While I toyed around with Dungeons & Dragons at several points in my life, it wasn’t until the McElroys started their podcast The Adventure Zone that I truly “got” how to enjoy D&D and what the experience of my own tabletop adventure could be. There was one moment in particular that has always stuck with me, which is when DM Griffin McElroy, exasperated, seems to decide on the fly to rename a side character “Barry Bluejeans” (originally it was Sildar Hallwinter, as they were playing starting from the 5th edition tutorial mainstay Lost Mine of Phandelver). It is a very silly, very dumb name… and yet over the course of hundreds of hours of their first saga, Barry and in fact all the characters go through a truly epic and at times emotional campaign — one that is so, so, so removed from the Phandelver story they started with.
The Adventure Zone taught me how to effectively DM, and also that I don’t need to build adventures around esoteric terms and highfalutin names when you can still make compelling narratives. The podcast is absolutely worth a listen, but more often these days I find myself skimming through the Adventure Zone graphic novels, which in many ways feel like a remix that take what made the improvised saga so great and adapt it to the pages, featuring amazing artwork form Carey Pietsch. [Disclosure: Justin McElroy and Griffin McElroy are co-founders of Polygon.] —RM
