Podcast Review
Contributed by Taryn Tranby, Administrative Assistant
Part One: Introduction and the Balance Campaign
What starts off as a goofy game of Dungeons and Dragons between three brothers and their dad ends in tears as Griffin, the youngest brother, weaves an incredible tale full of laughter and love. Griffin, Travis, and Justin McElroy are three brothers from Huntington, West Virginia that decided to embark on a Dungeons and Dragons campaign to expand their repertoire. The McElroys already had a multitude of podcasts including Sawbones, The Besties, and My Brother, My Brother, and Me. The Adventure Zone began in 2014 with these three brothers and their father, Clint McElroy, setting up their characters and meeting in a tavern for their first mission. The family embarks with these newly created characters and a few unusually named NPCs, or non-player characters, to join them. (One such NPC is named ‘Barry Bluejeans’ by Griffin after Justin and Travis both snipe at him for trying to create unusual fantasy names to match the setting).
The Adventure Zone has been running a similar set up since 2014, but there have been several different story arcs and methods of gameplay that the McElroys employ for the podcast. The first campaign, Balance, appeals to those fans of traditional D&D fantasy although Griffin manages to squeeze in a little bit of science-fiction for some extra flavor. The campaign is built on the 5th edition of D&D mechanics, but a late arc named The Stolen Century is played with a Powered by the Apocalypse engine which is a simpler system. While the McElroys struggle a bit with game math and mechanics, they always manage to use their critical successes and failures to aid in building the story. The Balance campaign is broken up into eight arcs and each arc has the three heroes, Taako, Magnus, and Merle searching for a magical relic for an organization known to them as the Bureau of Balance. Balance takes them through caves, trains, and automobile races as well as crystal caverns, towns that repeat an hour nonstop, and even a challenging wheel of sacrifices.
The campaign itself runs for sixty-nine episodes and is clever, emotional, and a little bit unsafe for work at times with ribald jests and blue humor. Another fun thing to note is that starting with the fourth campaign arc, The Crystal Kingdom, Griffin McElroy begins composing music to add more drama and ambiance to the show.
The Adventure Zone can be found on the Maximum Fun Network or wherever you get your podcasts. Look out for the next article on this rowdy family and their subsequent Dungeons and Dragons campaigns!
Click here to listen: https://maximumfun.org/podcasts/adventure-zone/
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