Imagine a session of Dungeons & Dragons… but it’s on a theater stage with hundreds of audience members deciding the fate of the adventurers. Audiences get to choose actions of the adventuring party, and the performers will take feedback and act it out on the stage, including deciding to save someone or save the world. Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern will have its Los Angeles debut at the Montalbán Theater on November 25, 2025, for a six-week engagement as part of the national tour.

We had the chance to chat with the performers of Dungeons & Dragons The Twenty-Sided Tavern, which included Jasmin Malave, Conner Marx, and R. Alex Murray.

“Part of it is live theater and all the spectacle you expect from live theater,” Marx tells Nerd Reactor. “Part of it is genuinely playing D&D on stage. Part of it is improv. We never know exactly what will happen. One night to the next, every show is different.”

For those not in the know of Dungeons & Dragons, it’s a tabletop role-playing game where a group of players and a Dungeon Master tell stories set in a fantasy world filled with monsters, magic and heroes. The dice decides whether they succeed or fail on certain actions. In The Twenty-Sided Tavern, audience members get to choose the players’ course of action using their phones.

“And then part of it is the audience playing along with us,” Murray added. “And they’re part of the improvisational spark, but they give us names for NPCs, and also they just heckle us like we’re doing in stand-up, and then they also have the Gamiotics software that we use to have them play along. So audiences are helping with the aid of their phone. They play mini games to boost roles, and they decide if we’re going to go left to right or if we’re going to punch a guy or kiss a guy. That’s all the audience.”

D&D is known for its crunchy combat, where the battle slows down as players take turns deciding how to defeat the enemies using magic and weapons, and then letting the dice rolls and their stats dictate the outcome. (This was the inspiration for turn-based combat in video game RPGs.) The live show moves at a quicker pace by simplifying the encounters.

“Instead of doing rounds and rounds and rounds of combat, everyone gets a turn, and the more successes over losses, whoever did well – there’ll be three on one side and two on the other – the one with three successes wins,” Malave explained. “And so we just make it very simple in that way. We can expedite the process. D&D fans get a little bit of combat, but people who don’t know anything about it and don’t know the move sets can still enjoy it.”

With the Twenty-Sided Tavern coming to Los Angeles, expect some special guests from the video game and tabletop RPG world, including Neil Newbon (Baldur’s Gate 3), Erika Ishii (Ghost of Yotei), Devora Wilde (Baldur’s Gate 3), Aabria Iyengar (Critical Role, Dimension 20), and Anjali Bhimani (Overwatch, Ms. Marvel).

“There’s going to be second-act walk-on guests like every single night,” Malave said. “It’s a party.”

“Yeah, it’s going to be a party,” Murray added. “And I very often tell people like you love the show and you came once it was great. And then you come and see it again, and you really realize how different it is the second time. And then that’s when people get obsessed and start coming back and seeing it four, five, six times. I think we’ve got a couple of people who are well into 50 shows, like repeat guests. And I think LA, every night is going to be something special and spectacular, and that it won’t ever happen again.”

You can buy tickets to the show in Los Angeles at https://www.broadwayinhollywood.com/.