The Adventure Zone: 3 Best One-Shots NOT In the Balance Universe – CBR – Comic Book Resources

Some of the best one-shots of The Adventure Zone actual play podcast use short, quirky TTRPGs to tell wild stories. Here are 3 of the best.

The Adventure Zone podcast features brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin and their father Clint McElroy playing tabletop role-playing games together. While most episodes are recorded, some have been performed in front of live audiences. Since these live shows aren't immediately available to everyone, they can't continue the regular campaign narrative.

Instead,Adventure Zone live shows present one-shot adventures that take their main characters and drop them into shorter story arcs that don't impact the main narrative. Sometimes, however, they tell stories unrelated to the larger seasons, creating brand new characters and playing brand new games. Here are three of the best one-shotThe Adventure Zone episodes that do not take place in the main universe.

Related:D&D: How To Incorporate One-Shots Into Extended Campaigns

Set in the universe of TAZ: Amnesty, the second full season of the podcast,The Ballad of Bigfoot tells a story of cryptids meeting regular humans. Travis DMs a version ofOh, Dang! Bigfoot Stole My Car With My Friend's Birthday Present Inside, which is a hack ofJohn Harper's Lasers & Feelingscreated by Weird Age Games. The name of the game sums it up pretty well -- Bigfoot steals the players' car and drives off with it, along with a priceless birthday present, and the playersmust rescue both.

The gameplay is fairly simple, as with allLasers and Feelings hacks. Each character has a number, 1-6, based on how patient or reckless they are. Actions are then identified as either patient or reckless, based on the GM's whim or group consensus. For a reckless move, players want to roll above their character's number on a d6, whereas they'll want to roll under it for patient rolls. It's a great, simple game to learn and live in for the length of one show.

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In The Ballad of Bigfoot,Clintplays an off-duty Limo driver named M.C. C.M., Justinplays thebabysitter StephanieMacDuggins, and Griffinplays an 11-year-old version of himself. The ridiculous premise leads to one of the strangest stories, featuring everything from ghost gas-station attendants bent on basketball battles to transforming into a car using Surge soda. It's also probably the first narrative to feature a Chekhov's book light. All told,Bigfoot is a hilarious romp that shows the McElroys at their finest and gameplay at its weirdest.

Better known by its release name "Dadlands,"The Adventure Zone: Inheritance is set in the far future wastelands when the world is populated by nothing but dads. These dads have banded together in different clans based on dad stereotypes, including sports dads, grill dads, car dads, and vacation dads.This one-shot features all of The Adventure Zone's cast as players, with established DM Brennan Lee Mulligan at the narrative helm. Together, they go on a quest for the mythical remote.

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Based on a system created by the McElroys themselves,Inheritance asks players to draw tokens from a fanny pack to determine whether they succeed at actions. The sheer gamble of the action mixed with the pure dad-ness of the fanny pack makes this game a rollercoaster of emotions. This episode is worth listening to for the dad puns alone, but as a bonus fans will also get Griffin sowing chaos at every opportunity, concluding with him gamblingeverything toleave the scene of the final battle in flames.

Elementary was the first time Justin tried his hand at DMing for the crew, and it does not disappoint. The family playsFour Sherlock Holmes and a Vampire (Who Is Also One of the Aforementioned Sherlock Holmes), a short one-page RPG byAndrew J. Young and inspired by Justin himself. Players are all versions of Sherlock Holmes but must roll a die to determine whether they're a vampire or display vampiric quirks. They then collaborate, with dice rolls, to set the scene of a crime and determine what happened and who among them could be the vampire.

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If the premise sounds ridiculous, it is. It's a game that relies on role-playing and improv experience to make it compelling. The McElroys lean into this, becoming increasingly bombastic and unhinged as the crime scene becomes less and less explicable. This one-shot is a wild ride that never slows down and demands to be heard.

This list leaves out some classics that are also worth a listen -- inThe Adventure Zone: Hootenanny, the McElroys play in a wild country-western space opera, while a donor-only episode features famousCritical Role DM Matthew Mercer. But these three one-shots best showcase The McElroys' skills in crafting these short stories. More importantly, they also demonstrate how well they play in the space, making the stories they tell compelling and fun.

Keep Reading:Dungeons & Dragons: How To Build A Long Campaign From A One-Shot

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E.L. first saw the game Myst when she was in elementary school, and it has irrevocably changed her aesthetic, She is currently a graduate student in the history of the exact sciences in antiquity, and *has thoughts* about ancient math and modern astrology. She has shared these thoughts (and her writing) with digital venues like Eidolon, Lady Science, and the Journal of the History of Ideas blog, and if you sit still for long enough she'll probably try to share them with you, too. In her downtime, E.L. enjoys puzzle games and pet care, and is currently training in the circus arts.

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The Adventure Zone: 3 Best One-Shots NOT In the Balance Universe - CBR - Comic Book Resources