D&D is now celebrating success on every conceivable platform, and the next one is to be conquered for the 50th anniversary in 2024: the theater!
Dungeons & Dragons or tabletop role-playing games in general have long since ceased to be seen as just a kind of board game with strange dice. Nowadays, embodying your own role is just as important an aspect of the whole experience as rolling dice and boxing dragons. Pen & Paper is thus often almost reminiscent of a private round of improvisational theater
Now D&D publisher Wizards of the Coast is taking another big step in this direction, as the first official play in the Forgotten Realms is being produced for the 50th anniversary of the role-playing game. Whereby play is perhaps misleading. It is more of an interactive stage show that goes by the name of The Twenty Sided Tavern
This is The Twenty Sided Tavern
The Twenty Sided Tavern is a project that was launched independently of Dungeons & Dragons and has successful performances in Chicago and Pittsburgh Now, however, an official collaboration with Wizards of the Coast has been announced to present the first official D&D show.
The show is billed as experiential entertainment and will consist of five actors who can embody up to 30 different characters and will feature a cast of five. In addition to the dungeon master, the audience can also decide exactly which characters appear, what challenges they face and how the story unfolds during the live show. To do this, they vote on their smartphones using an app called Gamiotics.
This is to guarantee that no two shows are the same. Every audience member will experience something different when attending the event. Guests should even be able to be brought on stage, where they have to master small challenges. This video of a performance in Chicago shows how you can imagine this:
The whole thing seems to be much wilder and more interactive than the live shows of well-known D&D streamers such as Critical Role, who have also filled huge halls with their campaigns. Here, however, there was less physical action on the stages, with the actors sitting in their seats and playing out the planned adventure, just like in the stream.
For now, the show will only take place in the USA and only in New York on Off-Broadway. Tickets will go on exclusive pre-sale on February 29, then on sale to the public from March 4. The first preview performance will then take place on April 19, 2024. The regular program will then officially begin on 5 May 2024.
