The Adventure Zone

Keeper & NPCs: Griffin McElroy

Aubrey Little/Lady Flame: Travis McElroy

Edmund “Ned” Chicane: Clint McElroy

Duck Newton: Justin McElroy

“Beacon”: Justin McElroy

The The Adventure Zone Zone:

MaxFunDrive 2019 Special

(part of TAZscripts on Tumblr)

[Deja Vu (TTAZZ Remix) plays]

Justin: Welcome to The The Adventure Zone Zone, I’m Justin McElroy. Here’s our first question. Justin, will you eat more goulash during episodes? And the answer is, dear listener, you got it!

Travis: Okay, I will also say though, Justin, it’s 3:15PM—

Griffin: [crosstalk] Yeah, it is 3:15—

Travis: [crosstalk]—when we’re recording. What meal slot are you hitting?

Griffin: Yeah, where you at?

Justin: Um, lemme see, lemme check the clock on the wall—

Clint: [crosstalk] Tea! It’s tea!

Justin: [crosstalk]—and the little hand is pointing to goulash...

Griffin: Oh, okay.

Justin: And the big hand is pointing to goulash. [crosstalk] It’s goulash o’ clock.

Travis: [crosstalk] Welcome to the Maximum Fun Goulash Drive, 2019. How much goulash can we get with the amount of money you donate?

Clint: And remember, it’s ghooooul-ash!

Justin: Wait a minute, the Adventure Zone: Elementary, The Adventure Zone: Fur, The Adventure Zone: Goulash.

[laughter]

Griffin: It’s the special one-off. Justin, I know that you have enough professionalism and common sense not to eat the goulash while we’re recording this episode where we ask people for money, but I would also suggest that the goulash probably leaves a slight residue that affects the tones coming out of your mouth hole, and just make sure you give it, like, a nice sweep before you start broadcasting.

Justin [chuckling]: [crosstalk] Alright. Of course.

Griffin: [crosstalk] There. That’s my one refrain(?).

Justin: Yeah, I’ll be sure to—once—Yeah, if I happen to stop eating goulash at some point, I’ll be sure to give a good rinse, just to get all the goulash particulate.

Travis: Now, so that Justin can slam-jam that goulash on down, Griffin, why don’t you tell us a little bit about the Max. Fun drive?

Griffin: Yeah, sure, so we’re a part of the Maximum Fun network and we have been—well, TAZ has been since its inception, but we have been a part of the network for— in some way for, you know, like eight years now. This is our eighth Max. Fun drive. We joined the network back in 2011, and because of that we have been able to turn podcasting into our full-time careers, and we have been able to launch a bunch of other different shows, and we’ve been able to start touring, and, you know, take time off from stuff to make the TV show, and all of these different things have been possible because we’ve been able to dedicate the time that we’ve been able to dedicate to these shows, and that is all because of the support that listeners have provided us over the years. I think it was so obvious for us to spin off our one DnD episode of MBMBaM into TAZ because there was a demand for it, and then there was a ton of support for it in the Max. Fun drive. So, that kind of, like, direct support that you can give us, and it is direct, when you go to maximumfun.org/donate, you pick the shows that your money goes to and a small amount goes to Maximum Fun to help cover overhead, it helps sort of put the things that you like into the world. And so we’re gonna talk a bit about it during this episode as we’re also answering your questions about Amnesty, and live shows, and whatever you asked questions about, so think about going to maximumfun.org/donate, there’s some great rewards that you can get if you become a member, including the bonus content you get at five dollars a month, which for us this year includes Honey Heist, or The Adventure Zone: Fur, as it has so been titled, which was a really fun thing to record, but we’re gonna talk more about the bonus stuff as soon as we, I dunno, after we answer a few questions, so who wants to rip one of these bad boys out here?

Justin: What was that address one more time?

Griffin: Well it is, yeah, it’s maximumfun.org/donate.

Travis: I’ll start with a fairly big one for Griffin. ‘Griffin, how have your original ideas for Amnesty changed since their first conception?’ And that’s from Tucker. Thank you, Tucker.

Griffin: Thank you, Tucker—I think I mentioned during the experimental episode TTAZZ that we did about this being sort of Persona-influenced, and the Persona games, if you’ve never played them, they’re about, like, you know, teens going into secret worlds and fighting the monsters there that are, like, influencing their stuff while also having all this day-to-day drama. I don’t necessarily know that Amnesty is that, necessarily. And in fact, I’d say that what Amnesty is now is kind of nothing like what I envisioned it would be, and I’m kind of—I’m happy about that. I don’t think I had a great idea for what it was gonna be beyond, you know, the West Virginia ski town with monsters in it, but I think it’s turned into something kinda bigger than that. And honestly, for the last couple arcs I feel like it’s been way more play-driven and way less big picture, like, where we are now is, like, I have no idea where we’re going, I’m sure we’ll get there, and I haven’t had any idea for a while. So it’s less that the world has changed out of what I thought it was gonna be before we started playing, and more that the way we are doing storytelling has changed pretty drastically. Which, I’d be curious to hear what the other three of you feel like because it’s definitely a different way of makin’ doughnuts than we did with Balance, it feels like.

Travis: Well, I think that connects to another question, too, where DesperateDM asks ‘How do you write your notes for sessions, especially for parts where the players dictate how the game progresses?’ And I feel a lot, like, in Amnesty, we’ve had a, more where you have the monster and all of the elements and all the pieces, but then what happens within those scenes and how we get to that and stuff like that, you do tend to leave that a lot more open to what we decide to do with the characters and the scenes than you did when we were doing Balance.

Griffin: Yeah.

Travis: And so it has been more of an open world kind of play, you know, where we have created, like, what shop we go to and a lot of the NPCs are based off of scenes we wanna do, and that kind of thing. So it’s been a pretty different experience here to Balance.

Clint: Yeah, and I also think that the fact that we, we started doin’ it towards the end of Balance, I’d say the last quarter of Balance, but Amnesty really, really feels more character driven in the fact that I think that we are doing--we’ve been pretty consistent with trying to stay in character, and try to drive the action that way, and the choices we made and the things we’ve done—and we will call each other on it occasionally, if we veer from that—I think it’s been much more character-honest all through Amnesty.

Griffin: Which isn’t to say that the characters in Balance were weak.

Clint: No, no, no, that’s not what I mean—I’m talking more about the way we play.

Griffin: Right.

Clint: I think that we have embraced it from the get-go with Amnesty, and it took us a while with Balance.

Griffin: I think it’s an interesting case study, an interesting comparison, because when we started doing Balance we had no idea who the characters were gonna be, and then they turned into these characters that we all fell in love with by the end of it, and with Amnesty, and really all of the experimental arcs, we put in a lot more elbow grease ahead of time to try and come up with who these characters were, and I still feel like it took us, like, a dozen episodes or more to really start understanding who they were, and start having fun with them and start knowing how they would react to all of these different situations. So I think we ended up kind of in the same place, even though I think we tried to put in a little bit more effort to inform who the characters were before we got started.

Justin: You know, it’s interesting, when we were creating characters—I’ll speak for myself—when I was creating Taako for The Adventure Zone, a lot of the Taako, like, things that made up Taako as a character came from a disinterest in any sort of consistency or continuity. We were all very—just kinda pulling it out of our asses when we started, and I think that that actually made for more interesting characters.

Griffin: Yeah.

Justin: Because it was like, you know, very few people are deliberately created. You know? Like, almost nobody’s deliberately created, and it’s just, the things that make up your personality are the things that happen to you, and I think that that lack of structure early on is what created a lot—and there’s some stuff, blind alleys that we tried for the characters that didn’t work out. I think with Amnesty it was actually kind of a struggle at first to not care, not be precious, because I was much more thinking about it and almost kind of psyching myself out, like, playing in a 30-episodes-in headspace right from the beginning without having that groundwork and, at the same time, being much more conscious of choices that I was making because—with the realization that I was creating a character as I went.

Griffin: [crosstalk] Right.

Justin: [crosstalk] You know what I mean? Like, I was overthinking it.

Griffin: Yeah, I honestly—I feel like next time we do this, I think we might all take a step back from trying to flesh out every—not every part of the characters, right, but I feel like we did maybe go a little bit hard in the paint on all the experimental arcs, when really the ethos of all of these Apocalypse world games is to draw maps but leave spaces—

Travis: Yeah.

Griffin: —and I don’t necessarily know that we left enough spaces. Which is—I’m not slamming the characters or the arc because I’m genuinely happy with where it is now, but yeah, it’s been, I dunno, it’s been interesting, it’s been very different from Balance.

Travis: What I have found too is, like, when I think about the differences between Balance and Amnesty, a lot of it has to do with genre, right—

Griffin: Yes.

Travis: —because when you think about that Balance kinda filled the genre of high fantasy epic—

Griffin: I would not call it high fantasy.

Travis: Well, but I mean, like, if you’re looking at what it’s aping and what it’s kind of sort of like, where you have this—in the end, the world is—the entire universe, the entire multiverse is at risk, right--

Griffin: Right.

Travis: And so, yeah, we have these three doofuses that were—everything was kind of happening around them and they were just trying to make it through, right, whereas with Amnesty you’re looking at a Monster of the Week, and when you look at other monster-of-the-week—like Supernatural and Buffy the Vampire Slayer and shows like that, a lot more of it is like, yeah, there’s a monster and that’s very important, and they have to find it, but really you’re watching the show for the characters and their own internal journeys and relationship journeys and all of that…

Griffin: Right.

Travis: And the monsters are kind of an excuse to keep the action moving.

Griffin: It’s a more tension-driven than an exploration, wild sort of footloose and fancy—like, I don’t know that we could do a scene in Amnesty where you’re just chilling in a mud bath with your boss. You know what I mean?

Travis: Yeah.

Griffin: Because there’s a fuckin’ werewolf out there that’s trying to eat every—and I just, I dunno, it is a different type of storytelling that I don’t think any of us really appreciated it would be? I think we all thought, like, oh, well now we know how to play RPGs, let’s just do this monster one. But really, it’s a different kind of story, it’s a different environment, it’s different types of characters, it’s a different tone, there’s a lot of stuff that has been different with Amnesty.

Clint: I’ve got one. From Pawzymandias, ‘Clint, is “Saturday Night Dead” and the Cryptonomica based on Svengoolie, by any chance, and if that isn’t a primary influence for Ned’s whole deal, what was? He feels very nostalgic in a way I can’t put my finger on.’ It’s ‘cause the guy playing him is old, hence the nostalgia…

Travis [sarcastically]: What? No, no…

Clint: Here’s the thing, while Svengoolie is an example of—

Griffin: Can you explain what that is?

Clint: Svengoolie is a monster movie host on, ahh, I’m trying to remember, it’s… I don’t remember which network it’s on, but he’s still doing it today, and it’s—

Justin: MeTV, is the network now.

Clint: Is it? Okay. And it’s in a long tradition of monster movie hosts, like Zacherle and Morgus—

Travis: Elvira.

Clint: Elvira, Vampiro, well, Vampiro was a pest— my favorite was Dr. Paul Bearer, not the one from wrestling, but it— I mean, these used to be prevalent— there used to be all kinds of these monster movie hosts, and there was always humor based around it and really cheap jokes, and really— and the worse, the crummier the movie, the better the show would be. And that’s kinda where I was coming from, I am a fan of Svengoolie, it genuinely is— while it’s, you know, cheesy sets, and everything else, it’s pretty well-written and he’s really hysterically funny, but yeah, I was going for that whole monster movie hosting vibe with the whole thing of Saturday Night Dead, yes. Which is why I chose such horrible movies.

Travis: This question is from Jessie. ‘I remember a point when the new arc was starting where it was mentioned that Commitment and Dust would be revisited during live shows. Is that still planned? I would love to see those characters and stories come back in some way.’

Clint: Aww.

Griffin: Let’s talk about live shows.

Travis: Yeah.

Griffin: I know some of the questions have to do with live shows, which we’ve only been doing Balance for, and we’ve been doing them, like, every other month, every other tour or so that we do, we do a TAZ: Balance, and— did we say that we were gonna do live Commitment and Dust? I don’t— I remember saying that we wanted to return to them in some way, I don’t remember saying in a live environment. But maybe we did. It was such a long time ago now.

Clint: Well, it’s on the internet, Griffin, so it must be true.

Griffin: It probably is. So we just got back from the Joco cruise, which was a hell of a lot of fun, and our Adventure Zone offering for that cruise was a performance of five Sherlock Holmeses and a vampire with special guest Pat Rothus, and that was our first time doing a live show that wasn’t Balance, that was something else. And obviously it was Elementary two, which is the best, a really good game and a really incredible and rich tapestry that was woven. But it was, fuckin’, it was a lot of fun. Like, it was very very very fun, and there is a certain—returning to the Balance well as much as we do in those live shows has started to get kind of, like, it’s getting trickier to make something new, if that makes sense. Something new that also works as a live show that, so like, I think it would be fun to do Dust or Commitment or somethin’ else, I dunno.

Travis: We had so much fun doing Honey Heist, like a one, you know, doing a live Honey—or maybe a live Amnesty, somethin’ new, somethin’ weird, who knows?

Justin: [crosstalk] I mean, we’re being honest, right, there’s no reason not to be—

Travis: [crosstalk] Yeah, we can edit it.

Justin: Yeah, we can always edit our honesty out— mean, part of it is when you do a live show, you book a venue, right, and that is predicated on selling a certain number of tickets, and if you don’t sell those tickets then you lose money! On the thing, right? So there’s definitely a concern that I think a lot of people, our suspicion, at least, has been that a lot of people who come to those shows are coming to see the Balance characters, right? So that’s part of it, is that we would have to be really clear up front that it was not a Balance show, but also it would have to be, like, we’d have to choose a venue— guess how many seats— we don’t have the data to guess how many people would want to come. We have absolutely no idea. And that’s really tough to do. But there is a sense that we love the way the world ended, in the podcast, we love where we left the characters, and if we’re being super honest, there does start to come to a point— and I don’t think we’re quite there yet, but it comes to a point where you feel like you’re a cover band, just going out and playing—

Travis: [crosstalk] It makes me think of the parts in Galaxy Quest where they’re opening up the car dealership, and they’re like “by Gravthar’s hammer”—

Griffin: [crosstalk] Yeah, that’s maybe a little—

Justin: Like I said, not there yet—

Travis: [crosstalk] —not there yet—

Griffin: Yes.

Clint: I cast Zone of Truth! And then just point.

Justin: On these deals! These deals can’t be—

[laughter]

Justin: These prices can’t be for real.

Griffin: There’s also an element of, it’s been a long time since we— it’s been a year and a half, right, since we wrapped up Balance? Even longer than that, right? God, I don’t remember. Anyway—

Justin: August 20…

Griffin: 2017, right?

Justin: ...17?

Griffin: I think so.

Justin: Yup.

Griffin: So it’s tough to remember a lot of stuff from the— and I remember most of the stuff, but also DnD is kind of getting a little bit tough to play in a live environment? I remember—

Justin: When you take two months—

Griffin: When you take two months between touching it, it can get a little bit rough, but also, like, Justin, we were talking after the New Orleans show where you were like “I don’t—” Like, Taako I think is great at doing stunts at each live show, doing some wild thing that nobody expects, and it’s you looking through your spell book like, “I’ve kinda done all the spells, there’s not that many spells that I haven’t—” and so there’s a mechanical thing that’s— all this is to say— I don’t know, I think the future of live shows…

Justin: The reason that we’re talking about this so much is, like, this is an extension of conversations that we have—

Griffin: All the time.

Justin: All the time, yeah.

Travis: Because we don’t want it to get stale.

Griffin: Right.

Travis: If you’re gonna show up and support us, we don’t wanna be like, “Okay, cool, we’re gonna ramble off some character names that you like and then, I don’t know, bye.” We want it to be good.

Griffin: And that’s not what we’re doing.

Travis: Yes.

Griffin: I would not sell any of the live shows we’ve done short by saying it’s like that, but any step in that direction at all makes me super uncomfortable.

Justin: We wanna stop doing those before we do the one where we’re like “Hey! We didn’t do anything interesting that time!”

Griffin: Yeah, sure. But at the same time, the Joco cruise show was super fun, and it was— I think more humor-driven than gameplay driven? Obviously, because we were playing five Sherlock Holmeses and a vampire, but also we made a new thing, and there was— and the same with Honey Heist. Honey Heist is a game about bears trying to steal honey from HoneyCon, and yet at the end of that I was like “I feel good about the story we just told!” So I don’t— I’m not thinking of it as a loss, I’m just thinking that it’s like, our views on the core podcast show that we’re doing, because we’ve moved on from Balance, kind of are starting to align how we think of our live shows, too.

Travis: Speaking of Honey Heist and Sherlock Holmes, Brian asks ‘Where do you get those one-page RPGs like Sherlock Holmes and Vampire and the bear Honey Heist game? Those sound like lots of fun!’

Griffin: Trav, you came up with the idea to do Honey Heist.

Travis: Yeah, so, the thing is is there are all of these—

Justin: Do they mean literally where do you get the files, or…?

Travis: The ideas for—

Justin: Where do you find them.

Griffin: I torrent all of them off Limewire…

Travis: I found it under a log in the woods… I like watching a lot of actual-play podcast things and there’s lots of roleplaying game streams and stuff on Youtube. I first became aware of Honey Heist from Critical Role doing Honey Heist.

Griffin: Yeah.

Travis: But the internet is just full of one page, one-shot RPGs, and we just came upon one somebody Tweeted at us, a Carly Rae Jepsen one page RPG...

Griffin: Yeah, it will not surprise you to hear that I got sent that one a lot. I’m not even on Twitter anymore and I could feel the reverberations through the air surrounding my computer of people hitting me with that.

Travis: There’s a lot of— I would be willing to bet that pretty much most genres you can think of, there’s probably some kind of one page one-shot RPG for it.

Griffin: Oh, sure. I just, I heard Dad when we started this call asking one of you “Have you heard of this game Lasers and Feelings?” and I was like “How do you know about Lasers and Feel—”

Clint: I found it on Justin’s printer! [laughing]

Griffin: Oh, okay. Justin’s doing...

Justin: That’s Dad’s discovery engine for these games.

Clint: Well, I have another backdoor hack. Have an uncomfortable moment on a beach where you interrupt Will Wheaton and his wife having a nice conversation to ask him for recommendations on what things you should play.

Griffin: Ahh, that’ll do it too.

Justin: That’ll do it too.

Clint: That’s really awesome.

Justin: And hey, that’s a good way to turn me into a ghost, so that’s another cool way I—just be a whole skeleton.

Travis: Here’s a question from Ashley, and I guess this is for Griffin and Justin, ‘Was Minerva always going to die or did a bad vision or roll kill her?’

Griffin: This is a wild question…

Justin: Don’t know that Minerva is dead, is worth noting.

Griffin: Right, exactly, that’s the first thing, and the other thing is that, I don’t know, I don’t think about the—

Justin [doing a silly voice]: Oh, that’s right, you never saw me die.

Griffin: No, we can’t copy that into our show, that is a safe space for friends. No it’s not like she was always going to, it’s not like when I was writing the thesis of Amnesty before we started, it was like he’s gonna have this holographic alien friend who’s going to train him until she gets, you know, until her planet gets hit by a meteor, but that was part of the bad vision roll, and because of that, I have to follow up with those hard rolls, I have to follow up with those hard moves when you guys fail, because that’s the big tool I have for shaping the story. If you think about it, like, when you guys roll well you’re in charge of where the story goes, when you roll poorly I’m in charge. So I can’t just say there’s a meteor and then there’s not a meteor.

Travis: Yeah, but you wouldn’t have done it if it broke—‘cause that’s the thing people always asked about during Balance too, is a time when Justin and Travis and Clint broke the game, that’s not really how RPGs like this work.

Griffin: The way that it went was Justin rolled this roll, I knew that the monster was going to be a thing that made bad things happen, and when I thought about it, when you failed, a very bad thing that could happen is a meteor strike, an asteroid hitting the planet, and then as—I think after we finished that episode or so, I was like “Oh, what about if it’s not your guys’ planet that gets hit?” This was not a thing that was always going to happen. These visions are my favorite part of the game, trying to get to them, trying to figure out a way to get to them, which is, like, we have not even touched the vision that you had for the arc that we are currently in, where you saw Leo dead in your arms in front of the telescope, and like, how do we get there? How do we get you guys there? Does that even happen? Is there a way for you to change what happens? Can you change it now that you are not The Chosen One, necessarily anymore? That shit is super cool.

Travis: And on that note, too, we had a lot of questions about that, about the change to The Mundane playbook. Was that—so basically, something people would like to know, in general, is that Justin had expressed interest in and so it worked out that way, or, Justin, was it because of Minerva going away that you were like “Oh, I’m going to do this”? How did that decision come about?

Clint: Yeah, which was the chicken and which was the egg?

Justin: Man, I’m trying to remember, a lot of this stuff is so collaborative… I definitely mentioned to Griffin something about how we were gonna handle it, like, I don’t know, Griffin, do you remember how it actually happened?

Griffin: So we had talked about, like, Duck’s powers come through this psychic tether that he had with Minerva, through this wormhole in his brain from across the galaxy, right, and so that was the source of his power, and so when Minerva’s point of contact with Duck got shut off, I think we just both were like, well, that’s gonna have some effect on Duck’s powers, and I think we had a conversation about you wanting to adjust Duck’s stats, wanting to change his thing. Or when we were talking about how—that’s when it was, we were talking about leveling up Duck for the most recent lunar interlude, you were trying to find some way to reflect the loss of power or something like that, and then I think I suggested “There’s a whole character archetype that is—”

Justin: Oh, it was take—I wanted to—one of the upgrades is you can take something from another playbook…

Griffin: [crosstalk] That’s what it was, yes. So you were looking at that.

Justin: [crosstalk] ...and I was like “I should take something from The Mundane playbook,” and you were like “Well, there’s a different thing you could do.”

Griffin: You could take everything from The Mundane playbook.

Justin: And it’s weird how that is probably one of the things that we’ve gotten the most negative feedback on, and it’s...

Travis: It’s one of my favorite things we’ve done.

Justin: It’s so much more interesting, why is that a negative, how many times have you heard that story of the chosen one who finds his destiny—it’s much more interesting to me, someone who chooses their—finally embraces their destiny, and then no longer has the powers that they were supposed to. That’s cool.

Griffin: It is—

Justin: Not a lot I can do in any given situation, though! That’s pretty chill.

[laughter]

Travis: Hey, welcome to being Magnus.

Griffin: But that’s fucking wicked not true, because you’ve used your power to convince somebody to do something to keep them safe from harm, like, four times in the last two episodes, The Mundane does shit, The Mundane has a role. You all can beat ass, right, even you as The Mundane have beaten ass, but now you have this other thing that you can do. Let’s take a second to talk about the Max. Fun drive.

{ 27:17 }

Justin: Mmm, I love it.

Griffin: Daddy, why don’t you go ahead and start telling us some of the donation levels, again, if you hear this, the spirit moves you, maximumfun.org/donate, choose the level that works for you, and get these great rewards. Father…

Clint: That’s a really important point, what works for you. Do what you can. But we do have some levels, some suggested levels. There’s a five dollar monthly membership. You get all this bonus content, exclusive bonus content, unless we’ve been hacked which I don’t think we have, we’re talking about over 100 hours of bonus content.

Travis: Over 200.

Griffin: Well, across all the different shows, we don’t have 200 hours of TAZ. But we do have Honey Heist, we have by this point, hopefully we’ve hit 15,000 donors, although who knows, which means that TAZ Elementary Two, which we did record on the Joco cruise, is gonna be up in the feed. We have our episode we did with—

Travis: With special guest Patrick Rothus.

Griffin: —with Pat Rothus, and then we have the episode we did with Lin. We have the first TAZ Knights…

Clint: Lin… Lin…

Griffin: Manuel-Miranda.

Clint: Lin Anderson? Oh, okay!

Griffin: Yeah. And just a bunch of eps up on there.

Clint: A 10 dollar monthly membership gets you the drive-exclusive enamel pin that Megan Lynn Kott did. My personal favorite is the Cryptonomica one. But you get that, and you get a Max. Fun membership card, and all the stuff from the five dollar level. A 20 dollar monthly membership—this is cool—it’s a beautiful 550-piece Maximum Fun puzzle. Jeffrey Teiss designed it specifically for Max. Fun monthly members, and you know, let’s face it, you’re listening to a podcast, you’ve gotta do something with your hands. Hopefully you’re not driving. But putting together this jigsaw puzzle would be a great thing to do, and of course, all the stuff—

Travis: We cannot stress enough, don’t put together a jigsaw puzzle while you drive.

Clint: Don’t jigsaw and drive.

Travis: I know it’s tempting, I know it is.

Clint: And of course, you get all the things from the previous level. Thirty-five dollar monthly membership, you get this incredible glass coffee mug engraved with the Max. Fun rocket logo. It’s safe to microwave.

[Griffin gasps]

Clint: You can’t say that about your pewter mugs, your iron mugs, your magnesium mugs…

Griffin: Your tinfoil mugs…

Clint: Your tinfoil mugs, you cannot say that—

Griffin: Your mugs made out of grape meat.

[Travis laughs]

Griffin: And we don’t have to do the higher tier ones right now, but—

Clint: Well, what else do you need?

Travis: There are higher tiers.

Griffin: There are.

Clint: There are, yeah. But yeah, and you get all of that great stuff, a lot of great content, a lot of really cool stuff to impress your friends and neighbors with, and we urge you--do what you can, take a look at those levels, listen to what I say and keep me from having to go back to having a real job.

Travis: Yeah, and that includes new and upgrading donors. So if you, like, maybe you’ve been at five dollars for a while or 10 dollars for a while, and maybe you start listening to more shows on the network, or they become even more important to you, or whatever, and you’re wanting to up those donations, you are also then eligible to get the rewards that we just listed. So if you’ve been considering upgrading, now’s the time to do it. maximumfun.org/donate.

{ 30:40 }

Griffin: Should we get back into the questions?

Travis: Yeah, we had a question here that was from Chase, about ‘when making or playing an arc for a one-off or live show, how do you go about timing it out?’

Griffin: Yeah, it sucks shit.

[Griffin and Justin laugh]

Justin: It sucks.

Griffin: We had ourselves a talk after the New Orleans show, because you all kept thinking that the first act—we’ve started doing intermission in the middle so we can take potty breaks, and y’all kept thinking the first act was over when it wasn’t, and so you were like “All right! Call it! Let’s go backstage and eat dinner!” and I was like “No, there’s—I had a button”. So I try to have a button, and sometimes we don’t get there, sometimes we go 15 minutes over in the first act and then the second act is 15 minutes long.

Justin: It is always that question of— and I think we’re erring more towards the side of, like, when we started, Griffin was very hint-y? About what was in the arc? I think when we did the wrestling one, I think you just told us “Think wrestling.” And now, I think we are a little bit more explicit about what the beats are going to be, because we want to make sure to get to the stuff that, you know, we want to make sure we’re keeping a good pace, and we’re getting through the story. I mean, they’re definitely— they’re probably more guided than Balance itself was, because we have to—

Griffin: We have an hour and a half.

Justin: We’ve got an hour and a half, we’ve got to hit the beats.

Griffin: Trying to tell a whole story in DnD in an hour and a half is impossible, because you can spend a fucking hour and a half dicking around in a tavern. You could spend—there are whole sessions, nights where you play with your friends, where you don’t actually fight anything because you’re just so busy dicking around in some place. And so trying to do a whole story in the span of that time is super hard. As long as we’re talking about live shows, Rachel asks, and hopefully this won’t come off too self-horn-tooting, but I’m curious to hear what y’all say. Rachel asks ‘What’s your favorite live show so far?’

{ 32:41 }

Travis: I really did love the wrestle one.

Clint: The first one of Boston?

Griffin: Yeah, the Battle Fest?

Justin: Battle Fest, that was good.

Clint: And not just because it was a great episode, but that was honestly and truly the first legitimate live show we had done of TAZ, where people paid money, right, wasn’t it?

Griffin: Well, we did the LA Podfest before that, and was this our second live show?

Justin: Yeah.

Clint: Yeah, but wasn’t this the first time we had done it in a theater setting? I mean, the way we do live shows now.

Griffin: Yeah, sure.

Clint: And honest to gosh, the reaction—it’s why I always refer to the Wilbur as our home theater, because that was like nothing I’d ever experienced before, and just, the reaction of the crowd and the energy that was going on, that was just a blast. For me, that was a real touchstone.

Griffin: I would say a contender for me, though, is the most recent Candlenights special we did, with the Home Alone sequence and the jingle-all-the-way stuff and—

Travis: I liked that one too. I really liked the Dracula one that we just did, because I thought it was a good pacing, and—because that’s the thing, is, what you’ve gotten really good at as far as timing out things, is saying “Okay, I know where we’re gonna start, I know where I wanna be by the act break, and I know where I wanna be by the end of it, but I’m gonna leave plenty of room for you guys to just dick around.”

Griffin: Sure.

Travis: And so it was just a lot of—Plus, I just always like when you do the Dracula voice, it makes me really happy.

Justin: Hmm… The casino heist, probably, for me.

Griffin: Ahh, that was a fun one too.

Justin: Stealing $15 from Greg Grimaldis.

Clint: Where was it? Was that San Diego?

Justin: All the cities are blending together.

[Clint laughs]

{34:23 }

Justin: The uh, someone said ‘I know it’s a bit early to a—’, here’s a quickie. ‘I know it’s a bit early to ask, but I was wondering if y’all have any plans for what the next arc will be?’ That’s from (???), and the answer is nope!

[laughter]

Travis: I have an idea for what I was telling Justin, Griffin, Dad before we started.

Justin: I want— I think it’s time for me to finally—

Clint: Oh my god!

Justin: Take the throne—

Clint: Oh my god!

Justin: Take control. I had so much fun in my rudimentary preparation of Elementary. I don’t know, I think it would be fun to do one at this point. [crosstalk]

Griffin: [crosstalk] You should, man!

Clint: Oh yeah!

Justin: I think it would be fun. I think I’d like to do one. But Travis has a really good idea and I probably, when it comes— when the rubber meets the road, as it were, uh, I’ll be— By the time we finish Amnesty I’ll be in my twilight years.

Travis: That’s true.

Justin: And I may just want to sit back and rest on my throne.

Griffin: [crosstalk] Oh god, I’ll finish— I hope to finish Amnesty in 2019 so hopefully that’s not true.

Clint: [crosstalk]

Justin: I’m 38, so.

Clint: I’ll be dead! Oh my gosh!

Travis: Wait, what are your plans, dad? [crosstalk]

Justin: [crosstalk]

Griffin: Yeah.

Clint: Skydiving, baby!

Travis: No I, I have—

Justin: Rocky Mountain Climbing, going 2.7 seconds on a bull—

Clint [singing]: I went bull ridin’!

[Justin laughs]

Travis: I have an idea for a really silly arc—

Justin [laughing]: You fucking…

[laughter]

Clint: Um...

Justin [laughing]: Dad just sung a part [laughter] of Live Like You’re Dyin’ and he got the right thing but he said it wrong!

Clint: I guess great minds don’t think alike. Well, let me ask you this, are we gonna— I mean, this show is how, not involved with planning I am. So, what about going back and doing experimental arcs again. Do we, Are we thinking—

Justin: Oh man. I don’t know, our listener number tanked so hard [Griffin laughs] after Balance, and like they really weren’t ??? And I don’t think it’s because the arcs were bad—

Griffin: No.

Justin: Like, imagine if you were watching Lost, right? [Griffin laughs] And then [crosstalk]

Clint: [crosstalk] And then they had a whole bunch of different people!

Griffin: Yeah.

Justin: Yeah, imagine you’re watching Lost, and then after the finale and it’s like “And that’s—anyway that’s what it was all about.’”The next time they show up they’re all doctors.

[laughter]

Justin: And it’s like— They wear different wigs and stuff and it’s like ‘Okay wait a minute, why, what is happening.’

Travis: Also there’s a caption at the bottom of the screen that just said “Don’t get used to this, it’s gone in two episodes.”

Griffin: Yeah.

Justin: Right. “Don’t try getting connected to this.” Um.

Clint: So maybe we can, like, when we are talking about the one-offs and the, you know, bonus content stuff, maybe that’s the future for these one-off games. And maybe these shorter things might be for live shows or, you know, for the bonus content.

Travis: Yeah, I think what, what we are kind of always doing is trying to figure out, like, what is best for the audience and for the show and trying to find— Like we had conversations before about like doing alternating stuff in the off weeks but then once we really [crosstalk]

Griffin: God, that’d be bad.

Travis: Yeah, that would be so, like, the jerkiness of jumping back and forth between two stories, both for us and for the listeners, would be I think really off-putting. Um, and also just prep-time-wise, I don’t think we would be able to do it. And so like we’re always trying to figure out like what’s the best way forward. So I don’t know, like I said, I had an idea for a new arc, but I also, like, have an idea for a continuation of Dust that I may wanna do. Like, the icing is we probably have, what Griffin— another four, five months of Amnesty?

Griffin: Uh yeah, it’s hard for— again, like I don’t know where he fuck we’re going with this [Travis: Yeah.] So I can’t say for sure, but, uh, I mean, 2019 I’m hoping Amnesty will, we will be able to wrap it up in a satisfying way and then, you know, do whatever we want to do next— we keep saying the word “experimental arcs”. Like I would be happy to just do some, some of these, like, one page, you know, one-shots.

Travis: Yeah.

Griffin: And maybe that’s like, literally maybe we’re talking semantics at that point. But uh, I don’t know, I think we were all so antsy to start Season 2 after—or in the middle of Dust, and I don’t know that I would feel this way again after we finish Amnesty. Like I don’t think, I would be fine with not starting Season 3 until we were like, you know, really, really sure we have like explored all these different options and uh, you know, build something that we could really, really expound on. Which isn’t to say Amnesty isn’t that, but I wouldn’t feel necessarily the rush I’ve felt between Seasons 1 and 2.

Clint: I’ve got, I’ve got one I’d like us all to address. ‘Cause I think, it’s a specific question but I think it’s kind of a broad issue that comes up quite a bit. From Ricky: “When you guys did the scene meeting Indrid did you have to like work out what you were gonna say beforehand and then do it?” Um, and—

Travis: ‘Cause that’s when it was like Indrid speaking at the same time as the characters, right?

Griffin: Oh, yeah. No, it was, that was an editing trick. I just repeated what they said in the moment [Travis: So a lie.] and then I moved my shit ahead like a half second. That was a special effect. [Travis: Aw, Griffin, how could you.] It was a fucking special effect!

Travis: You lied to them!

Griffin: It’s not a lie, it’s a special editing effect!

Travis: You can’t really tell the future!

Griffin: Yeah.

Travis: Piece of shit.

Clint: But also I think that kinda brings up the fact that, you know, we don’t prepare chunks of dialog ahead of time.

Griffin: No.

Travis: We don’t prepare anything!

Clint: We don’t pre— We don’t know what’s— And I mean we’ve said it before in previous TTAZZ’s but I think it’s really important to stress again: We don’t know what’s coming, that’s the beauty of it. That’s what makes it so fun is not knowing what’s coming and making your choice in the heat of the moment and, no we don’t prepare dialog ahead of time.

Travis: Uh, here’s a question from Twitter, from David, for Griffin “Out of all the NPC’s you’ve created throughout all of these games, which are your favorites?”

Griffin: Angus, Lup, [Justin: Yeah.] Uhh, Johann. Johann really I think reflected my existential creative dread that I was experiencing at the, as like halfway through Balance so that’s important, Lucretia I like. I still get people—

Travis: Favorites out of Amnesty?

Griffin: I like the sheriff a lot. I feel like that’s somebody who has interesting motivations for me. I like Hollis, and—

Travis: Billy the goat.

Griffin: Billy the goat is extremely fun, and…

Travis: Indrid! Indrid is a really fun NPC.

Griffin: Yeah, yeah, and we haven’t seen the last of Indrid. [someone gasps] But that was a good— that was a good— that was fu— like a character who can see the future is an interesting challenge of trying to make that not like, mechanically broken. Yeah, that’s just a few.

Justin: Here’s one from Sydney, who asks, “The Amnesty campaign has felt more dark and perilous than Balance, especially since the death at the end of the last episode.” Who?

Griffin: Yeah, I mean— [crosstalk] —well, spoiler.

Travis: [crosstalk] Deputy Dewey—

Griffin: Yeah, Deputy Dewey. He’s n— he turned into a ghost! He’s not dead in the traditional sense.

Justin: “How intentional is this on Griffin’s part? Is this affecting how Justin, Travis and Clint are playing and making choices for their characters?” You know it’s funny, we— for some reason the stakes have been high for us since the beginning. It’s ‘cause— I think it’s ‘cause what we talked about with it being much more grounded. It has not felt like the kind of thing where we’re just gonna randomly kill somebody? I think because it’s in the real world. You know, a realer world. There are… cops. Who will arrest you and take you to jail if you do a crime! And I think that is like, permeated through. Um—

Clint: Do you think it’s darker? Do you think Amnesty is darker than— [crosstalk] [everyone agreeing]

Travis: I think so. Once again, I think that’s a genre thing, right? Of like—

Clint: But like, the body count is so much higher, on average for Balance!

{{42:31}}