This post was updated Oct. 13 at 8:10 p.m.

UCLA’s Asian American theater company – Lapu, the Coyote That Cares Theatre Company – is bringing out the magical side of UCLA.

The student-led theater group is currently producing a quarter-long Dungeons & Dragons campaign called BRUIN MAGIC. Streaming every Saturday on YouTube and Twitch, the improvised sessions follow four characters navigating UCLA as incoming freshmen but with a fantasy twist. For second-year cognitive science and math student Ezekiel Ito, who serves as both LCC’s co-digital media director and the campaign’s Dungeon Master, the storytelling opportunities are endless in an improvisational game format like Dungeons & Dragons.

“Dungeons & Dragons is a tabletop role-playing game that really stresses the freedom of choice, unlike a typical board game or video game where choices are constrained to a somewhat finite system,” Ito said. “It does have rules, and your actions do have consequences, which is what makes it fun.”

[Related: Luke Beall blurs lines between authenticity and artifice in film ‘Fatal Exposure’]

Ito said he discovered LCC through the Enormous Activities Fair last fall, where a cardboard cutout of LCC’s founder Randall Park decorated the table. Interested in joining a theater company but looking for a more diverse group than he’d had in high school, Ito said he valued LCC’s focus on Asian American stories. After being inspired by an actual Dungeons & Dragons series called Dimension 20, Ito began examining elements of UCLA’s campus he could weave into his own improvised Dungeons & Dragons campaign.

Incorporating characters and elements such as aggressive squirrels, labyrinthine South Campus buildings and tour guide lore, Ito said he wanted to represent shared student experiences in a fantasy setting. As a Dungeon Master, Ito’s role is to play referee among the players, he said, allowing them to make individual choices while justifying his rulings through the result of dice rolls. Ito added that the imaginative storytelling aspect of Dungeons & Dragons allows for more complex situations and scenes, expanding beyond what can be realistically accomplished onstage.

“We do live theater, which means there are certain things you just can’t do … like pyrotechnics,” Ito said. “But with Dungeons & Dragons, I can just say ‘fire happens’ and fire happens, so it allows us this greater range of possibilities.”

Second-year psychology student Jessica Le, who serves as co-digital media director alongside Ito, said the choice to livestream the sessions rather than pre-record was a deliberate storytelling decision. By allowing viewers to watch in real time and participate in a live chat, Le said the campaign takes on a more compelling and interactive tone. Exercising her digital media skills, Le said she works on each session by running the livestream and filming multiple camera angles simultaneously. Le also manages tech elements like microphones, produces promotional materials such as photographs and flyers and advertises the livestream.

Third-year statistics and data science student Tishi Avvaru, who grew up doing theater in the Midwest, said she was excited to find a community of Asian American creatives through LCC. As a theater company, LCC produces solely student-written and produced work that creates a unique collaborative community, Avvaru said. Serving as a producer, Avvaru works on the administrative side of LCC by booking meeting rooms, finalizing scripts and running general meetings, they said. During the summer Avvaru said Ito and Le pitched the idea for BRUIN MAGIC, and they were impressed by their preparedness to run such a complex project. As a producer, Avvaru said they helped connect Ito and Le with the financial team and secured equipment for the livestream.

While BRUIN MAGIC will continue to stream every Saturday throughout fall quarter, LCC is also busy preparing for other projects, Avvaru said. Their fall show, entitled “Playing House,” will premiere in Kerckhoff Grand Salon in November, she said, showcasing three short plays about family dynamics. Avvaru said LCC will be holding their yearly auditions for the company during weeks seven and eight, with this fall marking 30 years since the company’s founding. Avvaru said the audition process aims to make people feel welcomed and comfortable, recalling their own laid-back audition experience.

[Related: Mirrorball Productions provides creative, inclusive space for UCLA creators]

As the campaign continues, Le said she hopes freshmen specifically will tune in, as BRUIN MAGIC mirrors the freshman experience of navigating campus and classes for the first time. Orientation events such as the Westwood Village Block Party, the Enormous Activities Fair and student clubs are featured as story elements, Le said. Even people new to Dungeons & Dragons can enjoy BRUIN MAGIC, Le said, noting that several of the campaign’s players are new to the game themselves.

“I hope it’s coming along to any student that your time at UCLA … is also a choose-your-own adventure where you’re the one rolling the dice and making your own decisions,” Le said. “No other experience is the same, because with these four characters no one is living the same life … you’re the one in charge of your own path in college.”