Roll for Tricksters: A Powwow Heist
A Live Play GM'd by Brennan Lee Mulligan with an All-Native Table

ADMISSION:
Admission is free.

RSVP

DESCRIPTION:
Native storytelling and Dungeons & Dragons combine when legendary dungeon master Brennan Lee Mulligan (Dimension 20, Worlds Beyond Number, Critical Role) leads an all-star cast of Native D&D players through Roll for Tricksters: A Powwow Heist, a brand-new tabletop one-shot to match wits with cultural tricksters who create mischief and chaos wherever they go and save a small-town powwow.

In this one-shot escapade, professional writers and performers Kelly Lynne D’Angelo and Joey Clift; USC alum and TV writer Lucas Brown Eyes; USC alum and game developer Diego Galileo Melendez; and USC professor, comedian, and module writer Maddox Pennington will join forces to recover stolen artifacts, protect the powwow from corporate exploitation, and keep the Grand Procession running smoothly.

After the live-play event, USC students will have the opportunity to participate in Play the Powwow Heist!, a playtest session with professional and student GMs on Wednesday, February 18. Student gamers of all levels are welcome to get first-hand experience with the one-shot.

Bios:

Lucas Brown Eyes is an Oglala Lakota TV writer from the Pine Ridge Reservation. He was raised by his mother, grandmother, and aunt because, according to his mom, matriarchy is the Lakota way. Lucas’ large family also included his brothers, cousins, and sometimes an uncle. They all lived packed in one house because, according to his mom, strong family values are the Lakota way. Also, they were poor. But what his family lacked in funds they made up for in support. And in 2003, their support reached absurd levels when they moved to California so Lucas could study TV writing and acting at the Orange County School of the Arts. He then graduated from USC with a BA in Cinema-Television Production. In 2014, he was accepted into the ABC Disney Writing Program. Lucas would go on to staff on eight TV series spanning multiple genres including comedy, drama, sci-fi, and horror. He has written for both live-action and animated shows, with over 100 episodes of television under his belt —working with the likes of J.J. Abrams and Guillermo del Toro. He has also sold and developed multiple pilots, including the autobiographical Native American family comedy Reservations. Most recently his work can be seen on the HBO MAX series Duster.

Joey Clift is a Los Angeles–based comedian, Emmy-nominated TV writer, and enrolled member of the Cowlitz Indian Tribe. Growing up, Clift aspired to become a local TV weatherperson because he didn’t see Native American comedians on screen and thought a career in comedy was off-limits. He has since proven otherwise, with his comedy featured in the Washington Post, CNN, Dropout, Pitchfork, NPR, Dead Meat, and Comedy Central. As a television writer, Clift has written for shows such as Spirit Rangers and Cocomelon Lane on Netflix, Molly of Denali and Alma’s Way on PBS, New Looney Tunes and LEGO Ninjago: Decoded on Cartoon Network, and Paw Patrol on Nickelodeon. Clift created, directed, and wrote Gone Native, a Webby Award–winning Comedy Central Digital series about weird microaggressions Native folks often experience, and his short films have screened everywhere from Just For Laughs to the Smithsonian Museum.

Diego Galileo Melendez is a writer and game developer from Los Angeles. After an invitation from a friend in 2021 to join their campaign, his love for Dungeons and Dragons and Tabletop RPGs has blossomed into a passion – or obsession, if you ask his mother – for writing and game design. Since then, Melendez has starred in the indie live-play web series, Arcane Critsters, and written for and developed several video games, including the innovative fps dating-sim DuoQ and the high-speed bowling-racing game, Lanesplitterz: Bowling 2. He is also a recent graduate from USC with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing from the Dornsife School of Letters, Arts, and Sciences.

Kelly Lynne D’Angelo is a Two-Spirit Tuscarora (Haudenosaunee) writer, performer, and seasoned dungeon master with a passion for storytelling across multiple mediums, including television, stage musicals, and tabletop role-playing games (TTRPG). Her writing credits include Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina, Miracle Workers, and Final Space, as well as Candlekeep Mysteries for Dungeons & Dragons. With over a decade of experience in improv, she took her first professional dungeon-mastering role with Girls Guts Glory in 2015, launching a career that has since made her a staple in the TTRPG community. Additional game-mastering credits including Geek & Sundry’s Tales From The Loop, D&D Live, D&D in a Castle, and D&D Annual Celebration events. Beyond the table, D’Angelo has shared insights on storytelling in interviews on shows including Dragon Talk, Geek & Sundry’s GM Tips, and Game Masters Hall. In theatre, her parody musical Les Millenniables had a sold-out run at Edinburgh Fringe in 2023 and her show Starry is set to debut on London’s West End in 2025–26 through Ameena Hamid Productions. She is also a selection committee member for Outfest’s Screenwriter Lab and serves as a mentor and coach for Creative Lab Hawai’i’s Ideation Program for Indigenous Storytellers.

Brennan Lee Mulligan is an award-winning actor, writer, creator, and producer. As a cast member of CollegeHumor, he wrote and starred in the sketch “Tide CEO,” which won a 2019 Webby Award and received over 8 million views. He is executive producer, writer, and game master of Dimension 20, a series produced for the CH streaming service Dropout, and also hosts Dropout’s fantasy gaming vodcast, The Adventuring Academy. Mulligan is author and co-creator of the popular webcomic and graphic novel series Strong Female Protagonist, which was selected as an Autostraddle Favorite, and was on io9’s list of Best New and Short Webcomics. He received an Excellence in Performance Award from the NY Fringe Festival, playing the lead in …And Then She Dies at the End. Mulligan has been a head storywriter for The Wayfinder Experience, a director and performer for Story Pirates, a member of the UCB Touring Company and Harold Night, and has taught and performed improv for years at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater on both coasts. You can see his face on Adam Ruins Everything, sketches for CollegeHumor, Funny Or Die, and Above Average. Mulligan’s voice can be heard in the animated series Cartoon Hell and Liverspots + Astronots, and he voiced the character Tyler Locke in Audible’s 14-hour, Audie-nominated occult thriller, Locke & Key.

Maddox Pennington is a nonbinary comedian, professor, and playwright. A citizen of the Cherokee Nation, originally from Tulsa, OK, they received an MFA in creative nonfiction from Columbia University, and their debut bibliomemoir, A Girl Walks Into a Book: What the Brontës Taught Me About Life, Love, and Women’s Work was published by Hachette Books in 2017. Previous writing has appeared on Electric Literature, The Toast, and The American Scholar online. Pennington has performed at DC Nerd Nite, FemX Improvised Monologues, the DC Drafthouse, the DC LGBTQ Comedy Festival, and other comedy venues. After teaching college and creative writing in New York and Washington, D.C., they moved to Los Angeles to join the writing faculty at USC, where their teaching interests include Native studies, disability studies, empathy, and monsters. Their work for the stage has been developed with the Native Voices series at the Autry Museum of the American West and the La Jolla Playhouse, NYC’s FRIGID Queerly Festival Off-Off Broadway, the Theatre Viscera Podcast, L.A.’s Moving Arts MADLab, and the 2023 T/GNC Reading Festival. They’ve written, directed, and produced award-winning plays with majority-nonbinary/trans casts, including Love Chicken, Annex, and A Third Space at the Hollywood Fringe. They completed the Native American Media Alliance TV Writer’s Lab in 2023.

Related Event:
Play the Powwow Heist! – A One-Shot Playtest Session
Wednesday, February 18, 2026, from 4 to 7 p.m.
Friends of the USC Libraries Lecture Hall, Doheny Memorial Library 240 & DML 233 
For more info, click HERE.

Presented by USC Visions and Voices. Organized by Maddox Pennington (Writing) and Laser Webber.

Art: Paige Pettibon