{"id":7696,"date":"2024-09-04T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-09-04T13:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/?p=7696"},"modified":"2024-09-09T20:35:44","modified_gmt":"2024-09-09T20:35:44","slug":"the-adventure-zones-new-season-mixes-dice-with-saturday-morning-cartoons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/phoenixengin.com\/index.php\/2024\/09\/04\/the-adventure-zones-new-season-mixes-dice-with-saturday-morning-cartoons\/","title":{"rendered":"The Adventure Zone\u2019s new season mixes dice with Saturday morning cartoons"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Ten years ago this month, when The Adventure Zone<\/em> started as a one-off actual play experiment on the My Brother, My Brother and Me<\/em> podcast, two of its four hosts worked here, at Polygon. In fact, Justin and Griffin McElroy helped co-found this place, after we worked together at another video game website (RIP Joystiq) as far back as 2007. I mention this, in the interest of disclosure, because I am not impartial when it comes to all things McElroy.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been 10 years since the show began and rapidly grew across many seasons and hundreds of episodes, across a bestselling graphic novel series and countless live shows. I can measure my life alongside its evolutions.<\/p>\n

When I listened to the first episode of The Adventure Zone<\/em> \u2014 this would be the introductory Balance arc, up and running on its own podcast feed later in 2014 \u2014 I did so while building some basement shelves, in part to hold some kid stuff overflow for a 9-month-old upstairs. The most recent episode I listened to was the pilot episode for TAZ<\/em>\u2019s new season, Abnimals<\/em> (not a typo), during a recent family drive to the beach, with a now 10-year-old listening along. The theme song is still stuck in his head (more on this later).\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cImagine a world in which all of the anthropomorphic animal hero shows of the \u201990s and early 2000s existed at the same time,\u201d explains this season\u2019s Dungeon Master, Travis McElroy (or \u201czookeeper,\u201d as the team floated in an early episode shared with me). \u201cAnd within that world there were three team members who had been removed from their former teams for various reasons now trying to form their own kind of ragtag group trying to exist in this world of heroic teens. And this time no swears.\u201d<\/p>\n

<img src="https:\/\/platform.polygon.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/chorus\/uploads\/chorus_asset\/file\/22996183\/tazteam.jpg?quality=90&strip=all&crop=0,6.171875,100,75.875327225131" alt="" title="" data-has-syndication-rights="1" data-caption="Artwork from a graphic novel adaptation of The Adventure Zone<\/em>.” data-portal-copyright=”” \/><\/p>\n

Those three team members include Roger Mooer, a Charolais cow \u2014 well, technically a bull \u2014 with a knack for spy stuff and a gift for ballroom dancing, as played by Clint McElroy, their dad; Navy Seal, an aquatic commando who is also a beefy anthropomorphic Ross seal and is not and has never been, it must be noted, a member of the armed forces, as played by Griffin McElroy; and Axe-O-Lyle, an extreme firefighting axolotl who can regrow his limbs\u2026 but it\u2019s kind of embarrassing, as played by Justin McElroy.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Why the shift to a family-friendly format? \u201cWhat sort of changed my mind on it was seeing how meaningful it was to me to find decent stuff that I like listening to with my kids,\u201d Justin says. \u201cWe have a few podcasts that they\u2019re obsessed with and it\u2019s nice to find ones that I\u2019m into too. So making something that could serve that purpose I feel was also sort of a public good, or at least serving our audience well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cRecently, as I\u2019ve been doing meet-and-greets and we\u2019ve been doing conventions and stuff, there\u2019s just a lot more kids coming through,\u201d Travis agrees. \u201cTwelve-year-olds with their graphic novels to be signed, and a lot more people talked about their kids being into The Adventure Zone<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Outside of an absence of swearing, I asked how they\u2019re choosing to adapt their improvisational storytelling for younger listeners. Should we expect something akin to a G rating?\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know, nobody said G-rated, Chris,\u201d Travis says. \u201cPG-13, maybe\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI like TV-Y,\u201d adds Griffin.<\/p>\n

Travis continues, \u201cI\u2019ve gone back through and watched a lot of the source material cartoons and thinking about it in that framework of what those setups are, what they\u2019re doing and what the stakes are, because, for example, with the original 1987 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles<\/em>, they made the Foot Clan robots. So we can just kick him in the face all day. It\u2019s robots, man! Don\u2019t even worry about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

The pilot episode I listened to had henchmen who were knocked out, but never killed; environmental attacks instead of weapon-based attacks; a Big Bad doing a heist (greedy!); and some longer story arc mystery with a surprise cliffhanger ending. All the while, the play system Travis designed for the series \u2014 which rests on rolling two to three d8 dice \u2014 provides plenty of room for the flexibility and improv that has defined the show\u2019s last decade while also emphasizing momentum.<\/p>\n

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So we can just kick him in the face all day. It\u2019s robots, man!<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n

\u201cI am trying to keep action and momentum in my head,\u201d explains Justin. \u201cWhen we were doing previous seasons, the comedy was almost always the point. And so if something\u2019s funny but not necessarily propulsive, we\u2019ll kind of sit in it and mess around with it until it stops being funny and then move along. But I have been cautious in my head thinking this isn\u2019t going to be interesting if you\u2019re younger; you just want something to happen. Let\u2019s make something happen. And if something hasn\u2019t happened in a while, I\u2019ll make something else happen.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

For the tabletop role-playing curious kiddo in your house, this may help whet their appetite for their own seat at the table, but it won\u2019t give them a framework to host their own adventures.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I made up the rules system, I wanted something that isn\u2019t chunky, isn\u2019t complicated so that we don\u2019t have to spend a lot of time explaining or adding up various die. I wanted it to be like, You roll, good, go<\/em>. So that we could focus more on moving the story forward and doing the action,\u201d Travis explains. \u201cThere are some wonderful versions of actual play stuff that you watch or listen to and learn how to play the game. I mean, it\u2019s wonderful, but that\u2019s not what I pictured this season to be and so I didn\u2019t want it to be school. I didn\u2019t want it to feel like school.\u201d<\/p>\n

What does come through in Abnimals<\/em> is a focus on family, Clint McElroy \u2014 in a fitting role for the patriarch of the family \u2014 says. \u201cOne thing that runs through everything we do in TAZ<\/em> that is also applicable here, and this was a constant in [Teenage Mutant Ninja<\/em>] Turtles<\/em> and a lot of those other shows, was family. I don\u2019t think there\u2019s any way we could do something that didn\u2019t have something to do with family, whether it\u2019s found family or actual family coming together. We\u2019re going to explore that in Abnimals<\/em> as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

You can listen (with or without your family) to the first episode of The Adventure Zone: Abnimals<\/em> when it premieres on Sept. 19, but until then I\u2019d encourage you to indulge in the season\u2019s theme song, with music by Eric Near, lyrics by Near, Justin McElroy, and the internet\u2019s Jonathan Coulton, and performed by Coulton.<\/p>\n

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