Evoking Burnout and Grief through Mechanics in The Gladlands
Editor’s Notes: This is the first in a series of articles previewing presentations slated for NASAGA 2026. Register now to attend! Also, this blog post contains minor spoilers for the Gladlands season of Dimension 20.
When you love somebody and then that love doesn't have anywhere to go, and they say that that's grief, and I think that when the grief doesn't have anywhere to go, it just turns rotten sometimes, and I'm kinda scared it's what's happening with me. - Vic Michaelis as Hugi in Gladlands, Episode 5: A Hugi Minute
Games have always stoked players’ emotions. Beyond the joy of winning and frustration at losing, they have offered a microcosm of reality in which we are able to access parts of ourselves that our lives, or culture in which we live then, do not allow ourselves to express. This year at NASAGA, I will be presenting on one specific emotion — grief — and how recent examples of digital and analog game experiences have created opportunities for emotional processing.
Dimension 20, the long running tabletop role-playing game (TTRPG) actual play series on Dropout.tv, has a history of unique settings and campaign arcs, combining their trademark sense of humor with impassioned storytelling. In its most recent season, they delved into the question: “If cooperation and mutual aid is the adventure, what do heroes look like?” Set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland where community and collaboration take the place of Mad Max-style violence, Gladlands follows a roaming group of do-gooders who focus on quests such as “make sure blood donors get their thank you notes” and “find a way to support a village on the edge of burnout.” Here, most story beats arise not from faction-on-faction violence, but from the question of “How long can you give it your all when so many people are relying on you?”
This narrative is bolstered by two things: the game’s mechanics — a homebrew adaptation of the TTRPG Kids on Bikes — and by its players’ understanding of how the very same mechanics can be used to enhance the emotional journeys of their characters. The combination of these two aspects results in multiple poignant scenes that provide key examples of the power of games to create situations that allow for self-discovery and emotional processing.
The Mechanics
Gladlands builds on prior adaptations of the Kids on Bikes framework, a rules-light TTRPG system designed by Jonathan Gilmour and Doug Levandowski. In it, player characters assign a standard roleplaying die to each of six stats, with the number of sides representing their aptitude with said stat. To overcome challenges, players declare their approach, determine which stat they will be using and roll the corresponding die. If the highest number of the die is rolled, the player may roll again and add the values together before checking to see if they succeed. If a player fails a check, they are rewarded an adversity token, which may be used to increase their — or another character’s — roll by 1.
Gladlands makes some key changes to this system to simulate what life in a caring, stressful wasteland would look like and drive its players to show the effects of prioritizing the support of others at the expense of their own wellbeing. Mechanical changes focused on driving the narrative include:
Stat Changes: Gladlands tweaks the six stats of Kids on Bikes to reflect attributes what would be valued in the setting: charm, warmth, creativity, awareness, resilience, and determination. These are the key ways problems can be solved and stand out from standard TTRPG attributes like raw strength and agility.
Burning out: If a player fails a check, they can “burnout” the die, or reduce it to d4, to reroll the original check. If all the character’s dice reach a d4, the character is retired out of the game. As there is no other way to track health, this means the only way a character can leave the game is their own refusal to accept failure.
Boo-Boos: Gladlands makes a key change to Adversity Tokens to incentivize collaborative play. Renamed Boo-Boos, using one on yourself still adds 1 to your roll, but using the token on someone else instead adds half the users’ die value of the stat being rolled. This highlights a key belief of the campaign setting: using your own resources to help people is more valuable to helping yourself.
Bummerometer and the Good Goo: Outside of individual characters’ burnout scores, two overall measurements of the health of the Gladlands are implemented. The Good Goo reflects the overall efforts the party has made in making their home a safer, more harmonious place to live. The Bummerometer shows the opposite, how the failures of the party have increased strife and tension and drive them to action to prevent further decline. Both drive characters to allocate their limited resources to keeping these in check.
Players and Narrative
As so many facilitators of TTRPGs have found, game design alone won’t always tell the story you want; you need player buy-in as well. The cast of Gladlands are all trained long-form improv actors, some of whom have never touched a TTRPG before filming. Bolstered by their common understanding of how to tell a shared story, they accept the worldbuilding gifted to them, find the narrative beats, and within a few episodes begin to manipulate the games’ mechanics to better explore their character arcs. In all of this, they create a safe container for their fellow players to make interesting, often emotionally charged, choices and provide the support needed to see where they go.
The mechanics that encourage collaboration over self-preservation come to a head multiple times in moments when Gladlands citizens with high expectations of themselves face the limits of their own resilience. In some cases, these are non-player characters the party must figure out how to help: How do you comfort the only maternity ward nurse who knows if she steps back children may not survive? In other cases, it is player characters pushing themselves past their capacity and accepting that change is the only way forward.
A prime example of this is in the character of Hugi, played by first-timer Vic Michaelis. Hugi is the only person in the Gladlands who handles funerals in the form of a roaming crematorium. Revealed in later episodes to have taken up this role from their cousin who died a sudden and tragic death, Hugi amongst all the player characters puts the needs of The Gladlands before their own. This is shown in gameplay by Vic consistently burning out their dice and focusing on Charm, their highest stat, above all else to mask the fatigue and pain underneath.
This comes to a head in the penultimate episode of the series. After being forced to withstand the oppressive nature of a community of emotionally chilled librarians, Hugi has long been at the point of breaking. This is exhibited not only by Vic’s portrayal of him, but in how they have used the game mechanics to limit their ability to roll well. During a confrontation with their deceased cousin’s mother over missing their funeral, role-play shifts into a heart-rending conversation about the wretchedness of losing a loved one and the importance of allowing oneself to grieve. Through Hugi, Vic sums up their character’s arc, "When you love somebody and then that love doesn't have anywhere to go, and they say that that's grief, and I think that when the grief doesn't have anywhere to go, it just turns rotten sometimes, and I'm kinda scared it's what's happening with me."
The emotional effects of this conversation and the following funeral resonate outside of the narrative. Dungeon Master Brennen Lee Mulligan, who is portraying the aunt, begins to get noticeably choked up while talking about processing the death of loved ones. Jacob Wysoki, a fellow player who recently had lost his mother, can be seen tearing up and dabbing his eyes. This moment of vulnerability and space in which to feel true grief was fostered into being through the game’s mechanics — the game’s rules pushed Vic into the headspace of a burned out, sorrow-stricken helper who needed the okay to say difficult truths out loud.
Especially in times wrought by change and loss such as these, it is critically important to take time to bolster our emotional resilience and understand our own emotional needs. Much like the heroes of the Gladlands, we cannot help others if we have nothing left to give. At NASAGA’s 2026 conference, set in Rochester, New York, from October 15 - 17, I’ll be talking more about the importance of processing grief, and dig more into this season of Dimension 20, the award-winning game Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, and more. I look forward to seeing you there!
Brian Stauber is a coach and facilitator who prides himself on crafting creative and thought-provoking experiences tailored to the unique personalities of teams. A trained improv actor and professional Dungeon Master, he loves getting into theoretical discussion about increasing collaboration and immersion for better tabletop experiences.