Skye Smith keeps “Dimension 20” straight between long filming days, deep trivia, and a constant flow of questions—using tools like Airtable and sticky notes. Asked if AI could replace her, she said the job depends on listening, catching human mistakes in real
Under the stadium lights of Madison Square Garden. people cheered for Brennan Lee Mulligan. the game master of “Dimension 20. ” and for the tabletop roleplaying game show’s most famous face. The show. run by Dropout—a media company spun off from the former CollegeHumor—involves Mulligan or other game masters weaving a fantastical tale of adventure and magic.
For “Dimension 20,” the world doesn’t hold still. Episodes are filmed at a pace that can feel relentless to anyone trying to keep the rules and history consistent. Mulligan wouldn’t have been able to do hours-long games—at stadiums and in the show’s recorded form—without Skye Smith, his lore keeper.
When Business Insider asked Smith to sum up her work, she described herself as the “Google, or Wikipedia, for ‘Dimension 20.’” She’s responsible for knowing the show’s encyclopedic, sprawling history, from timelines to factoids, and making sure her boss and his players keep it all straight.
The job matters because there’s too much to remember. “Dimension 20” and “Critical Role” both rely on lore keepers. and the scale is a big part of it: “Critical Role” has streamed multi-year tabletop games for hundreds of episodes. totaling thousands of hours. “Dimension 20” has shorter seasons. but the game master still leans on an assistant to ensure the plot points and facts are right.
Smith described the rhythm of her days in a way that makes the demands clear. “A filming day for me is very different than a regular 10-to-6 workday. It’s always going to be at least a 12-hour workday. I get to set the same time as our GM, Brennan. And then I stay until pretty much the very last person has left set,” she said.
Because “Dimension 20” films multiple episodes a day, she and Mulligan have a “consistent Slack” going as they film. Smith takes notes on the ongoing game, then fields questions called to her off-camera.
Keeping up with evolving lore means building a system that can survive the speed of production. Smith uses Airtable for most of her notes, and she also relies on sticky notes. “I usually have a printout of either the materials that they use at the table for the game that we play. or a visual of the world we’re in. ” Smith said. “And I always have a notebook.”.
Her work isn’t confined to fact-checking. Smith is involved in the creative process for “Dimension 20’s” new seasons, including pitching and ideation. “So I get to know what’s cooking really early,” she said.
That’s where the question of AI comes in—because her role is tied to what happens live, in the middle of a scene, when a player needs an answer fast and the story can’t afford to drift.
Asked whether her job would be endangered by AI note-takers. Smith said her work revolves around listening. spotting human error. and understanding the lore of the fantasy world being made in real time. “A big part of this job and why it’s important has to do with human error,” she said. “And so fixing ‘errors’ with a machine would never work because what you need is another human set of eyes who knows the pitfalls of making something creative. knows where the weak spots are. and you just can’t train an electronic artificial intelligence in the same way that you can train human intuition.”.
Smith added that she enjoys the “hard parts” of her job that other people might find taxing or that they might look to robots to help with—like taking “hours and hours of notes.” She described it as a double-layered problem. “It’s a double-layered answer — it would never be able to do it as well as I do,” Smith said. “And then on the other hand. given the environmental effects of AI. it wouldn’t even be worth it to try.”.
Her path to the role also reflects how the job is built through experience, not just information storage. Smith worked her way up to lore keeper from an entry-level role as a production assistant in 2023. She then jumped at the chance to work on “Dimension 20” when Dropout offered her the role.
Her career highlights include working behind the scenes at the crew’s Madison Square Garden show and getting to showcase her own writing. “This wasn’t where I initially thought I would end up. but if I had remained singularly focused on the things that I thought I wanted. I would never have gotten here. ” she said. “The closest advice I can give to recreating the path I got that got me here is just do the work that you love. do it well. and then watch the opportunities that come from that.”.
Dimension 20 Dropout CollegeHumor Skye Smith Brennan Lee Mulligan lore keeper Airtable sticky notes tabletop roleplaying AI production Madison Square Garden