• Critical Role and Dimension 20 are nerdworld cornerstones.
• Artists like Cait May, Eren Angiolini, and Hannah Friederichs create art for the crews.
• They talked with BI about what goes on behind the scenes and how they got their gigs.

The people behind breakout nerdworld hit shows "Critical Role" and "Dimension 20" have found a way to turn streaming themselves playing tabletop games like "Dungeons & Dragons" into lucrative business ventures.

In 2025, both teams are scheduled to play sold-out live gigs in arenas and theaters across the US. The eight members of CR are also embarking on a 10th-anniversary global tour, which will include arenas in Australia.

The cast members are the most recognizable part of the enterprises, from big-name game masters like Matt Mercer and Brennan Lee Mulligan to CR's heartbreak prince, Liam O'Brien. But behind the scenes, there are crew members and artists helping make the shows shine.

Business Insider spoke to three full-time artists who've worked on projects for CR and D20: Cait May, Eren Angiolini, and Hannah Friederichs. They have made a range of illustrations, from fan-favorite character designs to comic book iterations of CR stories.

Behind the scenes at CR and D20

People who watch the shows may recognize Friederichs' art from CR series like "Exandria Unlimited" and, more recently, the team's third, long-running "D&D" campaign, "Bells Hells."

May's work, meanwhile, can be seen on Dimension 20. Her art is in episodes of "Fantasy High: Junior Year" and "Never Stop Blowing Up."

Angiolini's art is featured in CR's comic books, released by Dark Horse Comics.

Friederichs told BI that she was initially commissioned to work on CR's "Uk'otoa" board game, then brought back to make character art for O'Brien's character, Orym.

"I sent in five or six pages of concepts and went down a rabbit hole researching swords. I was like, 'This one's got a leaf blade, this one's got a straight blade, this one has a tapered blade,'" Friederichs said of her interview process. "I went completely overboard, but it worked out, and Liam liked it."

Sheet metal and lightning

There's no fixed road map to getting a gig with CR and D20, but each of the artists BI spoke to had tips for those who'd like to get in on the action.

Friederichs said a piece of art she made for her husband helped her clinch her first gig with CR.

"My husband wanted a playmat for 'Magic: The Gathering.' I drew one with boats on it, and that's what got me hired for 'Uk'otoa,'" Friederichs said.

"My tip is: just do your best work," Friederichs added. "Whenever I've gone to portfolio reviews, none of that advice has actually gotten me a job in the industry, but doing that one piece for my husband did."

May told BI that publishing as much of her art as possible and networking within the fandom helped her early in her art career.

"Opportunity is like getting struck by lightning," May told BI. "It may never happen. But there's nothing stopping you from dragging a bunch of sheet metal out into an open field to increase your chances."

Fan art is fair game

Angiolini told BI that drawing fan art is one way to get noticed. Angiolini remains an avid CR fan artist and still posts CR fan art on their social media.

May added that if artists have ideas on how characters could look, they could always create their own reimagined takes on the character art and post them online.

"Make something that is really cool. It could get you noticed, and maybe you'll get to make the official stuff, too," May said.

Working fast

May says her projects at D20 involved quick turnarounds and intense bursts of work. The workflow was similar to regular commissions, where she sent in sketches that she later colored and rendered.

"The pipeline becomes very different when you're making something that needs to be then altered or put into the editing," May told BI. "That was a learning curve for me."

May said that on one seven-month-long project for D20, she made art for 75 characters and background projections. She also got to see all the uncut footage D20 had filmed.

"I was working as fast as I could with the backgrounds while playing footage of the show they shot the day before," May said.

Angiolini said that CR's cast and editors try to get notes for the comics in as early as possible.

"I think Liam and Sam had a couple of extremely minor notes," they said of CR co-founders O'Brien and Sam Riegel. "When I met them sometime after, they were like, 'Oh my god, we're so sorry about the notes.' I was like — 'You're fine, you're good!'"

Angiolini also had to turn a character commission around for CR in two weeks so they could make their deadline for CR's "The Mighty Nein Reunion — Echoes of the Solstice" live show in London. They said the project went well, even with the tight timeline, because they received a succinct creative brief from which to work.

"I sent them three iterations with slightly different variations to choose from," they said.

The artists told BI that working with CR and D20 still feels like working with fellow nerds who understand the process and see the value in paying for art — instead of generating things via AI.

"It's because they get it. They aren't a giant conglomerate — they're making something creative too, and want people to be a part of it," May said of D20.

Angiolini said that while working with CR, they felt the team genuinely understood how freelance artists struggle to stay afloat — and why it's important to pay people well.

"The fact that they strive to include marginalized voices in the community and make space for them — I think that's really admirable too," Angiolini said.

• "Dungeons & Dragons" is now a 50-year-old game.
• It's undergoing a major facelift, with new core rulebooks being released through next year.
• BI spoke to a Wizards of the Coast executive to hear how the company is trying to keep "D&D" hot.

For half a century, the game of "Dungeons & Dragons" has been a cornerstone of the nerdy experience.

The tabletop game allows people to tell stories in groups, with turns of the narrative being decided by the roll of a 20-side die. It's gotten diehard fans like Tesla chief Elon Musk hooked. And it's also made the company that owns it, Wizards of the Coast, a lot of money.

Fifty years on, WOTC is now part of the gaming juggernaut that is Hasbro. And "D&D" continues to reap the rewards it needs for its parent company to keep investing.

According to the company's third-quarter earnings, the new "Player's Handbook" released in September is "D&D's" fastest-selling product in its 50-year history, beating its internal expectations by 50%.

Chris Cocks, Hasbro's CEO, said during an October earnings call that the company's acquisition of D&D Beyond, an electronic platform on which players can create and view their game characters, is paying off and "driving 'D&D's' total mix of direct-to-consumer revenue from zero at the time of acquisition, to 60% today."

Hasbro did not break out revenue specifically for "D&D," but per the earnings call, the company netted $244 million in adjusted revenue for the three months ending September 29.

Jess Lanzillo, a senior executive at WOTC in charge of product and franchise, told Business Insider how the company intends to keep the game hot for 50 more years, including growth in a key demographic.

Fresh content

WOTC's plan centers on refreshing D&D's core content, including rulebooks like the "Player's Handbook" (PHB), "Monster Manual," and "Dungeon Master's Guide." The "PHB" was released in September and the "DM's Guide" in November.

"We've got new subclasses, new spells, all sorts of new tools and toys to play with," Lanzillo said of the new "PHB." WOTC sells the digital and physical bundle of the "PHB" for $59.99.

The game's fifth edition was released 10 years ago, so 2024's rules refresh is, essentially, a facelift.

"We wanted to make sure that people didn't feel like there had to be a hard stop with their old experience and they've to throw away that 10 years that has been really important to them," Lanzillo said.

The "DM's Guide" — the definitive tool for each "D&D" game's narrator —has been reworked as well. That rejig was made in consultation with other leaders in the "D&D" space — including Critical Role's chief creative officer, Matthew Mercer.

Lanzillo added that this version of "DM's Guide," which hit stores in early November, is geared toward entry-level game masters learning to tell stories for their friends for the first time.

Branching out

WOTC is also investing in tie-ins with other brands and creators — there's now a "D&D" movie, the hit video game "Baldur's Gate 3," and collabs from Converse shoes to Lego sets.

Lanzillo added that the company's staff are huge fans of the teams behind Critical Role and Dimension 20, who've helped bring "D&D" into the mainstream.

"We love our friends that make cool stuff with 'D&D,' and we're always looking for ways to partner together on stuff," Lanzillo said.

Lanzillo highlighted one of WOTC's major ongoing collabs: "The Twenty-Sided Tavern," an off-Broadway theater production that's a live, stage-play version of a "D&D" game. The show opened in May and will run through at least April 2025.

David Carpenter, the creator of "Twenty-Sided Tavern," told BI that the show involves the audience using software to participate in the two-and-a-half-hour-long program.

The audience's choices affect the show, including what happens to the characters.

"I really wanted to not only make it unique but make it mathematically impossible to be repeated. There are 300,000 possibilities of what could happen at every show," Carpenter told BI.

"I wanted to build something that you didn't need to know anything about 'D&D' to go in and have a great time, and leave wanting to learn how to play the game," he said.

"Twenty-Sided Tavern" has brought in some major names from the tabletop gaming space to guest star in its New York run.

Felicia Day, creator of "The Guild," and Dimension 20's Aabria Iyengar both had guest runs in the Tavern in September and October.

Erika Ishii, star of the coming video game "Ghost of Yotei," is slated for a guest run from December 5 through 17.

Catering to digital players

Lanzillo told BI that WOTC customers are evenly split across generations, from baby boomers to Gen Z. Millennials make up a bigger segment of the game's user set — but Gen Z is the game's highest growth segment.

So, while old-school "D&D" players may be more inclined to stick with playing in person, Lanzillo also said WOTC has a full slate of digital tools for players. Those include character creation platforms like D&D Beyond, where players can access all the new rules and cook up fresh characters.

WOTC's upcoming 3D digital sandbox playspace, Project Sigil, is also a "cool 3D tabletop" version of what people might have on the table at home, Lanzillo said.

"We just want to build something that's as flexible as possible that has some integrated 'D&D' mechanics and adventure hooks," she said.

Project Sigil, which is planned for use across PC, console, and mobile platforms, is now moving into its closed beta phase, which is limited to players in North America.

• Farez Najid turned his Dungeons & Dragons hobby into a thriving business in Singapore.
• Inspired by Critical Role, Najid and his partners opened a studio for paid D&D games in 2021.
• The business now includes multiple locations, a retail space, and a dungeon master training program.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Farez Najid, a professional "Dungeons & Dragons" dungeon master and the co-owner of the TableMinis Tabletop Roleplaying Game Studio in Singapore. The following has been edited for length and clarity. Business Insider has verified his employment history.

At the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, my friends and I came together to take a leap of faith.

I was working in the Singaporean theater business at the time, so when live performances ground to a standstill, I tried to figure out what to do.

Then the idea hit me: I'd been watching a Twitch-based show called Critical Role for years, where a group of voice actors sit around the table playing "Dungeons & Dragons" live. It was enthralling to watch the show's eight co-founders as they found a way to convert their home game into a streaming hit and a business in its own right.

These people are my heroes. And the idea that someone could convert their nerdy hobby into a career inspired me.

I wondered — what if I could make a career out of "D&D" too?

My business partners, Jodie Yeo and Dennet Krishnan, took a chance on the wild idea that we could set up a small studio and run paid "Dungeons & Dragons" games.

Here's how that works. Some "D&D" fans may be looking for other folks to play the game with and a comfortable space to play it in at an affordable rate. Others are looking for experienced dungeon masters — the people responsible for crafting the game narrative. Games can be one-shots spanning three to four hours or multi-game campaigns, not unlike those you see on Critical Role and Dimension 20.

When we started out in April 2021, we had $500 Singapore dollars (or $370) in capital and operated out of a single-room studio. We ran five games weekly, charging people $30 per person. That meant that a table of five could net me around $150.

It helped that I'd started running paid games online at $25 per head while we were in the pandemic lockdown. We began to get more bookings, and the single-room studio space wasn't enough.

After a few months, we opened a second and third game room. We then realized we were getting way too many bookings to keep it limited to three rooms.

We moved to our current location at Arumugam Road in April 2023. It has four separate gaming spaces, including a staging area complete with a projector and equipment — where people can play their games live for an audience, Critical Role-style.

It's important to me that players are immersed in the game and feel safe and included at my table. That means pulling out all the stops, with custom terrain for games. It means being educated about gaming best practices and being as good a listener as you are a storyteller. It also means a full day of prep and set-up before a game.

I make sure I have all my non-player characters prepped, and I review my notes again to ensure my storytelling is solid. I also take time to set up things like battle maps in the center of the table — we have equipment from terrain tiles and monstrous miniatures that I get to play with.

Setting up a proper studio space, too, has improved the player experience. We have rooms that we try to soundproof as much as possible so the noise from one game doesn't filter into another.

There's also a community space outside our main studio, where people can hang out before and after their "D&D" games. And there's a retail space where people can pick up merchandise like dice and miniatures.

Right now, I still run games — but I've limited it to a yearlong campaign for a small group of players.

Now, I'm more focused on the business development aspect of TableMinis — because the business is now bigger than me. With our Chinatown outlet that opened in September, we now have two separate studio locations that can run multiple games per night.

We've also started training new game masters under the store's dungeon master training program. The idea is that after three to six months of training, people can start making money running "D&D" games for their clients, too.

Under that program, dungeon masters can earn between $50 and $80 for the games they run, depending on their experience level. We now have 41 game masters under that program, and collectively, we run more than 180 games a month at our Arumugam Road studio and other pop-up spaces.

Some people may say it's a bad idea to turn your hobby into your career — because then, the thing you love most becomes work. But, to be honest, this is a dream job.

I now get to create, tell stories for a living, and guide others along the path to doing that themselves. And there's nothing better than that.

• Matt Gaetz withdrew from his attorney general bid on Thursday.
• But he's since hinted on X at a possible 2026 Florida governor run.
• Gov. Ron DeSantis of Floria terms out in 2026.

Former Rep. Matt Gaetz's bid for attorney general may have been short-lived, but he appears to have his sights set on another big career move.

In a Saturday tweet, Florida State Rep. Anthony Sabatini posted on X his prediction that Gaetz would be the next governor of Florida. Gaetz responded to Sabatini with a gif of the Florida state flag.

Gaetz resigned from Congress in November after President-elect Donald Trump had tapped him for attorney general.

But that bid soon soured when Gaetz became embroiled in fresh scandal, including new developments in a long-running sex-trafficking investigation against him. The DOJ declined to pursue charges against Gaetz in 2023, but the House Ethics Committee continued probing the allegations.

CNN reported on Thursday that Gaetz withdrew from consideration shortly after they contacted him for comment regarding an accusation that he had a sexual encounter with a 17-year-old at a party in 2017.

Gaetz has denied wrongdoing in the sex-trafficking probe and the encounter. However, he withdrew himself from consideration for the attorney general post on Thursday afternoon.

"While the momentum was strong, it is clear that my confirmation was unfairly becoming a distraction to the critical work of the Trump/Vance Transition," Gaetz wrote on X on Thursday.

After Gaetz withdrew, Trump wrote on Truth Social that he appreciated Gaetz's "efforts."

"He was doing very well but, at the same time, did not want to be a distraction for the Administration, for which he has much respect," Trump wrote.

"Matt has a wonderful future, and I look forward to watching all of the great things he will do!" Trump added.

Meanwhile in Florida, Gov. Ron DeSantis terms out in 2026. DeSantis, once a Trump protége, got on his former boss's bad side when he started running a short-lived, Elon-Musk-backed presidential race against Trump.

Florida has had a continuous slate of Republican governors since Jeb Bush won his gubernatorial race in 1998.

It's unclear what Gaetz's chances will look like in 2026 if he were to run for governor. But Gaetz is now in the market for a new gig — he said last week that he doesn't intend to rejoin the 119th Congress, to which he was elected in November to represent Florida's 1st congressional district.

"I'm still going to be in the fight, but it's going to be from a new perch," Gaetz told conservative podcaster Charlie Kirk last week.

"It seems like a pretty poetic time to allow that great new blood to come in, to allow my district to have high-quality representation," Gaetz said, adding that he's not going off on a "tropical excursion" for the rest of his life.

For now, he seems to be enjoying some downtime — fishing, spending time with his wife, Ginger, and making some bucks filming videos on Cameo like his former colleague, George Santos.

Gaetz did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider.

• Jon Collins-Black has hidden five treasure chests across the US for a public hunt.
• The chests contain valuable items like a Casascius bitcoin, an emerald, rare Pokémon cards, gold, and more.
• Collins-Black spent five years planning the treasure hunt and wrote a book with clues.

Jon Collins-Black once dreamt of finding treasure of his own. Now, he's hidden five treasure boxes in locations around the US — and he wants people to find them.

Collins-Black, a California-based musician turned entrepreneur, told BI that he made a tidy sum from early bitcoin investments. During the COVID-19 pandemic, he embarked on a project: Secure a hoard of treasure, then send people off to search for it, hoping they'll enjoy the journey.

Collins-Black told BI that there are now five chests — four smaller ones and one large box — hidden across the US.

He said that none of the chests are buried or placed on private land, and reaching the boxes does not require dangerous stunts.

He wrote all the clues one needs to find these treasure chests into a book, "There's Treasure Inside." Collins-Black said finding these leads in the text will require a close reading — and a sharp but open mind.

Collins-Black secured most of the pieces of treasure at auction and through antique dealers over the last five years. There are pieces like a Casascius bitcoin — the first physical bitcoin ever made; a green Columbian emerald; a 2002 Shining Charizard Pokémon card; antiques from a shipwreck; George Washington's jelly glass, and more. BI has viewed the receipts for Collins-Black's purchases at auction.

He told BI he had a "loose budget" for the treasure's value. Based on the price he paid for the items at auction, he estimated that the total value of the stash, at press time, is between $2 and $3 million. But frequently fluctuating items like bitcoin could change the chests' worth.

"I was actually trying to figure out what the sweet spot would be as far as how big to make this without making it too big," Collins said. "I didn't want people to go too crazy."

All five treasure chests are also puzzle boxes, Collins-Black said — but if one finds the chest, instructions are placed with it outlining how to open the boxes, so people don't have to destroy them.

Only he knows where the chests are, so quizzing his family members and his publisher won't help. He placed the boxes around the country himself, hiking over a hundred miles on his trips.

Collins-Black said he doesn't think he'll regret giving this money away.

"If bitcoin goes to $500,000 or $1 million, or these treasures are worth $10 million in five to seven years and someone finds them, and then I think I'll just celebrate that and be happy for it," Collins-Black said.

"There were definitely a couple of items where people were like, 'Are you sure you want to put that in the treasure?'" he added. "But at the end of the day, I think I'll just be excited for whoever finds it."

Collins-Black told BI that he doesn't have a favorite treasure in the lot, but he does have a soft spot for the emerald — which he calls a "beautiful" thing to look at.

Treasure hunts have long captured popular attention, from the $350 million-grossing 2004 movie "National Treasure" to geocaching, a real-world game in which people hunt for "caches" of information using GPS devices.

Art collector Forrest Fenn hid a chest filled with gold, jewels, and other valuables in the Rocky Mountains in 2010 — and Collins-Black set out to look for it.

Collins-Black wasn't successful in his hunt. After a decade-long search, Fenn's chest was finally found in 2020.

While Collins-Black has gone out of his way to hide the boxes, he does not want the mysteries to outlive him. In eight or 10 years, he might release more clues.

"I don't have this desire for me to be long gone, and they're to be the 'Legend of the John Collins-Black treasures,'" he said. "I don't want to drag it on forever."