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aion-rsa · 5 years

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The Adventure Zone: From Three Points of View

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Three of our contributors review The Adventure Zone, based on their familiarity (or lack thereof) with the source material

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This post is sponsored by First Second. All opinions expressed in this post are based on the writers' personal views.

The Adventure Zone series is a unique storytelling experience—a graphic novel series that began life as a game of Dungeons & Dragons played by podcasters Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy and their dad Clint, it has evolved into something much, much more. You don't have to have listened to the McElroys' podcast or to have played D&D before to enjoy this tale of adventure and intrigue.

Den of Geek reached out to three of its regular contributors—one of whom is a McElroys podcast fan, one of whom loves D&D, and one of whom is neither—to get insight into their respective experiences reading The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins and The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited!, the first two installments of The Adventure Zone series.

Here's what they had to say...

The Adventure Zone Review #1

Reviewer: Megan Crouse, a fan of The Adventure Zone podcast

You’ve probably seen the McEloy family’s influence online, even if you don’t know it. Griffin McElroy founded video game journalism site Polygon, and he and his brothers’ sense of humor has become the new voice of the internet. They’re known for games, memes, and podcasts, including The Adventure Zone.

As a Dungeons & Dragons podcast, The Adventure Zone starts out as a stock fantasy quest, albeit lead by bumbling heroes. Later arcs branch off the established format. Murder at the Rockport Limited, the second arc collected as a graphic novel, is a murder mystery on a train, and later arcs diverge even more dramatically from dungeon-crawling. My primary window into McElroy World is the most recent The Adventure Zone arc, "Amnesty." For the release of the latest graphic novel, I returned to the earlier arcs.

Some of the references, jokes, or information in the episodes is moved around in the script, and clearly a lot of work went into making them feel like a story instead of a conversation while also preserving the most well-known moments. The art varies from beautiful and easy on the eyes (the lush Rockport Limited and the lands it travels through) to humorously pinched and distorted to a Dr. Suessian degree (most of the elves). Details in the background and the funny names of places reward a close look. But some of the art was flattened by color choice—there’s a default pink hue that my eyes tended to skim over.

Like the podcast, it takes its time getting good. Unlike the podcast, the book spends less time on the stock fantasy adventuring of the first arc and zooms to the funnier, more creative stories. There’s still a hurdle to jump, because some in-jokes aren’t explained or don’t work as well without delivery. Character voices likewise don’t translate as well.

But the stories are still funny. Clever and unexpected and raunchy, the group has a charming rapport with each other. Adapting writer Clint McElroy and artist Carey Pietsch know when to sparingly drop Griffin McElroy in to break the fourth wall as the DM. The Bureau of Balance and the Rockport Limited are both unique concepts that bring new flavors to the fantasy.

Whether you like the characters will depend on your tolerance for irreverent, canonically annoying protagonists with rapid-fire jokes. There are deeper relationships in these stories, and glimmers of those show through, but most of the best and most serious character work comes later in the podcast series. The collection editions offer the delight of official art and skim over the podcast’s more tedious sections, but an established fondness for this particular brand of humor may be a requisite for reading.

The Adventure Zone Review #2

Reviewer: Alana Joli Abott, a Dungeons & Dragons fan

Reading the first two volumes of The Adventure Zone feels a lot like sitting down at a table with my high school gaming group. In some ways, that's great—it's incredibly nostalgic and definitely brought back memories of my early days in gaming.

During those early years, we worried less about world building and our characters being consistent in their fantasy knowledge and included things like Fantasy Quickie Marts where our characters could snag a pack of gum along with a healing potion. The McElroy's world is full of those kinds of jokes, and while it makes for inconsistent world building, it joyfully breaks the fourth wall with references readers are sure to appreciate. Griffin McElroy as DM is, by turns, long-suffering and cacklingly evil—as a frequent DM myself, I can identify with both aspects, and I cheered with the characters in triumph when he makes a call breaking the rules for the sake of the story.

In other ways, that echo of real game tables hit some sour notes: a lot of the familiar tropes (particularly the evil drow wizard with the ginormous spider) are overplayed, and their familiarity was irksome rather than enchanting. Despite the inclusion of some really fantastic female NPCs, the story is entirely drive by the three male main characters, whose humor has a more masculine turn ("Man, it's nothing but dick jokes with us"). That's not a problem in itself (and it makes complete sense given that the players and DM are all male), but it did frequently make me feel like I wasn't the target audience for the story, and recalled the many times where I've been the only female player at a table.

That said, the story itself, particularly starting at the end of the first volume, when the larger world context is introduced and departs from some of those more heavily trafficked D&D tropes. The second volume's combination of train-bound murder mystery with swords and sorcery felt like sitting in at a really excellent game table, particularly the inclusion of an underage detective (although a few contextual jokes about that NPC felt a little uncomfortable to me as a parent). Pietsch nails the artistic tone (especially in one cute chibi page that references another Hasbro toy line), but I'll note that the child-friendly appearance of the covers, which drew both of my kids like moths to a flame, belies the adult language inside (there's plenty of cursing, as you'd expect from a raucous game table).

Not many non-game works out there really capture the spirit of playing D&D. While I may have nit-picked about the target audience flaws, but I recognize here that the McElroys and Pietsch are doing something really cool that stands alone without my ever having listened to the podcast. The Adventure Zone doesn't quite overtake The Gamers (which has some of the same issues I mention above) as one of the best representations of D&D in other media, but I think it's a close second.

The Adventure Zone Review #3

Reviewer: Natalie Zutter, previously unfamiliar with Adventure Zone or Dungeons & Dragons

Reading The Adventure Zone graphic novels as someone who has neither listened to the McElroys’ podcasts nor played D&D (aside from listening in on my husband’s weekly games) is constantly feeling not quite in on the joke. That’s not the fault of illustrator Carey Pietsch, who remarkably translates four voices into a rich visual fantasy adventure; nor Clint McElroy, who worked with Pietsch to adapt the audio campaign in fourth-wall-punching ways, like including Griffin as a long-suffering DM providing helpful context. Regardless, something never quite clicked for me.

Strangely, what I found myself missing most was more D&D structure. Completely skipping character creation and jumping into the action—with brief stat/proficiency explainers via tongue-in-cheek cue cards—made for a very sitcom-y feel, as if these three players have always been adventuring together. But without any background, the characters felt shallow; I knew plenty about their foibles (Magnus’ poor impulse control, Taako’s self-servingness, Merle’s evangelism) but not enough of their wants. It’s also unclear how meta they’re intended to be, accepting the presence of their omniscient DM so readily that it seems as if they must be aware that it’s a game, yet treating their quests as life-or-death.

As someone who initially bounced off D&D gameplay precisely because of how dice rolls dictated every possible movement, I was surprised to see how sparingly rolls were used in the fight scenes. Instead, Magnus might get a mighty swing of his axe in, or Taako might get knocked down a peg by a more powerful wizard—but these felt like moments typical to any fantasy story, instead of being susceptible to the randomness that controls the rest of the outcomes in D&D. Another pet peeve was the constant asides: the trio ribbing NPCs instead of using conversations to learn more about quests, and especially out-of-universe references to Star Wars and Paul Blart: Mall Cop. On a podcast, it’s probably snappy and fun; on the page, it just feels like tedious wheel-turning.

These criticisms aside, the world is incredibly inviting. Once our heroes got rid of that pesky static at the end of the first volume and got to join the Bureau of Balance, it gave them some much-needed artifact-of-the-week structure combined with “these might be the good guys, but they’re not telling us everything” levels of intrigue.

I vastly preferred Rockport Limited to Gerblins because of how it sharpened the stakes: a locked-room mystery with a countdown clock; gender-stereotype-challenging NPCs; and a truly clever twist for a story set within so many constraints. Beyond the titular train murder, the scenes set at the Bureau evocatively step outside of the podcast narrative and utilize the graphic novel format: nonverbal moments where the Director ponders some undisclosed regret, and Taako considers conspiracies, lay curious groundwork as to future clashes.

Even if The Adventure Zone isn’t for me, I can’t deny the power of the McElroys’ reach—wonderfully illustrated in the fan art galleries that make up the back ends of both volumes. Each piece is imbued with the listeners’ delight in the story, and their own particular headcanons for each character reveal just how much they care about this world.

The first two installments of The Adventure Zone are now available for purchase. You can find out more about The Adventure Zone: Here There Be Gerblins and The Adventure Zone: Murder on the Rockport Limited! here.

Read and download the Den of Geek NYCC 2019 Special Edition Magazine right here!

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Review Natalie Zutter Alana Joli Abbott Megan Crouse

Oct 3, 2019

First Second

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutra’s community. The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.

[Video Game Deep Cuts is a weekly newsletter from curator/video game industry veteran Simon Carless, rounding up the best longread & standout articles & videos about games, every weekend. This week's highlights include the art behind Thimbleweed Park, the rise of RimWorld, and much, much more.

For anyone counting, this is week 31 of picks, and I'm still managing to keep up the weekly pace - primarily because my regular social media trawls during the week allow me to stack up links to post at the weekend! And this is still without regular RSS feed checking - so there's got to be a bunch more stories I'm missing. Ah well.

So much good stuff out there - and I really enjoyed some of the more esoteric stories in this week's set, including the piece on Tamagotchi collectors and the visually impaired Roguelike players. There are all kinds of unique, wonderful video game nerds under the sun, aren't there? Until next time...

- Simon, curator.]

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The Stress of Game Development - Tips for Survival (Extra Credits / YouTube) "Making games is hard. You need all kinds of technical and creative skills, but most importantly, you need to know how to manage the many kinds of stress that come with it."

Game Design Deep Dive: Watch Dogs 2's Invasion of Privacy missions (Christopher Dragert / Gamasutra) "In this article, I will describe some of the technical challenges and design decisions that drove development of the Invasion of Privacy feature in Watch Dogs 2. Areas of focus will include managing branching scenarios, motion capture challenges, controlling NPC state, maintaining dialog flow, and NPC coordination."

Video Games Aren’t Addictive (Christopher J Ferguson & Patrick Markey / New York Times) "Is video game addiction a real thing? It’s certainly common to hear parents complain that their children are “addicted” to video games. Some researchers even claim that these games are comparable to illegal drugs in terms of their influence on the brain — that they are “digital heroin” (the neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow) or “digital pharmakeia” (the neuroscientist Andrew Doan)."

The Job Simulator Postmortem (Alex Schwartz & Devin Reimer / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 postmortem, Owlchemy Labs' Alexander Schwartz and Devin Reimer analyze the challenges of building, sharing, shipping, and sustaining Job Simulator on multiple platforms with examples showing both successful and less-than-successful design prototypes and how iteration led to the final product."

The Underground World of Tamagotchi Collectors (Alyssa Bereznak / The Ringer) "On October 26 of last year, a user named “psychotama” made his first entry in what would become a detailed online diary, otherwise known as a “Tama log.” “I’m not quite sure how to begin,” he wrote in purple Comic Sans. “My journey with Tamagotchi began about 13 years ago.”"

'Make me think, make me move': New Doom's deceptively simple design (Kris Graft / Gamasutra) "Doom is known for its speed and straightforwardness – move fast, shoot demons. It's a seemingly simple combination that, at the franchise’s best, evokes an ultraviolent cognitive flow. But Doom’s apparent simplicity belies a core design that is difficult to achieve."

From 'Zelda' to 'Witcher 3': Why We're Still Talking About 'Skyrim' (Alex Kane / Glixel) "How Bethesda's 2011 masterpiece – and the colossal online culture of fan art, memes, and music surrounding it – forever changed the game for fantasy RPGs."

Precious Moments, Hype and High School: A Conversation with 'Persona 5' Director Katsura Hashino (Sayem Ahmed / Waypoint) "Hashino tells me that seeing the anticipation for the game build, as previously announced street dates passed and more information on the game crept out via the press, was both "encouraging and scary.""

How Uber Uses Psychological Tricks to Push Its Drivers’ Buttons (Noam Scheiber / New York Times) "The company has undertaken an extraordinary experiment in behavioral science to subtly entice an independent work force to maximize its growth. [SIMON'S NOTE: you may have seen this, but thought it particularly interesting that GDC board member Chelsea Howe was also quoted in here re: F2P-style coercive psychology evils.]"

Why games like 'Super Mario 64' had terrible cameras (Mike Rougeau / Mashable) "The camera is the interactive window through which we experience video games; the term describes not just our perspective and view of a digital space, but the freedom of or restrictions on how we as players control that viewpoint."

A Year after Firewatch (Colin Campbell / Polygon) "With sales of more than a million copies, developer Campo Santo is now working on its next project: unannounced as yet. I sat down with writer Sean Vanaman to talk about the direction he wants to go in next, and how he feels about Firewatch one year after its launch."

Kevin Horton Is a Cryogenics Engineer Turned Retro Gaming Savior (Nicholas DeLeon / Motherboard) "By day Horton, 43, is an engineer at a cryogenics company (he's worked at the same company since high school). But online, he's better known online as Kevtris (in reference to a Tetris clone he developed in the mid-1990s), where he is the brains behind a series of critical technological breakthroughs that allow gamers to play classic video games like The Legend of Zelda and Metroid on modern televisions."

Interactive Fiction Appears at the Whitney Biennial (Chris Klimas / Interactive Fiction Technology Foundation) "The 2017 Whitney Biennial has something curious to offer fans of interactive fiction. Among the works shown this year are With Those We Love Alive and howling dogs, Twine works written by Charity Heartscape Porpentine. [SIMON'S NOTE: short article, but great news, & the linked interview is also notable.]"

From Rational to Emotional: Designs that Increase Player Retention (Jim Brown / GDC / YouTube) "In this 2017 session, Epic's Jim Brown provides specific examples of design techniques that encourage the formation of enduring emotional ties that could enhance both retention and enjoyment for players in game design."

A Brief History Of Speedrunning (Kat Brewster / ReadOnlyMemory) "A good speedrun is hypnotising to watch – this goes for ones showcased at GDQ, or the ones which get circulated around the internet for their insane jumps or cutscene skips or lightning fast movement. They’re a dizzying show of hard won skill and palpable effort. The video of a world record time which knocks an hours-long campaign into minutes can be jaw-dropping."

In Their War With The Wall Street Journal, Top YouTubers Just Played Themselves (Patricia Hernandez / Kotaku) "Over the last couple of weeks, anger has been bubbling on YouTube over the news that major brands pulled advertisements on the platform in an effort to avoid being matched with objectionable content. The reports, which were published by the Wall Street Journal, were met with such skepticism that they sparked scandalous conspiracy theories among YouTube’s top creators."

After tragedy strikes, a dev's friends strive to complete his game (Chris Priestman / Gamasutra) "Former Harmonix programmer Roger Morash had been working on his passion project, a co-op platformer called Shard, for years before he died in January of this year. "

Inside the Shady World of PlayStation Network Account Resellers (Patrick Klepek / Waypoint) "A few weeks ago, Mic Fok got a weird email. The person writing it claimed they'd been playing Overwatch on a PlayStation Network account for more than six months, but the password had changed recently. But why would Fok know anything about this random dude's account?"

(Not) a Thimbleweed Park review (Matej Jan / Retronator) "Thimbleweed Park started as a spiritual successor to Maniac Mansion and Monkey Island. “It’s like opening a dusty old desk drawer and finding an undiscovered LucasArts adventure game you’ve never played before.” [SIMON'S NOTE: mainly linking this for the amaaazing vintage Mark Ferrari art linked within, tho the whole thing is cute!]"

Playing roguelikes when you can’t see (Kent Sutherland / RockPaperShotgun) "For most of us, traditional roguelikes are intrinsically inaccessible. They’re notoriously difficult, their design is complicated and often opaque, they can have more hotkeys than there are keys on the keyboard, and their ASCII-based visuals mean that it’s often unclear what’s happening on the screen. It’s these exact qualities, however, that ironically make roguelikes accessible and even appealing to blind or low-sight players."

The Game Beat Weekly: Digital Foundry and Microsoft make it "exclusive" (Kyle Orland / Tinyletter) "That kind of server-melting traffic shows why it would have been somewhat crazy for Eurogamer to turn down Microsoft's invitation to see Scorpio up close at their Redmond headquarters last week. But agreeing to an exclusive of this magnitude also risks coming across as a mere mouthpiece for a company you're supposed to be covering with a kind of detached objectivity."

The Witness - Noclip Documentary (NoClip / YouTube) "What lies at the heart of Jonathan Blow's island of mystery? We talk to the famed indie designer about how one of his earliest design ideas blossomed into The Witness."

A Pioneer Story: How MECC Blazed New Trails (Joe Juba / Game Informer) "Decades ago, as computing migrated from research labs and universities and into the mainstream, one company in Minnesota was instrumental in bringing technology into classrooms. Thanks to its focused mission and talented staff, the Minnesota Educational Computing Consortium (MECC) used exceptional software like The Oregon Trail to engage and educate a generation of students – and establish an unforgettable legacy."

Inside 'RimWorld', the Cult Sci-Fi Hit That Just Keeps Growing (Chris Priestman / Glixel) "Since its earliest public release on Steam Early Access in July, RimWorld – a sci-fi space colony sim – has amassed more than 600,000 players, and it's not even a finished project."

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[REMINDER: you can sign up to receive this newsletter every weekend at http://ift.tt/2dUXrva we crosspost to Gamasutra later on Sunday, but get it first via newsletter! Story tips and comments can be emailed to [email protected]. MINI-DISCLOSURE: Simon is one of the organizers of GDC and Gamasutra, so you may sometimes see links from those entities in his picks. Or not!]

#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 7 years

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- Simon, curator.]

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#IFTTT #Blogger

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symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

- Simon, curator.]

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#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes

symbianosgames · 7 years

Link

- Simon, curator.]

-------------------

#IFTTT #Blogger

0 notes