The Adventure Zone: The Announcement Zone: Season Two, MaxFunDrive and more!
March 29, 2018 9:08 PM - Subscribe

SEASON TWO APPROACHES. Find out what our plans are for the future of The Adventure Zone in this announcement-filled episode! Also discussed: The MaxFunDrive! Our book tour for the graphic novel (tickets go on sale very soon at mcelroyshows.com/tours)! A new The The Adventure Zone Zone! Some details on the buckwild thing Justin did for us! Some peppy piano music that came with Garageband! Tune in!
posted by bleep (15 comments total) 1 user marked this as a favorite
 
I thought this was a fun and cute 10 minutes. Excited to hear their MaxFun episode. Mostly I wanted to post this cause I love that they called it "The Announcement Zone".
posted by bleep at 9:08 PM on March 29, 2018


TL;DL: Amnesty will be Season 2 of The Adventure Zone.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 10:05 PM on March 29, 2018


I was hoping for Dust. But amnesty will be fun. Also Dust lends itself well to short one off mystery games that they can fill in from time to time.

Really looking forward to Elementary though. It sounds like a Justin DMed game was... Interesting
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 2:27 AM on March 30, 2018 [1 favorite]


Yeah, I was really hoping for Dust but it does sound like they’ll keep the others alive as well.

For all their warnings of these experimental arcs, they all had their highlights and anyone of them would’ve been great as a longer series.
posted by slimepuppy at 3:27 AM on March 30, 2018 [3 favorites]


I'm pretty happy with Amnesty as the choice.

I've been trying to formulate my problems with Dust (mostly the finale) for a while into a coherent form for a while now, and I think I've got it. Travis is a very, very skilled actor and he nailed the individual NPC mannerisms, speech, tone, etc. Buuuuuut the story felt a little limp from an RP perspective. I didn't feel like the PCs/players had any particularly tough choices to make or that there was a meaningful chance of failure.

Also, the Sheriff had his whole speech about order and chaos and balancing them, which is a neat idea for a villain! But I don't think the arc as a whole ended up being about that, so other than the Banshee's speech I didn't think order/chaos really fit into the rest of our perspective on the town. I can kind of see order/chaos as a good macro analogue to the PCs' corruption scale, but the PCs didn't play that way either.

I'm probably beanplating this pretty hard but these are the things that agonize me as a DM trying to plan out my own campaigns. It's a tough job and a skill that's not quite like anything else. I think if Dust kept going, Travis would improve (especially if they were breaking out of the semi-contrived investigation format) but for now Griffin's still got the crown.

So, uh, long comment and 100% subjective but I just wanted to express these thoughts.
posted by Maecenas at 9:12 AM on March 30, 2018 [2 favorites]


Buuuuuut the story felt a little limp from an RP perspective.

This has always been pretty true of TAZ overall.

I just want to know where the scifi short arc went? There are spaceships in the new show art! I demand spaceships!
posted by GuyZero at 3:41 PM on March 30, 2018


Also here is hoping Griffin takes it easy this time.
posted by bleep at 5:20 PM on March 30, 2018


Is there going to be a Fanfare post for the MaxFun Drive bonus episode? It's up on the donor feed, and uh, I WOULD LIKE TO DISCUSS IT. (or lol helplessly about it, whichever) But I don't know what the etiquette is on posting about an episode that's only available to donors.
posted by yasaman at 2:12 PM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


It looks like the Max Fun donor materials feed has to be added to FanFare in order to post it. I don't even know if it would be technically possible due to the feed needing a password.
posted by bleep at 2:57 PM on March 31, 2018


But I will say I think it’s great that Griffin brought out his Juicy Wizard voice
posted by bleep at 3:36 PM on March 31, 2018 [1 favorite]


We could discuss the Donor episode here in this thread?
posted by Tevin at 6:29 PM on March 31, 2018


>But I will say I think it’s great that Griffin brought out his Juicy Wizard voice

I think it was Jenkins from the same arc but yes I burst with joy.

Based on the recent conversations that have happened on here about the joy we take when they say yes to everything, I strongly encourage you all to become donors and listen to this thing. It is a gift.
posted by tchemgrrl at 11:33 AM on April 1, 2018 [1 favorite]


Oh yes, Jenkins.
posted by bleep at 2:15 PM on April 1, 2018


Here's a link to the RPG they played in the donor episode. Honestly, it seems like it'd be enormous fun to play with the right group of people, plus it's relatively simple and low on time and effort investment. I thought a good portion of the donor episode was the kind of silly dumb humor that by all rights should not work, and yet had me crying with laughter anyway. Every single description of BBC Sherlock Holmes had me rolling, and honestly, Travis's take on RDJ Holmes was hilariously in character at some points.
posted by yasaman at 11:14 AM on April 2, 2018 [2 favorites]


> I'm pretty happy with Amnesty as the choice.

Likewise. Clint's and Travis' turns both started well but it was clear that the gameplay was moving faster than they intended and their own attempts to slow things down or glue in more material was weakening the narrative structure and/or the the worlds they'd built. It's a somewhat unfair comparison because Griffin has had a lot more experience GMing than anybody else (and because a weekly cadence is a lot of work to keep up with), but this is literally their revenue-generating business, they have to focus on what's got the best likelihood of continuing to be popular.

"Commitment" started strong but felt like the world was too big, or the NPC cast was too unstructured; after the initial character introductions it felt like things kept floundering. The episodes were a lot of fun while I listened to them but aside from the player characters nothing's stuck in my mind about the mini-arc since it ended; things hadn't hung together well enough.

Of the three mini-arcs, I thought "Dust" had the most interesting scenario and cast of characters (though Gandy struck me as problematic), but I also wonder whether there's enough there for Travis to run 70-minute episodes of RPG-based storytelling for a year or more, especially since Travis' intent is to work with classic mystery-solving story arcs which require a lot more detailed world-building than your standard quest-based game. So I hope they return to Dust for one-offs or short arcs, at least, and maybe at some point Travis will have enough experience to pull this off in a future season.
posted by ardgedee at 7:41 AM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


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