50 Fun Facts About The Adventure Zone

Which kind of creature, discovered in Appalachia, did scientists name after the McElroy family of The Adventure Zone?

A millipede found in 2021 was named Nannaria mcelroyorum, because the family's podcasts had kept the scientists entertained during their fieldwork.

The Adventure Zone began as a one-off episode recorded to cover which absence of host Justin McElroy?

Paternity leave was coming for Justin in August 2014, so the family banked a Dungeons & Dragons session to run on the brothers' advice podcast. It grew into a show of its own that December.

Who served as Dungeon Master for all 69 episodes of Balance, the first campaign of The Adventure Zone?

Griffin McElroy ran the story from 2014 to 2017, voiced almost every side character and composed much of the show's original music.

Taako, the elf played by Justin McElroy in The Adventure Zone: Balance, belongs to which Dungeons & Dragons class?

Wizard magic lets Taako summon Garyl, a phantasmal binicorn who was the one Balance side character not voiced by the Dungeon Master.

Which real retail chain lends its name to the Fantasy store where The Adventure Zone's Balance heroes shop?

Costco became Fantasy Costco, a bulk store at the Bureau of Balance's headquarters, and listeners sent in the magic items that stocked its shelves.

Where do the heroes of The Adventure Zone: Balance report to the headquarters of the Bureau of Balance?

A moon base hides the Bureau, and the heroes return to it after every quest to regroup, buy new equipment and prepare for the next job.

The Adventure Zone: Amnesty is set in a ski town in which US state, the home state of the McElroys?

West Virginia is where the McElroys come from, and the campaign's fictional resort town there is regularly invaded by monsters nicknamed abominations.

Which cryptid of American folklore is the true identity of Indrid Cold in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?

Mothman wears the human disguise of Indrid Cold and uses precognitive powers to phone the heroes with warnings of accidents that are about to happen.

The Adventure Zone: Steeplechase, the first campaign run by Justin McElroy, is set inside which vast attraction?

A theme park of stacked layers is the setting, inspired by the documentary series Defunctland, with a home layer laid out like the real Kings Island.

Which hit survival drama inspired the 64-player elimination contest at the heart of The Adventure Zone: Royale?

Squid Game shaped a contest that starts with 64 spellcasters on a floating island and thins them trial by trial until only one remains.

Merle Highchurch, the dwarf played by Clint McElroy in The Adventure Zone: Balance, is which Dungeons & Dragons class?

Cleric duties suit Merle badly: aboard the Rockport Limited he tries his hand at evangelism and strikes out.

Which boy detective helps the heroes solve the Murder on the Rockport Limited in The Adventure Zone: Balance?

Angus McDonald, styled the world's greatest detective, helps the party unmask a killer on board before their train reaches the end of the line.

What strange fate has trapped the frontier town of Refuge in The Eleventh Hour arc of The Adventure Zone?

A time loop makes Refuge relive its final sixty minutes over and over, until the heroes work out how to stop the town from being destroyed.

Which world-devouring cosmic force is the final enemy faced by the heroes of The Adventure Zone: Balance?

The Hunger chases the heroes across a century of worlds in the prequel arc, then arrives in the finale, where old friends and former foes unite against it.

Which actual-play show is credited alongside The Adventure Zone with the mid-2010s Dungeons & Dragons revival?

Critical Role, in which professional voice actors play the game, began streaming in March 2015, a few months after the McElroys' podcast launched.

Which worker-owned podcast network, founded by Jesse Thorn, distributes The Adventure Zone?

Maximum Fun became a cooperative owned by its workers in 2023, a move Thorn chose over selling the network to a larger company.

In which medium did Clint McElroy, the father at the table of The Adventure Zone, work for decades before podcasting?

Radio was Clint's trade from 1975, and he co-hosted a morning show from 1994 until he retired in 2017, sometimes performing on-air skits with his sons.

The first Adventure Zone graphic novel was the first of its kind to top which newspaper's trade fiction list?

The New York Times list was topped by Here There Be Gerblins in 2018, and the later volumes of the series became bestsellers as well.

In The Adventure Zone: Dust, a fantasy western run by Travis McElroy, which beings make up the Fangs?

Vampires are the Fangs, who share the tense Crescent Territory with the Furs, who are werewolves, and the Fleshes, who are ordinary humans.

What is the name of the fictional ski-resort town defended by the Pine Guard in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?

Kepler is regularly invaded by monsters that come through a gateway, and its defenders work out of the Amnesty Lodge that gives the campaign its name.

Which film was the Dungeon Master of The Adventure Zone watching when the plot of Petals to the Metal came to him?

Fast Five sparked the quest, in which the heroes join a mostly illegal battlewagon race to win a relic from a master thief called the Raven.

Which Grand Relic is the prize of the battlewagon race in Petals to the Metal, an arc of The Adventure Zone: Balance?

Gaia Sash is the relic of conjuration, able to control nature and weather, and a thief known as the Raven is using it when the heroes arrive.

Which deadly labyrinth, run by a pair of liches, do the heroes enter in The Suffering Game arc of The Adventure Zone?

Wonderland promises visitors whatever they desire as a prize for surviving, but it is a trap, built by liches who feed on suffering.

Which undead bounty hunter makes his first appearance in The Crystal Kingdom arc of The Adventure Zone: Balance?

Kravitz turns up in a floating laboratory overrun by pink crystal, in a quest the Dungeon Master thought up while watching Alien.

Which mysterious faction, creators of the Grand Relics, do the heroes of The Adventure Zone: Balance turn out to be?

The Red Robes split the light of creation into seven relics to hide it, then had their own memories wiped, a past the heroes relive in The Stolen Century.

The Rockport Limited, scene of a murder mystery in The Adventure Zone: Balance, is a train bound for which city?

Neverwinter is nearly flattened in the arc's last chapter, when the heroes have little time to stop their runaway train from crashing into the city.

What is the day job of Duck Newton, the chosen one played by Justin McElroy in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?

Forest ranger Duck carries Beacon, a talking sword, and Justin provides the weapon's voice as well as his own.

Which stage magician with real fire magic does Travis McElroy play in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?

Aubrey Little performs as the Lady Flame, and her act turns real: she starts a fire in an early episode and wields stronger magic as the hunts go on.

Justin McElroy's unnamed druid in The Adventure Zone: Graduation is known only by the name of which fantasy race?

Firbolg is the only name he goes by in the campaign, which had Travis as Dungeon Master and a fantasy school as its setting.

Which comics publisher's universe is the setting of Outre Space, a short Adventure Zone arc run by Clint McElroy?

Marvel published the McElroys' own 2019 comic War of the Realms: Journey into Mystery, and Outre Space picks up that story with Kate Bishop and Miles Morales.

Which tabletop game system from Evil Hat Productions do the McElroys use for The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?

Monster of the Week calls its game master the Keeper, and its format of one creature hunt after another gave the campaign its episodic shape.

Which dying otherworld sends its abominations through a gateway to Earth in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?

Sylvain is being consumed by an evil force called the Quell, and the second half of the campaign follows the heroes' attempt to stop it.

Which video game series did the Keeper of The Adventure Zone: Amnesty name as the campaign's main basis?

Persona shaped Amnesty more than the creature-hunting television that inspired its format, such as Supernatural.

At Wiggenstaff's school in The Adventure Zone: Graduation, the player characters first enrol to train as what?

Sidekicks and henchpeople have their own program at the School for Heroism and Villainy, where the campaign begins with classes and misadventures.

Which title did Travis McElroy take in place of Dungeon Master when he ran The Adventure Zone: Abnimals?

Zookeeper fit a campaign of animal heroes modelled on cartoons like Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, played with no swearing so that children could listen.

Which genre shaped Commitment, the four-episode experimental arc of The Adventure Zone run by Clint McElroy?

Superhero stories drive Commitment, whose characters work for the Do Good Fellowship, an organisation that uses science to improve the world.

Which artist, first noticed by the McElroys for her fan art, illustrates The Adventure Zone graphic novels?

Carey Pietsch began drawing fan art of the show in 2015 and designed a live-show poster before the family asked her to draw the books.

Which streaming service commissioned a script for an animated Adventure Zone series that never reached the screen?

Peacock ordered the script in January 2020, but the project stalled, and Travis later blamed upheaval in the industry after the pandemic.

Which publisher released The Adventure Zone graphic novels, beginning with Here There Be Gerblins in 2018?

First Second published the books with scripts written by the McElroys themselves, and the opening volume was a bestseller on release.

Which Appalachian city is the hometown of the McElroy family, the hosts of The Adventure Zone?

Huntington hosted the filming of the brothers' 2017 television series, with scenes featuring their father and the city's mayor.

Which Starter Set adventure was the loose basis for Here There Be Gerblins, the first quest of The Adventure Zone?

Lost Mine of Phandelver came in the fifth-edition Starter Set released in July 2014, and the McElroys' story soon veered away from it into a plot of its own.

Which electronic music pioneer composed Déjà Vu, the title music of The Adventure Zone's Balance campaign?

Mort Garson, the Canadian composer best known for the album Mother Earth's Plantasia, released the piece on a record called Ataraxia: The Unexplained.

Which map-drawing game did the McElroys play to build the world of The Adventure Zone: Ethersea?

The Quiet Year filled a prologue in which the whole table guided a society with twelve months to move under the sea before a magical storm struck.

What is the name of the ship bought by Amber, Devo and Zoox in The Adventure Zone: Ethersea?

The Coriolis is paid for with the proceeds of a botched job looting a sunken gallery, which a pirate attack had thrown off course.

Which tabletop system about a crew of criminals did Justin McElroy use to run The Adventure Zone: Steeplechase?

Blades in the Dark calls its jobs scores, and the campaign's story is likewise divided up by the capers its crew pulls in one layer after another.

Which songwriter behind the closing song of the game Portal wrote the opening song of The Adventure Zone: Abnimals?

Jonathan Coulton, known for his songs about geek culture, supplied the tune in 2024 for a campaign styled after 1990s animal-hero cartoons.

Which gothic horror Dungeons & Dragons adventure helped to inspire The Adventure Zone Versus Dracula?

Curse of Strahd was one source, along with public domain tales such as Frankenstein, for a campaign that leaned on improvisation more than most.

All four hosts of The Adventure Zone guest-starred in which Dimension 20 campaign run by Brennan Lee Mulligan?

Tiny Heist came out in early 2020, and its carefully built world inspired Travis as he prepared to run a campaign of his own.

Which guest Dungeon Master ran Imbalance, the Adventure Zone mini-series released as video on YouTube in 2021?

Aabria Iyengar ran the game under the banner The Zone of Adventure, and unlike the podcast it showed the players on camera.

The McElroy brothers of The Adventure Zone campaigned by podcast for cameo roles in which animated film sequel?

Trolls World Tour gave all three brothers the part of a character called Skyscraper after their documentary podcast lobbied for a role.