You run a roadside attraction in 1960s America featuring (1d6):
- A giant fiberglass fruit
- Giant fiberglass dinosaurs
- The World’s Biggest Collection of [something useless]
- Biggest Ball of Twine
- Minigolf
- A Haunted Corn Maze
The place is going to shut down but you’ve got a plan (1d6):
- Lure in cocaine-rich investors from Miami
- Scare elderly Uncle Morris to death and inherit his fortune
- Get featured as the setting for a Hollywood movie
- A celebrity endorsement!
- Rally the community and host a fair
- Be the first roadside attraction to launch into space
Unfortunately (1d6):
- The Mob has plans for your space
- A crew of thieves plans to steal the attraction
- Your attraction is re-zoned for toxic waste storage
- Dinosaur bones have been found on site and archaeologists are everywhere
- All the kids are into disco
- The tax code is changing unless you help elect a dog mayor
You have two statistics which both start at 3 (on a 6 point scale). They are ROADSIDE and ATTRACTION. Use ROADSIDE when you want to get your hands dirty, engage in business, fleece someone, use street smarts, or scrap. Use ATTRACTION when you want to charm someone, get glamorous, harness the power of dreams, or create something.
When taking an action where the outcome is possible, but in doubt, roll a d6. Rolling under your relevant stat is a success. If you fail and your failure can serve as an indictment of The American Dream, increase your ROADSIDE stat by one. If your failure was because, by Gosh, you just didn’t work hard enough, increase your ATTRACTION stat by one.
If you ever reach 6 in ROADSIDE, you abandon your dream and go get a day job somewhere in a call center selling diet pills or penny stocks. It doesn’t matter. If you ever reach 6 in ATTRACTION, you abandon your dream and go to L.A. or New York to earn money dressing in a costume for tourists. It doesn’t matter which one.
You can move a point from ROADSIDE to ATTRACTION (or vice versa) if you introduce a flashback scene to a time where the establishment of your attraction has an important corollary to the current obstacle you’re trying to overcome. Perhaps it’s a lesson you learned, a skill you acquired, or an asset still available to you from those days.