Debuting before Critical Role began streaming its Vox Machina campaign, The Adventure Zone proved one of the first cornerstones in the explosive popularity of the actual play genre. Though The Adventure Zone‘s podcast empire continues to expand, here’s a list of how its campaigns have stacked up against each other.
Honorable Mentions
The Adventure Zone’s Episodic One-Shots
Though the following list focuses on The Adventure Zone’s main narrative campaigns, it’s worth mentioning the episodic delights the McElroys pack into the show’s live one-shots. Initially, Adventure Zone live shows relied on the continued antics of Balance’s Tres Horny Boys, but eventually, these events morphed into something altogether their own.
Hootenanny, Just Us, and Dadlands are three distinct genre stories that The Adventure Zone has returned to frequently for live shows with heroes like Guy Ferrari and Del Kraven (of no known relation to Hell Raven) that have carried over from one-shot to one-shot. Spirit Breakers has additionally made perfect Halloween fodder, unveiling a similar horror-comedy premise with a fresh cast of investigators in each of its two seasonal installments. The Adventure Zone‘s episodically interconnected one-shots prove a fitting microcosm of the overall show’s post-Balance trajectory in that they often experiment with new systems outside of Dungeons & Dragons, feature special guests, and offer a variety of GM-ing styles.
The Adventure Zone: Outre Space
Outre Space is The Adventure Zone’s most recent outing and has kicked off a return to the short-form storytelling emblematic of the podcast’s post-Balance experimental arcs. Gabe Hicks and Kate Welch accompany the McElroy brothers in a Marvel Multiverse campaign woven by their true believer father, Clint McElroy. The McElroy patriarch has always worn a love for comics on his sleeve, having previously penned titles like Green Hornet Dark Tomorrow.
Outre Space marks a unique entry across all Adventure Zone campaigns as it serves as a loose follow-up to the McElroy family-written comic War of the Realms: Journey into Mystery. Outre Space‘s tale is still unraveling and settling in with Adventure Zone fans, meaning it doesn’t yet have a place among the following list of the show’s mostly retired TTRPG campaigns.
All Adventure Zone Campaigns, Ranked
7) Graduation
Graduation saw The Adventure Zone return to its Dungeons & Dragons roots after the experimental arcs and Amnesty campaign and followed Thunderman, LLC’s scholastic hijinks at Hieronymous Wiggenstaff’s School for Heroism and Villainy. Just off the heels of Dimension 20‘s wildly popular Fantasy High debut, Dungeons & Dragons in an academic setting felt like a surefire hit. Unfortunately, Graduation did not quite make the grade for many Adventure Zone fans.
Some cursory reasons fans had trouble connecting with the season included a sense that the story was too overwhelmed with plotlines and non-player characters. More comprehensive overviews of Graduation‘s prevailing discourse appear on The Adventure Zone‘s subreddit and in thorough video essays like Sarah Z’s, but it’s worth noting that GM Travis McElroy himself even addressed this reaction during talkback series The The Adventure Zone Zone. Despite the negativity that often accompanies discussion of this campaign, it’s worth noting that Graduation still had supporters invested in the ending of Thunderman, LLC’s story.
6) Commitment
Taking the reigns of The Adventure Zone after its wildly popular Balance campaign was always going to be a somewhat thankless task, but Clint McElroy undertook the assignment in stride with Commitment. Aside from a new GM, Commitment also saw listeners adjust to the less familiar Fate system to experience the tale of the Do Good Fellowship. While many TTRPG systems have worked just as well, if not better, for The Adventure Zone’s style of actual play, Fate did not necessarily prove an ideal fit, nor did Commitment find too much lasting purchase with fans.
That being said, Commitment was not void of high-flying and hilarious moments, and it offered listeners Griffin McElroy’s first player character in Chris Rembrandt, also known as Jumpboy. Though the 4-episode mini-campaign only slightly moved the needle for fans, it set an important precedent for experimentation, new GMs, and new systems that would later bear some of the podcast’s best storytelling. And superheroics did not retire after Commitment either, with the Just Us one-shots and Outre Space continuing in the spirit of the game’s themes and aesthetics.
5) Ethersea
Though Ethersea marked another game in the Dungeons & Dragons column for The Adventure Zone, the campaign started its underwater tale with some above-table and above-sea-level worldbuilding sessions utilizing The Quiet Year. This choice garnered some mixed feedback from fans, with some engaged with this gamified approach to worldbuilding and others finding the set-up a bit slow. Regardless, The Quiet Year did help establish some of Ethersea‘s most beloved elements, like Ol’ Joshy and The Biggest Baby.
Ethersea‘s deep sea heists and unique environmental challenges drew fans into the tale of the scrappy Coriolis crew. Though the macro plot threads and ending proved slightly more polarizing with listeners, Ethersea constitutes a solid overall entry into The Adventure Zone‘s canon. Founder’s Wake is perhaps the most ripe world for The Adventure Zone to revisit down the line, with discussion of one day returning to Ethersea floated out by the McElroys as blink shark bait.
4) Dust
Sundown mystery Dust proved an engaging entry in The Adventure Zone‘s post-Balance experimental campaigns. The first installment of the Urban Shadows whodunnit saw Gandy Dancer, Errol Ryehouse, and Augustus Parsons investigate the death of Jeremiah Blackwell in the wee hours of the morning as the majority of Dry River slept, none the wiser to the murder at their doorstep. Not only did Dust deliver a tight, satisfying mystery, but it brought moments emblematic of the familial humor distinct to The Adventure Zone‘s gameplay, like the town’s collective roast of Griffin McElroy’s Errol.
Dust doubled down in its success with a second season that gave Adventure Zone fans even more to love about GM Travis McElroy’s world. Dimension 20 and Worlds Beyond Number‘s Erika Ishii joined the Graysons’ investigation as Louise “Lulu” Kagiyama in Season 2, and Griffin McElroy surprised listeners by stepping into the role of beloved Amnesty nonplayer character Indrid Cold, colloquially known as The Mothman.
3) Steeplechase
Partially inspired by Defunctland and the immersion of Disney Parks, Steeplechase utilized Blades in the Dark to stage heists across the many layers of the titular Dentonic theme park. Steeplechase’s layers allowed for each criminal mission of the Poppy’s Place arcade employees to explore a fresh genre, from the noir detective stylings of Gutter City to the reality dating show antics of Passion’s Cove. Steeplechase served as Justin McElroy’s first long-form GM outing on the podcast, and he packed his story with nonplayer characters like Shlabethany, who proved instant Adventure Zone classics.
A focus on smaller heist arcs and centering of comedic set pieces and characters made Steeplechase a pleasant return to form for Adventure Zone fans. From the moment Griffin McElroy’s Montrose Pretty swallowed a pin to help complete the party’s first heist, it became clear that Steeplechase was centering a borderline slapstick comedic sensibility and operating firmly in the McElroys’ wheelhouse.
2) Amnesty
Monster of the Week absolutely sung in the hands of Griffin McElroy and The Adventure Zone. Amnesty‘s Gravity Falls-esque supernatural story took the McElroys back home to West Virginia, where they each explored a grounded contrast to their larger-than-life Balance heroes. Duck Newton, Aubrey Little, and Edmund “Ned” Chicane lived in a closer approximation to the real world and thus balanced the mundane with the supernatural during their time with The Pine Guard.
This trio brought both the found family heart and heartbreak that Adventure Zone fans had grown accustomed to in Balance‘s crescendo. Cryptids, townies, and extreme sports enthusiasts flanked Amnesty‘s heroes in their journey, filling Kepler with colorful nonplayer characters like Pigeon, Jake Coolice, and the aforementioned West Virginia legend, Indrid Cold.
1) Balance
Re-visited by both fans and the McElroys, Balance, is without a doubt, The Adventure Zone‘s seminal campaign. The Dungeons & Dragons story follows The Tres Horny Boys as they track down Grand Relics for the titular Bureau of Balance and uncover the missing pieces of their shared past. Not only does Balance pack in The Adventure Zone‘s most iconic jokes, but it also deals moments of utter gut-wrenching emotional damage to listeners as well.
As seen throughout this list, risk and reinvention remain central to The Adventure Zone‘s ethos. While the entries higher on this list represent moments where the McElroys’ storytelling risks may have missed the mark with some fans, The Adventure Zone wouldn’t be what it is if they ever shied away from those opportunities. Griffin McElroy’s choices in Balance established this risk-taking precedent in a manner that managed to pay massive dividends, launching a penultimate prequel arc in a TTRPG system of his own invention and surprising a player character with a secret twin sibling who became one of the podcast’s most enduring nonplayer characters.
During its initial run, Griffin McElroy also invited another GM into his world, yielding The Flop House‘s tale of The Hogsbottom Three. Dimension 20 and Critical Role‘s Aabria Iyengar later continued this legacy in 2021’s three-episode sequel campaign Imbalance, which continued to demonstrate Tres Horny Boys’ enduring longevity. The Balance campaign’s success likewise inspired a comic book adaptation, which will bring the podcast’s grueling Suffering Game arc to life in its July 2024 installment.
