Tori Boutin kills monsters, too. Photo by Daniel J. Corey

Right now, Atlas Theatre’s Sprenger Auditorium looks like a board gamer’s dream come true. The floor of the auditorium has been transformed into a board of hexagonal tiles representing grass spaces, river tiles, and forests; staggered on raised platforms at various heights, and an eerie fog rolls across the human-sized playing board. Think the final “wizard’s chess” scene of the first Harry Potter movie, if only Harry and his friends had been forced to play the world’s largest game of “Settlers of Catan” instead.

I’m sitting on the sidelines to speak with She Kills Monsters director Randy Baker, and fight call is well underway. The game board is overrun by heroes clashing sword against shield, yelling battle cries, and—yes—slaying monsters, some of which are also wearing cheerleader skirts. It can be a bit hard to hear over the clamor.

The play blows a game of “Dungeons & Dragons” up into epic proportions—arguably, its a high-budget LARP session unfolding on set designer Ethan Sinnott’s lovingly realized giant board game—basically nerd nirvana. But Baker balks at the suggestion that the play would only be accessible to freaks and geeks. “It’s a universal story, and not just one for D&D geeks,” he says. “At the heart of the story are themes of loss, and fitting in, which should be familiar to everyone.”

That’s not to say that playwright Qui Nguyen’s story is a particularly mopey one. The play features lots of lighthearted action and adventure, and even a mid-show ’90s-themed dance number. Still, the core of the story is about everywoman Agnes’ (Maggie Erwin) quest to learn more about her deceased younger sister Tilly (Rebecca Hausman), the play’s eponymous monster killer. Though Tilly is gone forever, Agnes is determined to somehow connect with her—something she never had a chance to do while her sister was still alive. When Agnes finds Tilly’s old D&D playbook, she enlists the help of a dungeon master (Robert Pike) to teach her—and any equally-uninformed audience member—show to play her sister’s game, which unfolds on an epic scale, if only in their imaginations.

Though the play was written in 2011 (and has been performed by an impressive number of theater companies since then) it takes place in the ’90s; a time when we had to rely on our imaginations a bit more than we do today. “No one wants to go back to a time before the internet,” jokes Baker, “but we still experience a sense of loss when we realize there’s a whole world we can never go back to. There’s a nostalgia for a time when we had more excuses to use our imagination.”

With that in mind, Rorschach Theatre Company has peopled its D&D world with costume designer Debra Kim Sivigny’s vivid patchwork monsters—versions of old D&D standards like the bulette and the Beholder. The costumes are designed not to be photorealistic (whatever that might mean for fantasy monsters) but amalgams of the creatures and some of their high school counterparts: jocks, cheerleaders, and bullies.

The play should be easily understandable to anyone not well-versed in the mechanics of Role Playing Games, as all the basic concepts are explained to Agnes as she plays. There’s no baseline of geek knowledge required to appreciate She Kills Monsters. That said, those who do know an orc from an orca should especially look forward to seeing their dork dreams come true.

She Kills Monsters runs at the Atlas Performing Arts Center (1333 H Street NE) through September 14. The first pay-what-you-can preview runs tonight (Friday) at 8 p.m. Tickets all other nights, which are $30, are available here.