David Carpenter, co-creator and executive producer of Off-Broadway production, The Twenty-Sided Tavern, has taken a long journey to bring Dungeons & Dragons to the stage in a way that is not only entertaining but also fully interactive. His vision to create a live-action, gamified experience puts the audience in control, a concept that has captivated fans since its debut. Carpenter shared how this revolutionary project came to be, his inspiration for blending theater with RPG mechanics, and what makes this D&D-inspired play unlike anything else on the stage.
With a mind-boggling number of iterations guided by dice-rolls and audience participation, The Twenty-Sided Tavern has merged technology and interactive play into live theater, creating an official Dungeons & Dragons adventure that puts the iconic role-playing game’s lore and sense of personalized adventure onto an Off-Broadway stage.
Just like the OG RPG, Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern promises to be a different experience every time you sit down in your seat, equal parts improvisation, scripted theater, and interactive experience.
“There are over 360,000 possible pathways in the campaign,” said David Carpenter, executive producer and co-creator of the show, in an interview with SciFiSland.com recently.
Carpenter is a gamer at heart and although he’s an admitted D&D novice, he calls himself a “nerd, geek, scifi and fantasy fan” who’s been fascinated by the gamification of live entertainment for years.
“Since 2015 I’ve been trying to figure out a way to build a choose-your-own adventure narrative into live theater,” he said.
Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern is the culmination of a number of different adventures that Carpenter himself has taken. He’s a seasoned producer with 25 years of experience on and off Broadway, earning a Tony nomination for his work. He produced the immersive 2019 Broadway run of Slava’s Snowshow and led the Off-Broadway comedy Puffs, a parody of the Harry Potter series, told from the perspective of the often-overlooked students of the Puff house, inspired by Hufflepuff.
That experience with Puffs taught him how to produce a show that did not run afoul of the copyright lawyers and he’d been looking to create a D&D-like stage show, something no one had been able to do before, especially on the scale he imagined. Originally, The Twenty-Sided Tavern had nothing to do with Dungeons & Dragons, while at the same time having everything to do with the classic game. There was no official association with Wizards of the Coast or the brand. You can say it was D&D adjacent.
“I knew how to not violate IP and brand confusion,” he said.
The idea came about – as so many creative endeavors did over the last few years – during the pandemic. Carpenter is a “wide-ranging, eclectic gamer” playing everything he can get his hands on from video consoles to board games and RPGs like D&D to TCGs like Magic the Gathering. But there were already plenty of live streams for people to watch games where players run through a module in real time.
“You need something more if you want people to buy a ticket to the event,” said Carpenter.
That’s when The Twenty-Sided Tavern began to take shape.
The basic premise is that a wizard shows up at a tavern saying the world is going to end soon and the party has to follow along on an adventure. Almost everything else is up to a roll of the die or what the audience decides. But Carpenter didn’t want people picking from predetermined pathways.
“I wanted the audience to have agency,” he said. “They’re part of it. They’re not just a passive observer. I wanted to be able to make collective audience choices.”
To accomplish that feat, he needed something special. After a number of what he calls “blind alleys and failed experimentation,” he solved the problem. Carpenter is multi-classed, a technologist as well as a Broadway producer. He founded Gamiotics, a company that connects audiences to a live experience, geared toward interactivity in education, sports marketing, museums, or, as with The Twenty-Sided Tavern, theater, through a web-based platform.
“As a producer and entrepreneur it was a problem looking to be solved,” said Carpenter.
The audience is segmented so a cohort will influence one of the characters on stage through the Gamiotics interface on their phones, voting on key decisions in real-time, guiding the characters’ actions and influencing the direction of the plot. Characters include the wizard, tavern keeper, a mage, a fighter, and a rogue. There’s also a Dungeon Master who helps the game along, rolling a die, just like in the real game, to determine outcomes. While the show is set in the D&D Forgotten Realms campaign, it wasn’t always so on brand.
In its initial incarnation before coming to New York, The Twenty-Sided Tavern was staged at the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh and the Chicago Broadway Playhouse. It was there that the play had some anonymous guests who would change the game.
“Unbeknownst to us, Wizards of the Coast came to check it out,” said Carpenter. “A month or so later, they came calling.”
Wizards of the Coast, now owned by Hasbro, is the game publisher that owns Dungeons & Dragons. The 50th anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons was approaching and the company thought it would roll the dice with The Twenty-Sided Tavern.
“We said we’d love to partner,” said Carpenter. “Our goal is to create more D&D players.”
From then on, they put as much Dungeons & Dragons into the play as they could. (Carpenter didn’t want to give too many details away. You’ll just have to go see the play.)
To keep the fluidity of the gameplay, much of the acting on stage is improved. While it might seem chaotic, this group of actors knows how to roll with it (literally). Between improv and a dice roll, you never know what will happen. Carpenter says that it takes two main skills to be a good fit for the show.
“Know D&D and have an improv background,” he said. “The players don’t have a ton of stuff they need to memorize.”
Recently, the production reached out to three big names in the RPG realm to guest star in the show.
Felicia Day, known for her popular web series, The Guild, based on her own gamer life, joined the cast and is staring through September 24th. Day will appear as the mage.
Aabria Iyengar is joining the cast on September 26th through October 7th, also as the mage. Iyengar is known for her online roleplaying on a number of different channels, including Dungeon Master for the first season of Exandria Unlimited.
Known for their voice role as Valkyrie in the Apex Legends video game, as well as web series including L.A. by Night and Dimension 20, Erika Ishii will star as the warrior from December 5th through 17th.
Carpenter says the live roles will give all three a direct connection to their fandom, something the online stars don’t generally get through the screen.
Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern is a fun all-ages show, although it is based in a tavern so there’s a chance for some off-color language, alcohol, and of course, a little violence. You also don’t need to be a D&D geek to enjoy the show.
“It’s accessible to the hard core and novice players,” said Carpenter. “All ages from eight to 80.”
The set is made up of all original designs. A giant video wall at the back of the stage displays both dice rolls and digital backdrops combined with real sets as the characters move through the setting of (spoiler alert!) Waterdeep.
Attendees are encouraged to dress up if they want to cosplay but the organizers ask that costume elements do not obstruct the view of or be distracting to others in the audience. Also, please leave any weaponry at home.
Carpenter, who almost immediately after graduating from college began working on Broadway, says the show is ready to spread its wings. There are plans to stage the production at the Sydney Opera House in Australia at the end of this year for a four month run. A national tour will kick off at The Kennedy Center in Washington DC starting in May 2025 and run for 40 weeks with other cities already booked (look for announcements.)
In the meantime, Carpenter says the New York City show is staying put as long as they can sell tickets and make money. The entire show is about two and a half hours long with a 15 minute intermission.
“It’s never the same show every night,” he said.
The concept encourages repeat visitors.
“We had one person come over 30 times in five months,” said Carpenter.
That also doesn’t mean the basic premise will always stay the same. The show is built to evolve, according to Carpenter. He said he hopes in a year from now they can stage a new campaign with a new adventure.
“It was strategically built like that from day one to keep it fresh,” he said.
Get tickets for Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern in the Stage 42 theater at 422 West 42nd Street, NYC, thetwentysidedtavern.com.
