud, what! Now dropping out of school, with a new episode held every Wednesday at 7 p.m. ET.