Ten years ago this month, when The Adventure Zone started as a one-time experiment with real gaming on the My brother, my brother and I podcast, two of the four hosts here used to work at Polygon. Justin and Griffin McElroy helped found this place after working together at another video game website in 2007 (RIP Joystiq). I mention this in the interest of disclosure, as I am not impartial when it comes to anything McElroy-related.
It’s been 10 years since the show began and quickly grew into many seasons and hundreds of episodes, a bestselling graphic novel series and countless live shows. I can measure my life by its evolutions.
When I listened to the first episode of The Adventure Zone — this would be the introductory Balance arc, which runs on its own podcast feed later in 2014 — I did this while building some basement shelving, partly to store some kid stuff for a 9-month-old baby upstairs. The most recent episode I listened to was the pilot episode for TAZ‘s new season, Abdominal muscles (not a typo), on a recent family trip to the beach, with a now 10-year-old listening in. The theme tune is still stuck in his head (more on that later).
“Imagine a world where every anthropomorphic animal hero show from the ‘90s and early 2000s existed at the same time,” explains this season’s Dungeon Master Travis McElroy (or “zookeeper,” as the team was called in an earlier episode I shared). “And in that world, you had three team members who had been kicked out of their previous teams for various reasons and were now trying to form their own sort of ragtag group that was trying to exist in this world of teenage heroics. And this time, no swearing.”
Those three team members include Roger Mooer, a Charolais cow – well, technically a bull – with a knack for espionage and a talent for ballroom dancing, played by Clint McElroy, their father; a Navy Seal, an aquatic commando who’s also a muscular anthropomorphic Ross seal and has never served in the armed forces, played by Griffin McElroy; and Axe-O-Lyle, an extreme firefighting axolotl who can regrow his limbs… but it’s a little embarrassing, played by Justin McElroy.
Why the switch to a family-friendly format? “What changed my thinking about it was how meaningful it was for me to find decent stuff that I enjoy listening to with my kids,” Justin says. “We have a few podcasts that they’re obsessed with, and it’s nice to find one that I love, too. So making something that could serve that purpose, I felt, was also kind of a public good, or at least a good service to our audience.”
“Recently, when I’ve been doing meet-and-greets and we’ve been doing conventions and stuff, there’s just a lot more kids coming up,” Travis agrees. “Twelve-year-olds with their graphic novels that needed to be signed, and a lot more people talking about their kids being in The Adventure Zone.”
Beyond the lack of swearing, I asked how they choose to adapt their improvisational storytelling for younger listeners. Should we expect something resembling a G rating?
“I don’t know, nobody said G-rated, Chris,” Travis says. “PG-13, maybe…”
“I like TV-Y,” Griffin adds.
Travis continues: “I’ve been re-watching a lot of the source material cartoons and thinking about them in terms of what those setups are, what they do, and what the stakes are, because I was working with the original 1987 film, for example. Teenage Mutant Ninja TurtlesThey made the Foot Clan robots. So we can kick him in the face all day long. They’re robots, man! Don’t worry about it.”
The pilot episode I listened to featured henchmen who were knocked out but never killed; environmental attacks instead of weapon-based ones; a Big Bad who pulls off a heist (greedy!); and an extended storyline mystery with a surprise cliffhanger ending. Meanwhile, the gameplay system Travis designed for the series – which relies on rolling two to three d8 dice – allows for the flexibility and improvisation that has defined the series’ last decade, while also emphasizing momentum.
So we can kick him in the face all day long. They’re robots, man!
“I try to keep the action and momentum in my head,” Justin explains. “When we did previous seasons, the comedy was almost always the point. And so if something is funny but not necessarily stimulating, we’ll kind of sit with it and play with it until it’s not funny anymore and then we move on. But I’m careful in my head because I don’t think this is going to be interesting when you’re younger; you just want something to happen. Let’s make something happen. And if nothing has happened for a while, then I’ll make something else happen.”
For the curious kids in your family who love to role-play, this may help spark their enthusiasm for having their own place at the table, but it doesn’t give them a framework to organize their own adventures.
“When I came up with the rules system, I wanted something that wasn’t too thick and complicated, so that we didn’t have to spend a lot of time explaining or adding up different dice. I wanted it to be like, You roll, good, go. So we could focus more on the story and the action,” Travis explains. “There’s some great versions of actual game footage that you watch or listen to and learn how to play the game. I mean, it’s great, but that’s not what I envisioned this season to be, and so I didn’t want it to be school. I didn’t want it to feel like school.”
What is happening in Abdominal muscles is a focus on family, says Clint McElroy — in a fitting role for the family patriarch. “One thing that runs through everything we do in TAZ that also applies here, and this was a constant in (Teen Mutant Ninja) Turtles and a lot of those other shows, it was family. I don’t think there’s a way we can do something that doesn’t have something to do with family, whether it’s found family or real family coming together. We’re going to explore that in Abdominal muscles also.”
You can now listen (with or without your family) to the first ‘start-up’ episode of The Adventure Zone: Abnimals conveniently embedded at the top of this post. But I also encourage you to enjoy the season’s theme song, with music by Eric Near, lyrics by Near, Justin McElroy, and Jonathan Coulton from the internet, and performed by Coulton.
Despite what you’ve heard
We are at the height of our powers
We stand on top of the highest towers
(They’ll never stop us now)So take my hand if you trust
That we will do what we have to do
Until it turns out exactly as we planned
(We’ll find a way somehow)Yes, the road is long
But our mojo is strong
And unless I’m wrong (and I’m not)
We are at the height of our powers
Update: An embed for the first episode has been added to the post and the text has been updated to reflect that the season is now live.