The Adventure Zone

About

The Adventure Zone (sometimes shortened as TAZ) is a fantasy comedy podcast featuring the McElroy Brothers Travis, Justin, Griffin and their father Clint playing Dungeons and Dragons. Originally intended as a special episode of the McElroy Brothers podcast My Brother, My Brother, and Me, the episode quickly expanded into a standalone podcast series covering an original adventure authored by Griffin.

History

My Brother, My Brother, and Me is a comedy podcast in which the McElroy brothers respond and give humorous advice to Yahoo answers and emails from fans. On August 18th, 2014, a special episode titled "The Adventure Zone" was released in which Justin, Travis, and their father, Clint, played a game of Dungeons and Dragons run by Griffin.^[1] The episode was well received and on December 3rd the episode was given its own podcast series with a second episode the following day and new episodes every other week.^[2]

The adventure follows Taako the elf wizard , Magnus Burnsides the human fighter, and Merle High-Church the dwarven cleric (Justin's, Travis's, and Clint's characters, respectively) working alongside the mysterious Bureau of Balance to gather the Grand Relics, powerful artifacts that threaten the balance of their world. The first arc, known as the Balance Arc, ran between December 3rd, 2014 to August 17, 2017.

Reception

The podcast has been very well-received critically. As of February 2018, the podcast holds a five-star rating out of more than 10,000 reviews on iTunes. Cultured Vultures^[3] wrote a glowing review of the podcast as the Balance Arc ended.

Fandom

The Adventure Zone has gathered a considerable fan following producing content. Aside from a few defining characteristics, the characters true appearance is up to the listener's interpretation, being a strictly audio medium. Thus, depiction of characters can vary widely from artist to artist.

Fans have also created animated and story board depictions of scenes from the podcast. These can range from line art story boards with audio (below, left) to fully rendered, colored animated shorts (bottom, right).

On January 25th, several creators collaborated to create a full-animated trailer for the series, gaining over 279,000 views on YouTube (shown below).

A graphic novel of the first campaign of the series, titled "Here There Be Gerblins," with art by Carey Pietsch, will be released on July 17th, 2018.^[4] The announcement and initial drawings of the characters were met with some controversy, as all the initial character designs made all of the characters caucasian. The McElroys responded to criticism by listening to fan complaints, and as a result the colors of several of their characters were changed in the graphic novel.^[5]

Search Interest

External References