The Twenty-Sided Tavern has amassed a huge following, with sell-out shows across the United States, now the show comes to the UK for a run at the Pleasance Dome as part of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe.
It’s an unusual format for the Fringe, putting a table top role playing game on to the stage could either be a disaster or a triumph, but luckily this production leans towards the latter. Inspired by Dungeons and Dragons, the audience go on a hilarious adventure which unfolds based on the rolls of twenty-sided dies.
Co-creator of The Twenty-Sided Tavern, David Andrew Greener Laws takes the role of the Gamemaster, DAGL, and is assisted by fellow co-creator Sarah Davis Reynolds as the Tavern Keeper. They reveal the various elements of gameplay to the three performers who have taken on specific roles for this adventure.
Those roles, and many other elements of the game are decided by the audience, via their smartphones. Using technology called Gamiotics, which can be accessed via a QR code, audience members vote for which path they think their character should take next, the combination of the audience voting and the rolling of the dice, means that every performance of The Twenty-Sided Tavern is different.
In this adventure, the audience were called upon to help the adventurers defeat a monster inhabiting Coldfire Caverns, The Twenty-Sided Tavern has a lot of its own rules; rolling a one means wearing a dunce’s cap etc. So I can’t say that I was always entirely sure what was happening or why, but still it was all hugely entertaining.
There were clearly fans in the audience, who were having a whale of a time, hanging on breathlessly for each new roll of the dice, less enthusiastic audience members were still guaranteed a good time thanks to the fun and quirky comedy of The Twenty-Sided Tavern.
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