Felicia Day Talks The Twenty-Sided Tavern, The Guild Musical, and a Cats TTRPG (Interview)

Felicia Day is not done adding nerdy notches to her belt. The Geek & Sundry founder and bestselling author is about to become the first celebrity guest of The Twenty-Sided Tavern. Day spoke with The Escapist about her fittingly magical Off-Broadway debut, her plans for a Guild musical, and much more.

The Escapist: I just wanted to start by congratulating you on your upcoming New York Off-Broadway debut!

Felicia Day: Thank you so much! I’m so thrilled. It’s been a dream my whole life to do a play in New York. And what better subject than improvised Dungeons & Dragons?

I wanted to ask how this came together, the origin story of your collaboration with The Twenty-Sided Tavern.

I wish it could be a little more clever, but I had been seeing their ads online and thinking that I gotta get to New York to watch that and see it myself as a fan. And they reached out and said they’re now thinking about having guests and they would love me to be their premiere guest. I couldn’t have said yes faster!

It does seem like a match made in heaven! And you’re in this inaugural class of guests with Aabria Iyengar and Erika Ishii, but you’re the first one up to bat. How does it feel being the first?

I feel like I’m always the first at a lot of things. I like to pioneer things. And for some reason, as a very anxious person, I love diving headfirst into things I don’t understand or know or am well-versed at.

Although, I guess I am very well-versed at D&D. I’m very well-versed at improv. So, I have a leg up on this more than most things I do.

That kinda leads into what I was gonna ask next, which is that you have a ton of actual play experience. How do you think that has prepared you for this? And in what ways do you think what’s going on at The Twenty-Sided Tavern will deviate from your previous actual play experience?

Well, I have some briefing on what the show is like, but I have a suspicion that once I’m on that incredibly gorgeous stage and sitting there and the audience is telling me what choices they want me to make – I think it’s gonna be even more fun because we’re all just doing it together. The audience isn’t passively watching; they’re participating. I just get to goof off as a character that they help me choose. It’s really much more interactive than I even thought from reading the reviews and firsthand experiences and the ads.

I’m just thrilled to be able to do this collaborative storytelling with everybody!

I’ve been doing improv since the beginning of my career. I hate to say how long that is, but I will say that The Guild, my web series about gamers, came out of improv. Two of the people in the cast of The Guild, Sandeep Parikh and Jeff Lewis, who play Zaboo and Vork, I wrote those parts for them based on the fact that they always made me break up on the improv stage. And we still have an improv group that occasionally meets and performs in Los Angeles, which I did just a couple of months ago.

I can’t tell you how excited I am to be able to play on a stage in this environment with this vocabulary and these wonderfully nerdy fans.

I wanted to ask a little about your role as the Mage. I know things vary at The Twenty-Sided Tavern from show to show, but is there anything you can share about what you’re looking forward to from playing the Mage?

Well, I don’t want to give any spoilers as to what kinds of characters I may play, but there are multiple characters I could play as the Mage. And the audience gets to choose, essentially. So, I get thrown a character, and I get to play that character for the whole evening. And I love that sort of variety because I know that, even if I was playing the same character every night for my eight performances, it would be different every night. But I know it’s going to be extra exciting because I don’t know what accent I’ll be using or what physicality or what attitude, and it’s gonna make it so much more fun.

In the past couple years, D&D has had the Dungeons & Dragons movie and Baldur’s Gate 3, these adaptations that have both been really appealing and successful for long-time fans of the franchise but have also been really welcoming to new audiences. So, I was curious if you could talk a little bit about how you think the stage makes a unique atmosphere to welcome new audiences to D&D?

When I first started doing D&D, I was riveted by how collaborative and fun it was to play with my friends. I did it through a sketchwriting comedy group. We started doing weekly D&D, and I gotta tell you, some of those sessions made me laugh more than anything has in my life.

So, I always knew it was a performer’s medium. That’s why when I was at my old company Geek & Sundry and I wanted to start a Twitch channel, I knew people playing D&D on Twitch live would be compelling and exciting live entertainment, even though a lot of people told me that would not be the case.

So, what I’m excited about is that [The Twenty-Sided Tavern] is taking it to a whole new level of performance, of immersion, of interaction. And I think it’s really clever and something where the audience will never feel like they aren’t ready to participate. Having that extra barrier of the fourth wall broken completely, and the audience could literally be on stage with us. I think that’s really exciting. And it makes me as a performer more eager to make big choices and make everyone laugh. And, well, probably not cry. Only when I roll a one. Only when I have a critical failure.

There’s room for a little bit of tragedy in D&D, mixed in with the comedy.

Exactly! So, if you come into The Twenty-Sided Tavern and you’ve never played D&D before, the rules are gonna be laid out very simply. And I think people might feel like: “Hey, this is actually really fun, maybe I want to try it!.” Versus being intimidated by any of the guardrails that we have. Guardrails are just there – I mean, really, limitations make you more creative.

So, yeah, I’m excited to introduce people who’ve never done D&D to D&D and then also just make all the people who know how to play the game delighted with how this has been exploded onto the stage.

Speaking of the explosion of it, The Twenty-Sided Tavern has been so successful, and then you see Critical Role and Dimension 20 selling out these big arenas for their live shows. How do you feel you’d define the era of D&D we’re in right now?

I think it’s a performer’s medium. It’s taking live performance and improv, cause essentially it is always improv, this is really taking improv, and I know that a lot of the groups that you mentioned have actors who have improv and performance backgrounds, these are trained professionals doing this in this format, and I think it just enhances live performance and connection with audience. Improv is a very niche entertainment. I don’t know if you were just a regular person off the street if you would be like “Let’s go see a comedy improv show”. Same thing with D&D. But when you combine the two you have a topspin that’s really very attractive to bringing people who are curious about how this could come to be into the theater.

And, you know, passively watching a play is wonderful. Passively watching a musical is wonderful. But, we’re in an era where audiences are used to interacting with their entertainment. They’re used to reacting online to what they’ve seen. They’re used to watching live performances online, especially over COVID. I think that vocabulary and that method of interacting with your entertainment is probably something that people kind of want in real life as well. And I think this is probably scratching that itch.

Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. And I feel like you helped lay the groundwork for where we are now with what you did at Geek & Sundry, with bringing all these TTRPG shows to a new audience.

I mean, I’m blessed. I’m blessed to be involved in it, and I just admire all the people who’ve made it explode to a level that I never could have imagined.

And now I’m in my performer era. I just want to perform. I just want to play with people. I’m done being the behind-the-scenes mama, and I’m ready to play.

Take the stage, literally.

Exactly, take the stage.

I wanted to ask about the cross-section of Broadway and tabletop. If you could play or run a TTRPG set in the world of any Broadway show, which show would you choose?

Oh, that’s a really – oh, Cats! That would be a hot mess of a night. I would love to do that!

That would be incredible!

Sweeney Todd would be pretty good, too.

There’s a lot of room in the Broadway world for a lot of fun TTRPG stories.

I mean, that’s what’s wonderful about Broadway!

I’m working on stage things myself, so the stage has been on my mind. And just having this be able to be the start of a bunch of projects in a live venue is really wonderful.

That’s great! Are you able to speak a little to the things you’re working on?

We have a Guild musical that hopefully we’ll be doing a staged reading online of pretty soon.

That’s really exciting!

Yeah, I’m really excited.

I wanted to talk about The Twenty-Sided Tavern and how it celebrates the 50^th anniversary of [Dungeons & Dragons]. What are some things you hope to see in the future of the game? In the next 50 years?

Oh, wow! I mean, that’s a hard thing, because the formula works so well. Right?

You could evolve the edition a little bit with different rules and all that, but what’s most exciting is that people are using the format and the rules to be able to make their own modules and homebrew and things like that.

I mean, I love the Jane Austen RPG. I love Shadowrun. I love a good tavern, believe me, that’s my favorite. That’s always my baseline. But, I also love the fact that people are seeing the idea that structured play is a benefit and enjoyable to adults as well. I think that’s one of the things that we lost in our lives. We passively consume so much, right? And active play is where we get our creative juices flowing and we light up with that sort of like whatever it is, dopamine?

It’s collaborating with people. And I just like the fact that D&D and other RPGs give everyone the format to feel safe to play.

Absolutely. I feel like TTRPGs in general are also a great way to collaboratively problem-solve with people. And a great way to meet people too, like if you don’t know someone already, getting in the weeds with them of telling a story.

Yeah, if they’re a jerk around the gaming table, they’re gonna be a jerk in real life.

The red flags are there.

The red flags are there!

So, you’re going to New York for the show. Is there anything you’re particularly excited to do while you’re in the city aside from The Twenty-Sided Tavern?

I have not been to New York in quite a while.

I’m looking forward to having dinner with my collaborators for The Guild musical. I’ve actually never met them in person, but we’ve been working on this thing for four or five years. So, that’ll be exciting. They are hardcore theater people, and I’m excited just to treat them to dinner.

I just love New York. I love walking around. I’m sad there’s been no excuse for me to go. And I hope it’s not going to be too hot because I just love walking. I’ve got my HOKAs on, and I intend to just take in as much as I can. I don’t think I’m going to be able to see any other plays, so I think I’ll just be laying the groundwork for coming back. Maybe this Fall, to see the leaves change and see some wonderful theater and shove it in my eyeballs.

So, for The Guild musical, are you planning to stage that in New York to start?

You know, we don’t have any plans except to do a staged reading to raise funds to maybe put it on and do a short run. This is a new world for me, so we’ll be looking for producers to help. It’d be great to do it in New York, but right now, we’re doing one step at a time and that will be a sort of online reading at a local LA theater with an online component of people being able to watch the truncated version of it to raise money for an actual production. So, we’ll see.

And is the plan to bring back the cast of the original series as well for that?

You know, I don’t think any of them sing. So, it’s gonna be me and some new friends. But they’ve all given their blessing, and I’ve been working on a reunion movie, hopefully to kickstart next year. So, they’re gonna be happy for that one with no singing.

I mean, they sang a little in [The Guild] music videos you did back in the day.

You know, it was actually just me. If you actually go look back. [Laughs] I love them.

Speaking of singing. There’s not too much of that in The Twenty-Sided Tavern, but is there a Broadway [musical] in your mind that would be a dream to do?

Oh my gosh, that’s really hard. I love super old-school ones.

Into the Woods. Into the Woods, I actually did in college, and I would love to do Into the Woods.

What role were you in the college production?

I was the evil stepsister, but I understudied Cinderella. That was fantastic.

I just like the old cheesy ones like Brigadoon and Oklahoma!. For me, the cheesy ones like Carousel, like all those are my favorite. I watched the movies when I was a kid, and that’s how I fell in love with musicals. I didn’t really go to them.

There are so many wonderful old plays, but also new ones. I just love people discovering how awesome live theater is but also the catalog of creativity that’s there.

I feel like there have been a lot of new shows that have helped usher new audiences in.

Yeah, I really wanna see the Stereophonic! That would be the one I would try to nab if I had time in New York.

What else do you have coming up this fall that you’re excited about?

I’ve been doing small things here and there. The film industry is very slow right now, and that’s given me the opportunity to work on my writing. I have a one-woman show I’m working on, a novel, all my writing is going at a good pace. I’ve been doing a lot of book narration and podcast performance and voice-over. And then I have several shorts and movies that are doing film festival routes.

So, I’ve been really, really busy in a really wonderful way because I’ve been getting to do a lot more indie stuff and really getting back to, again, my writing. I’m finally over my trauma. Of becoming a mother, of leaving my company, you know, all these things. It was a big chunk of time I took off for a lot of personal reasons, and I feel finally like I’m in a good creative place and I just can’t wait to make the things that I love.

I feel like The Guild really struck a chord with people because it came from such a personal experience and from your voice, so it sounds like you’re ready to start telling those kinds of stories again.

One hundred percent. I have some things coming out next year that are pretty big, that I put my heart into. You know, COVID I think put us all on our back foot for a lot of reasons, and that was right after I left my company and had a baby, and just it was a lot to go through as a person. I really feel like I’m on the other side of something and I can get to a new phase of my life as a creator. Really just focus on the stories I want to tell, which there are many.

Yeah, it sounds like we’re gonna be in a new era of creative storytelling from you, which is exciting!

Yay, thanks!

Is there anything else you wanna say before we leave about The Twenty-Sided Tavern?

I’d just love fans to come out and see it, you know. I think that it’s gonna be a delight to anyone who goes. And I am so proud of being able to be a part of the crew and to improvise. It’s my two loves combined and I really, really hope everyone comes to pack the house and see up play and make merry!

I think we’re gonna have a good party together!

Felicia Day checks into The Twenty-Sided Tavern September 19 through 24, with a special talkback after the September 22 evening performance. Tickets are available on the Dungeons & Dragons show’s official website.