Zac Oyama Talks Fantasy High Junior Year, Gorgug's Development, and How Elmville Is Like Springfield

Dimension 20 has been a juggernaut in the Actual Play space since it debuted in 2018 with Fantasy High, a D&D game about a bunch of kids on their first day at Aguefort Academy. With its third season out today, we had a chance to sit down with Zac Oyama to discuss his Half-Orc Barbarian, Gorgug Thistlespring, and what the upcoming season may hold.

Fantasy High Junior Year is the 21st Season of Dimension 20. Most recently Aabria Iyengar led a group of Stoats through a strange post-apocalyptic world with Rashawn Scott, Jasper Cartwright, Siobhan Thompson, Erika Ishii, and Brennan Lee Mulligan in Burrow's End.

The interview below will reference the history of Fantasy High as well as the events of the first episode of Fantasy High Junior Year.

To start off welcoming Zac Oyama to the interview I asked his thoughts on Gorgug and the rest of the bad kids returning for a third season. "I think they're going to be held back and do about 15 years of high school."

He jokingly continued, "It will be like a CW show where they're all forty and still in high school."

Talking about what Gorgug has been up to between Fantasy High Sophomore Year and the beginning of Junior Year, Oyama explained, "They've had a summer of dealing with off-screen adventure tracking down and defeating the Night Yorb. It has not been a restful break for the bad kids, it's been anything but I would say.

"Gorgug has been manning the hangman, driving to the end of defeating this villain that we all know and fear."

Junior Year picks up on what could be the finale of a season all in itself. On the topic of who came up with this explosive beginning, Oyama said he'd "have to give all the credit to Brennan on that one."

"I think the inception of Night Yorb was so silly and clearly just a bit that went off the rails and was a fun thing to embrace," he said. "To give it full season arc story weight felt kind of dumb to everyone so it made sense to come in to 'let's just be wrapping this up.'"

Knowing that NPCs were introduced and a story was played off like it had occurred, Oyama said it "was really fun to just have these companions that we clearly had such a deep relationship with going into the first battle that I'm pretty sure Brennan introduced to us as we sat down." 

"We didn't really know them, you know? It felt very much like an improv scene where you choose to know about this person or have a relationship that you're just making up and I miss them every day," he said.

I had to admit as I was watching the episode and saw characters like Squeem introduced, I was scrambling for my phone to make sure there hadn't been a one-shot I had missed that introduced characters that the whole table reacted so positively to.

As most seasons of Dimension 20 are single series and then off to the next adventure, Fantasy High is a bit strange in that it not only got a second season but is now receiving a third. It can be so different building a short-form character as opposed to a long-form character. Oyama commented on what it has been like developing his story and motives.

"Thinking about who Gorgug is, where he started, and where he is now, and having the weird perspective of having multiple years in real life, it's interesting because we change as much as these characters do," Oyama said. "I think Gorgug started off as a sketch character, 'What if the shy kid was a rageful barbarian?'

"Experiencing so much time in character and out of character thinking about [Gorgug], of course his character is going to change over time and we'll see Gorgug realizing the interest he's had in the past have changed. He's embracing this Artificer path."

Gorgug being on an Artificer path is something Oyama also specifically calls out to in the first episode. "There's a lot of different reasons for that. From the meta-gaming perspective of being a Barbarian where you go into a rage, hit people twice, and then you know," referencing needing to wait another turn to do it again.

"Playing so many characters in so many seasons, you can get an itch of 'I want to do a little more in fights.' That's a very out-of-character want, but also the idea of Gorgug's interests changing and finding a passion in something you aren't good at."

"That doesn't mean you shouldn't try, it just means you're starting where you are, and I think that doesn't mean it's any less worth exploring."

Mechanically Oyama brought up an interesting point about playing a Barbarian with Artificer abilities. Rules as written for a Barbarian are that while raging "if you are able to cast spells, you can't cast them or concentrate on them while raging."

"I'm a Barbarian and Artificer stuff is casting spells, and on paper, you're not able to rage and cast a spell at the same time," he said. "These are antithetical classes that don't really make sense as multiclassing. I think he spends a lot of time trying to figure out what the best way forward with both of these disciplines is."

Talking about his methods for roleplaying Gorgug, Oyama explained that his mentality is to "try to take kind of an obtuse angle to things. Not trying to play an idiot, because that's not what Gorgug is, but to try to find weird ways to misunderstand things or to find ways in that I still find interesting."

Talking about D&D as a whole, Oyama said he's looking for depth that might not have always been there for Gorgug. "They were kind of unpopular but maybe less worried about that overall, he's not worried about being cool, it's less on his radar than it was in the past."

Knowing how excited fans were for the announcement of Fantasy High Junior Year I wanted to hear from Oyama what he thought the secret sauce of the series is. "It's relatable because a lot of us have had that experience feeling uncomfortable in high school and finding your place.

"Some people are watching it while they're at that time or having just left that time."

Talking specifically about Elmville and the setting of Fantasy High Junior Year, Oyama made an interesting comparison to the Springfield setting of The Simpsons and that there's always adventures to be had.

"I think Brennan hit a grand slam in terms of creating an almost 'fantasy Simpsons kinda world,'" Oyama said. "There are all these characters and you don't know who you're going to run into, but there's so many different iconic NPC that he plays. I always think of The Simpsons because you could do a billion stories in that world."

For those interested in seeing more of Zac Oyama you can see him in a number of other Dimension 20 seasons including Neverafter, as well as across Dropout.tv in Game Changer and Make Some Noise. He's also recording the Rotating Heroes podcast with Jasper William Cartwright and writing on Crapopolis on FOX.

You can check out the first episode of Fantasy High Junior Year streaming on Dropout right now, you can also catch up on the first two seasons in full on the official Dimension 20 YouTube channel or watch a 20-minute video to catch yourself up.