The Adventure Zone: Graduation Ep. 16 "Give Me A Hand"

June 12, 2020 9:43 AM

The Thundermen's time with the centaurs has come to a close. While Fitzroy recovers from his recent cursing, a new and present danger threatens the team.While Fitzroy buys some time, Argo takes a swing and the Firbolg changes. Maybe it could be said that everyone changes, but only time will tell.We're donating the ad revenue from TAZ this week to the Nina Pop & Tony McDade Mental Health Funds, organized by The Okra Project, and would encourage you to consider donating as well if you can. https://www.theokraproject.com/
posted by Tevin (4 comments total)

Enjoyable wrap-up episode because everyone got to do their thing. Loving Fitz’s heel turn, having an actually evil character is a great new facet to TAZ.

The “do you want to talk to Calhain” bit felt super rails-y (what did it accomplish, what COULD it have accomplished, that was good for the PCs that they didn’t already know?) but I think they 🙄-worthiness of that transition was mostly hamfisted compared to a relatively smooth rest of the episode.
posted by supercres at 10:32 AM on June 12, 2020

hey so I'm kind of hoping that this marks a step in the right direction, especially based on the way that this episode contained, you know, D&D

once again Justin is the tabletop RPG MVP, having lost touch with the problems of the terrestrial world, but Griffin is also a very good player (and Clint also deserves some solid credit, even though his better moments aren't quite so memorable)
posted by DoctorFedora at 8:12 PM on June 15, 2020

I'll say that this season of Adventure Zone has had an impact on me. I just can't get it out of my head! I'll listen to other comedy gaming podcasts and will sometimes stop and think, "Would this have flown on the Adventure Zone?"

For example, on Rude Tales of Magic's final pre-COVID episode, they had a guest player come in and play a godlike NPC. "Man, no way they would have let this happen on TAZ," I thought. On last week's Dungeons and Daddies, both the players AND the characters managed to scrap the DM's plans. The former recast an opposing team and the latter completely broke the rules of the competition they were in. In both cases, I thought "Woah - this would never happen happen on TAZ."

I think I'm realizing that I'm not just here for the goofs, but also the sense of collaborative, anything-can-happen wonder of a bunch of people playing a game together. I'm starting to suspect the boys have lost the plot a bit, even on MBMBaM there are bits that are no longer prompts for goofs.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 11:24 AM on June 16, 2020

> The “do you want to talk to Calhain” bit felt super rails-y (what did it accomplish, what COULD it have accomplished, that was good for the PCs that they didn’t already know?)

It felt mostly like a prompt for Travis to fill in some exposition so that the audience wasn't left hanging. But yeah, it would've been nice to be left hanging and, say, leave the potential (even if probably never fulfilled) of Calhain coming back, whether for revenge or just to be a genuine villain, which as we all should remember is an unsanctioned, criminal type of villain that usually has to be captured and face justice.
posted by ardgedee at 1:48 PM on June 17, 2020