The Adventure Zone: Amnesty - Episode 36
September 23, 2019 9:22 AM - Subscribe
The curtain rises, and the machine is exposed. The Pine Guard stands in judgment of judgment itself. Two doors — two choices — illuminate the darkness. The final episode of The Adventure Zone: Amnesty. Thank you for listening.
In a moment of perfect and painful synergy I received my Cryptonomica key tag in the mail today. It's a huge piece of plastic 3x bigger than any of my keys and completely impractical and I love it very much.
I loved Balance but I freaking LOVED Amnesty, everyone's game was just so elevated (Clint KILLED IT) and like emotionally grounded in a way I found really enjoyable.
As a small sound design note I thought using "Take Me Home, Country Roads" in both the opening recap and as the bg music for Thacker's epilogue conversation was a really lovely way to link together Kepler and Sylvain / Thacker and the Quell / love of a place and Love of a Place.
Also I've never related to a reddit comment as much as I did this one, I actually had to pause the episode to wait out a paroxysm of shock/horror/delight/angry awe that Justin keeps pulling this shit and it WORKS FOR ME EVERY TIME.
I'm gutted it's over but I'm looking forward to chilling out with the live show episodes and the start of the next campaign. Travis seems to favor dense infodumps, which I find difficult to process aurally, but I actually liked (K)nights a lot so I'm still optimistic!
(...I almost hate to say it because Purity of the Form but I really feel like in the right hands Amnesty would be an incredible TV show.)
posted by brieche at 8:38 PM on September 23, 2019 [6 favorites]
I loved Balance but I freaking LOVED Amnesty, everyone's game was just so elevated (Clint KILLED IT) and like emotionally grounded in a way I found really enjoyable.
As a small sound design note I thought using "Take Me Home, Country Roads" in both the opening recap and as the bg music for Thacker's epilogue conversation was a really lovely way to link together Kepler and Sylvain / Thacker and the Quell / love of a place and Love of a Place.
Also I've never related to a reddit comment as much as I did this one, I actually had to pause the episode to wait out a paroxysm of shock/horror/delight/angry awe that Justin keeps pulling this shit and it WORKS FOR ME EVERY TIME.
I'm gutted it's over but I'm looking forward to chilling out with the live show episodes and the start of the next campaign. Travis seems to favor dense infodumps, which I find difficult to process aurally, but I actually liked (K)nights a lot so I'm still optimistic!
(...I almost hate to say it because Purity of the Form but I really feel like in the right hands Amnesty would be an incredible TV show.)
posted by brieche at 8:38 PM on September 23, 2019 [6 favorites]
That was a good ending.
I didn't connect with Amnesty quite so well as Balance. I thought earlier on it lacked a bit of the silly free form that early days balance had, so I'm looking forward to a few stand alone experimental ones coming up.
But it was still awesome!
I'd like to see them try another system again next time.
Maybe the 2d20 system that star trek adventures uses, because it would give Griffin a lot of scope to hoard threat until exciting dramatic moments.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 7:02 AM on September 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
I didn't connect with Amnesty quite so well as Balance. I thought earlier on it lacked a bit of the silly free form that early days balance had, so I'm looking forward to a few stand alone experimental ones coming up.
But it was still awesome!
I'd like to see them try another system again next time.
Maybe the 2d20 system that star trek adventures uses, because it would give Griffin a lot of scope to hoard threat until exciting dramatic moments.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 7:02 AM on September 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
I also didn't connect quite as much with Amnesty, but I think that's a pretty typical trend for creative works - you make a thing that proves unexpectedly popular, and then rather than just trying to make a thing, like you did the first time, you also get caught up in figuring out 1. what made the first thing so popular and 2. how you can make something new and equally popular 3. without just doing a retread of what came before. So you lose some of the spontaneity and creativity that was part of what made the first thing so good. They all (but especially Griffin) were a lot more "in their heads" in those ways with Amnesty, especially starting out. You see the same trend with second novels after a new writer makes it big on the first one.
I also think this is why they ultimately make Griffin the DM again for Amnesty - not just because they liked his story pitch the best, but because Griffin as DM was the format that won them millions of listeners, and switching to a green DM just seemed unacceptably risky.
But going forward, I think a lot of those issues will be gone. And one big reason for that is actually BECAUSE Amnesty (while still good and popular) didn't necessarily fully capture as many people as Balance did. Now they all know that they can make something different, mess with the format, and even maybe lose some listeners, and the show will still survive. You can see this growing comfort in the move away from Balance-universe live shows. I think now they'll be a bit looser and more able to focus on the fun of what they're doing from the start, rather than thinking "this is our livelihoods, oh god oh shit how do we maintain this?"
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:01 PM on September 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
I also think this is why they ultimately make Griffin the DM again for Amnesty - not just because they liked his story pitch the best, but because Griffin as DM was the format that won them millions of listeners, and switching to a green DM just seemed unacceptably risky.
But going forward, I think a lot of those issues will be gone. And one big reason for that is actually BECAUSE Amnesty (while still good and popular) didn't necessarily fully capture as many people as Balance did. Now they all know that they can make something different, mess with the format, and even maybe lose some listeners, and the show will still survive. You can see this growing comfort in the move away from Balance-universe live shows. I think now they'll be a bit looser and more able to focus on the fun of what they're doing from the start, rather than thinking "this is our livelihoods, oh god oh shit how do we maintain this?"
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:01 PM on September 24, 2019 [5 favorites]
On the subject of the actual plot of Amnesty - I was thinking about all the comments here/elsewhere about the fact that the Pine Guard seemed too focused on the Quell when it was clear there was a secondary thing going on. And I suspect that Griffin set up the structure in such a way that it didn't HAVE to happen that way, but then the boys were set on pursuing the Quell track so he just went with it, and deliberately didn't prompt them to not forget the second thing going on. I'm thinking that's why the whole backstory of the light beings came out in the very last episode - potentially it could have happened way earlier and changed the whole structure of the final arc, but it just didn't happen that way.
In fact, at the end of the last episode, there's a bit where Minerva says "well, you know, we have this whole OTHER thing to deal with," and I think there's a cut right before Duck responds to her - and I wonder if that cut was one or more of the players going "wait, fuckin what?"
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:08 PM on September 24, 2019
In fact, at the end of the last episode, there's a bit where Minerva says "well, you know, we have this whole OTHER thing to deal with," and I think there's a cut right before Duck responds to her - and I wonder if that cut was one or more of the players going "wait, fuckin what?"
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:08 PM on September 24, 2019
Some other thoughts:
1. Probably my favorite thing about this whole arc was Billy. Not just as a character, but as a piece of the story. Based on that character's initial episodes, Billy was something that I'm pretty sure Griffin absolutely did not plan for at all. But then, not only did he find a way to make him integral to the final confrontation, he also trusted the players to take up that thread and run with it. And then they very much did, because based on his reaction he definitely didn't have any notion of "literally magically remake Billy in physical form" as a potential outcome. And THEN, once that happened, the rest of the story played out like he'd planned it from the start. It was magical.
2. As much as I fucking love Duck, and as much as I think Justin is the most skilled member of this ensemble in several ways, Clint really became the MVP for me by the end of Amnesty. He brought so much sincerity and emotion to both of his characters, knowing exactly when to back off of the goofs and get real. It reminded me of that Stolen Century episode where he had all those talks with John - asking "are you my friend?" and then later "I don't think I want to hang out with you anymore."
3. Another thing that sticks out for me about Clint now, having heard him do multiple characters, is the way that he, as a man of faith, incorporates the concept of faith into his characters. With Merle, of course he was a cleric, but he really made an effort to play him as a man with truly conflicted feelings about his faith rather than just another type of magic user or, as Griffin one put it, just "a Pokemon master of angels." And then with Thacker, the way he talked about Sylvane in this last episode - I don't know that an areligious person could have or would have gone in that direction, and it worked so well. Thoughtful and sincere depictions of religious faith in modern media are pretty hard to come by, and I really salute Clint for that.
4. Hollis, though admittedly a minor character, is one of the best examples of gender-nonconforming representation I can think of. They are simply introduced as "they" and then for the entire rest of the series, that's it. No subplots about their transition, no questioning of what their assigned gender at birth might have been, no interpersonal conflicts as a result of their identity - nothing. I actually have a friend who began identifying as GNC and began using they/them pronouns a year or so ago, and it was hard for me to make that mental switch - my brain just kept using their old pronouns and I kept having to translate in my head before speaking. And, honest to god, I was taking to a mutual friend of ours about them recently, and I had just caught up on a few months' Amnesty backlog and had been thinking about Hollis in the context of this friend, and suddenly referring to them as "they" felt so much more natural to me. That's fucking awesome.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:40 PM on September 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
1. Probably my favorite thing about this whole arc was Billy. Not just as a character, but as a piece of the story. Based on that character's initial episodes, Billy was something that I'm pretty sure Griffin absolutely did not plan for at all. But then, not only did he find a way to make him integral to the final confrontation, he also trusted the players to take up that thread and run with it. And then they very much did, because based on his reaction he definitely didn't have any notion of "literally magically remake Billy in physical form" as a potential outcome. And THEN, once that happened, the rest of the story played out like he'd planned it from the start. It was magical.
2. As much as I fucking love Duck, and as much as I think Justin is the most skilled member of this ensemble in several ways, Clint really became the MVP for me by the end of Amnesty. He brought so much sincerity and emotion to both of his characters, knowing exactly when to back off of the goofs and get real. It reminded me of that Stolen Century episode where he had all those talks with John - asking "are you my friend?" and then later "I don't think I want to hang out with you anymore."
3. Another thing that sticks out for me about Clint now, having heard him do multiple characters, is the way that he, as a man of faith, incorporates the concept of faith into his characters. With Merle, of course he was a cleric, but he really made an effort to play him as a man with truly conflicted feelings about his faith rather than just another type of magic user or, as Griffin one put it, just "a Pokemon master of angels." And then with Thacker, the way he talked about Sylvane in this last episode - I don't know that an areligious person could have or would have gone in that direction, and it worked so well. Thoughtful and sincere depictions of religious faith in modern media are pretty hard to come by, and I really salute Clint for that.
4. Hollis, though admittedly a minor character, is one of the best examples of gender-nonconforming representation I can think of. They are simply introduced as "they" and then for the entire rest of the series, that's it. No subplots about their transition, no questioning of what their assigned gender at birth might have been, no interpersonal conflicts as a result of their identity - nothing. I actually have a friend who began identifying as GNC and began using they/them pronouns a year or so ago, and it was hard for me to make that mental switch - my brain just kept using their old pronouns and I kept having to translate in my head before speaking. And, honest to god, I was taking to a mutual friend of ours about them recently, and I had just caught up on a few months' Amnesty backlog and had been thinking about Hollis in the context of this friend, and suddenly referring to them as "they" felt so much more natural to me. That's fucking awesome.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:40 PM on September 24, 2019 [6 favorites]
Yeah, I didn't click quite as hard with Amnesty, but I really did come to love the characters. I also had some issues with the weird status of the light-world stuff. It seemed pretty clear going along that Griffin was telegraphing it, but the players really just ignored it until the finale. I wonder if they didn't concsiously ignore it, to make it seem like more of a surprise at the end? I dunno. Eager to hear the next TTAZZ and have Griffin break down some of the plotting and structure.
I'd love to see an Amnesty TV series. Lean a bit more into the monsters and let the light-world stuff trickle in a bit more gradually, like the Mythos in The X-Files.
Justin is absolutely the best player of the group, and his characters are always so interesting, but Clint really does settle into his characters in a way that is so satisfying. I never thought he would have enough time to make me care about Thacker, but he did. Travis is just such a good person, and he wants his characters to be so heroic that I think they don't end up as interesting as the others, even though they are so good-hearted. Very interested to see what Griffin does as a character.
The music in this episode should win awards. It gave me goosebumps no less than three or four times.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:50 PM on September 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'd love to see an Amnesty TV series. Lean a bit more into the monsters and let the light-world stuff trickle in a bit more gradually, like the Mythos in The X-Files.
Justin is absolutely the best player of the group, and his characters are always so interesting, but Clint really does settle into his characters in a way that is so satisfying. I never thought he would have enough time to make me care about Thacker, but he did. Travis is just such a good person, and he wants his characters to be so heroic that I think they don't end up as interesting as the others, even though they are so good-hearted. Very interested to see what Griffin does as a character.
The music in this episode should win awards. It gave me goosebumps no less than three or four times.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:50 PM on September 24, 2019 [2 favorites]
So, I basically need someone to provide me with a primer of everything that went down between Ned's death and the end here, because I almost completely lost the plot despite listening to these episodes more than once. (Well, not the finale finale, which I just finished now.) Nevertheless, when Clint came in during the epilogue to voice Ned one last time I started ugly-crying out of nowhere. I love all these characters, and of course the Balance characters as well, but it hasn't done anything, in my opinion, that matches what Clint pulled off with Ned Fucking Chicane, turning what Justin called Clint's "genetic inability to sound sincere" into something that warm, flawed, nuanced, lived-in, natural and flat-out hilarious.
But they all did such cool things with this campaign. God that epilogue just slayed me. brieche, you seem to have knowledge I don't about Travis being the DM for the next campaign. Where did you learn this? I thought he did really interesting things with Dust, so I'm definitely optimistic as well.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:29 PM on September 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
But they all did such cool things with this campaign. God that epilogue just slayed me. brieche, you seem to have knowledge I don't about Travis being the DM for the next campaign. Where did you learn this? I thought he did really interesting things with Dust, so I'm definitely optimistic as well.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:29 PM on September 24, 2019 [1 favorite]
By the way, Rock Steady, can I give you utter props for the prediction you made in this comment?
posted by Navelgazer at 10:45 PM on September 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
I think the deal is that the Bom Boms are creations of this "third world" that somehow acts as a hub for many many sets of paired worlds. For some reason, this hub world (intentionally or unintentionally) sets the paired worlds against each other. I think this is what happened to Minerva's world and the insect world she exterminated, She somehow learned about the hub world and was able to use that hub to connect to the Earth/Sylvain pairing through DuckBecause damn. Absolutely nailed it.
posted by Navelgazer at 10:45 PM on September 24, 2019 [3 favorites]
In re: Travis, I feel like Magnus worked gangbusters for me in a way that Aubrey didn't nearly as much, though Aubrey definitely grew on me over time and seeing all the Aubrey cosplay women are doing at live shows makes me understand her importance. The fact that Magnus was on-paper supposed to be "Lawful Good" when Travis couldn't possibly play him as anything other than Chaotic Good made me like him a lot, and the hints about his "wicked dark" backstory while he was playing the character so happy-go-lucky gave him some fun dynamics (and still, for me, one of the funniest moments in all of TAZ is when they discover the dead Boyland and the generally heroic Magnus simply says "Well, I feel nothing about this.")
In broad strokes, Aubrey was very, very similar to Magnus (chaotic good, heroic, heart-on-sleeve, impulsive, romantic, etc.) in a way that Ned and Duck didn't trace onto Merle and Taako. But Travis also tried something very different with Nadia in Commitment, which worked for what it was, but was definitely Travis playing against his "type." Travis's best self is chaotic good, heroic, heart-on-sleeve, impulsive and romantic. It doesn't bother me that he wants to enact that through role-playing. I adore Griffin's world-building, but he also gave us basically two versions of Galactus: World Eater for each of his campaigns. That's where he goes with it, and that's fine.
Justin is definitely the best player of the group, which makes sense to me with his hesitance to try to run a campaign: he real real good at playing in whatever sandbox he's given. That doesn't mean he has any clue how to design a good sandbox.
And of course Clint. I really think some switch flipped for Clint during the "arms outstretched" bit in Suffering Game, where he realized that he could do inspired things in the podcast and dove headlong into it (and being the primary writer of the group working with Carey Pietsch on the graphic novels can't have hurt there either.) From that point forward, Clint has been so on point it's incredible, from his parleys with John fueling the home-stretch of Balance to everything he did as Ned and Thacker in Amnesty. And I really loved his DMing in Commitment as well (Fate I think was poorly suited to a radio-drama format, but he did really cool worldbuilding, kept the tone consistent and evocative, and hearing his janky clip-art maps described by the boys before looking them up where they would inevitably be posted added a layer of hilarity to the proceedings.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:14 PM on September 24, 2019 [7 favorites]
In broad strokes, Aubrey was very, very similar to Magnus (chaotic good, heroic, heart-on-sleeve, impulsive, romantic, etc.) in a way that Ned and Duck didn't trace onto Merle and Taako. But Travis also tried something very different with Nadia in Commitment, which worked for what it was, but was definitely Travis playing against his "type." Travis's best self is chaotic good, heroic, heart-on-sleeve, impulsive and romantic. It doesn't bother me that he wants to enact that through role-playing. I adore Griffin's world-building, but he also gave us basically two versions of Galactus: World Eater for each of his campaigns. That's where he goes with it, and that's fine.
Justin is definitely the best player of the group, which makes sense to me with his hesitance to try to run a campaign: he real real good at playing in whatever sandbox he's given. That doesn't mean he has any clue how to design a good sandbox.
And of course Clint. I really think some switch flipped for Clint during the "arms outstretched" bit in Suffering Game, where he realized that he could do inspired things in the podcast and dove headlong into it (and being the primary writer of the group working with Carey Pietsch on the graphic novels can't have hurt there either.) From that point forward, Clint has been so on point it's incredible, from his parleys with John fueling the home-stretch of Balance to everything he did as Ned and Thacker in Amnesty. And I really loved his DMing in Commitment as well (Fate I think was poorly suited to a radio-drama format, but he did really cool worldbuilding, kept the tone consistent and evocative, and hearing his janky clip-art maps described by the boys before looking them up where they would inevitably be posted added a layer of hilarity to the proceedings.
posted by Navelgazer at 11:14 PM on September 24, 2019 [7 favorites]
> Navelgazer: brieche, you seem to have knowledge I don't about Travis being the DM for the next campaign. Where did you learn this?
It's confirmed in this excellent interview of the boyz by Courtney Enlow for SyFy.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:28 AM on September 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
It's confirmed in this excellent interview of the boyz by Courtney Enlow for SyFy.
Do you guys have kind of an idea for what comes next after this campaign?Scraps also confirmed on Twitter that next up is "G" but he won't say what it stands for.
All: Yeah! No. Yeah.
Travis: Yeah. I've been working on an idea for the next arc that I'm really excited about and I'm excited to start playing. I'm sad to leave Amnesty behind, but I'm very excited to get into the next thing just because it's a different kind of thing and just an idea that I really like.
Are you going to DM this one?
Travis: Yes.
posted by Rock Steady at 4:28 AM on September 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
This was a good wrap up. I’ve been relistening to Amnesty to try to figure out some basic stuff, and I feel like this will make that process easier, even if I still don’t fully understand the deal with the quell—did the white-light guys make it? Did humans?
I feel like Justin put a couple of hints about Minerva in there. Duck keeps trying to shorten her name—she rejects “Minnie” but he says “‘Nerva” a few times without comment. The inverse-Twilight thing of an ancient ageless woman watching a young man who said no to her squicks me a bit, but by the end they were meeting as equals.
posted by tchemgrrl at 10:18 AM on September 25, 2019
I feel like Justin put a couple of hints about Minerva in there. Duck keeps trying to shorten her name—she rejects “Minnie” but he says “‘Nerva” a few times without comment. The inverse-Twilight thing of an ancient ageless woman watching a young man who said no to her squicks me a bit, but by the end they were meeting as equals.
posted by tchemgrrl at 10:18 AM on September 25, 2019
I like the arc overall and the end was indeed good. I like that the boys aren't at all above blatant metagaming (I level up! and I take this move that I need right now!) which, I mean, we've all done it, right?
I liked how Griffin isn't above being outright maudlin in the wrap up scenes. Putting up a giant statue of Ned is about as heavy-handed as you can get, but it works.
The whole Duck-Minerva thing does have some odd overtones but my read was not just that they were equals but that Duck was and always has been kind of socially awkward and that it wasn't possible for him to build that kind of close relationship with anyone else. It's a weird connection but I had heard a radio interview with Céline Dion earlier in the week and she was like 20 when she started a relation with her manager who was 46 at the time and it's definitely kinda creepy from the outside, but hearing her talk about him (he passed away 3 years ago), man, you have never heard such unadulterated love. Sometimes relationships come from weird places but they can still be good relationships (although yes, sometimes they're just weird).
Anyway, the McElroy roleplaying/audio drama format continues to kill it and I'm sure their next thing will be equally big.
posted by GuyZero at 1:33 PM on September 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
I liked how Griffin isn't above being outright maudlin in the wrap up scenes. Putting up a giant statue of Ned is about as heavy-handed as you can get, but it works.
The whole Duck-Minerva thing does have some odd overtones but my read was not just that they were equals but that Duck was and always has been kind of socially awkward and that it wasn't possible for him to build that kind of close relationship with anyone else. It's a weird connection but I had heard a radio interview with Céline Dion earlier in the week and she was like 20 when she started a relation with her manager who was 46 at the time and it's definitely kinda creepy from the outside, but hearing her talk about him (he passed away 3 years ago), man, you have never heard such unadulterated love. Sometimes relationships come from weird places but they can still be good relationships (although yes, sometimes they're just weird).
Anyway, the McElroy roleplaying/audio drama format continues to kill it and I'm sure their next thing will be equally big.
posted by GuyZero at 1:33 PM on September 25, 2019 [4 favorites]
Ducknerva is definitely weird in many ways but I don't find it creepy because they didn't really have any sort of relationship when Duck was a kid. He met her a few times, blew her off, and didn't engage with her again until well into adulthood.
I have an aunt who is married to a man who taught at her high school and is maybe 20 years older than her - but they didn't reconnect and start dating until she was in her 50s and moved back home to care for her parents. To me this feels a lot more like that than like some sort of grooming situation.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:57 PM on September 25, 2019 [5 favorites]
I have an aunt who is married to a man who taught at her high school and is maybe 20 years older than her - but they didn't reconnect and start dating until she was in her 50s and moved back home to care for her parents. To me this feels a lot more like that than like some sort of grooming situation.
posted by showbiz_liz at 1:57 PM on September 25, 2019 [5 favorites]
I felt that was a good ending, but then again I'm a sucker for aliens.
Looking ahead:
Of the mini-shots, I liked Amnesty the most so was glad they went with it, although by the end I was tired of the Save the World plot and just wanted more monster hunts in a weird town, which should be read as high praise for the collective world building they did. Griffin has a good sense of when to hang back and let others do the world building, something that based on their mini-shots I'm not sure Clint or Travis has.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:26 PM on September 25, 2019
Looking ahead:
Of the mini-shots, I liked Amnesty the most so was glad they went with it, although by the end I was tired of the Save the World plot and just wanted more monster hunts in a weird town, which should be read as high praise for the collective world building they did. Griffin has a good sense of when to hang back and let others do the world building, something that based on their mini-shots I'm not sure Clint or Travis has.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:26 PM on September 25, 2019
Griffin has a good sense of when to hang back and let others do the world building, something that based on their mini-shots I'm not sure Clint or Travis has.
To be fair, they each had just four episodes to tell a coherent story. I don't think we can assume anything about how they'd DM longer arcs based on the one-shots.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:39 PM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
To be fair, they each had just four episodes to tell a coherent story. I don't think we can assume anything about how they'd DM longer arcs based on the one-shots.
posted by showbiz_liz at 3:39 PM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
Yeah, I think it's a tough balance to get right but for sure no one gets it right out of the gate. Even Griffin had a long run up to the Stolen Century part of Balance to figure it all out. We'll see how the others do given another try.
posted by GuyZero at 3:42 PM on September 25, 2019
posted by GuyZero at 3:42 PM on September 25, 2019
Sure, it's a skill that can be learned and Griffin had more time with Balance which may be why even the opening of Amnesty felt a little more built around the characters than Clint or Travis's games. Travis is an admitted over-planner and I wonder how much steeper the 'let the players mess with the world' learning curve will be for him. I'm an over-planner when it comes to gaming as well and it is hard for me to abandon my planning when the group wants to go another way. Random goofs being worked into major plots/characters is one of the things I love about the Adventure Zone and I'm hopeful they continue to be a thing.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:49 PM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
posted by robocop is bleeding at 3:49 PM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]
Duck's not a naïf and both he and Minerva have things to learn from each other, so it doesn't squick me out any more than Taako dating the grim reaper did (which is to say, not at all, though I agree it must be weird playing those scenes against one's brother.)
posted by Navelgazer at 5:52 PM on September 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
posted by Navelgazer at 5:52 PM on September 25, 2019 [3 favorites]
Scraps also confirmed on Twitter that next up is "G" but he won't say what it stands for.
I'd be willing to abandon the one-word arc titles just for this one if the G stands for "Griffin Has a Chardonnay."
posted by Navelgazer at 6:19 PM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
I'd be willing to abandon the one-word arc titles just for this one if the G stands for "Griffin Has a Chardonnay."
posted by Navelgazer at 6:19 PM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]
So, nobody else is gonna talk about the part where Billy summons Sephiroth to destroy the shield around the Deliberative Mind?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:33 AM on September 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 11:33 AM on September 26, 2019 [2 favorites]
So, nobody else is gonna talk about the part where Billy summons Sephiroth to destroy the shield around the Deliberative Mind?
I am vaguely aware of who Sephiroth is but I never in a million years would have made that connection (though I saw a post about it afterward). I just shrugged it off as possibly a part of Griffin's mythos that hadn't had time to be fully explored.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:51 PM on September 26, 2019
I am vaguely aware of who Sephiroth is but I never in a million years would have made that connection (though I saw a post about it afterward). I just shrugged it off as possibly a part of Griffin's mythos that hadn't had time to be fully explored.
posted by showbiz_liz at 12:51 PM on September 26, 2019
Haha, all I could think about was Billy inevitably finding out that Duck did a horrible lie. When he took back the PS4 I was like WAIT NO
Thank you Navelgazer for reminding me of Clint's Commitment maps, which I just looked at and deeply enjoyed all over again !!
I'm pretty sure I love Duck/Minerva but I also can't think about it directly, it hits a really specific emotional intersection of horror and delight in me that I haven't been up for processing yet. I guess Ducknerva is my own personal cryptid...
Related to world building styles, I'm interested to see how Travis will approach world revealing for a longer campaign. Overall I found the pace at which Griffin introduced new NPCs/relationships/story elements/etc. pretty comfortable; it'll be fun to see how Travis handles this in the new campaign, where his greatest ally but also enemy will be his own eagerness.
On the topic of good characterwork, Justin taught me everything I know about roleplaying in episode 2 of Commitment:
Justin: Can I just say, I’m so glad you guys talked Kardala into that because there’s nothing I want to see more than the Bible theme park my Dad made!
I know he was just laying down track for a goof train but this little internal mechanics reveal legitimately calibrated my thoughts on disciplined characterization. I don't even roleplay but it was like weirdly inspirational to me on a personal level.
This is actually the first time I've engaged in any conversation about TAZ; I started episode one of Balance in July and caught up to Amnesty in mid-August and I was rigorously afraid of spoilers the entire time. In a sense I feel very lucky to have been able to smash through five years of content in a month and a half, but I'm also very aware of that experiential distance between me and people who spent literal years with both campaigns.
posted by brieche at 1:03 PM on September 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
Thank you Navelgazer for reminding me of Clint's Commitment maps, which I just looked at and deeply enjoyed all over again !!
I'm pretty sure I love Duck/Minerva but I also can't think about it directly, it hits a really specific emotional intersection of horror and delight in me that I haven't been up for processing yet. I guess Ducknerva is my own personal cryptid...
Related to world building styles, I'm interested to see how Travis will approach world revealing for a longer campaign. Overall I found the pace at which Griffin introduced new NPCs/relationships/story elements/etc. pretty comfortable; it'll be fun to see how Travis handles this in the new campaign, where his greatest ally but also enemy will be his own eagerness.
On the topic of good characterwork, Justin taught me everything I know about roleplaying in episode 2 of Commitment:
Justin: Can I just say, I’m so glad you guys talked Kardala into that because there’s nothing I want to see more than the Bible theme park my Dad made!
I know he was just laying down track for a goof train but this little internal mechanics reveal legitimately calibrated my thoughts on disciplined characterization. I don't even roleplay but it was like weirdly inspirational to me on a personal level.
This is actually the first time I've engaged in any conversation about TAZ; I started episode one of Balance in July and caught up to Amnesty in mid-August and I was rigorously afraid of spoilers the entire time. In a sense I feel very lucky to have been able to smash through five years of content in a month and a half, but I'm also very aware of that experiential distance between me and people who spent literal years with both campaigns.
posted by brieche at 1:03 PM on September 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
Travis is an admitted over-planner and I wonder how much steeper the 'let the players mess with the world' learning curve will be for him. I'm an over-planner when it comes to gaming as well and it is hard for me to abandon my planning when the group wants to go another way. Random goofs being worked into major plots/characters is one of the things I love about the Adventure Zone and I'm hopeful they continue to be a thing.
1. I think he learned his lesson on Dust about just how much planning and work would go into doing that sort of thing week-in-week-out. Dust of course has a ton of similarities with The Eleventh Hour, not just in the setting but in the need to solve a mystery in a small town under a limited amount of time during which the DM knows the whereabouts of every resident at all times, and how that resident fits into the mystery. The chief differences are that Griffin had four and a half arcs under his belt by that point within that same campaign, and that Eleventh Hour had the Majora's Mask/Groundhog Day mechanic going on that allowed for failure and player messing-about.
But in the post-experimental-arcs TTAZZ Travis made a point about how Dust wasn't going to be something he could realistically keep up that way anyway, and since Amnesty was SO collaborative in the directions it found to explore, I'm not too worried about Travis holding the reins a bit looser on "G."
What I am a little worried about, is the voices. Relistening to the experimental arcs, I think part of why Griffin-as-DM has been such a good consistent dynamic for listeners is that Griffin has the most distinctly different vocal timbre of the four of them. Not that I can't tell Clint, Justin and Travis apart, but they all sound a lot more like each other than Griffin sounds like any of them. Bigger deal, though, Griffin is great with character voices, while so far most of Travis's voices have been slight variations on Travis McElroy, something which unfortunately made Dust a little tougher to follow than it could have ideally been.
(Note: Justin is also terrific at character voices, and if he ever DMs a real campaign I expect that to be a singular delight of it. With Travis, I have confidence in his evocative world-building and tight construction, and believe that he'll give the others breathing room to create the space as well.)
posted by Navelgazer at 9:22 PM on September 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
1. I think he learned his lesson on Dust about just how much planning and work would go into doing that sort of thing week-in-week-out. Dust of course has a ton of similarities with The Eleventh Hour, not just in the setting but in the need to solve a mystery in a small town under a limited amount of time during which the DM knows the whereabouts of every resident at all times, and how that resident fits into the mystery. The chief differences are that Griffin had four and a half arcs under his belt by that point within that same campaign, and that Eleventh Hour had the Majora's Mask/Groundhog Day mechanic going on that allowed for failure and player messing-about.
But in the post-experimental-arcs TTAZZ Travis made a point about how Dust wasn't going to be something he could realistically keep up that way anyway, and since Amnesty was SO collaborative in the directions it found to explore, I'm not too worried about Travis holding the reins a bit looser on "G."
What I am a little worried about, is the voices. Relistening to the experimental arcs, I think part of why Griffin-as-DM has been such a good consistent dynamic for listeners is that Griffin has the most distinctly different vocal timbre of the four of them. Not that I can't tell Clint, Justin and Travis apart, but they all sound a lot more like each other than Griffin sounds like any of them. Bigger deal, though, Griffin is great with character voices, while so far most of Travis's voices have been slight variations on Travis McElroy, something which unfortunately made Dust a little tougher to follow than it could have ideally been.
(Note: Justin is also terrific at character voices, and if he ever DMs a real campaign I expect that to be a singular delight of it. With Travis, I have confidence in his evocative world-building and tight construction, and believe that he'll give the others breathing room to create the space as well.)
posted by Navelgazer at 9:22 PM on September 26, 2019 [3 favorites]
So, nobody else is gonna talk about the part where Billy summons Sephiroth to destroy the shield around the Deliberative Mind?
the music even does a wonderful little one winged angel homage while it's happening and it is ridiculously pitch-perfect! perhaps even moreso because it's not played as a huge gag/pointed reference. honestly, along with everything else Billy-adjacent, it was probably my favorite part of Amnesty (which I would say I enjoyed as I do any and all McElroy product, but did not love to at all the same degree as Balance, which is completely fine!)
posted by Kybard at 5:43 PM on September 29, 2019 [1 favorite]
the music even does a wonderful little one winged angel homage while it's happening and it is ridiculously pitch-perfect! perhaps even moreso because it's not played as a huge gag/pointed reference. honestly, along with everything else Billy-adjacent, it was probably my favorite part of Amnesty (which I would say I enjoyed as I do any and all McElroy product, but did not love to at all the same degree as Balance, which is completely fine!)
posted by Kybard at 5:43 PM on September 29, 2019 [1 favorite]
Being forced to contemplate the in-person slaughter of tens of thousands of individuals in the climax was a bit of a sour point for me, no matter how much they can be said to have brought it upon themselves.
posted by entity447b at 3:35 AM on September 30, 2019
posted by entity447b at 3:35 AM on September 30, 2019
Yeah I feel like the extra-planetary climax was a bit rushed and the bad guys were branded irredeemable a little too quickly, which is out of character for TAZ. But I also get the feeling that they wanted to wrap this one up in one episode and not have another half-dozen episodes talking with aliens. It's a bit old-school in that the setup was killing aliens even though it seems kinda weird and a little genocidal once they got there.
posted by GuyZero at 10:21 AM on September 30, 2019
posted by GuyZero at 10:21 AM on September 30, 2019
I liked the world-building of Kepler and its environs a lot, but Sylvane and the extraterrestrial stuff felt underdeveloped, and it was a lot harder for me to imagine and retain what was going on with whom during the segments that took place outside of Kepler. Probably because all four of them know their part of West Virginia really well and can comfortably add to it and modify it and keep it real and recognizable for each other, while it's a lot harder to prevent imaginary planets from being places where anything is possible. Travis kinda fucks it up with Aubrey's pudding trees, but at that point it doesn't really matter.
In general, Amnesty flowed better than Balance; they all had their play styles down, and they knew when they could indulge in grabassery without interfering with the game. In Balance (especially the early episodes) the game/story would grind completely to a halt now and then. On the other hand, the world-building in Balance seemed better constructed where Amnesty sometimes seemed pasted-together. Maybe because (imo) Griffin kept Balance on rails but let the story be more collaborative in Amnesty. Dunno.
> I was thinking about all the comments here/elsewhere about the fact that the Pine Guard seemed too focused on the Quell when it was clear there was a secondary thing going on. And I suspect that Griffin set up the structure in such a way that it didn't HAVE to happen that way, but then the boys were set on pursuing the Quell track so he just went with it, and deliberately didn't prompt them to not forget the second thing going on. I'm thinking that's why the whole backstory of the light beings came out in the very last episode - potentially it could have happened way earlier and changed the whole structure of the final arc, but it just didn't happen that way.
iirc, Ned was the only one who had first-hand experience and clues about the greater dilemma, in the events following his discovery of Boyd's doppelganger, but he got in hot shit with Aubrey and the folks at Amnesty Lodge before he could share and then the information died with him. So in a sense the players had in-game knowledge their characters couldn't act on.
posted by ardgedee at 6:08 PM on September 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
In general, Amnesty flowed better than Balance; they all had their play styles down, and they knew when they could indulge in grabassery without interfering with the game. In Balance (especially the early episodes) the game/story would grind completely to a halt now and then. On the other hand, the world-building in Balance seemed better constructed where Amnesty sometimes seemed pasted-together. Maybe because (imo) Griffin kept Balance on rails but let the story be more collaborative in Amnesty. Dunno.
> I was thinking about all the comments here/elsewhere about the fact that the Pine Guard seemed too focused on the Quell when it was clear there was a secondary thing going on. And I suspect that Griffin set up the structure in such a way that it didn't HAVE to happen that way, but then the boys were set on pursuing the Quell track so he just went with it, and deliberately didn't prompt them to not forget the second thing going on. I'm thinking that's why the whole backstory of the light beings came out in the very last episode - potentially it could have happened way earlier and changed the whole structure of the final arc, but it just didn't happen that way.
iirc, Ned was the only one who had first-hand experience and clues about the greater dilemma, in the events following his discovery of Boyd's doppelganger, but he got in hot shit with Aubrey and the folks at Amnesty Lodge before he could share and then the information died with him. So in a sense the players had in-game knowledge their characters couldn't act on.
posted by ardgedee at 6:08 PM on September 30, 2019 [2 favorites]
I thought the way they dealt with the aliens at the end was odd too. Griffin kept pointing out that they had agreed to stop Operation Start Shit if the hive mind decided it had become the thing it was trying to stop. In the end Duck just shoves Beacon into the hive and Minerva is like "Oh yeah that's why you were entrusted with such a psychotic weapon" and I'm thinking "Wait, is Beacon a lost remnant of these beings of light that can tip the balance now that they're back in the collective?" but no I guess it just means that Beacon goes into the hive and slaughters them all incorporeal intelligence versus incorporeal intelligence.
I'm not opposed to "Yeah sometimes you just gotta kill 'em" as an outcome, but stuff like Steven Universe has enamoured me to shows where the heroes don't solve a problem by violently murdering it, even if said problem has been trying to violently murder the heroes.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:51 PM on October 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
I'm not opposed to "Yeah sometimes you just gotta kill 'em" as an outcome, but stuff like Steven Universe has enamoured me to shows where the heroes don't solve a problem by violently murdering it, even if said problem has been trying to violently murder the heroes.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:51 PM on October 4, 2019 [1 favorite]
I liked the world-building of Kepler and its environs a lot, but Sylvane and the extraterrestrial stuff felt underdeveloped, and it was a lot harder for me to imagine and retain what was going on with whom during the segments that took place outside of Kepler.
I would imagine this is at least in part because (I assume) Griffin's initial hope/vision for Amnesty was to focus more exclusively on Kepler than they did by the last couple arcs, but as has been said I suppose that's how it goes with collab storytelling
posted by Kybard at 6:59 PM on October 4, 2019
I would imagine this is at least in part because (I assume) Griffin's initial hope/vision for Amnesty was to focus more exclusively on Kepler than they did by the last couple arcs, but as has been said I suppose that's how it goes with collab storytelling
posted by Kybard at 6:59 PM on October 4, 2019
it just means that Beacon goes into the hive and slaughters them all
I got the notion that there was the "Belligerence threshold" built in so that if the deliberative mind ever got too keen on doing murders then they'd automatically shut down. Because they didn't want to end up just being destroyers for it's own sake. But when Beacon was thrust into the mind it was so furious and aggressive that it tripped out the belligerence threshold straightaway and automatically shut the whole thing down.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 12:46 PM on October 6, 2019 [3 favorites]
I got the notion that there was the "Belligerence threshold" built in so that if the deliberative mind ever got too keen on doing murders then they'd automatically shut down. Because they didn't want to end up just being destroyers for it's own sake. But when Beacon was thrust into the mind it was so furious and aggressive that it tripped out the belligerence threshold straightaway and automatically shut the whole thing down.
posted by Just this guy, y'know at 12:46 PM on October 6, 2019 [3 favorites]
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posted by showbiz_liz at 4:00 PM on September 23, 2019