Live Performances of Dungeons & Dragons Are Filling Stadiums and Going Mainstream

The following feature is excerpted from TIME Dungeons & Dragons: The Game that Changed the World.

I enter a buzzing tavern, eager to partake in some drink and mingle with other patrons. On the way inside, a life-size mimic—with its menacing and toothy maw—is noticeable from across the room. Even with its monstrous denizens, the tavern is impeccably decorated with intricate wooden reliefs and carvings depicting dragon heads, owlbears, and battle axes. Along the ceiling’s beams, sigils carved into the wood spell out TOMOROW’S STORY IS STILL UNWRITTEN in Thorasta, a language more largely known as “Common” on the continent of Faerûn. As I settle into my seat with a tankard of wine, I clock a tiefling wizard entering from behind me on the arm of a paladin in full regalia (minus the clanking platemail).

Despite the fantastical ambience, I’m not actually in Faerûn’s Sword Coast, nor am I anywhere in the Forgotten Realms. I’m a few blocks away from New York City’s Port Authority Bus Terminal at Stage 42 Theater, about to play Dungeons & Dragons with 500 new friends.

Dungeons & Dragons: The Twenty-Sided Tavern is an off-Broadway show in which seasoned storytellers and comedians interact with the audience to complete a largely improvised D&D session, complete with dice rolls, initiative orders, and a charismatic Dungeon Master trying to keep the story on the rails. The warm-hearted and silly spectacle has been covered by myriad mainstream outlets, including the New York Times and Rolling Stone.

As D&D has evolved from a fringe hobby into a mainstream medium, the idea of people watching others play the tabletop game instead of playing themselves has exploded on a similar track. Actual play—sometimes called live play—is a new genre of storytelling in which people play tabletop roleplaying games (TTRPGs) for an audience, often through a podcast or an online streaming show. Much like with D&D itself, the original supporters of the genre were mega-fan tabletop devotees finding community in a niche medium. But over the past several years, it has exploded, with shows like Critical Role and Dimension 20 becoming large-scale franchises with robust merchandise programs, selling out stadiums with the fervor of a Taylor Swift or Olivia Rodrigo concert.

The Twenty-Sided Tavern builds on the actual play genre’s momentum, with improv comedians and dramatic storytellers crafting narratives that make you feel like you’re rolling the dice yourself, even if you’re not. But this show expands beyond the bounds of actual plays and involves the audience in crucial, pivotal story decisions from the second the guests take their seats. As the rows begin to fill, the three cast members, along with the Dungeon Master and co-creator David Andrew Greener Laws (who goes by DAGL), disperse into the audience and begin checking in with each group of viewers. While we wait for showtime, the cast seeks consent from individuals about whether or not they would like to be called on to participate on stage and hands out prompts for the audience to fill out. They also point out instructions in the showbill for accessing the browser-based voting software, designed by Gamiotics, that is key for the most interactive elements of the production.

Once the show begins, DAGL and the Tavern Keeper (Sarah Davis Reynolds, also a co-creator and story designer) continue to teach the audience how to play D&D—introducing key concepts and explaining what might happen depending on a given outcome—in a way that gives just enough information to newcomers without feeling exhaustive and stale to seasoned players. Although the audience has already met the cast ahead of showtime, DAGL formally introduces the three adventurers: a warrior (Tyler Nowell Felix), a mage (Madelyn Murphy), and a trickster (Diego F. Salinas). But the three comedians don’t know who they’re roleplaying yet: That’s for the audience to determine for them. Through the Gamiotics voting system, we’re given choices of different characters for each of the three main cast members to roleplay, from a shortlist pulled from 33 total characters designed for the show. “We try to make the show as balanced as possible so that every decision not only has consequences—because every decision does have consequences—but every decision has equal weight and equal draw for the audience,” DAGL says. Reynolds adds, “If you come to the show three, five, or ten times, you’re seeing something different every time.”

In the wake of the chaos after the Apogee Solstice, a group of brave heroes called the Mighty Nein join forces to deal with the rolling dangers suddenly unleashed. That was the promised premise when more than 12,000 fans gathered in London’s Wembley Arena, a venue that has hosted Tina Turner, the Beatles, and Queen over the years. But this sold-out show is not a rock concert. On October 25, 2023, Wembley hosted a handful of self-proclaimed “nerdy-ass voice actors” who create and star in a Dungeons & Dragons show called Critical Role.

The Scottish comedian Daniel Sloss introduced Dungeon Master (DM) Matthew Mercer and his fellow Critical Role cast members, Ashley Johnson, Marisha Ray, Taliesin Jaffe, Travis Willingham, Sam Riegel, Laura Bailey, and Liam O’Brien. The crew were dressed up as versions of the characters they brought to life through 141 episodes of the show’s second season and campaign (Riegel notably did not dress up as his character, instead donning a Freddie Mercury–inspired ensemble). The massive crowd sang along to the program’s theme song and roared at every natural 20 dice roll. “Because we’re all theater kids, there’s a special kind of energy,” says Mercer, who serves as the chief creative officer of Critical Role Productions and the DM of the program’s three major campaigns. “There really is kind of a sharing of energy with everyone who’s present, especially if they’re all there and as excited for this as you are.”

Whether on Twitch or YouTube (the show’s primary outlets) or on a stadium’s stage, Mercer weaves together rich narratives and expansive worldbuilding as he welcomes us into Exandria, the in-game Critical Role universe that he created and continues to showcase. 

The Critical Role cast is composed of voice actors, and many of them have earned accolades for their work. It was on the set of the film Resident Evil: Damnation, while Mercer was recording the character Leon S. Kennedy, that the Critical Role cast started to come together. Outside the recording booth, O’Brien, who was voice directing the project, told Mercer that he used to play D&D when he was a kid. Mercer shared that he had, too, but he never stopped, and O’Brien should join him for a game or two. “I had brand-new kids at that point, and I had no free time,” O’Brien recalls. “I was like, ‘That doesn’t sound like it’s for me, but I’m glad you’re having fun with it.’”

A year or two later, O’Brien approached Mercer to take him up on the offer. They assembled a table of voice actor friends at the small apartment of Mercer and his partner, Marisha Ray, who is now the creative director at Critical Role Productions. Johnson told Felicia Day, the co-founder of Geek & Sundry, about their home game, which was halfway through a campaign. Then Day approached the group about playing it in a live-streamed format for Geek & Sundry’s Twitch channel. They streamed their first episode in March 2015, picking up with the adventures of a party called Vox Machina. 

Amid their second campaign, on March 4, 2019, the Critical Role cast launched a Kickstarter campaign to raise funds for a 22-minute animation called Critical Role: The Legend of Vox Machina Animated Special. Within an hour of its launch, the Kickstarter had raised more than $1 million. At the end of the first full day, all of the announced stretch goals had been unlocked, and the total had reached more than $4.3 million. With such support, the project expanded into an R-rated animated series on Amazon called The Legend of Vox Machina, which chronicles the adventures from Critical Role’s first campaign. The show’s third season arrives in October 2024, and a new show focusing on the second campaign’s Mighty Nein has been announced.

On the road to Comida, the capital city of the food-based world of Calorum, among the peppermint trees, a caravan of the nation of Candia’s diplomatic envoy is ambushed, seemingly by Meatland brigands. The story that follows includes intense political subterfuge, villainous monologues, and heart-wrenching character deaths. This is a story of six little candy people in a saga modeling Game of Thrones. 

A Crown of Candy, which aired in 2020, is the sixth season of Dimension 20 and its third campaign with the main cast, known as the Intrepid Heroes. Produced by Dropout, an independent comedy-based streaming service, Dimension 20 features Game Master Brennan Lee Mulligan and a table full of comedians and pro gamers telling stories through Dungeons & Dragons. To date, the series has run 22 seasons, with themes ranging from John Hughes–meets–fantasy high school to a court of Regency-era archfey. In the coming months, Dimension 20 will host a live show in New York City’s massive Madison Square Garden, aptly named Gauntlet at the Garden. 

Mulligan was introduced to tabletop roleplaying games by Elaine Lee, a celebrated playwright and writer, and the future Game Master’s mom. Lee, who authored the graphic novel series Starstruck, helped Mulligan find a gaming group and learn how to play. When he was 10, he started running the games for his friends, not unlike what he does now. “The first time I ran a game, after it ended, I told my mom this was the most stressful day of my life,” Mulligan says. “And I went, ‘Can we schedule the next one?’”

CollegeHumor launched the Dropout TV video platform. In order to be successful, they needed new original content. By the time Mulligan pitched Dimension 20, he had already been running games for five out of the six main Intrepid Heroes. Siobhan Thompson, Emily Axford, Zac Oyama, and Brian Murphy all had experience as improv comedians at CollegeHumor. Lou Wilson was not a CollegeHumor cast member but had significant experience performing and playing with Mulligan. The sixth member of the Intrepid Heroes, Ally Beardsley, had never played D&D before but learned the game on screen as Kristen Applebees in Fantasy High, Dimension 20’s first season. After the first season, it was clear that Dropout had caught lightning in a bottle with these six players and Mulligan as DM, and the producers continued to lean into that group’s exciting dynamic. “There’s something magical about what happens when the seven of us are in a room together in which we just become more than the sum of our parts,” Thompson says. “They make me much better, and I feel like I help them be better as well.”

Dimension 20 fluctuates between seasons that retain the main cast and seasons that include other
gaming experts and comedians, and sometimes with Brennan at the table instead of DMing. One of the most infamous guest-focused seasons did not bring in anyone from the larger Dropout universe or any gamers in the space and became the perfect medium for teaching novice D&D players how to play. “I spent a good three years before getting hired at Dimension 20 making actual play, coming up with all different ways to deconstruct a script for a company so that they could teach D&D faster,” says Carlos Luna, the show’s series producer and co-executive producer. “I did not have on my bingo card that the best way to do it with the biggest audience and the most understanding at the table would be Drag Queens.”

In 2023, Dimension 20 released Dungeons and Drag Queens, a story that takes place in a macabre underworld and features the pinnacles of RuPaul’s Drag Race royalty. With Mulligan in the Game Master seat, the show included four players: Alaska 5000 as Princess, Bob the Drag Queen as Gertrude, Jujubee as Twyla, and Monét X Change as Troyánn. “They are apex performers—not just in the world of drag, in the world of entertainment,” Mulligan exclaims. “For them to say, ‘I’m going to learn a weird math game on camera’ is a level of confidence, vulnerability, intelligence, and bravery.” 

The day that tickets went on sale for Dimension 20’s Madison Square Garden show, Luna hoped they’d be lucky enough to sell a few thousand. If they didn’t, what would that mean for the program, and would this endeavor be considered worth it? “When we woke up in the morning, someone pinged us and said there were 20 or 30,000 people in the queue,” Luna says. When Ticketmaster’s dynamic ticket pricing system (which hikes up the cost in accordance with demand) kicked in, the average $150 to $200 ticket price soared to about $2,000. In a statement released on social media, Dimension 20 apologized to fans and said the vast majority of tickets were purchased for $119. The company announced that they would be halting all dynamic pricing on this and future events and implemented a lottery system through which fans can score tickets for just $35—a similar system to Olivia Rodrigo’s. “The idea that [the] love we have for telling stories together has brought us to this moment,” Dimension 20’s Lou Wilson muses. “I feel incredibly lucky. I feel incredibly grateful. I don’t think I’ll be able to really understand the immensity of those feelings until I’m standing in Madison Square garden with 20,000 fans making a whole lot of noise.”

When I asked both the Critical Role and Dimension 20 teams what they thought of the immense scale that their programs have grown to, the consensus included terms like “flabbergasted” and “befuddlement.” And even more so, these creators say they are immeasurably thankful to the fans and viewers who have engaged with their work. “Thanks to anybody who’s followed our antics,” Mercer says as we conclude our interview. “I’ll spend the rest of my life trying to express my gratitude that anybody cared for our silly dice-rolling stories.”