Critical Role & Sagas of Sundry - Quests N’ Answers: The Adventure Zone w/ The McElroy Family

Episode Date: June 30, 2026

The Adventure Zone: Balance is coming to an end all over again! The Adventure Zone: Story and Song is the final volume of the graphic novel adaptation of the critically acclaimed actual play podcast. To celebrate, Dan Casey sat down with Griffin McElroy, Clint McElroy, Justin McElroy, and Travis McElroy to dive deep into what to expect from the final volume; saying goodbye to Taako, Magnus, and Merle all over again; and much more.The Adventure Zone: Story and Song is available from Macmillan and 23rd St. on July 14, 2026: https://bit.ly/TAZStoryAndSongListen to more of The McElroy Family's excellent work at https://www.themcelroy.family/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Greetings, adventurers, and welcome back to Quest and Answers, the show where we talk to all manner of awesome people from around the gaming world. I'm Dan Casey, and today we have some very special guests joining me. Their writers, podcasters, comedians, and most importantly, family members. You may have heard their mollifluous tones on podcasts like The Adventure Zone. Their new graphic novel, The Adventure Zone, Story, and Song is available for McMillan on July 14th, wherever fine comics are sold. Folks, please welcome Griffin, Clint, Justin, and Travis McElroy. Gentlemen, thank you so much for being here today. Thank you.

Thank you, Dan. I'll address Dad's face first. Yes, please. Our dad should have a beard and a mustache. Everyone agrees. Yes. That's been that way since we were born, and he doesn't, because he's playing Ben Franklin in a show that I'm not going to give him the free plug for because I'm so mad at his face.

In the Keith Al-B Theater July 2nd and 3rd. I'm sorry about Dad's face. It's not normally like this. Yeah. I appreciate, you know, this is an exclusive for our viewers. We get a sneak preview of Ben Franklin. Also what it really looks like when, you know, a performer takes off that mask. Yeah.

I wish it was a mask. Then and his beautiful beard is underneath. That would be great. I would have been found with that. I would have paid Rick Baker and squad lots of money to do that. Or did you get that mission impossible machine? Get that wet a. Projection mapping?

Justin, here you go. Can I projection map your Ben Franklin face on your beard face? Yeah. What kind of budget do you have, Dan, to put that back on? For this interview, yeah. Well, I was going to send my son to college one day, but this is a much more compelling use case. I think it can really advance the medium of video podcasting. I'll talk to Jimmy Cameron.

Please, please. I'm glad you guys are on such a close first name basis like that. So, folks, we talk a lot about tabletop role playing games in particular on this show. And, you know, the Adventure Zone obviously fantastic example of taking that to the actual playing medium. But I want to take things back to the beginning. What is your earliest memory of tabletop or board gaming? Growing up, we did a lot of board gaming as a family. We didn't really get into tabletop like RPGs and stuff like that.

I think the closest that we came was Hero Quest, which, you know, I think is such a great kind of gateway into it, playing that together. But, you know, a lot of clue, a lot of life, a lot of monopoly, a lot of fights, a lot of arguments, intense situations. I remember Balderdash was big in our house. We love Balder Dash. We love Balder Dash.

That was a big one, making up, like, fake definitions. We got into a few TCGs here and there, Hero clicks, dipped in. We basically did all, every conceivable, nerdy thing except play D&D when we were growing up. Everything, literally everything else we were, We got down with, but we saved it all up till it could be content. Yeah, exactly.

You know, that's the right way to approach anything. If you can't monetize it, why even bother doing it? Exactly. What was it about D&D that finally made you want to take the leap into that sort of improvisational shared storytelling? I think I kind of spearheaded most of it writing for Polygon at the time. I was writing a lot about Fifth Edition, which was new at the time. And I had played a little bit of fourth edition with like a pickup group in Cincinnati when I lived there for a bit. And I really liked it and was listening to like the Pini Arcade podcast, the acquisitions incorporated.

And it seemed like it would make a lot of sense to do as a podcast. And it seemed like something that we could all really, you know, make our own. And so Justin was expecting, well, Sydney, Justin's wife was expecting their first. I was expecting Sydney to be expecting. Right, exactly. And so we wanted to have some stockpiled stuff to put up in the My Brother My Brother Me feed so that he could have some time off. And so that's what we recorded the original Adventure Zone for.

After, you know, just a couple episodes of that, our audience from a Bimban was like, hey, we would listen to a lot more of this. So it all kind of... So we've given them a lot more of this. Yeah, that's a lot. Way more than I asked before at this point. But yeah, Travis, had you played D&D before? I thought somebody...

Yeah, you and I played together before the issue. Maybe like four sessions total with the theater people. And I think it also bears a point. out that like going into the adventure zone for the podcast, it was not, we weren't like, we're gonna tell a story, that it was like, this'll be funny, right? It'll be fun.

And I don't think we would have approached it with as much confidence if we're like, we're gonna show people how you really play D&D. Yeah. I try to play with a few friends in college. We got through three sessions, I think, but we had one guy who just always try to cut people's Achilles' tendons. Like once he realized that as a thief,

that was a skill set that was open to him, like every conversation he would just be like well I guess I'm out of options it's like please we're not getting anywhere in the story because you keep rolling to cut Achilles tendons it was Jason but we but it kind of sputtered out yeah yeah and I never played yeah I had never played before and and so I think that when they asked me to to do the special Taz the first one to to kind of help fill in I I just had a natural innate inborn gift for the game. Wow.

Following the rules and, you know, spell slots. All of it just felt so natural, so organic. The ghost of Gary Gygax was behind dad the entire time. I think I can safely say that I play now with the same level of skill that I did on that very first episode. I would agree. But at least you have a healthy respect for Achilles tendons. You're not immediately going through the jugular of the leg. Never would let them get to me there.

Well, I think that's really awesome that, you know, I think so many people have that experience where maybe they've tried, they've stopped, they've started, but eventually you do find that group if it's something you're interested in where things really gel together. It's really cool that for you folks, it was something that, you know, maybe started as a bit of an interlude, but then became something much greater. And something I really love is that, you know, like you were saying, Travis, you weren't sitting down to tell this grand story initially. What I love is that you start with the starter adventure, Lost Minds of Fandelver, and then it blossoms into something much bigger than I think anyone would have anticipated. Now, I had the distinct pleasure of interviewing you folks way back in 2018 when the very first graphic novel was coming out.

And now we're here at sort of the other end of that. Balance begins a podcast, you know, spawned the storming fandom. I still miss dad. Damn. Damn, I still miss dad. Sorry, I just thought I would be saying this time. I'm as surprised as you are. I had it all lined up. Like, this one's really a tribute to that.

I had a whole forward written and everything. I scrapped it. Well, it's kind of in a printout thing. We might insert it. It's got three weeks. Someone at McMillan's with a big lever wondering if they insert the in-memorium page at the end. Yeah, dad started skydiving a lot more and dirt biking a lot of years. Oh, my birthday.

Yeah. If you're wondering when the box set is coming out, I would like to know as much as you would, Fran. But I think you'll know. I think you'll know the time. We have a tasteful, like, black box for it. Yeah. All picked out.

Here, I can show you a picture of it. Oh, fantastic. Yeah, definitely. I can see that right in the dust jacket right there. It's going to be amazing. It'll have the beard, though, so no one needs to be put off by it. Oh, yeah. He will have a beard in.

Just do it like, what was that? like grocery store toy with the iron filings like the oh yeah yeah yeah willie willie yeah um anyway just that's a free idea i'm gonna take it or leave it but for you folks being on the other end of this now the graphic novel coming to a conclusion what does that feel like for you i i i mean it feels on the one hand it feels absolutely wild right because when the first one came out it was what nine years ago yeah 2018 so a it you Yeah, eight or nine years ago at this point. And like that we would still be able to keep putting them out and get to finish the arc was like not.

It was not, that wasn't the plan. The plan was just like put it out, keep making them as long as we are able to. Yeah. And see how it goes. So to be able to get to the finish line with it feels amazing. But also at the same time, it feels so relieving. You know, it's like they're so good. I'm very proud of them.

And this one is a lot of work and love went into it. Carrie Peach worked her ass off getting it all done. And the whole team worked so incredibly hard to get it done that it feels so good to have the set finish. It feels complete. So, yeah, surprising and relieving. I'm just so dang proud, genuinely. it's it all seven books it's been like humbling sort of beyond words that we you know write a script and then carry like brings it to life uh in in a way that i don't think anyone else on earth

could possibly do and um this book especially is the biggest one we've done by um a good margin i think and I I it's just it's truly it's breathtaking uh especially because we've finished sort of our part of it because this is the the nature of graphic novels is we finished writing it a while ago at this point um and the whole time carry was just kind of you know working on on finishing up all of the art for the book and it's just it's so amazing and the fact that it's like out there and people are reading it with their kids and you know it just being out there on on shelves and stuff alongside other sort of graphic novels I don't know the whole thing is so surreal that it all kind of started just with us cracking jokes while playing the d and d starter set

and now we we have this incredible thing I'm just I'm so proud we uh it's funny when we finished the podcast story of balance the it was so personal i mean it was like so raw and it was like we didn't know how it was going to shake out and then once we sort of like landed it the catharsis of that was like really really emotional um and like it's funny now that the book is out the last book is out and we have such distance from it i'm really able to kind of see it i think as everybody's story that's something that belongs to a lot of people in a way that I couldn't like the last time we ended it like you know it's it's obviously a big part carries it's in a part bends now I mean like this is this is all of ours and it's the readers who've like shaped it and you know the listeners

who shaped it over the years like I it really is seeing it like this and seeing it as a physical thing like I don't know I feel like I'm able to appreciate it a little bit a little bit better than than I could it the first time and it's been a learning experience too I think you know getting the experience of putting together a project like this in such a collaborative way, you know, basically with four authors and an artist and editors and just all the different people that go into the whole process of putting the book together has really been educational, is really kind of, at least for me anyway, open my eyes into how the process works. and it's been very rewarding.

I think it's been rewarding on a level where we can sit back and look at it as a whole now, and we can see it as an epic journey, whatever you will. A saga. Did you hear the reflexes grown that Justin made when Dad referred to our location as an epic journey? That's amazing, dude. I didn't make a noise, but I thought it. And you heard that. That's amazing.

Well, see, that's another way that we have advanced, I think, over the seven books is our creation of sound effects, I think, is rule-breaking. I think we have expanded the world of illustrated art sound effects like you wouldn't believe. Oh, I think psychic, folian, automotopia is essential to the comic reading experience. Yeah, for sure. Something Griffin mentioned too, just to hit on that of like going to conventions now and getting to me, not just like people who have been listening, you know, since we started it, but like their kids who are now like old enough that their, the parents were sharing the graphic novels with them or introducing to the podcast. My, my nine-year-old, her school librarian found out that her dad was one of the authors of the Adventure Zone and requested like a set of the graphic novels for the school. library. And I made sure I was like, this is going in like a PG-13, like older kids section, right? And he was like, yeah. But like that kind of thing and it being like shared through,

you know, our kids, other people's kids is amazing. To have your work in your kids' school library, that's a pretty powerful and amazing thing right there. That's fantastic. I do want to touch back on something you were talking about sort of this collaboration that it's become sort of when you're, very few people get to adapt to their own work for a different medium. So I imagine it's a challenge in and of itself. But you're talking about your collaboration specifically with Carrie and her artwork and just how I think it's really shaped how so many people envision these characters. What is something through this collaboration with Carrie that's maybe surprised you

or made you consider the story in a different way? I mean, one of the things, honestly, there's been maybe the biggest change is like when we were, recording it originally, right? You have the main player characters. You have Taco Magnetton Merle. Then any other scene, right? Like, if Griffin was talking to himself for too long, it was like, oh, it's starting to get really weird. It's just Griffin having a one-person conversation. And it being translated into graphic novel allowed a little bit more expansion of, you know, the non-three main characters to add in, you know, more.

dialogue between characters more moments of just like reaction shots and the scope of things and Carrie brought one I think the two things that I would praise her for 24 hours a day for the rest of my life one facial expressions yeah capturing like not just like the line but like the jokes the react like it sold jokes that we didn't think we're going to work in print because she was able to nail the facial expression and the body language. But also there are some panels that are just like, you know, the shot of the void fish,

the base, you know, like these things that are just these epic shots. Gotta stop using that work. Gotta stop. I know. Gotta stop. Let's see. That are breathtaking.

Sweetie. In her rendition of a thing that we were just imagining, you know, just picturing. And then you turn. turn the page and the whole thing's there, you know, just it's mind-blowing. I think I read graphic novels and comics sort of differently after doing this. We don't get like a ton of insight into the like process of the illustration, save for whenever

the book comes out and we do like events where Carrie will walk us through sort of what, what goes into making the page look how it looks and the final thing and like how much you can accomplish with layout and color and just all this stuff that I as a casual graphic novel reader in the past would just not register really at all. I think we grew a lot in our writing sort of ability to begin to kind of incorporate some of that stuff into what we what we wrote. leaving opportunities for the big, you know, two panel spreads and all that stuff. And I mean, every time we would do something like that, my favorite note that we ever got from Ben Wilgus, our editor on the books, was in the Crystal Kingdom book when they're like talking about this big telescope that can see past the boundaries of reality. and we wrote like, so on this page, you're going to have the entire observable universe.

Right. Not thinking like that's a wild thing to ask someone to illustrate. But I don't know, Carrie was always up for the challenge. And yeah, I learned so much just from working with her and Ben and everyone for a second. Yeah. And I think that... Are you one of those media strategy people clicking through slides, scrolling, spreadsheet? Sheets. Yes? Good. This is for you. Because on Spotify, there's an audience that's different. Locked in. Loyal, invested. They're called fans. Fans don't just listen to music. They feel seen by it like it belongs to them. So when your brand shows up on Spotify, that's who you're talking to. And you're right next to artists like me, Lizzo. So, are you ready to talk to fans? Spotify advertising. You're among fans.

The war is over. lost. Kingdoms were reduced to cinders and armies scattered like bones in the dust. Now the survivors claw to what's left of a broken world, praying the darkness chooses someone else tonight. But in the shadow dark, the darkness always wins. This is old school adventuring at its most cruel. Your torch ticks down in real time. And when that flame dies, something else rises to finish the job. This is a brutal rules-light nightmare with a the story that emerges organically based on the decisions that the characters make. This is what it felt like to play RPGs in the 80s.

And man, it is so good to be back. Join the Glass Cannon podcast as we plunge into the Shadow Dark every Thursday night at 8 p.m. Eastern on YouTube.com slash the Glass Cannon with the podcast version dropping the next day. See what everybody's talking about and join us in the dark. That informed us because we started. Didn't we start the graphic novels? I mean, at least writing them and conceiving them and picturing them before the end of... It was around the...

Yeah, we started working on the graphic novels around the end of the podcast. Yeah, it wasn't quite done yet. And I think we... I think that we kind of expanded into more... Once we started seeing what Carrie could do over the course of the graphic novels, a lot of the times we'd say, ah, we come up with a wild idea, wild descriptions. say, ah, Carrie can do it. Yeah.

Yeah, Carrie can. And she always, always did. That's the old, uh, the old Stanley, uh, Jack Kirby dynamic. Yeah. Yeah, right. Go ahead, Jack. Just filling the page. That's not bad.

Yeah, it's not bad. Yeah, there's a great Jack Kirby. Was there anything then from McDareneville? Please. You have the voice. You have the voice. Vanessa. That's really good.

That's also really good. I thought Vintagio was here with us for a moment. We're all good at doing different Marvel guys. Yeah. That's awesome. That's going to be a whole separate segment of this podcast later. Yeah. Let's do the Marvel.

I beg of you. You've got to give us a question, Dan, we're not going to get off of this. Well, of course. I'm just warning you, man. Yeah. We got Marvel impressions go around here. Save us.

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as a new VIP. And now, on to the show. So what I do want to talk about is, you know, you're mentioning how working on this is maybe your approach to a changed over time, has working on this graphic novel maybe affected how you approach other writing? Are you thinking more visually

or sort of considering the whole scope of something, whereas before you might have maybe been keeping things limited to what you're picturing in your head. I'll speak from me and Justin. I think the thing it's really illuminated for us is we are not script writers. We're really good at punch up and notes and figuring stuff out. But the idea of like figuring out like this is what's going to happen in this panel. We're like, I don't know.

I mean, I can't imagine it. I really, I read the scripts. I can't imagine what it looks like until there's pencils. And then there's pencils that I can imagine what it looks like in black and white. But like, I can't. I really, I have no visual imagination for it. Like I can work on dialogue, but like it honestly like it makes me think about, you know, it's kind of interesting to run up against something where you are at the limit of your abilities. Like I really did feel like, how this is just not a talent I have.

I have to figure out ways to work around this, you know, ways to like contribute to this that are like that feel a little bit less natural for me. So I think that was like really eye opening to figure out like where my strengths are. and like limits were and the things that like because i think that finding those things out made me appreciate more the value that we did have you know the the the fact that we were able like look at this dialogue and say okay this isn't working what can we because you never get a chance to do that in the podcast really yeah that that was really it was that was a lot of fun because you don't get a chance to do that um so i i enjoyed that part of it probably the most i enjoyed watching Griffin, you know, we always have had a great handle on the funny stuff, ha ha, and, you know,

especially when it came to entertaining ourselves. But to watch Griffin be able to create and write these emotional arcs for people and these things that really kind of resonated beyond just jokes and laughs, that was extremely cool to see what would Griffin. could come up with and the fact that, you know, it's, again, we go back to Carrie, but I mean, Carrie would express those emotions like we were talking about with facial expressions, body language in the art, but to watch Griffin mature as a writer to come along to the point where, you know, we could take a risk with something like that and instead of just make it at a joke

Fast make it be about something and watch these characters develop. That's hugely flattering and meaningful. That also did a huge share of the writing on all these books. I would say in the past, like, few. We kind of passed it back and forth sort of. I forget who wrote which parts of this one, and then we kind of... It's been so long since we wrote this book, Dan. I think that we were really fortunate to, I don't know, figure out how to work together to make this book make sense.

Because we started as a, you know, using the starter kit and not really having big plans. And then by the end of the thing, having like pretty big plans that we sort of were building the plane as we were flying at the entire time. and that doesn't work so good in book publishing. Actually, Griffin, it's worked so well. Yeah, see, that's what I'm talking about. Like, I just, I simply don't know. But, you know, I'm really happy with, I don't know. I think we all kind of came a long way in making that stuff work,

making the parts of the story that really, really needed to be told were in there. being able to sort of like refocus parts of the story on those like emotional beats all of that is something that we just kind of went sort of full throttle on with this book which makes it a very I don't know if this is true for you dudes but like it's been an emotionally sort of like taxing I haven't finished reading it yet we've had it I haven't a couple weeks I've had it I've had it for a month and I can't read it. I made it halfway read it. I haven't read it.

I made it half way to the halfway point last night. I finished the stolen century part last night and it was, it genuinely is, it's moving in a way that is, and not just because like, oh, we did such a kick-ass job, right? It's not that. It's just like it was an emotionally sort of laid bare thing when we recorded it and when we wrote it and interfacing with. that we finished this season of Adventure Zone the podcast exactly nine years ago so it's been a minute

and yes um i don't know i i feel like i feel so proud in our competence uh in sort of making those emotional sort of moments uh you know work on the on the on the page as well and i do honestly i remember us after i think like book three came out and talking about like the rest of the books and everything the rest of the series and there being a lot of discussion of like we need to finish it because if i was like a fan of these books and i just like finished book three or something and found out like yeah they stopped making them after book four or whatever the like the anger the hurt the betrayal of like this is like this is a like not only do we want to keep making because we like keep making them but like we always always

it to people to finish it and finish it right and I you know to Griffin's point I will occasionally pick up the book and like flip to a part and be like oh what does you have this turned out and read like oh oh oh oh yeah I need to take a break need to take a break real quick and I hope that people you know see all the love that's poured into it and feel some of that back speaking for myself I think that people will definitely have that experience because, you know, so many people, one of the things I love about the Adventure Zone and also actual play as a medium is you really get to spend meaningful time with these characters and you really get to explore their inner lives and adventures in a way that you don't necessarily get to in other forms of serialized storytelling,

partially because it is that sort of communal act of play, everyone coming together to tell this story together in real time and getting the sort of the, not distilled, but re-approaching it through this, I think, is a nice send-off for these characters. Is this, you know, sort of does this feel like goodbye to the world of balance for the time being? Definitely for the time being. Yeah, I don't know. I don't think we've really seriously talked about doing some new big thing in balance. We've done, we've done like a couple.

We do a lot of live shows in balance because it's a fun thing to kind of like hop back into for an evening. We did the like TAS Inbalance series with a Brea Iyengar, which was, you know, just a few episodes. But yeah, I mean, beyond that, we, I think we kind of just want to let it be its own sort of complete thing. And that's sort of just been our general kind of rule for as long as we've been doing it. I think there's also something really beautiful about having just a complete story that you

can see from beginning to end. I think that so many of our, my favorite franchises, things like that, they keep getting increasingly filled in in more granular ways that are not necessarily additive and don't really enhance the experience. It almost just feels like you're sort of draining it of what you loved in the first place. So I think having this is really special for fans of the show.

It's also like we made this story when we were those people, you know, and I think there's a part of me that's like, wow, we nailed it. I really don't want to make it. mess it up. You know what I mean? I don't want to go back and do something that like ruins it for everybody, right? Because I feel like, you know, I don't want to drop a midaclorians on everyone we're like, I don't like this anymore. Yeah. Tato would be entirely different. Taco is actually a virgin birth. Yeah. Not a lot of, that's not really covered. No, if you want to start a religion,

there's money in that. But that's, I mean, that's the great point. It's like, we are so closely those, like, playing D&D and playing these characters is like a facet of yourself. and a reflection of what you're bringing to it at that moment, that if we tried to do that again now, it would inherently be different uncontrollably, right? And it's like after nine years of living with it and hearing and reading it and all that stuff, like if I were just a fan of it and not a creator,

I wouldn't want it to feel different. I would want something else that feel similar that I also enjoy. But if you brought that thing back and it's like, that's not how that character acts, I wouldn't like it as much. And we had, well, I think Charlie had been born, right, when we started? What? Yes.

Yeah. I mean. When we started, though, when we started the graphic novels. Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. Yeah. And Beebe, maybe, right? I don't know, man.

What's time? We all had kids. Yeah, I guess. But now we're completely different people. Yeah. And I'm a little older. you know I don't look at wise little less wise little less what no I'm wiser remember oh right I would argue that based on all evidence I've been presented with not Harrier lesser suit correct yeah for sure I rather you were

bald and had a beard dad hey leave Dan alone damn looks great what you're talking about my wish you looked as good as Dan yeah kidding me a huge upgrade you're half the Dan he is I did lose the role of Ben Franklin in a recent production. I'm still a little salty about it, so. I'm glad to see you're doing so well, Clint. You're too youthful. I'm bouncing back. With this comic coming to an end,

and sort of to your point, Travis, about having other flavors and other stories, are there other, you know, Taz stories that you would be excited to adapt into a comic medium? Or is this something you're like, is there another medium you'd prefer to explore beyond comics? Sorry, I need to take a quick phone call. It's from my son's camp.

They've been calling. A couple times. Yeah. Well, good. Now we got Griffin's opinion out. Well, no, I'll address this because Griffin doesn't want to do anything now. Like, to be honest with you, Dan, every time one of us has a kick-ass idea, Griffin's always the one who's like, it sounds hard to me.

He's a poo-poor. Yeah. I don't want to do that. I just want to play Pokemon. Like, it's tough. Oh, my God. Is he in the room? Him and Vincent Donofri are hanging out.

We have talked about doing. amnesty as like an hour long TV show. I think that'd be really cool if anybody want to do that and should come talk to us. Would you envision that as animation or live action? I don't know. Man, if you've got either... Which one? Where's the money? Yeah. Where do you have? What do you want to do, Dan? We'll do that. I did find a burlap sack in the woods with a dollar sign on it, so I might be able to do.

Fantastic. Be careful, though, that could be a prisoner trying to escape. That is a lot of people do that. That sounds a true. I have an old. I have an old. A real DB Cooper thing. If we did return to balance, I think it would be cool to do more stuff in the stolen century, which is sort of like a lost chapter. We've talked about like revisiting that

in like a different medium. That would be cool. To me, honestly, Dan, it's like the missing component is really another person who we not only like click with, but also like has a viewpoint that they want to like,

explore this with, right? With Carrie and Taz, the book, it was really this partnership of like seeing this person. Ben and Kalista as well. Yes, absolutely. Sorry, yeah, for sure. And the partnership and the teamwork there, like, that

shaped this into what this is, right? Like the reason there's not these other products is, I think, in part, like, this is our medium. This is what we know how to do. Audio stuff is like kind of our thing. And we do You know, we've been branching out in other videos and stuff, but we're still the creators that we are. You know, we honestly, we have a pretty full production schedule over here at the McElroy Ranch making podcasts and what have you.

And video streaming. So like, you know, these projects where somebody else is doing a lion's share of the work and we're just kind of putting English on the ball, that's really our sweet spot. So if anybody has any opportunities like that for us, profitable, low work, exploiting our IP. please get at us. We've been very open to it and we'll continue to be so. We'll take the credit. Don't you worry. Oh, yeah, for sure. And the money. It's just about slapping our name on something. Yeah. That's not a problem. We're sellouts. We'll put it on anything.

That's what any good collaborators looking for. So I will put the contact information down below. I appreciate it. Thank you. Yeah. I want to wrap things up with you folks by talking about, you know, we here at Geek & Sundry. We play a lot of games. We love getting together to play. Hey, I'm Ashley, host of Crime Salad, and every week my husband Ricky joins me as my partner in crime. We know the true crime space is crowded, so we skip the loud, bubbly small talk and get straight to the facts of the most gripping cases. If you want to see what we're all about, check out our recent two-parter deep dive. She saved him, can you save her? Covering the baffling Rebecca Zahow case. If you want a true crime podcast that feels authentic and respects the details, come check us out.

crime salad wherever you get your podcast. The world is ending. You just don't know it yet, but you feel it deep down in your bones, don't you? Some call it the great undoing as it seeps in at the edges of forgotten places, where crumbling abandoned ruins slowly fade away, and in their fading, these places wear thin the fabric of reality. They're wrought, creeping. outward. It calls to you and to the others. Edge of the Forgotten is a supernatural

horror hybrid podcast, with season one totaling 13 narrated episodes and 10 full-cast audio drama episodes. The show premieres July 7th on the Realm Network and all popular podcast platforms. The first three episodes arrive on launch day, with new episodes every Tuesday through the end of November. Welcome to The Undoing. Welcome. To Edge of the Forgotten. Play with people. Say that it's game night, and you have been tasked with bringing the game for everyone to play.

You can bring anything you want, and people will play it, regardless of how complicated it may be. What are you bringing, and why? How many people are there? We don't want them to have a good time. It's for us, right? It's like what's our...

It's whatever game you want to play most with however many people it's required to play with. There is a Game of Thrones, board game that really perfectly, I think, encapsulates the like political intrigue, backstabbing, like whispering campaigns

kind of deals. That is so fun. Every time I've played it, everybody gets so into it. But it takes the right, like, I've picked like the right for people to play this game with and we all understand how we're going to feel when this game is done and we're on board with that and we're cool with it and it's been a wildest one right what yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah you can't play that one with

people who take things personally or else your friendship will be over everybody has to kind of be in the character of the person running that that family or else you will ruin relationships but that one it's it's a it's a sometimes food as they say and uh that but if it was like dream scenario i get to play whatever game I'd want that one. Oh, man. I played through a couple of sessions of that pandemic board game that was like,

what was it called? It was like the story-based pandemic mode. Year Zero? Is it pandemic legacy? Pandemic legacy, I think, might have been it. Yeah, it was really great. And then it was interrupted ironically enough by an actual pandemic.

And we never got to return to that. So that's like, you know, that's dream level stuff right there. But I would say my standbys are going to be Splendor, which is a pretty straightforward, you know, ladder building resource management game about Renaissance gym traders and coup and its many expansions. That's a great one. We brought that on tour a couple times last year, and it's just so easy to pick up and play.

And it's wild playing a hidden role game. with our family, just because I think we've all got pretty good radar for when the other people are telling fibs or not. I've always wanted to play a game called Time Stories, where, like, you play it with four people, and it's, like, the story evolves over time. I just wanted to do that. If I have just, like, people, if I could just, like, play a game, it's usually betrayal at House and the Hill, but, like, that's not frequent that that's the vibe. That's a real sticky one. That's a real sticky one. I mean, it's not even sticky in the grand scope of things,

but in terms of getting people to play with you that don't love board games, it's fairly sticky. That's how I feel about Mysterium, too. I love Mysterium, but explaining to people like, and you're going to get like a one-word vague thing, and you have to decide, and it's completely subjective, and they're like, oh, I don't want to do that.

Yeah. It's kind of what I think the Flying Frog Games do better. I feel like they, how can I put it? They do a really good job of literalizing mechanics, where like you understand the game mechanics because they're so closely mapped to these like genre conventions that you're already doing your head. And I think that that really, I think that is better for a group. I think people grok that a little bit easier than they do with the trail to the House of the Hill, which is I think is a bit more abstract.

I'm going to go with a game that Travis or Justin mentioned earlier, Balder Dash. I like games where people and I mean, I love role playing games too. and betrayal on House of the Hill is one of my favorites as well. But I think games that lead to fun conversations and people enjoying each other's company and music playing and perhaps some imbibing going on, not by me. But I just think those kind of games where you have to be creative and it spawns. Like I said, everybody's talking about stuff, very convivial and a, fun dynamic. I love those kind of games that kind of foster that. And then we'll break out

the clue so I can dominate. Cheat. Did not cheat. I don't want to unpack this in front of Dan. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. I prefer some mysteries to remain unsolved, so I appreciate it. Well, gentlemen, thank you so much again for joining us. I really appreciate you folks taking the time. Everyone out there, make sure to grab your copy of the Adventure Zone story and song on July 14th. And if you want even more amazing conversations like the one we had here today, you can find more question answers on Geek and Sundry's YouTube or ever find podcasts are served. Gentlemen, is there anything else that you would like to promote before we a bit of fond farewell and disperse into the ether? Check out the Macroy Family YouTube. We have lots of fun stuff over there and we stream all the time.

I don't know when this comes out, but we're doing an event for the launch of the book in Boston. Oh, amazing. Yeah. July 16th in Medford, Massachusetts. Massachusetts. What is it at? It's the Chevalier, I believe. Or Chevalier, depending on what is correct.

Chevalier is how we would have pronounced it. I used to live in Somerville in Medford when I was in college. Oh, okay. How did you pronounce it? Chevalier? Legally, it's Chevalier. Nice. Good.

But they'd probably call a Chevalier. As long as we're following the letter of the law. Yes. We're doing a thing there, and Carrie's going to be there, and Ben's going to be there, and we're going to be doing a bunch of fun stuff just to sort of celebrate the book being out. So, yeah, tickets for that are on sale now. Fantastic. Well, this will be out in advance of that, so people will take the tickets.

Excellent. Yeah. All right, well, gentlemen, thank you. I really appreciate you taking the time, and thank you out there, everyone who's listening. For now, folks, tell us what games are you playing this week? What are you most excited to introduce to your table? Let us know in the comments below, and we'll see you folks next time. Bye-bye.

Hi, I'm Whitney. And I'm Katie. And we're the hosts of True Crime Campfire. We set out to make a true crime podcast we'd want to listen to. We get right to the story. We don't do a lot of extra talk in, and when we do, it's usually to roast the short hairs off of some loser, murderer, or scammer. You'll laugh, but only at the people who deserve it.

Like, which serial killer would you most like to shove into a locker? BTK and his awful poetry. Dude got caught because he didn't. didn't understand what a floppy disk was. We look for the stranger than fiction stories, like the case of Patty James, a killer catfish before the internet was even a thing. Or Howard Walmsley, a sentient wad of damp laundry

who convinced his town he'd won the lottery, fleeced local businesses out of thousands, and then became a romance scammer. We've covered tons of cases you've never heard of, cults, scammers, killers. So come find your next great binge. Listen to True Crime Campfire on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcast.

New episodes every Friday. Do you love Disney? Do you love Top Ten lists? Then you are going to love our podcast Disney Countdown. Hi, I'm Megan the Magical Millennial. And Biscuits, I'm Jeremy, aka Jarendell, and we are the host of the hit Disney podcast, Disney Countdown. On every episode of our fun and family-friendly show, we Countdown our top ten lists of all things Disney.

The parks, the movies, the music, the food, the lore. There is nothing we don't cover on our show. right Jeremy? Ooh, girl, you know we are famous for rabbit holes, Disney themed games, and fun facts. You didn't know you needed, but you definitely need in your life. So if you are looking for a healthy dose of Disney Magic, check out Disney Countdown wherever you get your podcasts.

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Join us every other Monday on the Nefer TV podcast as we discuss the real history behind Spartacus, Blood, and Sand. Follow Nefer TV, that's N-E-F-E-R-T-V, wherever you get your podcasts.