The Adventure Zone
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50 free The Adventure Zone trivia questions with answers — pop culture quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
The Adventure Zone began in 2014, when three podcasting brothers sat down with their dad to play Dungeons & Dragons, and it grew into one of the best-known actual-play shows around. Its opening campaign, Balance, turned a goofy dungeon crawl into an epic with a devoted following. This quiz covers the whole run: Taako, Merle and Magnus and their relic-hunting quests for the Bureau of Balance, the small-town cryptid hunts of Amnesty, and the later campaigns from Graduation and Ethersea to Steeplechase, Abnimals and Royale. There are also questions on the McElroys themselves, the tabletop systems they have tried, the guests who have joined them and the graphic novel adaptations. It is written for listeners who know their battlewagons from their abominations, and for newer fans still working through the back catalogue. Every answer comes with a short explanation, and the questions run from famous moments to details only long-standing listeners will remember.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Which kind of creature, discovered in Appalachia, did scientists name after the McElroy family of The Adventure Zone?
A millipede
A millipede found in 2021 was named Nannaria mcelroyorum, because the family's podcasts had kept the scientists entertained during their fieldwork.
Q 02The Adventure Zone began as a one-off episode recorded to cover which absence of host Justin McElroy?
Paternity leave
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.
Q 03Who served as Dungeon Master for all 69 episodes of Balance, the first campaign of The Adventure Zone?
Griffin McElroy
Griffin McElroy ran the story from 2014 to 2017, voiced almost every side character and composed much of the show's original music.
Q 04Taako, the elf played by Justin McElroy in The Adventure Zone: Balance, belongs to which Dungeons & Dragons class?
Wizard
Wizard magic lets Taako summon Garyl, a phantasmal binicorn who was the one Balance side character not voiced by the Dungeon Master.
Q 05Which real retail chain lends its name to the Fantasy store where The Adventure Zone's Balance heroes shop?
Costco
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.
Q 06Where do the heroes of The Adventure Zone: Balance report to the headquarters of the Bureau of Balance?
A moon base
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.
Q 07The Adventure Zone: Amnesty is set in a ski town in which US state, the home state of the McElroys?
West Virginia
West Virginia is where the McElroys come from, and the campaign's fictional resort town there is regularly invaded by monsters nicknamed abominations.
Q 08Which cryptid of American folklore is the true identity of Indrid Cold in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?
Mothman
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.
Q 09The Adventure Zone: Steeplechase, the first campaign run by Justin McElroy, is set inside which vast attraction?
A theme park
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.
Q 10Which hit survival drama inspired the 64-player elimination contest at the heart of The Adventure Zone: Royale?
Squid Game
Squid Game shaped a contest that starts with 64 spellcasters on a floating island and thins them trial by trial until only one remains.
Q 11Merle Highchurch, the dwarf played by Clint McElroy in The Adventure Zone: Balance, is which Dungeons & Dragons class?
Cleric
Cleric duties suit Merle badly: aboard the Rockport Limited he tries his hand at evangelism and strikes out.
Q 12Which boy detective helps the heroes solve the Murder on the Rockport Limited in The Adventure Zone: Balance?
Angus McDonald
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.
Q 13What strange fate has trapped the frontier town of Refuge in The Eleventh Hour arc of The Adventure Zone?
A time loop
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.
Q 21Which film was the Dungeon Master of The Adventure Zone watching when the plot of Petals to the Metal came to him?
Fast Five
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.
Q 22Which Grand Relic is the prize of the battlewagon race in Petals to the Metal, an arc of The Adventure Zone: Balance?
Gaia Sash
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.
Q 23Which deadly labyrinth, run by a pair of liches, do the heroes enter in The Suffering Game arc of The Adventure Zone?
Wonderland
Q 14Which world-devouring cosmic force is the final enemy faced by the heroes of The Adventure Zone: Balance?
The Hunger
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.
Q 15Which actual-play show is credited alongside The Adventure Zone with the mid-2010s Dungeons & Dragons revival?
Critical Role
Critical Role, in which professional voice actors play the game, began streaming in March 2015, a few months after the McElroys' podcast launched.
Q 16Which worker-owned podcast network, founded by Jesse Thorn, distributes The Adventure Zone?
Maximum Fun
Maximum Fun became a cooperative owned by its workers in 2023, a move Thorn chose over selling the network to a larger company.
Q 17In which medium did Clint McElroy, the father at the table of The Adventure Zone, work for decades before podcasting?
Radio
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.
Q 18The first Adventure Zone graphic novel was the first of its kind to top which newspaper's trade fiction list?
The New York Times
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.
Q 19In The Adventure Zone: Dust, a fantasy western run by Travis McElroy, which beings make up the Fangs?
Vampires
Vampires are the Fangs, who share the tense Crescent Territory with the Furs, who are werewolves, and the Fleshes, who are ordinary humans.
Q 20What is the name of the fictional ski-resort town defended by the Pine Guard in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?
Kepler
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.
Wonderland promises visitors whatever they desire as a prize for surviving, but it is a trap, built by liches who feed on suffering.
Q 24Which undead bounty hunter makes his first appearance in The Crystal Kingdom arc of The Adventure Zone: Balance?
Kravitz
Kravitz turns up in a floating laboratory overrun by pink crystal, in a quest the Dungeon Master thought up while watching Alien.
Q 25Which mysterious faction, creators of the Grand Relics, do the heroes of The Adventure Zone: Balance turn out to be?
The Red Robes
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.
Q 26The Rockport Limited, scene of a murder mystery in The Adventure Zone: Balance, is a train bound for which city?
Neverwinter
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.
Q 27What is the day job of Duck Newton, the chosen one played by Justin McElroy in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?
Forest ranger
Forest ranger Duck carries Beacon, a talking sword, and Justin provides the weapon's voice as well as his own.
Q 28Which stage magician with real fire magic does Travis McElroy play in The Adventure Zone: Amnesty?
Aubrey Little
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.
Q 29Justin McElroy's unnamed druid in The Adventure Zone: Graduation is known only by the name of which fantasy race?
Firbolg
Firbolg is the only name he goes by in the campaign, which had Travis as Dungeon Master and a fantasy school as its setting.
Q 30Which comics publisher's universe is the setting of Outre Space, a short Adventure Zone arc run by Clint McElroy?
Marvel
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.