The Adventure Zone - The The Adventure Zone Zone: Versus Dracula Wrap-Up!

Episode Date: August 22, 2024

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Believe me, welcome to my domain. I haven't gotten to do The Voice Guys in over a month, and I have it swelling up inside. It's all pent up. It's all pent up. I got it, bust. You're having a drag attack. Dracula flow.

Hey, everybody. Welcome to The Adventure Zone Zone. Everyone's favorite podcast about the podcast, done by the guys in the podcast. This episode, we're recapping our adventures in Ongrave with Tas versus Dracula. Hey, I'll start. I had a good fucking time doing this with you guys.

Yeah, this one was like a game to play. This one was like a fun game and you, yeah. I would agree with you. This was our most game-like season. It was nice to finally have fun with you guys. You're making it sound like we don't have fun doing other seasons of the show. No, I'm interested. Let's get, are we going to introduce yourselves?

I'm just a man cry. I did. It would be so wild to listen to the commentary episode. Okay. I want to have a friend. I know we usually do Q&A, but before we get into that, I want to have a naval gasey, no holds barred free-flowing conversation about why a debrief. A debrief.

Some seasons are really easy, and some of them take a lot more work to, some of them take a while to find their footing. Why do you guys think versus Dracula, what are the reasons that it worked as well as it did? Gosh, I hope everyone out there liked. I'm so unplugged from... I'm saying like, within the context of the stuff we made. Of the form of us. Let's just call it fun then. Why was this one so much fun?

I have theories, but I don't want to get your thoughts. One of the things that I really think worked very well is from the get, like, you can't deny a clear objective. It's right there in the title, right? I'm just like, yeah, we got to stop Dracula. Yeah. I think that I could think I think 10 reasons off the top of my head of things that I am. I tried to do purposefully differently from how I did it in like amnesty or ethercy, which is way less prep and predefined like courses of,

of action. I had like ideas and events that you could sort of swing on a vine to if you needed them, but like way, way, way less prep on my end, which just means naturally kind of like more improvisation on your guys end. I also think like, and this is very purposeful. Again, we talked about this a lot when we were trying to decide what next season should be, like, wanting to do one with a concept that is kind of funny. Like, I think that for everything we've done, except maybe Taz Balance, which maybe there's a lesson there,

like, the ideas have been more kind of, like, fleshed out. And, you know, with Ethersea, we had all the world building that we did and had, like, all of this, this big, rich world that was fun to play around in. But having a guiding light of, like, everything can just be, like, dead-ass-stupid. was very liberating for me. And frankly, I think plays to our strengths a lot better than, you know, starting out a season with like a whole bunch of lore and stuff that we want to, you know, bounce off. Dad, what about you? I like the fact that after whatever nine years, eight years, however many years, we have we were able to kind of get back to, thinking outside the box when it came to solving problems and doing stuff. But we, that's tempered

with our experience that you don't want to go too far outside the box. Yeah. We just stayed within a slightly bigger box than the slightly smaller box. Sure. But I think we were, and I think we, but I think it challenges your creativity instead of just saying the, the wildest crap you can think of, uh, in an attempt to, to derail. I think, I think, think we tried to think teamwork and tried to think what would be really not only kind of cool, but it would be fun. I think getting back to entertaining ourselves, I mean, to a large, I think we've never not entertained ourselves. But I think the fact that we got back to, let's the four of us have a blast. And if everybody else likes it, that's great.

And I enjoyed that quite a bit. And I think the fact that we went in without too much character delineation that we were able to, you know, free things up or completely change character if need be. Well, yeah, that wasn't a conscious choice on your part, at least not. No, I don't know. No, it's not a conscious question. Okay, cool. Yeah, I can't wait to debrief all the fucking completely unpredictable, wild moments that made me throw away large portions of my prep work. Travis, did you answer the question?

Well, yeah, no, I said the clear thing, but I also think to Griffin's point, I think we do well in, like, the juxtaposition of, like, us as players and our characters juxtapose to, like, the world. And so, like, a world in which, you know, on paper, it's like there's a scary monster king who has been, like, stolen the sun and, like, the undead walk the earth. And it's like, yeah, okay, cool. those but that didn't inform like the way that we a lot of the stuff that actually happened yeah and so I think it creates a lot of really good and fertile ground for having fun to be able to react to those

things and have expectations subverted and stuff like that I think I also want to say here at the top there may be a question about this later but much like balance I've springboarded this season off of the cursive strad, which is one of the, one of the, you know, book campaigns that they sell. Here's a question from Keith, Griffin. Let me set it up for you, okay?

I've enjoyed the many different styles and narrative directions you've experimented with over the years. This season felt like a return to goofy or more irreverence style similar to the tone of balance. Was this a conscious choice or something that happened organically?

Do you have conversations about tone and style before you start recording a new season? I mean, yes. I mean, I think we've said as much, in our sort of talking about this, but like we definitely, we wanted to take some of the pressure off of ourselves to like set up huge lore, huge narrative before, like, starting the game.

I think that's the main difference. And then whenever an opportunity comes to then like build off of whatever and improvise whatever, like we can still follow that principle, I think it's like, honestly, it is one of our, great challenges on this show is like trusting ourselves to to come up with stuff on the fly that can like eventually turn into you know character beats and stuff like that and I think it is when this show works works the best so I think that was the first conversation is like how do we kind to focus on that and I think that talking about a setting that is so kind of silly really makes

that a possibility. I was also looking at Curse of Strott at the time and was those two pieces kind of connected like it would be funny to do a season that was just about trying to kill Dracula but instead of him being this

scary dark warlock he was I don't know cartoon Dracula. I will say it also never I feel like there was one rule with this show and like if there's an exception of this

I don't know what it is, but there were more tender moments, but nothing, I think, was played with 100% sincerity. Like, we didn't get to a place where characters were having deeper, earnest conversations about their feelings. Yes. It didn't get deep. It didn't get earnest. And that is one rule, as wild as all the things were. And that is something where, like, is tough sometimes when, like, because the time,

kinds of stories you want to tell, sometimes there's that compulsion like, oh, let's dig deep into this. This is interesting. I wonder what's going on. And like, I don't, we never consciously decided this, but like we all sort of, I think,

subconsciously agree, like we're not going to get deep with these characters. We're not going to get into their inner workings. We're going to understand them at a primary and perhaps secondary level, but we're not going to get super deep. I want to give special kudos to Travis.

for this with Mutt, because I think we all feel this compulsion of like, how can I make this a bigger, how can I make this a bigger, more emotionally resonant thing? Like, is this an opportunity to kind of, like, include a little bit of that spice in here? And at the end, your resolution with the Invisible Man, I thought was truly, truly inspired. Yeah, it really was. A genius, very, like, true to character. I feel like you learn more about Mutt from that choice than any conversation. they could have had about like, you know, maybe we both do carry a lot of generational trauma. Like instead of that, mutt saying like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, like tells me a lot more about mutt at his, like, avoidance. And there doesn't have to be like, I don't know, we don't have

to fix mutt by the end of this thing. But I do certainly feel like I learned a lot about mutt in that moment. He's one of your best characters, Trevor. Yeah, I had a lot of fun. I told Griffin afterwards said there was a, I can't remember exactly when the conversation happened or how, like how it came up, but something about like mutt being hired as a guide and like babysitter for Lady Godwin and for Philo. And then treating it like that of basically being a little bit like, yeah, man, I'm part of the team. But I'm also like on the clock trying to keep them from dying and trying to like keep things like I'm here to make sure you guys don't eat poisonous things like things you find while you're out for it. It's harder to do, it's harder in some ways to do a character that is, like, disciplined is probably the word, right? Like, I think Duck is a good example of this with regards to, like, his forestry work, right? It's harder in some ways to be a professional because it assumes a level of, like, experience and credibility that can be hard to roleplay, right? There's a reason a lot of roleplaying characters are like vagabonds or shabonds. or jack of all trades

because it's like because I don't really know how to do horse stuff so I can't be like a horse expert they can't get fire for doing wild shit but there's a fun stability I think to having a character

that is that settled to where they know themselves and they know what their job is and I think that actually the structure is helpful because I think it lets other people play off of that I will also say

a combination of the strength of like Ranger, like as a Ranger, inherently is like, hey, here's a thing they're good at. Like this wedge of space is what they're good at. But also, man, I got some really good roles when it came to like sneaking through the forest or finding tracks and stuff like that that was like, oh, okay, good. My character isn't pretending to be good at this stuff, which is the other side of it. I wasn't planning on the Invisible Man being a like character character. in this season, but anytime you would do

like a really, really good role, I always thought it was the funniest solution to be like, and then you find the invisible man's footprints. Yeah. And it's like, shit, I'm writing a check for the invisible man that I do not know how to cash. Trap, is it, is it? Just real quick, because this is for my own edification.

It, other, the name is an obvious clue, but is it safe to say that maybe a little bit of Crawford's personality, you kind of kind of took from your grandfather. Oh, 100%.

It seemed like a lot of his personality was in. Yeah, our mom's dad, Crawford Kitchen. One, I just like the name Crawford. And Crawford Kitchen is killed. But I mean, it's also in the last name too because it was basically that mixed with like a kind of bloodhound personality, like an older hound dog kind of deal. Where it's just like, yeah, man, I don't know.

I'm just happy to be here. Kind of feeling of like getting excited about things. But like our grandfather Crawford would also occasionally just like mutter jokes to us while like mom and his wife Diane were like, Ty our step grandma would like be having conversations. And I remember one time they were having this conversation and Diane was like completely monopolizing mom's time. And probably just like muttering to me like, yeah, man, she's just my daughter. And I'd love to get to talk her. but I never get in old. And like that,

it cracked me up so much. Incredible mustache on that man. Oh my God, powerful. My head canad for mud is like, is Pop-A Crawford. And the man who taught me all about metal detection. Oh, fuck, yeah.

Very much. Very much. It's a very good tribute, Triv. I am going to start imposing a one answer per question rule because we've done exactly one, and we're well into this. So let's start, let's pick up the pace. And no more than one minute per answer every.

one. Oh my god. It's starting to feel like a speech and debate competition, Justin. Yeah, well, get a little discipline. I got one here for Dad from, I think, Fee. When it comes to D&D classes, I'm a huge fan, mixing about flavor text and game mechanics. Fylo is a great example with this, being an artificer, alchemist, and a man of the cloth,

as opposed to a class like cleric or paladin. What inspired this class choice, and did it inspire any of the rest of you all consider other potential background slash class? pairings. I really was excited about playing an artificer. I just, I had, I mean, goofed around with it a little bit on a couple other projects, but something about really trying to play within those confines. I seem kind of drawn to builder, characters, engineer type characters, and the fact that he was a magic user and could use magic, but at the same time had to incorporate that into

some kind of physical context, the tools you use, that's the coolest shit about, that's the main reason to play artist. I feel like it's not just the stuff they can do. It's like, it's because each of their spells is like a little bomb or whatever. I also feel like though,

that Philo is one of the best, I think, that you've ever done on Taz in terms of, or that any of us have done, in terms of like the character really working in concert with what the class is. Like everything that, that you would do that was part of your like toolkit, a lot of times in Taz, the comedy is like,

this is such a weird thing that I'm able to do, right? It's that juxtaposition. But I think with Philo, it was really interesting because everything you did felt very plausible within who this character was, right? There was a really good like continuity between, this is who I understand this person to be and these are like the mechanical skills

that are available to them. Yeah. They really worked nicely together. In my head, can, I went Philo, does something with magic and technology. He is an absolute expert in his field, one of the greatest of our generation. And then when he's having to make choices out in the world,

something misfires in his brain. And he's like, I put the hat on and press the button. Like there's something, there's, he knows what he knows, which is potions and technology. What he doesn't know is how to stay alive, making basic sort of human judgments in the face of danger and traps.

Well, I think that that, also holds with, and I made a conscious effort to do that because he basically was a monk, a friar who had lived in a monastery and had, you know, done his community work. And that was, you know, he hadn't been out in the world very much. And, you know, and I think that that's a good analogy. I can also deal with another question or two that we're on here about, well, you ask me about why he put the helmet on. Yeah, we have literally, I'm looking at the list of questions. There's three of them about putting the helmet on, how you felt about not having a human body, and like what twists and unexpected things happened this season. And this was, I think,

the one that started at all, basically, to go behind the curtain real quick, that was supposed to introduce to you Van Helsing in the body of Pinocchio, which Dracula had trapped him in. And I was like leaving clues, like, there's a skeleton. If you look around, maybe you'll find some of Van Helsing stuff. And dad was like, zoop. Boop, Boop, Pinocchio. And the pan, I don't know if you could pick up on the panic in my voice or I was like, okay, is this like a fucking, are they roommates in there?

What's going on? What I thought was it would give control over those disembodied hands. Now here's the thing, Dad. I love knowing what you thought was gonna happen because from the fact that there was a skeleton strapped in there. A dead skeleton.

And the hands were still moving around. This is the helmet that lets you control the hands, but at what terrible cost? Yeah. Dad, if you were, if you were walking around and you saw a dead skeleton, former human dead body holding a hamburger in their hands, would your thought not be like, I bet that hamburger's what killed, like, but who knows how would you think like, I bet that hamburger gives me the power to fly? How well, why? He said for the danger zone. Couldn't be more than, I thought maybe he had died happy with that helmet on and that, you know, maybe you wanted to die.

Centuries ago. And, uh, no, that really is what I thought. He died. He died of, of dehydration because he never wanted to stop controlling the hands.

Yeah. But once it, I got to tell you, I was completely shocked with the Pinocchio thing. I did not see it coming. No kidding. But, but I almost,

I almost immediately embraced it because it was. Yeah. a funny concept. And it kind of, it kind of gave me an out in the fact that, you know, suddenly this character, it would be so funny to see this guy. And I wouldn't be necessarily tied to the whole cleric, religious character, which Brother Philo was. And I was a little hesitant about playing Brother Philo. And I got to throw this in. My inspiration for him was a fictional character named Brother Cadfile

who was a monk who solved mysteries a great book series and that was kind of what that was but I didn't want to play necessarily another

you know religious character and straight up man another clarke yeah sure yeah and the fact that then Pinocchio could then become not a tank but the Pope the fighter the way it went though

and the way he accepted it so quickly. I think those two, that's a really good example of like where randomness and choice kind of like make a new reality when you're doing a role playing story. Because like that vibe of I put the hat on and I'm fine with what happened. It gave Philo this vibe of like, I don't know, he doesn't make a lot of good choices, but things seem to basically work out for him. Okay. Yeah. Like he's, it's like, it reminds me I was rewatching, uh, Deadpool 2. It reminds me a little bit of domino. You know what I mean? Like the bus crashing around Philo because he's crossing the street in an inopportune moments. He has good luck powers.

Right. Yeah. I also feel like there is a, I feel like there is a meta story happening about Philo where he is a man who is somewhat detached from reality. And I think that that's maybe a facet of his, of his origin. but the quickness with which you were like, yeah, no, I'm a puppet now, and I love being a puppet. And then there was a scene when you met on

where you found out that the Turbo Cardinal had turned into a vampire and killed everyone in your whole order. And Van Helsie was trying to check in with you after like, hey, man, are you do it okay? And your response was like, yeah, you know, I'm getting really used to being a puppet. And Van Helsing was like, okay. I tried to play that moment,

like Van Helsing is worried about you a little bit. And so I tried to slide in little warnings to you throughout as Van Helsing like, hey, man, just don't lose sight of the stuff that. And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, I'm going to turn myself into the Pope internet. Like, there's a, like, it's a, it's a character who I think is genuinely very interesting because it's like, I don't think Philo is completely in touch with. And it sounds apocryphal, but I think going into the puppet body, I decided, well, I think you would lose some humanity. Not all of it. Not all of it.

Anyway, we broke our one answer per question. Immediately. Immediately broke it. But I answered four questions. Yes, that we did. I will say also on the subject of other big twists when you guys killed On, didn't think that that was going to. My thought was like, this could go one of a few ways.

You take the sword out and you're like, yeah, I'll keep the sword. And then On comes back. And then you have to, maybe you have to fight a God, what? But then you just like did it and killed him. And you took Excalibur or took Scalibur. You didn't think we were going to, you had to know we were going to take the sword. This is the second time I've been sort of, my hubris has been my undoing.

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I think that's kind of always my goal when I'm making something. Nothing touches my heart more than when someone comes out of my movie and says, oh my God, I never thought I would see myself. So hang out with us and geek out about watching movies, making movies, and the ways the movies we love speak to us directly. You might just start asking folks around you, hey, what movie character made you feel seen? We're doing it every week at maximum fun.org.

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The Greatest Generation, now covering Star Trek Enterprise. the one with Scott Bacula every Monday on maximum fun.org or in your podcast app. Okay, another question. I got one for you. May I read one? Raps asked, how many pages of Dracula's diary did you have prepared for the episode's intro? Were you picking which one to use depending on what the party's goal was,

or did you have specific information you needed to give out for that episode, and then improve the pages' contents on the day? Thank you for all you do. Yeah, improv to the pages. I did improve the pages constantly. No, I mean, it would be, it would be, it would be, I would love a world in which I could write an entire diary for Dracula. And then as we play an episode, be like, I bet this will be germane today. But I did write all of those as part of sort of my, my loose prep for each episode and sort of think about.

And I, I don't really love the previously on thing, like as a rule on, on, on, on, on, on, any show. And so having it be a kind of, I don't know, a dietic part of the show, I thought was a good solve for that. I just did the last season. So I thought you were talking about me. I'm so sorry. Go ahead.

Oh, hey, I got one from Steve. How fun was it performing these characters in live shows? Now that the campaign is over, will you continue to use the versus Dracula characters in live shows? It's a black I mean I think that is one of my favorite characters to perform live a little bit because his costume is basically just clothes which is nice

huge upgrade yeah but it also is just like man it's really fun to play these characters that we've spent a lot of time with and are very comfortable playing but without a lot of burden of like rich inner life so much of like there's very little of like well they wouldn't do that oh and they've already interacted with this person and like oh we've had this big character development so they wouldn't make that common anymore it's it's very much just like playing a cartoon character of getting

to be like yeah man um i just get to step in and do it and react to the thing the way that they would react to it and have fun with it yeah i will also say as dm for it uh having just a huge slate of public domain works to try and like choose from is like just enough of a a boundary on on prep work and idea stuff that it is it has been very helpful to just look at it and be like oh fuck i don't know we could do great gatsby i have one i want to ask yeah loved this season says abby were there any plans that had to be changed or reworked due to unexpected character deaths or crazy roles i.e was the wolfman on or frankestine going of a bigger role that got cut short you touched on a couple of these

what was the original plan for Van Helsing Joel before Brother Philo pushed that button? Yeah, I did some of it. Killing on, I did not expect and was wild, although I was happy to kind of like, I don't know, tie back into that at the end with Mutz sort of scene. Frankenstein, I don't know. I had Frankenstein pretty fleshed out and was then just kind of like going to use him as I was going to use him. But I don't like forcing, I don't know, character interactions down your guys' throats. And so you kind of just hung out with him for a little bit, cut his arm off.

I had a beat where I was considering bringing him back in at the end. But again, like, it wasn't very memorable the first time. I guess I'm not sure it would have hit, you know. Yes. I think Wolfman getting killed was a huge surprise. Did not expect that. I feel like I tried to give the Wolfman plenty of opportunities. Yeah.

No, yeah, no. But that was, I don't know. We haven't played like that. in a while where a character just vengefully slays another character. It's great. I didn't get to touch on the... Yeah, I didn't get to touch on that. But I think that one of the things that was really helpful is clear good versus evil,

like clear sides. And dramatically, that's not always the most interesting. But if you're not trying to do a drama, it's pretty helpful to know that, like, that's a bad guy. And even if it's not a bad guy, there's something about the, iconographic power of some of these characters where like even if you kill them you know you're not really killing them right like even in the fiction of the worlds we've made like

you're not going to kill Dracula I mean you can't you know you're not going to kill any of these guys they could come back any time it's magical and I think I mean I have a great idea to that effect that I had ready this season but did not did not end up deploying I do want to highlight I think the warehouse kind of chapter of it was made be some of the most fun I have. I guess my favorite, yeah. The like series of like,

it was a great kind of like throw off joke when we talked about everybody having to intricately go back and re-bite like the people of like trying to like track like, okay, then you bit me. Yeah, we were making up entire world rules in real time, which is fucking so fun. And then having to like say like, wait a minute, if that's how, if that's how wolfmanism works, then that's got to be crazy. for everybody who's a wolf person. It's got to be just a constant.

You would have to, your Google calendar would be like, bite Ricky, bite Dave, get bitten by Ricky. There was a moment, I think, I may have misread it, but like, it was one of those moments where as we were doing it, there's that sense of like, maybe we should just stay here. Like, maybe we should forget about Dracula, just live in this situation for a few weeks. The payoff with the goldfish made me incredibly happy.

Yeah. Yeah, where he became a revolution. against the Wolfman forces. I feel like, to get back to Godwin, killing Wolfman, I feel like Godwin was great for me this season to keep the stakes in mind. I feel like you had the best sort of motivation

to keep going and really, like, were great at pulling stuff along. But like we would get in situations where, and the warehouse was a great example of this, where these are monsters, like these are monsters who kill and eat human beings. Like they are, and they're fun, they're fun guys to party with. But like, I think also there's this other side of every monster in this story where it's like, they're really likable.

They also murder people. Yeah. They murder people. And a lot of them eat the people. And so Godwin was great at being like, don't forget, they also murder and kill. Like, these are dangerous creatures and they are sympathetic and fun to hang out with. But like, they are killers. And I felt like that that was genuinely helpful.

So for me, as Diem, to be like, you're right, he's our dangerous monsters. You would want to slay them. Speaking of Godwin, we have a question from pseudonym, and this is one I've wanted to know about. I've always wondered about the body that Lady Godwin's head was grafted onto. I know she was a gladiator of some kind who won every battle until her last one, but was there ever a fuller backstory there? Have you ever considered introducing the body's previous owner as another character? and why is the name why is the axe named

Jennifer Myers? So they okay so I was puzzled by this but they haven't heard the last episode of the season right at this point so they wouldn't have heard at the end there's an incredible

teaser about the revert the anti-gonautil which is God lose that came to me like that morning it really was It was an incredible moment of collaborative storytelling where Justin was like, shut the fuck up. I wrote this thing, and it's the introduction of the anti-Godwin.

And this is, this is my end. I appreciate that. So you're being sarcastic a little bit. Especially after it came after a pretty lengthy, like, oh, and what's mud up to? Like, okay, cool. And now he has 30 seconds of introducing this script that Justin wrote. Read it. It's just, it also.

It's a great gag, and I couldn't do it. with any help. History needed it and I couldn't risk anybody else getting their fingerprints on it. If you could attempt to remedy one sort of small plot hole for me in this moment,

live in person, when you all sieged the city of Lumino and crashed the car, Dragula, you did see all of your bones go flying out of the trunk of the automobile.

Yeah. Did those bones then sort of of re-musselized. So you saw the bones? I think you saw the bones. So you just saw the bones. So Griffin, what you're saying is,

you never saw me die. Interesting. Okay, so the suggestion here is that the anti-godwin that shows up at the end has no bones. Or different bones. They're not my bones. No, man, it's not my bones.

That's not my beautiful bones. What's Jennifer Myers? What is Jennifer Myers? Yeah, what the fuck is that? Yeah. Was it just the first name that came to your mind? Jennifer Myers, I thought it was really funny to, I always think it's funny when there are like hard names for weapons, right?

Like Oathbringer or whatever, right? So if the sword is just named, I like the idea. I haven't had a lot of named weapons. And I've continued that proud tradition in our next arc. of another named axe. But I just really like the idea of a mundane name for a weapon because she had no real connection to it. So it was just like, I feel like someone said pick a name for it,

and she just picked the first name that came to mind. I love that. I'll tell you what threw me is the first time I heard it for some reason my brain connected to Stephanie Myers, who I think wrote The Twilight books. Yes, interesting. And at first I was like, is it named after an author? And my brain just like chewed on that for like four or five episodes.

And wouldn't like over. Okay, here's the actual like, I have gotten more comfortable. And I think it is a kind of thing that is just specific to this, this kind of thing that we do. I think that it's okay to throw out stuff that doesn't land initially. and that can feel kind of uncomfortable. But I've gotten pretty comfortable with just opening my mouth and seeing what comes out

and then finding it later, right? Yeah, sure, sure, sure. If I throw out a completely... And this is something we've tried to do with other characters, I think, and it doesn't work. If I try to have pages upon pages of mythos figured out for myself, it's not very interesting to figure out.

But if I have, like, questions for myself, like, why is the axe name Jeff from Myers? I thought I'd have a satisfaction. answer to that by the end of the season, didn't work out that way. It happened. You know, not all the...

I did consider the axe at one point becoming sentient and being like, I've done that, we've done that, though, man. We've done sentient. Well, guys,

we've been doing this for 10 fucking years. We've done everything at this point. Except not murdering. Like, other than that, like, they have to have axes. So, like, do they, you not want them to talk? Like... Uh, all right, what else

we want to get up on? Trab, you got one you want to ask? Daran asked. The season of Taz has been my favorite since balance. I'm dying to know what song was stuck in Dracula's head. Oh. I assume it was 311s, Amber's The Color of Her Energy. So that was sort of, I was trying to think of like a resolution for Dracula.

And this was me like leaning into my baser instincts of like what if the villain did have like a secret motivation for the things that he did beyond like. biting everyone, biting everyone in town. And I am very interested in the concept of like when an immortal being eventually loses their mind. Because like if you're alive for too long, I can't imagine that that continues to be a pleasant experience mentally. And so the idea of like Dracula being driven to do all of this wild shit because he had a song stuck in his head for several centuries and how to resolve that. So the song that was stuck in his head, I tried to set up as at least having the note C-A-B-B-A-G-E in it. But it's not, that wasn't a reference to, it was not like if you punch those into some sheet music, you're going to play, you know, Five for Fighting Superman or something. So there wasn't a specific song that you had in mind?

No, I wasn't like sourcing some, I wasn't doing a needle drop. and I could have done it with some sort of public domain music. Maybe I'll explore that for next season. Travis, I have a question here from Collive. I didn't expect Crawford's change of heart about killing the invisible man, but I really liked how it played out. Did Crawford's decision surprise you in the moment? Have the other players ever been surprised by their own character's choices?

So I just wanted to, because I know we talked about it, but I did want to, when that was happening, I felt my own impulse to be like time for a big dramatic scene and resolution of this thing. And it was just like, yeah, that's not, not only is that not fit the moment of the thing. It just wasn't what that would be. And I started thinking about like very much, you know, the kind of like rugged Appalachian man I was kind of basing mutt off of. And that idea of like, hmm, I'm going to have a big emotional moment and just didn't. resonate there.

And I just like the idea of him being like, yeah, I get it. I see the problem. We don't need to figure that. I see what you're trying to do. That was very much a conversation between Travis and Griffin, in addition to a conversation between Invisible Man and Mutt of me saying like, are you sure you don't, are you sure that you don't want to make more of a meal of this? Are you sure, man?

Yeah. Okay. I'm glad it went the way that it did, though. But it's like if a friend started saying like, hey, man, I just want to talk to you about this problem. and you instantly understand the problem that they're addressing. And you're like, oh, yeah, I get it. You're absolutely right.

I will work on that. But they've been preparing like a full explanation of it. And I'm like, no, no, no, I get it. Yeah, you're right. I do need to work on that. Here's one that I think is interesting. In past T-Taz's, you've talked about the balance between really fleshing out the PCs before campaign versus keeping it vague and discovering that you play.

How do you guys feel about the characters in Taz versus Dracula in terms of pre-planning and discovery? Yeah, I mean, you touched on this with Godwin, right? like leaving questions open. Here is one thing that I didn't that is I don't know

is interesting about God one I thought at least and this is terms of like pre-planning and discovery or whatever I came up

with the idea of I like the idea of I wanted to do some sort of barbarian but I wanted to like really play against the type of the character and I really like

playing high status characters and I thought that like a high society woman who has a barbarian's body was like a really, I think that was a fun idea. Who's your most high status? Augustus Parsons? I mean, if you think about like tacos high status, Augustus's high status. Yeah, that's fair point. You know, I like playing that kind of character. I think it's fun. So I came up with the idea

and as I started playing it and this is something that like didn't occur until we started being in the show, the drama of her story was a really close. parallel unintentionally to people who are in bodies that they don't love and that they aren't comfortable in. And I had to, and I realized as I was doing it, like, well, I don't want to try to tell other people's story, even though I didn't, especially not one that I like didn't set out to tell, right? So I had to make the decision at that moment that like, she is going to be someone who this body that she is in, it's about someone who is loving the body

that they're in and learning to love the body that they're in. And that was not a story that I had to, like, that I set out to tell, but it was one that I had to kind of become aware of as we were doing it, right? Because otherwise, and we have definitely done this

before, just through improvving and then sort of like finding the things that feel organic because you have lived them so many times and heard the story so many times. Like, you end up unintentionally paralleling stuff that you didn't necessarily plan to tell. Yeah, I think you did a good job with that.

I'm not the right person to make that call, I'm sure. I don't know about that, Griffin, who better? As far as the mic goes, there was very little pre-play. Like, I think of any character I've ever played in Adventure Zone or anything else. It was the one that I most said that. I wonder if I can find that email pitches for these things. Yeah, that I was like,

I know I want him to be like an Appalachian, like, mountain man monster hunter. And I think Griffin had asked, like, what the motivation is for, like, why he wants to kill Dracula. And I think I was like, yeah, like a family, like a family of monster hunters. And like they've, but then like the stuff with like the invisible man and go get his teeth to make. Like that was all like, okay, cool, man. And what I really actually loved about that and continued to be a thing throughout is that there was. no passion in Mutt's desire to kill. Oh, no, I think it was like he wants to retire from monster hunting, but doesn't want to do it with like the Muttner family name being like associated with failure.

So wants to kill Dracula so that he can comfortably retire. And like, yeah, so there was no passion in it. There was no like, I am a monster slayer or good versus evil. It's just a job, you know, it's just like, oh, I do it because that's what. the Muntner family does. And getting to play it as like, not like full of vitriol and emotion, but just like,

yeah, man, it's what I've always done. It's what I know, man. I think for Philo, first of all, I think the big prep for me was learning the new class, learning the artificer. And I think that kind of informed a lot of,

of Philo slash Pinocchio's personality after that, because he had to be a scavenger. And I think that became kind of a keynote of his personality that, you know, he'd pick up this junk and, you know, saved his own body and used magic to shrink things down into components. And that whole junk dealer, McGiver kind of angle, I think, was kind of informative for, he's a crossway McGiore and Fred Sanford. I can see that. I loved the sense of exploration, our of experimentation,

that Philo approached everything with. I also want to highlight when Philo turned into a fish to swim into the heart and swim up the bloodstream. And that was one of my favorite moments as mutt is that I was like, I'm gonna sneak over there. You guys wait here and I'll signal you when the coast is clear.

And then you guys both instantly did other things. Just beefed it. And in character being like, okay. And then mutt turns back and neither one of them are there. It's no fun to just hide. I know. It was perfect. I did want us just real quick.

I found Justin's slack message to me, December 14th, 20203. You think a barbarian would be okay? Fighter just looks really boring. Me, sure. Justin. Okay, here's the pitch. She has body parts from several different fighters, but her head doesn't know about fighting. So rage for her is like letting muscle memory take over.

Oh, oh, oh, fuck. Her head is like Maggie Smith. That's the end of communication between me and Justin. on his character. Oh, that's how the magic happens, folks. That's how, that's how, that's the character creation product.

Oh, oh, oh, fuck. Her head is like Maggie Smith. Kick ass, dude. This one's for me, but I think we can all talk about it because it's a question that shows up in a lot of these. Let's see.

Zip and a lot of others say, this question's for Griffin. I was curious to know if there was a public domain character you really wanted to use. But for some reason, they got put on the cutting room floor. Also, for everyone else,

was there a character you really wanted to see in the adventure once you knew Griffin was going for public domain characters. Is this your trailer for upcoming live shows? No, I don't have any live show ideas. I have some, if we wanted to return to TAS versus something else for like another short season, some ideas. But I don't think I'm like, I don't know, sitting on big ones. But man, if you look at the list of public domain characters, it's fucking crazy. How much stuff is on there.

Thank you, humanity. Yeah, Benz, you know, that's such a wild thing to say, man. If you look at all the characters ever created in human history other than the last 75 years, we've really done some amazing stuff of the millennia.

No, I'm saying as a... Like Homer? Ooh. Fuck, have you guys seen you're dizzy? Is this wild, man? He's going to all the different islands. We could do that for free. Like, no problem.

This is what I... We don't have to pay Homer's estate. a single dollar. I mentioned this earlier, right? I think that there are a lot of ways of looking at the choices that largely I have made this season. Just real quick,

I love this. Griffin, just, I want to say Taz versus Comedia del Art before I forget about it. Yeah, put that out there. Taz versus Dante's Inferno. Okay, go on, Griffin. You hear about the dark pictures and black. And you think that is a

That is a crass marketing effort to take these great works. Is Guernica in the public domain yet? Can we do Taz versus Guernica? To take these great works and put them into the grinder to fill with a Tom Cruise sausage. You see that and you say gross. As an artist, capital A artist and writer, looking at the list of public domain works

is like challenges that are fun and exciting, I feel like. How can we do a wolf, how can we do a Wolfman? How can we do a Pinocchio and have it make sense in this world? That's so much easier than just coming up with a whole new fucking idea. That could be anything. That could be anything. I know we kind of backed it. Not kidding.

That's 100% on the nose. But like it is, I think another strength of the season is that so much of the like chunky shoe leather of world building is sort of pre-built, right? It's Dracula. Yeah. Moving on. You know what I mean? Yeah, right.

There's a shared, like, vocabulary. And then anything we do and any choices we make with those characters is the informative stuff. Like, okay, it's like Dracula, but he loves to party with Wolfman. I know that about, yeah, it was, it's fucking great. It's genuinely super duper, especially for live shows, it's so fucking hard to come up with an idea for a live show. It is so hard to come up with an idea of something that's going to work in like an hour

and a half with some wiggle room. Like, yeah. if things go wrong and there's an audience and like there's all these different parts that are just like impossible to start putting down the groundwork for and having the prompt of the great Gatsby or moby dick is like yeah it's like oh okay well how can you turn moby dick into like a d and d thing that's so that's so actionable and so exciting and so fun to like figure out how those two things interweave uh and so like i genuinely i don't i don't look forward to going back to a season where i don't have this huge like,

I don't know, creative pool to be able to... I think Sherlock Holmes would be fun. Holmes is big. Travis, like, I think the only request I got all season for, like, can you please put this guy?

It was Sherlock Holmes in your sort of like conclusion. But I felt like Mutt had so much stuff that he had changed about the world fundamentally. But not about him. Mutt was unchanged. There was no character. No, absolutely.

He was the, He was the rock in the middle of the Zen Garden. Yeah. That is not interested in shifting around. But you know, there's a lot of detective fiction that could be parlayed. I mean, like, some Agatha Christie. If we did do Sherlock Holmes, I would want to play a different game. I would want to play Sherlock Holmes Consulting Detective.

But like, it's so weird to do, like, we have played a game called Sherlock Holmes and a vampire before. It's very wild if we were to do. A different Sherlock Holmes game than our Sherlock Holmes and a vampire game. With Sherlock Holmes and a vampire? Yeah, that's a good point. Can I ask, may I ask one? Sure, sure. From Theo.

Theo is very complimentary about how we're not quite as bad at D&D players as we used to be. Love all that compliments in these guys. It really hits home. Thank you. Thank you, Theo. Yeah. But then Theo asks, and what is something in the world of TTRPS that you are yet to explore

and looking forward to in the future, I would like to lead off by saying we have really wanted to do like a big hind-liney space opera. Yeah, sure. You know. We do kind of do that already.

Well, I know. Yeah, well. With Hootie and the Nannies. And a little bit with the Star Blaster. That world is so much more. I mean, this is the thing about Hootie and the Nannies, and like, some people may not even be, I don't know, if you don't listen to live ones, you haven't heard of hooty any

it's. You've never heard who do you. It's an original, like, the idea of like a space opera is like, is a, I like that vibe better than, that's a more fun space world than we're going to make if we set out to do like, we want our mass effect, you know, but. Yeah, sure, right. I am still very interested to see, I want to, we've always tried, talked about trying to do a horror and like, I don't know.

if we could pull it off. I legitimately don't know if we could make it work. I mean, Monster of the Week is very much a horror game. Yeah, but like, we've never done. We have a week. I mean, I wouldn't call Supernatural, like, a horror. It's exciting, but you're not trying to, you're not trying to scare people, right? Like, I don't know that we've done one other than, I guess, like, no, I mean, I don't think we've done one trying to scare people.

And I don't know that we could. Like, I don't know if it could, I don't know the context of which we could expose people. of that. Like, we've talked about trying to do something live around Halloween, but it's like, that may be an absolute bomb, like, live on stage. I still really, I still really want to play 10 candles. Do you guys remember that one? Me telling you the premise of 10 can. You have 10 candles, and it's sort of like your HP, and you have these cards about with your, like, traits on it that you burn in or with one of the candles in a little bowl. I don't know if we can do that in a live show, actually, because I don't think that most theaters will allow you to set flame to paper on stage. Yeah.

stage? Yeah. Probably let you use electric candles. That's not as cool. I think, though, in general, another one of the things that I think worked in this season, as far as, like, stuff we haven't explored yet, is I think that sometimes you can get in your own way by trying to say, like, I want to do something I haven't done yet, something completely original, something that doesn't feel like I'm rehashing old stuff.

And I think that that isn't necessarily always conducive to creativity. Sure. where I think, like, for example, I think one could make a comparison between like Merrill and Philo, both men of the cloth and blah, blah, blah, but they ended up being wildly different characters and, like, you know, making different choices than each other would make. And so I think that trying to get into a mindset of like, well, I want to do something completely different than we've ever done before can block creativity sometimes. Yeah. I also just want to say that I'm deeply interested in the entire sort of kids on bikes. Yeah. I'd really like to do one of those.

I don't know which of those myriad things we would want to do, but they have sort of a system for most genres, it seems. Here's one from Helena, who says, and to others, who asked, did you anticipate this campaign running as long as it did, or did you expect it to last longer? Definitely not the latter. This was this is part of a sort of initiative we've kind of taken after Ethersea to do shorter to do shorter seasons like the what uterus space was was at four or five episodes we yeah I mean we've been trying to I guess steeple chase how long was steeplechase how many episodes that was like 30ish right that's about the same length as Dracula yeah I think we've been trying to kind of like do shorter form stuff 42. But 42, wow. I think that we had a conversation after recording a few episodes of Taz versus Dracula, where we were like, we should do a little, we should do more with this. We should try to, you know, see how far this thing goes.

If anything, I will say, as we were trying to plan for the next season, there was a, I would say multiple times over a series of months where someone would say to Griffin, like, how many more episodes you think this is going to go? So we could plan when it. And Griffin's like, I don't know, man, maybe eight. And then it'll be like, no, no, maybe 10, maybe 12 more. Yeah, I think it was originally the date I said was, yeah, it'll wrap in April. And I think it just finished up in August.

So I missed that by just a little bit. It's fucking hard to figure that shit out when you're doing it weekly. It's like really tough to kind of like, I don't know, adjust the scope of the thing with that kind of turn around. Hey, let's talk about what we're doing next. Huh? I would love to do that. Yeah. What's going on?

we're gonna be playing poker and then just kind of talk about the hands that we're going to know we're going to know we got the silliness out of our system it's time to get serious again hardcore

rules lots of them pluses minuses you won't you won't believe how many these when we

sit in together to try and figure out what the next season is I feel like we all kind of make hard cells for our ideas if we have any and I think Travis lead off. So in doing this, I think it was Griffin, who proposed the challenge of like, think about the thing that you would run that just makes complete and absolute sense that you would be the one to do it, like that it just makes complete sense that you're doing it.

And literally that night I was trying to fall asleep and I couldn't and it just smashed into my brain. And the next day I got on a call with them and I was like, guys, one word. Abnibals. And abnables... Just instant. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Obviously. Yeah, of course it's it.

Here we go. Abimals is the blanket term that I use. I've talked about on my brother, my brother me, and McRoy family clubhouse numerous times of like those 90s and 2000s cartoons of like animal heroes with muscles in places. They should not have muscles,

these teams of guys. And so that's the concept. And then we were going through rules systems and everything and nothing fit so I developed my own kind of very simple it's like three and a half pages

of rules for the game and basically set up of like you have abs kind of skills the two skills are abs and animals yeah abs skills easy to keep track of yeah yeah I don't I don't think we need to break down

there's an episode zero that I think is probably going up but it's it's It's going to be swear free. Swear free. So if you want to... No cussing in this season. Cussing bothers you and you got people you want to listen to that don't like cussing, this won't have cussing. Yeah.

Can we talk about that decision for a bo-it? Because that might seem out of left field for our program. Yeah. So as we were planning the season, talk about it and talking about like the source material that it was inspired by, we started talking about like, oh, maybe it has like a Saturday morning cartoon five and blah blah. And then that led to what if it was something that people whose kids have started getting into Adventure Zone and role playing games and this kind of thing could listen to without needing to turn the volume knob down real quick or say, but you're not allowed to say

that at school. They can say it. It's okay for them to say that word, but you can't say that word. Yeah, exactly. And so... Who do you think I have the toughest time with that between us four? Oh, it's Griffin. Are you kidding me? You say that dude. I pop them off without thinking quite a bit. Justin drops some heavy ones, some heavy doobies. Yeah, I'm excited.

I know that Henry has an interest in Taz, but also like it's a foul program made by badmen who say raunchy stuff nonstop. So it'll be great, personally speaking, to have something that I can show him for that. Killer. Well, I'm looking forward to doing it with you guys. Is there anything else you wanted to say about abnibals?

Yeah. Do you guys want to say who your characters are? I'll save that. Let's save it. There's a whole episode for that. It's fun. You're going to listen to it. It's good.

Oh, what about the music? Yeah, without saying anything about it, the theme song is unlike anyone we've had before. I didn't make this. I didn't fucking touch this one. Yeah, we can't reveal it because it's coming out pretty soon, and it's going to be a whole thing. But it's maybe my favorite. I love it very much.

It's just very funny. It's been stuck in my head for months. Yeah, and thank you again to John Legend for... I mean, oh, Griffin. Shit. But I do think it's important to say that we're... Another part of Abdomals is continuing this kind of footloose, fancy, free, really enjoying the moment.

Yeah, it's a fun. and having fun with it. Yeah. Within the no cussing structure. Sure. Dad has not cuss so far. Dad is crushing the no cussing game. He's so freaking good at it.

Do you think that it's not just no cussing, but content-wise? I mean, I will say that there is thought put towards it, but no promises. I like that trap. I think in our character descriptions, we do describe them as sexy animals,

which abnibals are, I think, as a rule. It's right there in the name. That's the baseline right there. So if that is unacceptable, maybe wait for, we'll do, dad played a Smurf RPG when we were at Jencom. Maybe we'll do an all-smurf season. That'll be like totally TVY7 minimum.

So make sure you stick with us for that and so much more. That is it for this breakdown of Taz versus Dracula. genuinely, I just want to say again, I think it's the most fun I've had doing this show with you guys, and I really, really, really enjoyed kind of like focusing on on goofs first with y'all.

That is like always the most, that's always the most enjoyable that I think us working together is is when we kind of... And I'm sure during the break, you heard all the announcements, but just real quick, so it doesn't pass us by. We're going to be at Rose City Comic-Con

coming up pretty soon. So make sure you come out and see us there. Yeah. Okay, everybody. Until next time, when we'll recap Taz Abimals, do we want to give people like a sneak preview clip of

when the milk came out of Dad's character? No, we're just going to end it, Griffin. No, absolutely not. We just talked about difficult concepts and having to explain them from children. Let's just be honest, guys.

We never came up with a way of ending the Adventure Zone zone that didn't give us hives. We just have no. I have a great idea. Good, good, bye, bye. Bye. Maximum Fun.

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