D&D players raise millions in real-life campaign against ‘corporate elite’
Brennan Lee Mulligan’s Dungeons and Dragons push is part of a wider trend using tabletop games for political action
Just before their election day, six Los Angeles city council candidates stood on stage at Hollywood’s Fonda Theatre. But they weren’t there for a debate or a black-tie gala. They were there to play Dungeons and Dragons
Comedian Brennan Lee Mulligan guided the politicians through a short D&D campaign to defeat corporate villains and an evil dragon. Hundreds of enthusiastic fans in the crowd pledged additional donations up to $150 each to give the candidates what is called an “auto crit” for maximum damage to the dragon
If this sounds like a bizarre merging of politics and play, organizers say it is not. “Most people want to be tapped and told how to help,” said Mulligan, a longtime DSA member and the dungeon master of D&D-themed hit YouTube series Critical Role and Dropout’s Dimension 20. “Then, lo and behold, there’s this new way to participate, bringing the platform I have to bear.”
The DSA-LA show raised $30,000 for the city’s primary election in June; five of the candidates onstage that night either won re-election or advanced to the general in November. The event is just one in a wider resistance movement by players of D&D and other tabletop role playing games (TTRPGs) against the current political climate – ICE raids, attacks on transgender rights and the rise of artificial intelligence. Over the past few years, groups across the country have been playing TTRPGs online and in person to raise money to develop games that express their frustration with the federal government and instruct people on how to help those most impacted by its policies.
“There are different archipelagos of the fandom, but what unifies each and every one of them is that they are very responsive to calls to action from the people who are there watching and feeling that they’re in community with,” said Emily Friedman, an English professor at Auburn University who teaches classes on D&D and TTRPGs. “They feel like this is a space that is welcoming them.”
A safe space online and in-person
Many TTRPG organizers and creators say these role playing games align naturally with resistance. For instance, in D&D, a dungeon master and the players determine the human-created stories and characters – aspects many do not want to relinquish to AI. In 2023, D&D’s parent company, Wizards of the Coast, banned the use of AI to develop and create art in the game; comparatively, 90% of video game developers used AI in workflows, according to a 2025 Google Cloud survey
“One of the appeals of a game like Dungeons and Dragons or tabletop role playing is to disconnect and use real imagination,” said DSA-LA member Andoni Elias-Nava, the primary organizer of the Los Angeles event. “The left is facing these AI attacks from the corporate elite, the billionaires – they are just all in on these deceptive tactics, making it feel like a D&D game.”
Many D&D and TTRPG players can also relate to the Trump administration’s and conservatives’ attacks against marginalized communities. While many early D&D players were white males, the game and other TTRPGs have always attracted people who feel like outsiders – including people of color, women, the LGBTQ+ community and neurodivergent people – because the main conceit of the game is that players band together against evil, creating a sense of belonging, a shared language and a safe space to gather.
“D&D often involves found family, which for marginalized folks is especially powerful, but it’s also insular,” Friedman said. “It makes you into an in-group, and everyone else is an out-group. The storytelling elements of D&D imagine worlds that work differently and do inherent critiques of the system, sometimes using the system.”
“Actual play”, the performance of TTRPGs for an audience – and its tie to fundraising – became popular thanks to Critical Role, a series featuring eight voice actors playing long-running D&D games that debuted in 2015. Over the past decade, it has garnered more than 2.8 million YouTube subscribers, two successful animated spinoffs on Amazon Prime and the Critical Role Foundation, a non-profit established by the cast in 2020. Over the past six years, the foundation has raised nearly $5m, supporting a wildfire recovery fund in California, aid in Gaza, campaigns to end childhood poverty and more.
“The progression of what this has turned into has blown all of us away, but it has grown so much because of the community,” said Ashley Johnson, the Critical Role Foundation president and a longtime cast member
Popular D&D player Jes Wade’s ChariTTRPGs initiative has more than 1m YouTube views and has raised more than $1.1m since 2021 through playing TTRPGs on Twitch livestreams and selling bundles of creator-donated tabletop games and other creative work on the gaming platform Itch. The fundraisers benefited charities such as the Immigrant Defenders Law Center, Doctors Without Borders in Gaza and Trans Lifeline
“It led me to connect with incredible people in the community who sometimes wanted to be able to give back but didn’t have the experience to do it on their own,” said Wade, who goes by Jes the Human online. “Maybe they don’t have hundreds of dollars to donate, but they have this game that they’ve put their love and soul into, and they can at least donate that.”
In April, the Brooklyn-based femme and LGBTQ+-owned TTRPG company Twice Rolled held a charity livestream called Operation ICE Breaker on YouTube, raising $3,000 for the National Immigration Law Center. With each $75 pledge, the entire actual play group interrupted the story to yell “Fuck ICE”. Donors also received “Bleed”, a mini TTRPG designed as a zine to inspire players to “be a kickass fascism fighting machine” in the real world
“It walks people through the emotional steps of ‘I have done this hard heroic thing at a table surrounded by friends, and that’s something I can do in other places,’” said Linnie Schell, an author who is Twice Rolled’s director of creative development and production. “It’s all just getting people to take that first step to help.”
Fighting censorship
With the forces of good and evil battling each other, the games themselves and the platforms they’re on are inherently political, said many players
“The big illusion would be to pretend that fantasy doesn’t reflect our values or doesn’t describe a relationship between people and their surroundings – it does,” Mulligan said, noting that the Star Wars film franchise was inspired by the Vietnam war
Last year, the online RPG marketplace Drive Thru RPG removed 9th Level Games’ Rebel Scum, an anti-fascist space drama inspired by Star Wars, for having “overt political agendas or views”, citing a line in the game’s foreword about punching a space “Republikan” in the face
For nearly a year, 9th Level Games tried to work with Drive Thru RPG to reinstate the game on the platform. But ultimately, 9th Level refused to remove the line and ended up selling more copies of the game through its site and Itch. “We’re trying to create games that matter,” said Chris O’Neill, the game’s creator who is currently working on Portland, Oregon Trail, an anti-capitalist take on the classic ‘90s video game
Earlier this year, the trio behind Rough Magic Games, a game master talent agency, planned to run D&D and TTRPG games at the Chicago Comic and Entertainment Expo. Then, they found out Relx, the event’s parent company, also owned LexisNexis, a data and analytics company ICE used for surveillance. Rough Magic Games ended the partnership and started its own Chicago Charity Con Crawl, which raised more than $1,500 for Organized Communities Against Deportations
“We had a conversation with our community in the Discord about it, and a lot of people were concerned about us leaving this contract behind that we were going to lose visibility,” said Rough Magic Games’ Tara Bouldrey, who handles operations. “But what it comes down to is, our rooms are safe places for our people, regardless of background. As long as you’ve come there in good faith to connect with others, we want to keep you safe in all possible ways.”
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