The Adventure Zone

"Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy from My Brother, My Brother and Me have recruited their dad Clint for a campaign of high adventure. Join the McElroys as they find their fortune and slay an unconscionable number of ... you know, kobolds or whatever in ... The Adventure Zone."

The Adventure Zone is a real-play TTRPG podcast (and to a lesser extent, graphic novel series) run by the McElroy brothers and their dad. It is hosted on the Maximum Fun Network, and released fortnightly.

Podcast
Initially a one-off MBMBAM filler episode, popular request led The Adventure Zone to become a full-time podcast. It ended up eclipsing the original in popularity, but that didn't happen until later.

Balance
Main article: Campaign 1: The Balance Arc

Originally simply called "The Adventure Zone", the Balance campaign kicked off the show. Balance centers around the three-player party of Magnus Burnsides, Merle Highchurch, and Taako, as well as some of their friends, and their quest to find, capture, and destroy the immensely powerful Grand Relics to prevent them from being used for evil. But beware: not all is as it seems.

The campaign consisted of seven arcs.


 * The first arc, Here There Be Gerblins, began as a game of Dungeons and Dragons running the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure, but quickly diverged from the path of the module and became its own story serving to lead into the larger picture of the Balance arc.
 * The second arc, Murder on the Rockport Limited, was the first of entirely original material on Griffin's part (if you don't count Moonlighting), an Agatha Christie-inspired murder mystery.
 * The third arc, Petals to the Metal, did double duty as a bank heist and an illegal wagon race as the boys attempted to wrest a powerful relic from the hands of a self-made supervillain.
 * The fourth arc, The Crystal Kingdom, had the boys fighting to recover the ubiquitous Philosopher's Stone from a floating laboratory before a science experiment gone wrong could cause it to crash into the ocean and transform all of Faerun into crystal.
 * The fifth arc, The Eleventh Hour, sent the party into a Wild West inspired town, with the mission of solving its history mystery and freeing it from a 24-hour time loop.
 * The sixth arc, The Suffering Game, trapped the party in a twisted amusement park of pain with the promise of their wildest dreams gated behind it.
 * The seventh arc, The Stolen Century, looked into the boys' long-forgotten past to find the secrets that were there all along.
 * The eighth arc, Story and Song, consisted of the final battle to save their universe.

Experimental era
Main articles: Campaign 2: Commitment, Campaign 3: Amnesty, and Campaign 4: Dust

After Balance concluded, in order to find their footing in the process of reformatting The Adventure Zone from just Balance into a multi-season show with Balance as its first, the McElroys tried out several new miniature campaigns with the goal of seeing what stuck. However, it soon became apparent that what didn't stick was the format in general, and they abandoned the experimental arcs early due to losing listeners.


 * The first experimental arc, Commitment, DMed by Clint McElroy, was done through the Fate system and took place in present-day America, centering around the first mission of neophyte superheroes to rescue a slightly more experienced one from herself.
 * The second experimental arc, Amnesty, DMed once again by Griffin McElroy, was done through the Powered by the Apocalypse system and centered around a haphazardly assembled group teaming up to defeat a monster from another world. After the cessation of the experimental era, this arc was chosen to be adapted into the next full-length campaign.
 * The third experimental arc, Dust, DMed by Travis McElroy, was also done through Powered by the Apocalypse and had three detectives trying to solve a murder in a Western setting.

During this era, the show adopted a new general-purpose logo image (the prior one only representing Balance), a six-segment art piece adapted from the Bureau of Balance logo. It contained four images representing the first four arcs and two more which likely represented upcoming arcs that were scrapped after the experimental era's premature end.

Amnesty
Main article: Campaign 3: Amnesty

Segment unfinished.

Graduation
Main article: Campaign 5: Graduation

Rather than having another round of experimental arcs the podcast has returned to Dungeons and Dragons with Travis as the DM.

Graphic novel
Buy it. It’s great.

Primary campaigns

 * Campaign 1: The Balance Arc
 * Campaign 3: Amnesty
 * Campaign 5: Graduation

Experimental arcs

 * Campaign 2: Commitment
 * Campaign 3: Amnesty (first arc)
 * Campaign 4: Dust

Maximum Fun Drive

 * MaxFunDrive Bonus Campaign: (K)nights
 * MaxFunDrive Bonus Campaign: Elementary
 * MaxFunDrive Bonus Campaign: Fur

Live show one-shots

 * TAZ: Hootenanny - Live in Nashville!
 * TAZ: Inheritance

Trivia

 * The brothers and their father communicate through Skype to play audio-only games of tabletop RPGs. This is done due to the family's separation geographically, and helps make the podcast experience more genuine.
 * The show's arc names follow a jumbled alphabetical progression.
 * Despite their own blurb no TAZ characters have ever slain a Kobold.