The show, which ran off-Broadway in 2024 after years of development, is celebratory, a victory lap for a game that has endured more than half a century. It invites participation, with actors performing the action inspired by the dice rolls and allowing the audience to influence the direction of the show by making choices via a smartphone. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alex Stompoly, left, and Anjali Bhimani in \u201cDungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern,\u201d a production that invites audience participation. <\/p>\n
(Andromeda Rodriguez)<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty-Sided Tavern\u201d brought me back to days and nights crowded around my family\u2019s living room table. My father was an executive with TSR, Inc., the company that created \u201cDungeons & Dragons\u201d \u2014 there were glass dragons on our fireplace mantle, pewter dragons on our bookshelves, painted dragons on our walls and even a metal dragon that hung from a necklace I wore too often (and that probably didn\u2019t help me with getting dates). As a junior high kid, the game was a refuge, a creative tool where I could envision characters, worlds and fantastical scenarios. <\/p>\n
There was a lot of math, too, and quite a bit of rules, not to mention addendums to rules and fine print to those rules, but I discovered early on a key to its personal appeal, one that likely makes many hardcore followers of the game cringe: Story comes first, the rules a distant second. In fact, I discarded any directive that got in the way of a more fanciful tale. <\/p>\n
It pleased me that \u201cTwenty-Sided Tavern\u201d does as well. When my showing the other week began not with beholders and battles but instead a yarn about trying to flirt with and seduce a dragon, I couldn\u2019t help but smile. For the best \u201cD&D\u201d games, no matter how serious, tense or dramatic they may get, are always a bit silly, or at least they are to me. <\/p>\n
\u201cI know we hear about toxicity in gaming all the time, but when I picked up my first \u2018D&D\u2019 set that my brother gave to me when I was 8 years old, what was open to me was not just a world of storytelling,\u201d says Anjali Bhimani, a co-producer of the production as well as a regular performer in it. \u201cIt was a world where a halfling could kill a red dragon, where it didn\u2019t matter where you came from. There was always a seat for you at the table. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anjali Bhimani in a production of \u201cDungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern.\u201d The actor views the game as a storytelling tool. <\/p>\n
(Andromeda Rodriguez)<\/p>\n
\u201cI think the sense of belonging that tabletop RPGs and \u2018Dungeons & Dragons\u2019 can provide is so, so, so powerful, and I think it really is a means to just bring people together in a way that a lot of other media can\u2019t,\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n
\u201cTwenty-Sided Tavern\u201d does have some constraints. It is, after all, staged in a theater. But it also throws the traditional rules of theater by the wayside. Expect, for instance, to be on your phone most of the show. We\u2019ll lightly direct the production, voting, for instance, to explore a castle\u2019s catacombs or the mysterious woods. Many will cheer a good dice roll, and it wasn\u2019t out of the norm at my matinee for the audience to shout suggestions or requests. When, for instance, said storyline about romancing a dragon became a bit risqu\u00e9, a woman kindly reminded the cast that there were children present. It was toned down, but not before an actor made a joke about the show being educational. <\/p>\n
\u201cThis doesn\u2019t have to be a stuffy, fourth-wall drama,\u201d says Michael Fell, the show\u2019s creative director. \u201cWe can create a sense of community. As much as there is a script \u2014 there kind of is \u2014 we aim to have engagement with the audience every two pages. That means they\u2019re calling out a name, asked to come on stage or it\u2019s just an election on your phone where you make a choice or play a small mini-game. No engagement on the phone ever lasts more than nine seconds.\u201d <\/p>\n
In \u201cTwenty-Sided Tavern,\u201d there are three core actors playing and acting out the game, one dungeon master and a sort of tavern keeper helping to keep score and track of the story. There\u2019s a setup at a bar and a quest involving a threat to the town, but each show is unique. The cast may swap roles, the audience may concoct a monster \u2014 my group envisioned a giant, destructive slice of pumpkin pie \u2014 and settings will shift based on audience vote, done via smartphone. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a little bit like theater as sport.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is gamification of live entertainment. Part of what I\u2019m doing is mirroring what happens in sports entertainment, but in a live theatrical setting,\u201d says David Carpenter, the founder of Gamiotics, which co-developed the show and powers the smartphone tech behind it. \u201cThis show has surprised me for years, but one of the early surprises was the entire audience losing their mind when someone rolls a 20. It\u2019s like someone scoring a touchdown. The audience goes nuts because they didn\u2019t see it coming.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Anjali Bhimani, left, Will Champion and Jasmin Malave appear ready for battle in a production of \u201cDungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern.\u201d<\/p>\n
(Andromeda Rodriguez)<\/p>\n
Like the game, \u201cTwenty-Sided Tavern\u201d theorizes that stories can be at their most powerful when they are not passive, when we as audience members have a role to play and invitation to interact.<\/p>\n
Carpenter is curious how far the audience choice can be pushed to shift a narrative. He talks in the future of experimenting more with moral or ethical decisions. There are none in \u201cTwenty-Sided Tavern,\u201d where occasionally the audience may influence an action in a way similar to a dice roll. We\u2019ll tap, for instance, to fill up a meter on a screen, and where it lands may indicate a success or a failure. Here, the smartphone gamification is used to prod a narrative rather than define it, a reminder to me that \u201cD&D\u201d is in some ways a story creation tool.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are stories that we have told in tabletop games that I have played that I never would have imagined coming up with in the writers\u2019 room because the dice told the story that they did,\u201d says Bhimani. <\/p>\n
‘Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern’<\/p>\n
The large-scale audience participation of \u201cTwenty-Sided Tavern\u201d naturally invites a jovial, party-like atmosphere. It succeeds in extending a hand to the audience, welcoming us into what can be a complex, daunting fantasy world. It argues that \u201cDungeons & Dragons\u201d is for all, much as I did as a junior high kid who made it something of a mission to convert my name-calling friends with the hopes of showing them the joys of gathering with little more than paper, pencils, dice and an imagination. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s still somewhat intimidating to a lot of people because they think, \u2018I have to know all these rules and learn all these spells and read all these books,\u2019\u201d Bhimani says. \u201cComing to the \u2018Twenty-Sided Tavern,\u2019 it\u2019s about telling a great story. Yes, we roll dice. Yes, there are spells. But ultimately, that\u2019s just scaffolding to tell a beautiful, improvised story.\u201d<\/p>\n
I remember when I played weekly games in high school, my friends used to joke that I, as dungeon master, would \u201close\u201d because I did everything in my power to keep everyone\u2019s character alive and playing, wanting to see a narrative to a conclusion that didn\u2019t end in anyone\u2019s death. They wondered if I was running the game incorrectly because they always succeeded. Yet I saw \u201cDungeons & Dragons\u201d as a wholly collaborative endeavor, and I felt that way again watching \u201cTwenty-Sided Tavern,\u201d an ode to the idea that \u201cDungeons & Dragons\u201d is best when shared.<\/p>\n
And a reminder, too, that there is no wrong way to play it. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When I first started playing \u201cDungeons & Dragons\u201d as a tween, my friends christened me with a new…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":437883,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[40226,1582,276,71930,60707,202453,1910,202455,202456,2961,224,5337,36700,4370,18692,645,202457,202454,14164,103],"class_list":{"0":"post-437882","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-audience","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-california","11":"tag-critical-role","12":"tag-dragons","13":"tag-dungeons","14":"tag-game","15":"tag-glass-dragon","16":"tag-instance","17":"tag-la","18":"tag-los-angeles","19":"tag-losangeles","20":"tag-rule","21":"tag-show","22":"tag-smartphone","23":"tag-story","24":"tag-theatrical-production","25":"tag-twenty-sided-tavern","26":"tag-way","27":"tag-world"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115695449226786160","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437882","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=437882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/437882\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/437883"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=437882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=437882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=437882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}