The Adventure Zone

I only recently started The Adventure Zone and just listened to Episode 9 of the original campaign, and my opinion is "I'm glad that the only person apart from Griffin who's doing voices so far has been Justin-as-Takko."

I also think Travis is at his funniest when Griffin and Justin have been doing the majority of the riffing on a bit and he chimes in with a one-liner or piece of wordplay that frequently outshines anything else in the bit, as opposed to Griffin, who frequently seems to more or less spontaneously develop, apropos of nothing, truly inspired bits that he can riff on at length (most relevant to this as it relates to this comment, I suppose, is the fact that Griffin, of the three brothers, seems by far to be the most adept at "long-form" goofs, so to speak).  Griffin's comedic and creative strengths seem to lend themselves better to DMing a comedy D&D podcast than Travis'. 

It's pretty good so far, if not on par with MBMBAM at this point.  The actual story of "Here There Be Gerblins" (and to a lesser extent, the second story arc, "Moonlighting") is fairly standard, but then again, as you said, the first arc is based on a pre-written campaign, but it's already pretty entertaining, and they do a solid job of keeping the details of everyone's stats and health more or less ancillary to the action, which is good, because as with most podcasts, I'm often doing other (mostly) mindless tasks while listening, but I can't really afford to always give it my wholly undivided attention.  

I am a HUGE, like "since the beginning of the podcast" McElroy fan, but even I couldn't have predicted when TAZ started that at the end of Balance they'd be making me cry like a little baby. It's a brilliant podcast.

Agreed on Travis generally, though. He does do better along with his brothers and when he's not running the show. Though he was the funniest part of this week's MBMBAM.

Yea, I don't think it's an accident that they reverted back to the original set-up when they settled on their second "official" arc.  It was a laudable experiment (and probably necessary to keep Griffin from wearing down) to let the rest of them have a shot at taking the reins, but they aren't nearly as good at it.

They added a real sword pin to their merch store recently and I was tempted even though I'm not really a pins person.

We did a PBTA game on Roll20 a couple of years ago, and it was fun.  The system keeps things pretty loose and focused on role-play and collaboration.  I picked up Spirit of '77 and wish I had a group to run it with. The adventure book / modules looking like Atari cartridge art pretty much sold me.

I've been re-listening to the first couple arcs with my wife lately.  I do think earlier on he did a better job of balancing "we're going to keep this somewhat scripted so that it works as an actual narrative show" while still building in big chunks where it didn't really matter how they got from point A to point B and you could feel the other 3 being really loose with it (often with the most enjoyable results of the show).  There's a bit of a comic book movie third act problem to the later arcs though, where all the stuff that made the earlier parts fun gets ditched for the DnD podcast equivalent of big, dumb, CGI explosion fest.  I get the compulsion to ramp up the stakes and "get serious" towards the end, but that doesn't leave any room for charming a Tom Bodett clone into letting you wash up with his garden hose, unfortunately. 

I am so excited for the next campaign!

As I'm still midway through Balance, I decided to just go ahead and start listening to the new campaign so I could stay current on it, and have listened to the first episode of "We've Carefully Calculated How Different This Needs to Be From Harry Potter to Avoid Being Sued By the Billionaire J.K. Rowling".  It's not bad.  Justin and Griffin's characters were probably the best part of it, but Travis is better as a DM than I was expecting.  Clint's character made almost no impression on me.  It could have used like a third fewer NPCs at this stage as well.  That was a shitload of characters all voiced by one person for a single episode.  As for the worldbuilding of The Wizarding World of the McElroy Family Generic Fantasyland Whose Actual Name I Can't Remember Because Travis Didn't Mention It After Minute Five or So of the Episode IIRC, the whole "you can be good or evil and a hero or a villain and here's how this drives the economy" has a certain charm to it, but also feels needlessly convoluted, and if the main thrust of the arc doesn't involve exploring how fucked up a way this is to run a society, I think I'll be rolling my eyes at it a bit.  

Anyway, I plan to keep listening.  Harry Potter-clone snark aside, the premise is intriguing enough, and I am in fact a fan of the Harry Potter books by the billionaire J.K. Rowling, so I'll probably have a decent amount of tolerance for "the McElroy's do a D&D Harry Potter clone".

I was pleasantly surprised by Travis's DMing, in that found a lot to like about his worldbuilding, I was generally okay with his presentation, and I only actively cringed when he was roleplaying as a baby unicorn. His poking fun of Rowling's bizarre suggestion that old timey wizards used to just shit on the floor (https://news.avclub.com/j-k-rowling-reveals-that-wizards-used-to-just-shit-on-183150164) was reliably funny and on point. His ham-fisted introduction of a disabled character felt a little too PBS Kids Show for me, and he had an annoying habit of carrying out lengthy conversations between NPC's and not letting the trio get a word in edgewise, but I'm chalking that up to pilot-itus more than anything else. 

The premise is solid, insofar that it should allow for some good roleplaying opportunities, but I agree with you that some aspects are weirdly convoluted--you can be "hero" or "villain" for hire regardless of morality, but you're only "evil" if the Guild of Whatever takes away your license? And that's why the school has so many "evil" teachers? Why are we calling them evil again? Then again, it's not like Griffin was much better on the convolutedness measure.

Clint always seems to need to take awhile to figure it his character, just as Justin always seems to have his nailed from the get-go. Griffin's character is pretty one-dimensional at this point, but "arrogant aristocrat" is a solid archetype to play off of. 

All in all, I feel like I'll have a lot more to say about this arc than Amnesty, which was consistently "meh" for me.

Listened to the second episode. Seemed like there was clearly some stuff that Travis was guiding them toward, but not in a way that interfered too badly with the others’ jokes. Justin’s character being incapable of comprehending the concept of commerce was by far the best bit of the campaign thus far. Not terribly interested in the mystery of who Mariah is, though.

The TAZ Chicago live show was my favorite TAZ live show so far. Griffin made Jeff Gordan speak to a narwhal...in narwhal language!

My one remaining concern is Travis's tendency to have conversations with himself, particularly as he's introduced a bunch of characters, and his character work isn't quite as strong as Griffin's, so it's hard to keep track of just who is talking to whom. Otherwise I thought there some good bits and the premise is holding up.

The thing that makes Justin maybe the most endearing (besides his very good big brotherness) is his continued bemusement that they've become this popular and successful, as opposed to Travis definite lean into "YES, THIS IS WHAT I WAS MEANT FOR!!!".  

Griffin is somewhere in the middle on that.