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Dungeons and Dragons live play (or actual play, depending on who you ask) isn't just for places like Beacon and Twitch. No, it's very much for the stage, as hot ticket The Twenty-Sided Tavern is proving every day. The show invites audience members into an immersive, collaborative experience with fantasy-garbed actors on stage and combines classic 5e rules with improv comedy. But even with all that info, I still don't have the expertise necessary to sya why audiences are flocking to see it.

Fortunately, at PAX Unplugged 2025, I spoke to someone who does.

Along with being all over the live play scene in projects like Dimension 20, Critical Role, and Tales from Woodcreek, Bhimani is an absolute icon of the Twenty-Sided Tavern, having appeared in the New York, Chicago, and soon-to-be LA versions of the show. When I sat down with her at PAX, I asked her what she thought has made the show such a hit.

"I think, ultimately, it's because this game's origin," Bhimani answered. "It's a storytelling game. You play with your friends around a table. It's about the connection. It's not something meant to be experienced on a screen. Even if you are watching the actual play, you're usually watching it streaming in a format that makes you feel like you're sitting at a table with your friends and you're the eighth player, the ninth player, or whatever, right? When we watch Dimension 20 or we watch Critical Role, you're at the table with them." 

And knowing that that human connection will be made over the table, says Bhimani, is absolutely central to the Twenty-Sided Tavern's success. Particularly during a time in which human connection gets more rare by the day.

"I think what constantly brings people back to that live experience," Bhimani continued, "Is the same thing that brings people back to theater, especially the age of AI, where it's becoming more and more uncertain whether you're talking to a human being when you're online. I think that knowledge 'No, there is a tangible human. There's a tangible human right in front of me, and we are sharing this moment together in the theater.' That's the thing I love about theater."

But maybe even more than making that human connection, Bhimani expands, is the idea that this connection is, quite literally, a once-in-a-lifetime moment.

"The Twenty-Sided Tavern is different every night," she concluded, " We will have something that will never exist again at any moment in time the way it ex existed then. That is an experience that technology cannot provide. And I think it's going to last. You know, the theater survived the fall of Rome, it's not going anywhere."

You heard it here first, folks - get your tickets now for The Twenty-Sided Tavern, playing now and for at least the next two-thousand years.

Click here for proof Anjali Bhimani loves Overwatch 2 fanart just as much as you do.