This wasn’t always the case, but it happened enough to be distracting and the problems with NPCs doing a lot of the story work also persisted as well. And again I don’t want to compare too much, but many beats of Graduation felt like scheduled plot points, not an organically evolving narrative. Now, both Balance and Amnesty also had very big mysteries and overarching plots that Griffin concocted, which also took some big things about the players’ characters’ backstory and the overall narrative out of their hands, but in that case, it felt more like solving a mystery. When big parts of the final battle are handled by NPCs fighting and arguing with each other, that’s not great. I admire Travis’s world-building, creativity, and ambition, but there were so much of those things, it sort of swept the actual players along in a way where it felt they were secondary to a story Travis was going to tell without them. The first episodes, in particular, were overloaded with exposition and NPCs (non-player characters) and throughout the series, the gameplay involved a lot of Travis talking to himself as various NPCs. And I loved many of the NPCs as well, especially Ranier the necromancer who was based on one of my favorite people, Rachel Miner.īut I also felt that Travis, in his excitement to DM his first campaign, went a bit too far in crafting his own narrative and didn’t let his players, well, play enough. Griffin and Clint also had a lot of fun, with Clint doing a great job as a rogue and Griffin really shining a Sir Fitzroy Maplecort. His nameless Firbolg was both funny and had a huge amount of pathos. The characters created by Clint, Griffin, and Justin were great, and as seems to be a pattern in TAZ, Justin has a particular talent for inventing a fan favorite that comes from left field. I enjoyed a lot of Graduation because I always enjoy listening to this family have fun and do silly voices and roll dice. And I don’t just think that was a factor of “this is different.” Griffin definitely deserved a break after so many years as DM, But Graduation was not as successful as Balance or Amnesty. I don’t want to compare them too much, because that’s really unfair, and I certainly listened to every episode with an open mind to let Travis do his own thing and put his own stamp on the campaign. Travis was a very different DM from Griffin. Things got way more complex and the whole series ended up being about how too much order and maybe also capitalism, in general, are bad, but also fun? And there were lots of demons? On the one hand, it was really fun having Griffin as a player and seeing how he developed a complex character who ended up being sort of the hero of Graduation, a story about (as usual) three dinguses who in this case were students at a school for heroes and villains, but in the sidekick program. Having a different DM for a major campaign definitely changed things for The Adventure Zone. Travis McElroy took over running the game and narrative for Graduation, and so let’s start there. But I missed the fantasy setting and D&D ( Amnesty was a Monster of the Week game set in present-day West Virginia) so was curious and excited going into Graduation because it was a return to D&D but with a new dungeon master. Both Amnesty and Balance featured babiest brother Griffin McElroy as the game/dungeon master and that kept up a certain continuity in tone and dynamic between the two, and though Amnesty was less complex than Balance, I certainly enjoyed it and thought it mostly worked. So how do you follow up after something so big and successful? After a few experimental short campaigns, the McElroys moved onto a new campaign called Amnesty. Every fan was sad to see it end but it concluded in an incredibly satisfying way. And that’s not surprising, Balance was amazing. It was and continues to be wildly popular with a devoted and pretty awesome fandom. The first campaign, Balance, lasted for years and has spawned a series of graphic novels, a game, and an animated series still in development. Spun off from The McElroy brothers’ My Brother, My Brother and Me podcast and starring brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy along with their dad Clint, The Adventure Zone is always fun and goofy no matter what. So we want to take a minute to talk about the campaign, and what we loved and didn’t love about this trip to the Adventure Zone.įor context, The Adventure Zone podcast has been around for quite a while. It seems like just yesterday we were hyping the announcement of The Adventure Zone: Graduation and now the third major campaign in from the popular tabletop podcast has concluded after 38 episodes.
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