hey star! i’m thinking about watching (listening to?) taz, but i know absolutely nothing about it except that it might be vaguely related to some brothers called the mcelroys? and that they have something to do with critical role and a bunch of other podcasts. should i watch/listen to (is it a podcast too?) taz, why is there “adventure” and “amnesty” and etc, and what do the mcelroys have to do with anything? thank you and i hope the job is going well!

OKAY, so, The Adventure Zone (TAZ) is a DnD podcast done by the three McElroy brothers (that’s said “Mackle-roy,” btw, not “Mick-elroy”), Justin (oldest), Travis (middlest), and Griffin (youngest and DM), and their dad.  I unconditionally recommend it as some of the best, funniest comedy I’ve ever encountered, as a genuinely good and heartwarming narrative that brought me to tears more than once, and also just as...like...sometimes a bitch wants to enjoy media that centers around a family that actually loves and enjoys each other as people.  If that last sounds like your cup of tea, I recommend the entire McElroy podcast empire (that’s a separate post), but ESPECIALLY The Adventure Zone.  

Now, in terms of DnD, a lot of people are nervous about starting TAZ because they associate DnD with a very rules-heavy exhaustive kind of activity, which they assume will be zero fun whatsoever.  Now, I...play a lot of DnD, so that wasn’t really a concern for me.  Regardless, the McElroys absolutely do not understand the rules of DnD and have never allowed a rule to stop them from making a good joke or having a good time, and frankly I think that is a totally valid way to play the game!  It’s also extremely accessible to people who may not have ever played DnD before, because hey, half the cast has no idea which dice to roll at any given moment.  They are right there with you.  Go forth.

(On the other hand, if you HAVE played DnD before and you don’t mind committing yourself to an ungodly amount of content, I whole-heartedly recommend Critical Role!  It is a YouTube series that also exists as a podcast, both equally fun ways to consume the material.  The seven players and DM are all famous voice actors that you have definitely heard in something somewhere, their characters are fucking clutch, and they play a much more rules-heavy game, classic in every way right down to the dungeons and dragons, that is a ton of fun.  The main reason I usually tell people to start with TAZ, however, is this: TAZ episodes run about an hour, with few exceptions, and release every other week.  Critical Role episodes average four hours and release weekly.  So if you have that kind of time, that’s awesome, absolutely do it!  I’ve finally started watching through their first campaign and it’s great, I’m mostly caught up on their current campaign and it’s also great.  Watching their DM work is just...competence porn, and the characters are fucking destroying me in both campaigns.  TAZ is more approachable in terms of content volume, though.)

Narratively speaking, you should start at the beginning of TAZ, at the start of their Balance campaign.  You asked about the “Amnesty” thing, and this is your answer--you can’t run a DnD campaign forever, all stories end eventually, so their first campaign that kicked off the podcast is called “Balance” and is 69 episodes long.  If you hear people talking about Taako, Magnus, Merle, “the seven birds”, etc, those are all from Balance.  Then they ran some mini campaigns where they tried new stuff out, specifically “Commitment” and “Dust,” and then they settled on “Amnesty” as their new campaign.  Each campaign is set in a totally different world with wildly different rules and they’re all pretty radical, but here’s a short breakdown:

BALANCE: It’s fucking DnD, babes (although remarkably short on both dungeons and dragons).  They fight goblins, they get magic items, they have a wizard and a fighter and a cleric.  They go to the moon to join a secret society and get in a deadly car battlewagon race, there are liches and time loops and Wheels of Misfortune, there’s a giant mindwiping jellyfish and Garfield the Deals Warlock.  There are elevators.  ...okay, so they get pretty far from your traditional DnD universe build, the universe gets weird pretty quick, but like.  Just trust me, get a good giggle out of two or three arcs worth of dick jokes, and then buckle in for the emotional shit.

COMMITMENT: A superhero mini-campaign!  Three people get superpowers from their place of business and trash shit at an abandoned amusement park, it’s a good time.

DUST: Urban fantasy old Western murder mystery.  What else do I even need to say, honestly.

AMNESTY: The new arc!  If Supernatural took place in small-town West Virginia where half the monsters were pretty chill actually and the cast was Sketchy Con Man With Car, Long-Suffering Chosen Forest Ranger, and Punk Magical Bisexual With Pet Rabbit.  This one has a much more cohesive aesthetic than Balance, but I love it anyway.  

TLDR: yes you SHOULD listen to The Adventure Zone.  It’s hilarious when they’re busy telling dick jokes at first, and heartwrenching when they realize they have the ability to get heartwrenching, and those two things happen within minutes of each other more often than not.  And if you have gotten this far and you are sitting there thinking “Huh, this is weird, normally this is where Star goes the fuck Off about pitching the narrative,” it’s a DnD game! They go on quests to find shit!  There are seven shits to find!  They have mixed success at finding the shit!  What do you want from me!  

Oh, also, something that I have come to really appreciate lately: the McElroys put a lot of work into being funny without being mean.  Balance and Amnesty and the mini campaigns are all diverse, enjoyable universes, the punchline of a joke is never “ha ha, that person is [whatever]”, queer characters live long badass lives--I dunno, this might not matter to people, but I just find it incredibly restful.  Four cis white heterosexual men are not necessarily who I expected to provide that restful universe, but damned if they didn’t deliver in spades.  Plant your gays in healthy topsoil and water regularly and you too could mysteriously end up on the NYT bestseller list.