The The Adventure Zone Zone: Royale Wrap-Up!

The Adventure Zone - The McElroys

The McElroys wrap up their 'Tas Royale' season with a meta discussion about the podcast's unique structure, character development, and audie

Key takeaways

• The survival game structure of Tas Royale unexpectedly led to deep, personal character transformations rather than predetermined destinies.

Main topics

• Character development in a competitive, survival-based narrative
• The impact of unexpected events on player decisions (e.g., Rictus's key theft)

Notable quotes

"After I went through so much... it forced him to steal a key, and it ended up costing Bobby Dazzler his life."

"I was honestly surprised at how kind of single-minded you were. It was because of that moment."

Conclusion

The McElroys celebrate Tas Royale as a uniquely compelling season wher

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:03) Hello, Speaker 7 (0:37) everybody, and welcome to VV Adventure Zone Zone, the world's only podcast about a podcast hosted by the members of that original podcast. And appearing Speaker 6 (0:48) in the feed. And Speaker 7 (0:49) appearing in the Speaker 5 (0:50) feed of the original. Yeah, that's true. It Speaker 6 (0:52) is Speaker 5 (0:52) somehow part of the podcast and not part of the podcast at the Speaker 6 (0:56) same time. The podcast Speaker 7 (0:57) they do about the podcast when they don't. when they're not doing the current podcast. Anyway. This is the Speaker 6 (1:01) true metaverse here. We Speaker 7 (1:03) are gonna be talking about Taz Royale answering your questions. Do you know what Speaker 6 (1:08) they call it in France? Here Speaker 7 (1:10) he Speaker 6 (1:10) goes. Speaker 7 (1:11) I'll be glad, honestly, to see the backside of this joke. I will be. I wanted to get it in one last time, you know? And I'll tell you what was rough is life found a way to. really fuck up our record schedule on this season, like a few times throughout the run of it. So we would have stretches where we did not record, and then I think we would just forget. Let's let the, what do they call it in France? Joke, like rip again. And so this is a sort of 21 gun salute, I feel like. I never forgot. I just thought it was funny every time. Oh, okay. Well, never mind then. We got some questions sent in by you all. to our email. Thank you all so much for sending those in. And you guys ready to get started? Yes. I would say so. That was the first question sent by Mike. Thanks, Mike. Are you Speaker 4 (2:06) ready to get started? Speaker 7 (2:08) Was that serious, Griffin? Here's a question that says, have a good time, guys. And that's from Susan. Susan's question is, was that one real? No, that one wasn't real. Speaker 5 (2:17) That question for you was sent in by David Peterson. He wanted to ask Griffin, was that one real? Whoa. And David, you have your answer. Holy shit. How is this happening? Here's Speaker 4 (2:27) one. Who is David Peterson? That's from Claude. Wow. Claude Speaker 6 (2:33) Peterson, his Speaker 4 (2:33) dad. That sucks, dude. That sucks Speaker 7 (2:35) for David. Yeah, I Speaker 5 (2:35) know. Dude, yes. Sorry, Claude. You have a son, and he's beautiful, and he's a Taz fan, and he's not going to change that for anybody. Oh, Speaker 4 (2:43) man. Speaker 5 (2:45) Sorry, pal. You just don't get it. Speaker 6 (2:46) If you can't handle the volume of the podcast, you're too old. I'm going to ask the first question in Speaker 5 (2:52) the list because it's the only way out of this bit. Was there any moment that made you decide you wanted to play your character differently? And that's from Valerie. Speaker 6 (3:04) Yes. What was it? Oh, okay. In the beginning. God created. Yeah, no. Rictus was a very, I wouldn't say pacifist, but I was really making an attempt because I wanted to play him as a kind of aspiring healer who just happened to have been born a necromancer, but wanted to use his powers to show that you could do good. And then Griffin stole my key. as the gentleman at the end of the first thing. After I went through so much, like, Rictus went through so much to, like, not hurt anybody, and it forced him to, like, steal a key, and it ended up costing Bobby Dazzler his life. Speaker 7 (3:52) Yeah. Speaker 6 (3:53) And that guilt weighed real heavy on Rictus and turned into a vendetta against the gentleman. And then that... sent him down a pathway I had never expected. Yeah, Speaker 7 (4:08) I really enjoyed the pathway that Rictus went down and then had to try and sort of wreck it with, because you were trying to be a nice guy, and then this one dude did this one pretty fucked up thing, and then it was like, I was honestly surprised at how kind of, I don't know, single-minded you were. It was because Speaker 6 (4:28) of Speaker 7 (4:28) that Speaker 6 (4:28) moment, because the death of Bobby Dazzler weighed very heavily on Rictus, and he blamed the cowardice and sneakery of the gentleman for it, and decided that the gentleman did not deserve to win, and in many ways, live. So, I Speaker 5 (4:49) think we were probably going to bump up against this phenomenon a couple of times, but I feel like it's interesting. This is... endemic to TAS Royale in the way it's structured. And part of what I found really interesting about it, like, none of these characters had a quote-unquote story or a, like, destiny kind of story that they would be fulfilling due to the nature of the fact that we were working at cross purposes. So, like, you couldn't go in knowing that, you know, my whole thing as Loravith is, like, I always try to do the right thing and... I always want to help everybody. And also there's this special sword that I'm supposed to get that'll let me kill the super dragon. Like that's not the story. Right. And so I think what Travis is talking about was similar to what I encountered with Duber where it's like, we kind of needed to find our own reason to fight and our own reason to like, maybe motivation as a character is a better sort of. uh, way of putting it is where I think everybody kind of went in with this general sort of like, um, I want to go in and win this thing in order for us to have compelling stories that couldn't be everybody's main focus. Yeah. So I think that like, I, at least both, I think Travis, I think all three of the characters actually really had like turns where it's like, oh, so this is the kind of story that they are going to be sort of dealing with. And we were, discovering that, I think, sort of as it happened. Speaker 7 (6:18) Yeah. I really, really enjoyed that about this season. We've done some debriefing ourselves, which we didn't record, if you can believe it or not. Sometimes we talk about our shit just for us, just for Speaker 6 (6:29) funsies. And it's content right down the toilet. Speaker 7 (6:32) It's content right down the toilet, but it's, you know, that's how the sausage gets made, the toilet sausage. Like in prison. There were, I think that the... The structure of like the killing game, the survival game was at times something we had to kind of work against. But I do really, really, I did enjoy how it kind of forced us to sort of like localize all of the stories and all of the events to like what was happening on this island during this, you know, conclave. And I feel like it was a lot easier to sort of. see what you guys were like jiving with and trying to just really, really hone in on that stuff. Whether it was like the beef with the gentlemen or Justin adopting an adult man or, you know, hell gram it's sort of will he, won't he kind of pursuit of power. And the bridegroom thing, I Speaker 6 (7:34) think was a big like hook for hell gram of like, what's the deal with Akari? I think was Speaker 5 (7:40) the Speaker 6 (7:40) name of it, and Hal Graham. There was also a moment, and I don't know if you meant for it to be this big of a lure for me and Rictus, but when we set his house on fire, and you talked about near the end, as Rictus avoided the time freeze, that there was a look of pure hatred in the gentleman's eyes, and I was like, oh, this dude sucks. He's gotta go down. Like, this has gone from like, we have a beef with each other to like, oh, I hate him. This is Speaker 7 (8:15) what's interesting to me about the gentleman and about Rictus is like, all the stuff that a gentleman really did to you, you guys were also kind of, like, it is a game of betrayal and killing. And I feel like at certain points, certainly you participated in that. You all kind of participated in that. So like, You being set off by the gentleman's look of hatred after you burned his house down is like, yeah, he's gonna look, he is gonna look that way. I tried my very best to play the gentleman not as like a mustache twirling, like, yeah, he stole your key because like that's what his power allows him to do. And so he did it. He used his power to survive. And it really wasn't anything personal. I didn't have any kind of like plans for him to be your nefarious kind of arch rival, but it kind of. I had to go that route because you hated his fucking guts so bad. He was just such a wiener. He was a huge wiener. Don't get me wrong. Absolutely. I Speaker 4 (9:14) felt like Al Grammett was pretty much on task. Speaker 4 (9:22) Almost the whole season. I mean, I think what varied was what he let people see. And for us, that was kind of tough to play, to try and keep Hellgrammet's motivations and his real state of mind hidden from you guys. Speaker 7 (9:45) Yeah. Speaker 4 (9:46) You did it so well, though, Dad. Speaker 7 (9:49) You did, Dad. Again, we talked about this before when we started debriefed. I loved Hellgram. It's a whole fucking deal, man. I never knew what you were going to do. Like, I really, truly didn't know what you were going to do and whether or not you were having this change of heart or whether it was, like, all for, you Speaker 6 (10:10) know, for play pretend. I mean, I guess it's all for play. You were so consistent and yet indecipherable at the same time. It was so fun. Speaker 5 (10:18) I'll also say that like, I'm not down with the bug man is one of the first angles that I found a way in with Laura. Like that was like, and it was very, I will say this, that can, that energy can get kind of like to listen to. And especially if the other player is like taking it personally, but like you. Hellgram it rolled with it in such a like accepting way that it was fun every time. Like it never felt bad. It's like, because you knew it was like, go ahead, funny man. You got your own, dislike me all you want. I got to kind of my own thing going, which like worked because I never really like had insight to it as more of it. It was just always sort of like, fuck this guy. Speaker 6 (11:01) It was one of the things that I really enjoyed about this season. Cause it was fun to play with of like the three of them ended up. working together a lot, but I don't think they ever got like close, you know, and we were never having deep conversations about our backstories and our wants and needs. Yeah. I Speaker 4 (11:19) mean, discouraged. They weren't a party. We talked about that on that train trip when we first started talking about Royale was that the big challenge was going to be that, you know, we weren't going to be, weren't going to start off as buddy buddies. And we weren't going to come together as a team because that is antithetical to what the whole setup of the arc was. That eventually, Speaker 2 (11:48) I Speaker 4 (11:48) mean, the three of us would be pitched against each other and two of us were not going to survive. Speaker 6 (11:58) Speaking of Hellgrammet, Nicole asks, Hellgrammet might be my favorite character Clint has played. I found his pathetic and self-serving nature hilarious and unique. What was the inspiration behind Hellgrammet? Speaker 4 (12:12) Blackadder. Oh, yeah. That makes sense. And kind of a combination of the four main seasons of Blackadder and the fact that Rowan Atkinson played these different Blackatters as sometimes obsequious and, you know, sometimes, you know. Speaker 4 (12:35) acting like he was hungry for friendship and, you know, camaraderie and all this other stuff. But always with a little bit of a sneak. So Blackadder, one of my all-time favorite. TV shows of any kind. And so, yeah. Especially Black Energy. And Zorak, right? Huh? Speaker 6 (12:58) And Zorak. Speaker 4 (12:59) And Zorak. Well, Zorak physically, yeah. And the voice came from Zorak. Yeah. Yeah. And I always had a little Zorak right there next to me, you know, for inspiration. So, yeah, I loved playing him. He really was fun. And I kind of, I mean, I missed the... team coming together kind of angle. I'm not going to lie. That's always one of my favorite things about, you know, Taz. But this has such a fun, cool energy to it that, you know, it was kind of a joy to see. Justin, did you ever get a little John Blackthorn Speaker 6 (13:37) from Shogun little pop list? I mean, he slipped into that, I Speaker 7 (13:42) think, a couple Speaker 6 (13:43) times talking Speaker 5 (13:45) about it. Guys, look at D &D Beyond. That's been my character icon the entire time. I Speaker 6 (13:52) locked Speaker 5 (13:52) it right away. Because it's like, I don't know, it's Speaker 2 (13:56) a Speaker 5 (13:56) great, it's like, I'm just gonna do. As much as I love Shogun, the show, the thing that really sticks with us is for some reason doing impressions of Shogun is really funny. There's like this one, and I Speaker 6 (14:09) don't know, I really Speaker 5 (14:10) love that. No, because I remember Speaker 6 (14:11) you doing the impression of him describing the world as you know it to me a couple times after we started watching the show. Speaker 5 (14:17) Yeah, and that's like, yeah, I don't know. That is absolutely my inspiration for his voice. Speaker 7 (14:24) There was a question from Kelly and Julia towards y'all and me about whether you picked your spell that you wanted to do first and then base the character around that or if you had the character and then you just kind of picked the spell for it. I'm curious what your guys' answers were. Speaker 4 (14:40) The initial spell that we had? I think that Swarm was always Hellgrammit's go-to. But Speaker 6 (14:49) did you pick Swarm first or did you decide to play Infestation or decide to play Thrykeen and then find that spell? Speaker 7 (14:57) Yeah, this is a chicken and egg question. Did you pick your spell first or did you pick the character first? Speaker 6 (15:01) Because I found Wither and Bloom in the list of spells and I liked the idea. of a necromancy spell that harmed and healed at the same time. Yeah. Right? And that gave me the idea of the dichotomy for a necromancer that wanted to be a healer. And Griffin allowed me to, because it was a level two spell. Right. And I was like, can we make a level one version of this? Because I have this idea for a character. I Speaker 4 (15:26) think the character came first. I think Hellgrammat came first. I think the Thrakeen angle of it was a big part of it. Speaker 4 (15:36) Yeah, I did it informed of... Speaker 4 (15:41) of insect powers and insect magic. Cause there's, there's, you know, quite a few insect based things, you know, wall crawler and, you know, all of the stuff like that. So I kind of, I think now hellgrammit came first and then I was lucky enough to find infestation because I had used something similar as Zooks. The, yeah, you know, the, the, I think we, it was even infestation, wasn't it? But it was sea-based Speaker 7 (16:11) creatures. Speaker 4 (16:12) I mean, he had other Speaker 7 (16:13) spells. Speaker 4 (16:14) We didn't have that. He was also Speaker 7 (16:15) a ranger, if memory serves me right. Yeah. Geez, what about you? Just a cool, Speaker 5 (16:21) it's a good, if you get one spell, it's a good sort of all-purpose, you know, you can lash things, you can grab things, you can pretend it's a grappling hook and see if the DM will let you get away with it. Yeah. You Speaker 7 (16:37) can Speaker 5 (16:37) use lightning lure. Speaker 5 (16:39) I also read that it's the, it does more than its fair share of damage for a cantrip. So I went, I just, yeah, man, cool. Speaker 6 (16:52) Dad, I had a follow-up question for you. Did you ever figure out what your biokinesis school of whatever it was that you took was? Or what it did? It Speaker 7 (17:00) really scared the shit out of me when you, when you, Biomancy, I think. Biomancy, that was it. Speaker 4 (17:07) I kind of goofed around with there was one where you could detach your hand and another one where you could grow in size or shrink in size. But there's already a power, I mean, like enlarge and all that stuff. You know, I think it got to the point. Where we had too many spells. Yeah. I think that's a good observation. I think that – and I mean that when you just have a handful of spells, it forces you to try to think of creative ways to do it. And I'm kind of infamous for getting yelled at for that. But no, I love the idea of the Biomancy, but I just don't think we ever – between me and Griffin, I don't think we ever really got a handle on what to do with it. Speaker 7 (18:01) Yeah, Speaker 4 (18:01) the Speaker 7 (18:01) bigger issue, and there was a question, let me see if I can find it, about sort of the way that we handled magic and not utilizing a lot