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“Do Not Over-Plan”: The Adventure Zone Crew on How to Plan a Satisfying D&D Finale

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When The Adventure Zone originally premiered more than a decade ago in 2014, it was impossible to predict that it would become a pop culture phenomenon that eventually would span hundreds of episodes and spawn its own graphic novel adaptations.

Twelve years later, The Adventure Zone: Story and Song graphic novel is preparing to wrap up the story and bring the final moments of the epic Balance campaign to readers.

Clint, Travis, Justin, and Griffin MCElroy Chat With VICE About BRinging The Final Moments of the Balance Campaign to the Page

The Adventure Zone podcast pulls in 2.5 million downloads a month and has become one of the most popular pillars of the McElroy family entertainment empire. This week will see the debut of the seventh, and final, installment in the graphic novel adaptation of the gang’s Balance campaign.

Before the major milestone arrives, VICE had a chance to chat with the McElroys about how their relationships with D&D evolved over the years and what it was like to try and translate their chaotic table presence to graphic novel format.

VICE: In the original Balance campaign, you all treated the D&D 5e ruleset as a polite suggestion in favor of “the rule of cool” and emotional payoff. When you were scripting Story and Song with Carey Pietsch, how did you balance preserving the messy, hilarious chaos of a real D&D table with the structural needs of a graphic novel epic?

CLINT: If you charted our adherence to the “rules” on graph paper, I think the arc all through the…well, arc… would be somewhere around the 5% mark, with a gentle upslope through Rockport (13%), Petals (24%), Crystal (29%), Eleventh (32%), levelling off during Suffering (34%). Story and Song was such an epic endeavor that the battles and personal encounters became bigger. I think we held to that 32% through S&S.

TRAVIS: Denny, this is a really polite way of saying that when we started we had no idea what we were doing! Carey has a truly magical knack for giving the characters the facial reactions and body language that we as the players would have had........

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