For this to work, we needed players who knew how to improvise and respond to ridiculous situations. We invited some friends from the comedy and entertainment scene to fill the table, while Desyanto stepped behind the DM screen as the Dungeon Master to guide the story using Wanaloka, an IP in development that focuses heavily on organic, community-driven storytelling.

We were not surprised. The dynamics at the table were instantly funny because everyone brought their own comedic style into the game. Isman HS played a Bard, and his character was a Panda. Ge Pamungkas played a Rogue and chose to take his role a bit too literally. He spent a good portion of the game spreading chaos, like stealing an immovable rod just to get a punchline.

Kristo Immanuel used his vocal range to bring his Druid to life, changing voices and fully committing to the bit. Arie Kriting took on the role of a Warlock with a pact weapon. This was actually his first time ever playing D&D, but he navigated the game very naturally, proving everyone can jump to play TTRPG almost immediately with no experience. To keep the party from getting themselves killed, Punipun joined the group as a Paladin, acting as the much-needed anchor for the group.

They were playing a game with strict gaming mechanics, but their backgrounds in comedy turned the session into an unscripted sitcom.

Translating a game you usually play in a living room into a live stage performance comes with a lot of challenges. The biggest one is pacing.

Our original plan was to run a tight two-hour show. Instead, the session stretched into a three-and-a-half-hour marathon. We did receive some feedback afterward that the duration was a bit too long for a live theater experience.

The main reason for this was the combat phase. Combat in D&D requires a lot of figuring out positioning and what to do in a combat situation. Doing all of this on stage can easily kill the momentum of a comedy show. We felt the need to anticipate this challenge, so we made some technical adjustments beforehand.

We completely removed physical battle mats from the stage. We displayed dynamic backgrounds to instantly set the scene so the audience knew exactly where the characters were. For the audio, we used a live background music setup. We set up crews in the back where they could shift the atmosphere from a quiet tavern conversation to an intense boss fight in real-time. This sensory engagement prove helped maintain the energy in the room, even when the players had to stop and calculate their dice rolls.

Despite what we do to mitigate the time, the mechanical weight of combat still prolonged the show, making it clear that a more streamlined combat system is necessary for future stage adaptations.

When we planned this event, we assumed that the crowd would mostly be hardcore D&D players. The reality was much more interesting. A large portion of the audience that night had never played a Tabletop RPG in their lives. They were there for the comedy, but they ended up getting invested in the mechanics. They didn't necessarily care about the specific rules of lay on hands or feather falls. They just cared about the story. The entire room cheered loudly for natural 20s and groaned together during critical failures because they understood the stakes.

This was a huge validation for the project. It proved that TTRPGs do not have to be confined to private hobby groups. As a medium, it works perfectly well as an interactive storytelling format that mainstream audiences can watch and enjoy, even if they do not know the rulebook.​

In Wanaloka, the stakes of the story are the balance of two worlds. It is what drives our main goal behind this project in the first place; uniting different worlds of Game and Comedy.

Tawa & Tabletop served as a solid proof of concept. It showed that when you hand the structured mechanics of a tabletop game over to people who master the art of comedy, you create a new way for players and spectators to connect.

We definitely have some operational notes to fix for the next run, especially regarding how to streamline the combat rules for a live audience. But the foundation has been built, the experiment worked, and we are looking forward to seeing how much further this format can go.