The Adventure Zone

The Adventure Zone is a weekly comedy and adventure actual play podcast, in which the McElroy family play Dungeons & Dragons along with other role-playing games. The show is distributed by the Maximum Fun network and hosted by brothers Justin, Travis, and Griffin McElroy, and their father Clint McElroy. Regular episodes of the podcast feature the family solving puzzles, fighting enemies, and leveling up their characters in a series of cinematic and humorous encounters. The Adventure Zone originated as a special episode of My Brother, My Brother and Me in 2014, which was spun off into a separate biweekly podcast later that year. The first 69 episode campaign Balance was followed by a series of short experimental arcs in the late 2010s, and subsequent campaigns have generally run for 30 to 45 episodes. To date, eleven campaigns have been depicted in a variety of game systems, with further settings used for live shows and donor bonus material. The show switched to a seasonal format from 2022, in which the family can return to earlier settings for further episodes. The podcast has been credited alongside Critical Role with the Dungeons & Dragons renaissance that began in the mid 2010s, and influenced later shows in the actual play genre such as Dimension 20. Balance has since been adapted into a New York Times best selling graphic novel series. The podcast is often represented by the stone rune ᛥ as a logo, which was the symbol of the Bureau of Balance in the first campaign.