In Dadlands, The Adventure Zone’s McElroy family cooked up a savory slice of short-form tabletop storytelling that would make even Grill Dad Briquette Hoggins proud. The two-page tabletop role-playing game’s set in a Mad Max-style post-apocalypse dominated by six factions of dads, here’s how to play.
The Straightforward Goal and Set-Up of The McElroys’ Dadlands
The goal of Dadlands is to retrieve “the most storied and iconic tool of Dadhood,” The Remote, from somewhere in the depths of the game’s motherless wasteland. The coveted MacGuffin is stashed within one of Dadlands six dad domains: Grill, Sports, Car, Vacation, Drama, or Craft. Dadlands’ Game Mom can roll a d6 to determine The Remote’s locale or choose for themselves, either way, that faction becomes off-limits to the player characters.
The remaining domains represent distinct flavors of dad personalities for the players to choose from, with plenty of room to build a customized dadsona within each region. For example, Justin McElroy plays Chip Hugginsbee on The Adventure Zone, a Vacation Dad specializing in all things Disney.
Dadlands‘ TTRPG Mechanic Operates on a Binary Token System
Once a player determines their dadsona, they establish their stats in Dadlands two binary categories: law and chaos. Each Dad places a total of seven law and chaos tokens in their fanny pack, with the only stipulation being that they must have at least one of each token. If, during gameplay, a player falls to zero in either category they succumb to the life of a hardass or deadbeat and fail the game. Dads can stack their fanny pack’s token by rolling a d6 or choosing a balance of law and chaos that best fits their character.
As the Game Mom guides the Dads toward The Remote, they determine when a pull from the fanny pack is needed. A Dad will have to blindly reach into their fanny pack and present the appropriate number and category of token set by the GM. For example, if a Car Dad’s attempting to cut a vehicles brakes, the Game Mom might set the rating: 2 Chaos.
On a success, a player’s able to achieve the move and add an additional token of that type to their fanny pack, on a failure they lose one token. If the challenge rating were 2 Chaos and a player pulled one of each token, they would still succeed in their intended move but have to lose one token of their choice (keeping in mind that falling to zero in a stat will retire them from dadhood).
The above example applies to normal moves, but a Game Mom can determine whether a Dad’s decision’s Difficult or constitutes a Defining Moments. Difficult fanny pack pulls work the same a normal ones, but with the caveat that mixed results do not succeed. In Defining Moments, all tokens pulled must be discarded in the event of a failure. For each variety of action, dads can team-up to help achieve their goals, adding one token to the challenge rating.
Related: The Adventure Zone: Steeplechase Ending, Explained
The Game Mom Reigns Supreme
The simple mechanic and objective of the Dadlands gives the Game Mom plenty of room for creative licensee in both storytelling and mechanics. As The Adventure Zone‘s Game Mom, Brennan Lee Mulligan highlighted Dadlands lore-potential by introducing interplanetary factions of Moms and Aunts. Mulligan likewise tinkered with the game’s mechanics, replacing the Defining Moment token pull with a cornhole toss.
