The The Adventure Zone Zone: Abnimals Wrap-Up!

Hi, everybody.

Welcome to The Adventures End Zone,

the premiere podcast in which we talk about the podcast that we normally do on a different podcast within the podcast feed itself.

It's called Gaze Into Our Navel with Us.

Yeah.

We want you to come to the very edge of our navels, our collective navels, and stare into us with them.

Don't make us stare into our own navels alone.

Join us in our navel.

Come into our belly button world.

Look.

You can go all the way in there.

There's some lint.

A little bit of lint in there.

We're going to be discussing the season we just wrapped up.

Abnimals,

talking about the next season.

Ooh.

And we have lots of great questions here.

So let's dive right in.

From Devin, were there other animals you considered choosing?

If so, what were they?

Bonus question for Travis.

If you were to make a hero character, what animal would you choose and why?

Devin, did you listen to the season?

Because Travis made about 40 hero characters.

Yeah, but I don't know that I'd play as any of that.

I think if I was going to make a character, it would be like a golden retriever.

Yeah.

kind of dude, like that was just really,

you know, ready to do anything, eager to please, happy to be anywhere doing anything.

I like the idea of like a himbo, like a Mr.

Peanut Butter kind of like himbo.

That's your vibe.

I mean, that's the vibe.

Yeah, it's my vibe in general, yeah.

I never considered another animal because I actually came into Abnoles with the concept of a spy cow already fully formed.

I pitched a children's book

called Bovine International Cow of Mystery.

Wow.

That

was, surprisingly, not picked up by a publisher.

They were just too afraid.

They were too afraid of Johnson.

It was too real.

Yeah, it was too real.

Breaking the mold.

So I already had the cow spy thing and the ridiculousness of him trying to be a master of disguise and a dancer and all that stuff.

So

I was on Roger right away.

So in a way, the character was also a funeral for the search.

Yes, absolutely.

It's like a living memorial.

Just accubai.

But if a publisher wants to pick up the adventures of Roger Moore, give me a call.

Navy Seal was my first thought, best thought.

Didn't come up with another one.

Got it in one.

I think I was the last one to make my character

because I wanted a good gag.

And this was, I think, soon after our

Mabimbam year where I dressed up as

a sailor boy.

And so I guess I had stolen valor on the, on the, on my brain.

And that's where Navy Seal came from.

I just know kids like Axolotls.

Yeah, that's how it's real big.

They're big, they're big.

So I, I, I did that so my kids would like me.

I mean, like, period.

I feel like if it, we all kind of had the same thing of like finding our thing and settling on it, because if this specific game and this specific world, I feel like if you look at the full breadth of what,

you know, the entirety of the ecosphere offers to you,

like, it would be impossible to choose choose uh to choose just one

um

from uh larry speaking of roger roger moore's backstory of being an alien is awesome what inspired that and will we ever get more stuff about it maybe i love it this is the question that you picked mac yeah it just ran by random

chance what cartoons were your biggest inspirations for the season i think this is to all of us which do you think abnormals ended up resembling the most thank you for the great podcast macro Family.

I look forward to hearing your answers.

Basically, Roger being an alien,

Travis said there are three ways: the three origin points.

Was it three, Trav, or four?

Three, three, origin points.

No, there were three.

And he to be a mute, to be evolved, or to be an alien.

Yeah.

And Travis said, the other guys have kind of taken on mutate and evolved, so why don't you take aliens?

And I said, yeah, great.

So it was kind of a natural after that.

We really didn't discuss the, um

i don't know the the major sort of things that that would bring to our characters the fact that you were an alien and that justin i think axolal used to be a human and then turned into an axolotl is that that is so interesting griffin that has kind of gone back and forth a bit of a moving target there yeah you would think there's some context like it would come up in conversation like by the way my planet bove lacks nine or whatever yeah i think from what i remember the the can i came up with is that if he was an axelal before, he does not remember it because as an axolal, he wouldn't have formed memories in the sense that we do think of them.

So, Axel Isle only knows himself to be a Axel Isle.

Love that.

But I think along those lines, to answer the second half of your question, Larry, so the cartoons, I mean, there's a long list of Abnimals cartoons that I pulled from.

Cowboys the Moon Mesa, Biker Mice from Mars, TNH Mutant Ninja Turtles, of course,

even stuff like gargoyles,

Road Rovers, there's a lot, right?

And one of the things,

there was, of course, you know, the inspiration of the abnormal stuff, but also there was a lot of like, yeah, man, there's backstory and justification for things,

but it's all very like surface level.

Like, they don't get into the science of like, they're street sharks.

How do they breathe?

Right.

Like, that's not as important as,

like,

we all need you to accept that these are half human, half sharks that, like, ride motorcycles and stuff and play, you know, street hockey or whatever.

And if you can buy into that enough, we're golden.

It's great.

So, like, the backstories are pretty malleable within those shows as to like what's going on and why and how they got there.

And, you know, know, it was less about

strict factual adherence as much as it was like, yeah, that's fun for this episode.

That's great.

Yeah.

You know, here's a question from Frankie.

I'd love to know what writing and creating the theme song for this season was like since it's so unique compared to other seasons.

Juice, do you want to, I feel like you spearheaded the sort of

coordination on this.

Yeah, I wrote it.

Yeah, I wrote it.

I wrote it is what you meant to say, Griffin.

I wrote it.

You sort of by yourself on the baseline yeah so i i wanted to try it and i came up with like sort of a very very very loose song idea and then i went to eric near who has done a lot of the jingles for us for backward family clubhouse and eric's also done the music for both the charlie burst episodes and i was like listen to this we're kind of messing around with it.

See what you think.

And then Eric reworked the melody and some of the words.

And then

we were talking to jonathan colton about recording it and he uh changed some of the the lyrics and tweaked some of that and the music and gave it a really cool sound and so it was a very neat kind of collaboration um i just wanted to do i thought it would be fun to try something uh to try writing uh a song or at least like the the basis of of one and it was fun and i think it came out pretty cool um we had a question here uh let's see from l

While some, Lamar, are somewhat self-explanatory.

I was wondering where the inspiration of the names of the Greenback Guardians came from.

I don't know why Lamar is self-explanatory, but basically,

I took inspiration from the Teenage Meeting Ninja Turtles all being named after,

I believe, Renaissance artists.

And I like the idea of like a theme to that.

So I went with like adventures

instead of artists in a similar line.

So Lamar was Heddie Lamar, who, along with being an actor,

she also basically

like developed Wi-Fi and GPS and she developed frequency hopping technology.

And then there's Ada Lovelace,

who is like the creator of the idea of programming computers.

There's Isaac Newton for Newton and George Washington Carver for Carver.

Really, the trickiest thing was picking names that worked, one, as names, like singular, we're just going to call him this.

Right.

And like kind of sounded cool as well.

Carver.

So I like such a good thing.

Carver, Lovelace,

Lamar, Newton.

And so like, I went through, I tried to, like, I was thinking about Curry in there.

Yeah.

And I just couldn't.

It was too hard for me to say repeatedly.

And not ended up saying Curry lot that's a good point actually people don't think about that kind of stuff that honestly separates us from the answer when i when i am naming npcs i will noodle on it so long uh especially for like major npcs say it out loud so many times to find one that i can say repeatedly yeah and not sound dumb do i yeah as opposed to the early days when we like snatched tombodette out of the ether well but even tombodette you can say over and over again.

It's fun to say.

It works.

Can we do this one from Margaret?

Loved this season of Taz and have been loving the shorter form goofiness of recent seasons.

I have two questions for y'all.

One, for Travis, how far in advance did you have the big walrus reveal planned?

Was it hard to keep it hidden from your players?

Two, for Clint, Justin, and Griffin, who was your favorite abnormal NPC that you encountered?

This could be from a pun appreciation standpoint or a narrative one.

Travis, do you want to tackle that first, the first one?

Right.

So I told them right away:

there is going to be a character called the Walrus, and there is going to be an NBC who is half Walrus, half man named Walter Russell.

And it will be obvious to you as players that he is the Walrus.

But it is important that your characters don't make that connection until it's revealed.

Because once again, this is kind of playing on a lot of like the Abnimals TV show tropes of having a person who's very obviously the bad guy to the audience.

Like, I was thinking about the, I can't remember the character's name.

I think it's Magnum or Magnus or something in Gargoyles,

who is like so obviously bad, but he's the guy who like moves the castle there.

And the Gargoyles, like, live on top of his building for a while.

And the Gargoyles are like working with him while the audience is like, he's the bad guy.

Yeah, clearly.

This guy's the problem.

And I, so I like.

It's like Magnus, get him.

Yeah, come on.

And not like a cool Magnus like we've seen before.

And so like, it was kind of a running joke amongst us that it was so obvious and the characters never put it together until he revealed it.

There was a fun point in the season, maybe like 10 episodes in or so, where I feel like I was kind of spinning my wheels trying to figure out, try to piece, trying to piece like some of the clues together that you had given us.

And I think my brain was operating in a more,

I don't know,

abstract sort of fashion.

And once you

talk to us very frankly about the Walrus and Walter Russell, the pieces kind of fell into place of like, oh, this is,

this is as simple as, you know, the villain arc in a

Saturday morning cartoon would be.

Exactly.

And I feel like we all really got on board after that.

Favorite NPC?

Yeah.

mine was Eel Patrick Harris.

Come on.

Dang, you took mine.

That's yeah, that's the best.

Are we just talking name?

Are we talking characterization?

In the question, it specified exactly that.

So

we can do both.

Mine is from a narrative perspective.

I'm really...

I love the sort of like cohesive tone of this world being that of a cartoon and therefore not having dire consequences or much violence to speak of whatsoever.

And it is for that reason that I love Chlorophyllis because anytime Chlorophyllis showed up, like the

all the air in the room got sort of sucked out.

And it was like, oh my God, there's an actual,

actual dangerous killer here in this, in this children's

show.

And I always found that very, very entertaining.

Yeah, I, I don't know.

I had a lot of fun

with Hair Dryer.

Yeah.

Oh, yeah, he was great too.

That That was fun to play.

I liked the guy.

I think maybe Hair Dryer came first, and then the name of the business, Dryaria, came second.

And then I was like, oh, yeah, I love this guy very, very much.

And I had a lot of fun playing him.

Artie Fischel as well was really fun.

Artie was good.

That was a good play.

Thank you.

From Neil, the end credit song of many action movies becomes culturally synonymous with the movie itself.

Kiss for a Rose by Seal and Batman Forever.

What I've Done by Lincoln Park and Transformers and Extreme Ways by Moby and the Jason Bourne movies comes to mind.

If you were to pick a licensed rock ballad to play during the live-action Abnimals movie end credits, what would it be?

For me, again, referring to Clor Phyllis, I would say U2's She Moves in Mysterious Ways.

That would be such a weird, wild,

like troubling pick for this show.

Probably Kesha's Animal.

That would be good.

Would be good.

I'm not sure the lyrics of it, but I would say a Fallout Boy cover of Hungry Like the Wolf.

Oh, God, yes.

Okay, from Drew Davenport.

Justin, were you prepared to evolve Axel

if he ever encountered Iodine?

So interesting question, Drew.

There are people who have

one of the things that's interesting about axolotls, there's a lot, is that they don't metamorphize in the sense that we

think of amphibians doing that.

But you can make them, if you give them iodine, they will.

That's weird.

That's a weird thing that is true.

And I thought about that at some point.

I think that it's kind of a classic Taz stumbler, though, because,

you know, you invest these sorts of like private research

times in, and then you just like wait for the opportunity to use them to materialize.

But if you don't communicate them with the other parties, it's rare that you're just going to organically encounter iodine, right?

Like, it's rare that that just like pops up in the story.

So, it never became

salient, if that, if that makes sense.

Travis, were you trying to think of like, how can I slip some iodine into this guy?

Because I have to imagine that that's got to be a tough sort of improv prop early days uh yes uh there was going to be a

temptation you know of iodine where he could have because like axe lyles if i remember correctly one of the reasons he wasn't more ingratiated uh in the amphiba force was because he didn't evolve into a final form like they all did yeah and the idea of like having an iodine injection presented that he could choose to do to join them But then that ended up feeling, I don't know, way too heavy.

Super heavy, dude.

And I was like, yeah, I'm not going to do that.

It seems like too much.

There was a question about your favorite fun fact about the animal archetype that you played.

And I don't know if the iodine thing qualifies for you, Juice.

I worked in a lot of them.

The limb thing is really good.

I try to work in as many axolotl facts as I could because

I mean, I had a bookmark that I just recently deleted that was great axolotl facts for kids.

A hundred great axolotl facts for kids.

And I had that tab opened pretty much all the time we were recording.

I'll tell you what, man, speaking of working things in, I always had, in the back of my mind, trying to find opportunities to chop Axolis limbs off.

And it came up so infrequently, but

I was trying to find opportunities to do it constantly.

Well, Trav, I think the tough thing is it's hard to create the stakes of limb removal, but then keep that specifically targeted to one character.

Just one character.

Yeah.

So, like, if you unleashed like Limbor, the limb-hating man,

right?

And it's like

the one human in the world, it's Limbor, the limb-hating man.

The Limbor baby would have been it.

But go on.

Limbor baby, the limb-hating man.

And everyone's disgusted by him, right?

Yeah.

He's a human being.

But if you put him in a room with some of the other turds, dad probably would have like farted on him so hard.

He cut dad's legs off.

And like Griffin would have been like stealing Valor.

And it turned out that he was in the reserves or something.

And then he would chop Griffin's limbs off.

And then he may not even get to my limbs.

That would be a good thing.

It also just didn't fit with the vibe of a lot of like Saturday morning crowd.

There's very rarely a time where Shredder like rips Donatello's arm off.

Well, you know.

Despite the name, right?

He

shredded nothing in the entire run.

And Lyle didn't really need anybody else.

He chopped off his limbs more often than anybody.

Yeah, that's true.

By the way, that question about animal facts came from Sierra.

Just wondering.

Thank you, Sierra.

Do you have a fun animal fact about

cow must be a tough one, Dad?

Because I feel like cows are pretty mainstream as far as animals go.

I tell you what, I had to stay away from was any reference to

beef or

steaks or I mean, that just seemed to be a bit too much.

Well, you're an alien, right?

The thought of people eating your meat must be so insane.

And

so,

you know, everybody knows they got multiple stomachs.

And maybe I leaned a little too heavy into the fart thing, do you guys think?

Or not enough.

Or not enough.

Well, it was interesting, Dad, because you leaned so, like, that was such a big mechanic you did, but your character was this like debonair, you know, like spy, cool dude who just also farted a lot.

Well, when all you have is a hammer, your farts, your flatulence this season, Dad, was your, this, your farts were your give-a-ghost projector this season.

Yeah, I think you're right.

Yeah.

There was a lot of, but the good thing is you can fit a fart through a round hole, no matter what.

And so that's what that is one good thing.

Can you say the sentence again?

You can fit a fart through a round hole very easily.

You don't have to force it.

Yeah.

Maybe the only good thing.

I couldn't find a ton about Ross Seals, or at least

not before I did just the Zoo of Us, where I learned a lot about Ross Seals.

I think that the crazy siren calls that they do is the most biggest standout thing.

That was fun.

But

the fact that they are so solitary and so territorial, I feel like influenced a lot of the,

I don't know, character choices, certainly between Navy Seal and

Golden Seal.

So that was a bit more coded, I guess, and

not as uh silly.

I hear one of my cats upstairs crying.

You know what they're, you know, what they're upset about.

Just like the state of things and whatever.

No, they're only ever wanting one thing, and that's for me to get the smalls out.

Dad, we don't know how to.

Yeah, they love the smooth bird.

Dad, we want our smooth bird.

We don't have jobs.

We can't buy our own food.

We don't know how to order things.

Dad, we're so scared.

We're cats and we've gained complete human intelligence.

What's happening?

Where are we?

Yeah.

Where are we?

But you know what?

I calm them right down with smalls because you're going to get a package of smalls, right?

You're going to open it up.

You're going to put it in front of your cats there, put it into a bowl, whatever you're going to, I don't know your business.

But when you put it out there, these cats are going to freak out.

And you're also going to see some long-lasting effects.

In my experience, at least, my cats have been a little healthier.

They've had a nice, nice-looking coat, and they just love, they love smalls.

They love it.

Smalls cat food is protein-packed recipes made with preservative-free ingredients.

and it's delivered right to your door and cats.com named it their best overall cat food and get this after switching to smalls 88% of cat owners report overall health improvements for smalls food that's a big deal

for a limited time only because you are I was really proud of that Justin I was really proud

sorry Trav that was great thank you for a limited time only because you're an adventure zone listener you can get 60% off your first smalls order plus free shipping when you head to smalls.com slash adventure That's 60% off when you head to smalls.com slash adventure plus free shipping.

Again, that's smalls.com slash adventure.

Hey, this week we're coming to...

Sorry to interrupt.

I just kind of burst in.

Okay.

Yeah.

Sorry.

Hey, I'm also sorry.

I'm also sorry.

And I'm here and I'm interrupting too.

If you're coming to

our shows this week in San Antonio and Austin, thank you.

If you're not already planning on coming, why not?

We want to see you there.

We need you there.

Join us.

What are you doing?

It's so great.

Yeah.

If if you're coming to the show and you want to have a question you uh you got a question you want answered you want a fear read aloud we got you email that to mbmbam at maximumfund.org and put your city in the subject line in austin and also doing what trap what are we doing in austin buddy well we're doing uh adventure zone versus hercules and it's going to be a real treat You're going to feel happier than you've ever felt in your entire life.

Yeah, we're also coming to Utah and California later this year.

Tickets for all those shows are on sale now.

More info and ticket links are available at bit.ly forward slash McElroy Tours.

Oh, we also have new merch because it's a new month.

Yeah, we got a new month, new merch, new you.

Well, yeah, sort of.

We've got a brand new Gerald t-shirt over there designed by Lynn Doyle.

Go to mackeroymerch.com and check it out.

And 10% of all merch proceeds this month will be donated to Equality Florida, which is dedicated to securing full equality for Florida's LGBTQ community.

So go to macromerch.com to get yours now.

You know, we've been doing My Brother, My Brother, Me for 15 years.

And

maybe you stopped listening for a while.

Maybe you never listened.

And you're probably assuming three white guys talking for 15 years.

I know where this has ended up.

But no, no, you would be wrong.

We're as shocked as you are that we have not fallen into some sort of horrific scandal or just turned into a big crypto thing.

Yeah.

You don't even really know how crypto works.

The only only NFTs I'm into are naughty, funny things, which is what we talk about on My Brother, My Brother, and Me.

We serve it up every Monday for you if you're listening.

And if not, we just leave it out back and goes rotten.

So check it out on Maximum Fun or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we're over 70 episodes into our show.

Let's learn everything.

So let's do a quick progress check.

Have we learned about quantum physics?

Yes, episode 59.

We haven't learned about the history of gossip yet, have we?

Yes, we have.

Same episode, actually.

Have we talked to Tom Scott about his love of roller coasters?

Episode 64.

So, how close are we to learning everything?

Bad news.

We still haven't learned everything yet.

Oh, we're ruined!

No, no, no, it's good news as well.

There is still a lot to learn.

Woo!

I'm Dr.

Ella Hubber.

I'm regular Tom Lum.

I'm Caroline Roper, and on Let's Learn Everything, we learn about science and a bit of everything else too.

And although we haven't learned everything yet, I've got a pretty good feeling feeling about this next episode.

Join us every other Thursday on Maximum Fun.

Liz the Wiz asks, for the players, how did using a custom system affect your ability to inhabit the characters in the world?

And for me, how did using your own system affect preparation for each session compared to to Urban Shadows or D ⁇ D?

Liz also asked, are there any plans to release this system publicly?

Yeah, we're going to put that out.

It's very bare bones.

Yeah.

Right?

So it's not like, this is going to be the one that sweeps the TTRPG nation, but it's a good starting point, I think, if you want to build on it and stuff like that.

I feel like games come at this.

uh come at this question in different ways like there are some games like blades in the dark where the the tone and the world and the setting are so ingrained in

the game and its mechanics and like maps and all that stuff.

And then there are games where like the aesthetic is pretty well defined just by the genre.

And so it kind of stays out of your way for the most part.

And I felt that way about this.

about this game.

Like when we made our characters, Travis was like, come up with your own special moves.

So like there's a lot of, there's, there's, I, I enjoyed that process a lot because it made me feel a lot of ownership over my character rather than like, uh, you know, I'm trying to pick a

power off of a list of powers and trying to make it fit in what the character was that I had, that I had envisioned.

That was my goal in the character creation aspect was I, I wanted it to be play these characters the way you want to play them so that they feel very unique to you and to the like animal you've picked and the way you know the style you want to approach it with and everything.

Instead of just being like, here's a rogue, right?

Choose a rogue archetype that you want to do.

But we did still fill archetype.

Like, I do think there is a temptation there that is hard to resist of like, I'll be the tank and

Roger will be sort of the infiltrator and Axelisle will be sort of the brawler.

And I think that's just natural.

And I like the flexibility of the system, too.

I mean, you could

and the fact that you could fail and it would still benefit you in some ways with the different points you could build up and everything else.

I think it's also cool that it's sort of mixed for like team play.

Like combat is balanced, I think, for like to be to make sense in a group.

context.

Like it's not, it doesn't incentivize going off on your own and prioritizing your own individual goals, which feels in step with the sort of like,

you know, TV that it's in conversation with.

Yeah, as far as the using the system to like prepare for sessions and stuff, I think that

like combat is a great example where I tried to look at it once again from the perspective of like the TV shows that we were basing it off of.

So the idea of like, you know, these four ninja turtles versus like a hundred foot clan things, right?

And it not being the danger isn't like the damage that's going to be done

to, you know, the ninja turtles so much as it is the sheer number that they have to deal with.

Yeah.

And so trying to balance things that way where there was a lot more like swarms of enemies are descending and you need to make it easier on yourself by figuring out like ways to use your abilities and the environment and stuff to try to disable them for a couple rounds so that you can find room to maneuver and breathe and everything.

There's a fun byproduct of like this model where you're not killing characters.

There's not like a predetermined finish line for a fight, which is you killed all the guys.

Instead, I feel like most combat scenarios we got into were while we were trying to accomplish something else.

And I think that that is like, I don't know, the optimal way to do combat in any role-playing game is to have it not just be a, unless it's like, you know, you have your boss fights, your Walter Russells, if you will.

But for the most part, like, I don't know, I enjoy when combat is just kind of a thing you have to do so you can do the thing that you, you know, your mission objective or whatever.

Yeah.

And once again, I mean, once again, that's source material thing, you know, like the, you never, the street sharks weren't like, let's just go out and kill a monster.

Yeah.

Right.

It was, they, they were very much trying to stop something or, uh, you know, uh, intervene in something else that was going on.

Uh, it's why I really like, I think one of my favorite, like, encounter things was the

first time we met Artificial with, like, the robots smashing up

scala.

um you know that that was just a fun like environmental use of things and uh all the stuff going on in different rooms well and that the babies, sorry, the house sitting adventure was my favorite of all of them, just because

the combat there was sort of just sort of preventative,

like trying to stop the house from getting messy

and trying to clean up the house while the combat was still happening was a real highlight of the season for me.

Here's one from Poppy.

I had a blast listening to Abnimals and appreciated that it felt like a very tight narrative that explored each of the characters without losing the plot.

Were there any story beats you wanted to explore but weren't able to for whatever reason?

And if at liberty to say, what were they?

Looking forward to the next series on the horizon.

For what it's worth, I feel like I got everything I kind of wanted.

Like once we sort of found that a lot of Navy's stuff was about his family, I don't know.

I feel like I got good.

I was very satisfied by the kind of closure of that situation with the standoff in

the tower.

I'm not sure there was much meat left on the bones that I wanted to get to.

I would have liked to spend more time with Nicole Squidman and Navy SEAL's burgeoning relationship.

I always get so uncomfortable about

in-game relationships.

I don't know that that's a thing I'll ever see.

Obvious reasons.

Obvious reasons.

Yeah, fair favorite.

From the GM side, I guess I do have a history of being comfortable with it.

On the player side, I don't know.

Yeah.

I don't know.

Hmm.

Telling.

I think

maybe I would have liked to spend more time with Roger Moore and the all-stars and like sports related stuff.

Once again, it just didn't really come up all that often, but the idea of like Roger Moore was from

a planet of

like all sports stars and

that kind of being their main focus and his thing was like competitive ballroom dancing.

So wait, he didn't come from

that.

You didn't come from a cow planet.

You came from a planet of sports.

Oh, yeah.

Well, they were, it was all barnyard.

It was the barnyard all-stars.

So it was a planet of all barnyard sports.

Balnyard.

Aficionado.

Yeah.

I didn't put that together.

That's great.

Yeah, I wanted to go.

I want to go to Sports Planet 2.

Season 2, Sports Planet.

We didn't get off-planet.

I think that's something I would have liked to do.

And then there were like the Dragon Riders who were dragon abnormals who rode dragons.

That we didn't get time to explore that kind of stuff.

I think there was just a hat file.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I mean, that was the thing right of like i had ideas for all these other abnormals teams um that you guys would like encounter and occasionally like go toe-to-toe with and that kind of thing just ended up feeling too crammed in and uh like i i was i found myself trying to manufacture like and then you have a run in with these people you know it's like well then i'm kind of forcing them into that i really thought your restraint this season was really on point Trav, in not sort of like overloading us.

And what I really liked about it is that you would have some moments where you had to kind of rip the valve off and let some steam out.

And then we would get nine characters named after celebrities with fish-based puns snuck into their names.

And I saw those, and I was like, that's a lot of fish-based celebrity puns, but I know that he has to get this out of his system.

That has to come out somehow or else he'll die.

Better out than in.

He'll burst.

Yeah.

And then I started.

And then we started doing our own puns, too, for catchphrases.

And I still had a couple I didn't get to use.

Like, do you feel like I veal?

But so, Dad, you say a catchphrase, but that's not a catch.

Like, I can't see that.

You don't know what's going to catch on, bud.

You know,

that's fair.

Yeah.

Do you feel like I vet?

That's fair.

Along those lines, there's a question here.

Let's see.

From Mitch.

We know you had an entire list of celebrity abnormal names who didn't get around to using Let's Hear Them.

my brain doesn't work i don't i didn't have a bunch prepared so much as i think i could come up with them easily on the spot like lion reynolds uh ryan gosling uh was one that one you don't even have to change that's great yeah yeah i wanted to use that one um i got to use mark buffalo uh and talk about him i think at the sports gala which i enjoyed though one of my favorites um

oh now i'm blanking on his name who's the guy who did west wing

Paul oh Sorkin.

Yeah, oh, Heron Sorkin.

Herron Sorkin actually came.

Um, that was from Paul Foxcroft, who voiced Crillium in the like phone call voice messages and stuff.

And I had him help me punch up that, that intro thing.

He came up with Heron Sorkin sponsoring the West Wing wing of the museum.

That's cool.

And it's, it's a great joke.

It's one of my favorite jokes in the thing because it's just like a weird little flavor thing.

And have Dr.

Schneider Arden Fields, aka

Snarf.

Snarf.

Yeah, that was a tough one because incorporating an abnormal cat when so many abnormal cats exist.

Right.

Right.

And I was trying to be very choosy.

So I decided to go with the Thundercat that was least abnormal-like.

and went with Snarf.

And plus, I like doing Snarf voice, so that was fun as well.

Good.

I'm glad you get that out of your system.

Thank you.

Duck also asked to address this.

How does it feel once again in DM a season where you have to come up with clever episode titles?

Our editor, Rachel, was in charge of that, and I was merely there

refining them and helping with them.

But I think that those clever titles, Rachel absolutely knocked it out of the park and did an amazing job

with the editing, the sound design, everything.

It was really fun this season.

Let's get to what people really want to hear about, which is the cussing.

Can we get into the data?

Can we crack open the data?

We had some questions, a lot of questions about the profanity.

Mel said, so let's be real.

How often did y'all get unfamily-friendly?

AKA, how hard did you make Rachel work?

And I don't know who pulled this data, but it is exhausting.

I believe it was Rachel.

Rachel and Amanda, I would bet.

There were 65 total censored swears throughout the season, which I don't think is that bad bad for

out of what, like 28 episodes?

Yeah.

And the results are surprising to me knowing the breakdown on my bim bam.

Yeah.

Trav, do you want to read?

Yeah, Justin had the most at 22.

I have to say, that's absolutely fair.

Yeah.

Did you think I'd have a defense?

I don't have a defense.

No, I think that there was a lot

about Axel Lyle that would have made him a prime cusser in a different show.

Yeah, sure.

Well, part you know, that's for sure, Trav.

And the other thing is, I cuss in front of my kids all the time, yeah, so I don't really have a setting for I don't have a kid setting, like, I really should, I don't have one.

I have a, I should have pretended I was doing Sawbones, but I would have asked you guys too many questions about blood.

Yeah, that's fair.

And I thought, Justin, you did a really good job keeping the questions about blood to a minimum.

Thank you, Justice.

I got a lot of feedback.

Um, I had 20 curses, which I think what I found surprising was apparently my descriptions and like emotional states of people tended, that's when I tended to curse,

not like in character, but rather like I'd be describing how upset someone was

and

I would just default to a curse word

or how messed up like a room was when you walked in and I would curse in there and I'm like, oh, God, darn it.

The takeaway here is I had 18.

The least of the brothers, which is the inverse ratio of Mabim Bam, because I try not to cuss in front of my kids.

Dad only cussed four times.

Four times.

Boy Scout.

Well, okay.

Well, now we do need to get that once.

So that's up to five now.

Speaking of, while recording,

Griffin caught and called out 28 of those curses.

I caught 12.

Justin caught eight.

Dad caught none.

And I love that.

He doesn't neither a user nor a noticer be.

Judge thee and judge not.

And be not judge.

We missed 17

in the process that Rachel, Sarah, and Amanda had to catch.

Yeah.

And how many did they miss?

Good question.

They didn't include that in their stats, did they?

Episode one had the most swears with 11.

Next was episode two, six.

And then we got better after that.

We grew up.

Yeah.

That was good.

Only four episodes out of 28 had zero swears.

12, 16, 21, and 22.

Now, there's also some data here for who said baby the most times.

Okay, now tell them, I didn't know we had a baby jar.

Yeah, this, this was, um, you sort of made the baby jar a thing because in episode zero, you kept saying baby like a lot.

Like, yeah, baby.

You, you had four babies throughout the whole season.

Three of them were in episodes here.

Which is where the baby jar came up with.

Okay.

I found it so repugnant, and yet somehow I had the most babies throughout the season 30 there are 35 total babies i had 13 travis had 12 six from justin and four from dad um so i do want to apologize that's not that's not an energy that i feel comfortable sitting in so the fact that i created it is uh i don't know a reason for deep reflection shameful yeah um max asks have your kids been listening to this season my girls love the

yeah my my girls love the theme song so much and they will ask me out of nowhere to pull up the like video we did with like the character artwork and stuff over and over again.

And they're not, they don't really listen to podcasts in general, but they have asked me about every episode, what happens in it.

And I've like shown them the prep for it and everything.

And when I was telling Bibi about the like fight in Walter Russell's office, she started telling me things that I should do with like the water rising

and the aquarium and stuff.

And I was like, oh, okay, I wasn't planning on doing that.

And she's like, why not do the thing I'm saying?

The Charlie Verse episodes have really turned our kids into all tours.

Yes.

And

I wish it would stop.

Daddy's working.

This is serious growth.

No, that's not.

That's not true.

My kids don't listen to my things.

The only content of mine that they enjoy is the intro to the McElroy Family Clubhouse that I had absolutely nothing to do with.

So

same.

That's it for me.

Juice, what about Charlie and Cooper?

They are not fans of mine, broadly speaking.

No, they, they, uh, they, in, they, uh, honestly, they only like Greaking Out, which is a podcast about Greek mythology.

And anytime I would say, do you want to listen to my podcast?

They would ask if we had listened to all of Greaking Out yet.

And I would say, no, we had not.

And then we started to do Greaking Out.

So that is how it's been at my my house that's that's my and I would like to amend my answer when I said yes have your kids been listening this season I think they have but it was only in that one hour before we were getting ready to record the next episode I think that's when we

at two times speed yeah you can't get high on your own supply man I can't I can't be entertained by us

oh I feel nutty

that was from Max right yeah said that uh this was from Lex now that you have done a few more silly-leaning, light-hearted seasons, do you think you'll ever give larger, more dramatic narratives another go?

I personally think you do an amazing job of either.

They each shine in their own specific ways.

I will say to kind of pre-answer that question, I think one of the things that, as we've discussed, you know, like post-mortem and stuff after seasons and everything, one of the things we found is what, at least, correct me if I'm wrong, but what we find we like doing best and what works best is to start the season not with

not with the intention of like telling you know these uh like dramatic narratives and stuff and if they develop they develop yeah if it happens it happens but like if we set out to do it it will often feel kind of uh uh manufactured um and and so i think maybe abnormals well definitely Abnimals and like Taz versus

maybe weren't as conducive an environment for those.

Yeah.

But I don't think we said like, and there won't be any no dramatic narratives.

No, but I would rather do a season where we have like a lot of fun.

Record.

It is a lot of fun to record this show knowing that you don't like, it is not the goal to tie together some like grand narrative.

It is easier to run a season like that.

And

I feel like it's more organic.

Like that's kind of how that's kind of how balance went.

And

I think that is sort of where our heads are at now.

There's one I wanted to talk about real quick from Jacob.

Is there any aspect of the abnormals theme you wish you could have done more with?

We had talked early on about like kind of a toxic Avenger kind of thing where there would be like a character made of ooze that had been like a former member of the like three, you know, the Axelio, Roger, and Navy's team that like he had left to get a real job because it wasn't taking off and wasn't doing anything.

And not having, I, I think

if we had continued or if the opportunity had arisen, having like kind of gross out mutant characters would have been fun

as like another hallmark of like 90s and early 2000s, your garbage bail kids, your creepy crawlies, your that kind of thing, Toxic Avengers.

I think that would have been fun to play with that we didn't get.

You keep lumping Toxic Avenger in there with the other stuff.

And I don't know that Toxic Avenger.

Well, there was an animated Toxic Avenger.

Oh, yeah.

I forgot about that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Was it Toxic Crusader?

Toxic Crusader.

That was it.

The anime.

The Toxic Avengers, the movie.

I think Toxic Crusader was the, because it's like, sounds better for kids to have a Crusader rather than an Avenger.

The Toxic Crusader, yes, because the Toxic Avenger was a much different property.

I feel like there is a theme that's kind of in the questions and answers.

It's worth mentioning.

Like, when we talk about...

things that we like quote wish we had gotten to or whatever

it's worth noting that like that that is the game for a lot of this.

It is how much you prepare.

Because if you like, the discarding a lot of the stuff you prepare is just kind of power for the course.

Right.

Because if you only prepare the stuff that you get to, then what you're doing is like railroading yourself and trying to steer moments into the stuff you've prepared.

Yeah.

But if you don't have stuff for any of it, then you know, you're kind of working without a net.

So it's, it's really always kind of a balance of how much stuff

do you have on hand, you know, thinking about, I, I,

I, when I was DMing, I thought a lot about the backpack full of uh little toys and crayons and notebooks that I take for my kids on vacation.

Like when we're just like it's stuck in airports or whatever, I have this bag that's like snacks and wipes.

And, you know, I might not need everything, but I have all of this.

You know, that's kind of, that's kind of the process.

Yeah, because that's the thing is really really like another version of this question would be like, what do you wish your players had been interested in that you threw out at different points?

And like, I don't know, man.

Like, I was just trying to say, like, and here's a character and here's a character.

And if they'd been like, I want to hang out with that guy, it would have been a different scene or a different storyline.

But that happened like a lot.

Yeah.

I mean, from the beginning, the first episode, I think, when you guys were on the bus and you're like, what other people are here?

And I was like, there's a koala man named Dean.

And that, and then that became a thing.

Like, the way you guys reacted to Clora Phyllis is a great example of, like, yeah, I wanted her to be kind of like a blown-out poison ivy.

Of, like, not only does she care more about plants than humanity, she's a psychopath when it comes to that kind of thing.

And if you guys have been like, we want to party with her, okay, cool.

That would have gone differently.

You know what I mean?

So, I definitely did not party with her.

No, no, definitely not.

So, I don't know that there were like Gasha with Darnett could have been kind of a Casey Jones-esque character, but ended up being a bit of like a doofus.

And so that went a different direction, you know, stuff like that.

It is also hard.

I think

when the characters have such goofy names, it's really hard to lend them a lot of interiority.

There's nothing about the name Goshwood,

whatever it was

that makes Goshwood Darnett that makes you think like, I bet there's a rich tapestry.

I want to dig through.

See, I got the sense that there was a rich tapestry, and we were willfully choosing not to explore it, which I

liked a lot.

That was actually, I chose that name, this is no joke, as a tribute to dad's darn tootin from Dust Season 2 that he didn't get to use.

And so I went with Gosh Darnett for a character.

God Travis, I didn't even put that together until you just said that right now.

As a nod to when Dad didn't get to use Darn Tootin for Dust, that I was like, well, here's Gosh Darnett

as a tribute to Darn Tootin.

Let's talk about the next season of The Adventure Zone,

if we may.

So for the next season, I'm going to be running it.

We're going to be playing Dungeons and Dragons.

Both of them?

Both of them this time, the fifth edition of it.

And, you know, a lot of the feedback that we get on our DD seasons and a big problem that people run into when they play DD, you know, with their friends is that there's maybe like one wizard or two or two wizards.

But there's no way of fixing that.

And unfortunately, it's one of the great unsolved problems of

what perfect wizard.

Well, my bold vision is this.

What if there were 64 wizards?

Okay.

And what if those wizards were competing in a sort of battle royale style, high-stakes death game for the ultimate magical power in the world?

This is feeling less and less hypothetical.

No, it is feeling quite material because we've already recorded in an episode of it.

It's called Taz Royale, and it's going to debut on June 5th.

And

it is a Battle Royale-inspired season.

More in the Squid Game style than the all-out deathmatch Battle Royale.

Winner-take-all.

Winner-take-all

series of trials with survivors and not survivors.

And which one will our heroes be?

I don't know.

They're wizards, and so are the other characters.

There's lots and lots of, it's filthy with wizards this season.

Filthy with you'll be spoiled for wizards.

And it's going to be a lot of fun.

And

one thing we are going to, for this season,

we are going to switch back to a bi-weekly schedule.

And there's a lot of reasons for that.

A big one is just that Abdimals, we kind of felt pretty rushed,

both on the production side and the scheduling side.

I want to speak on that real quick because, like, episodes were shorter in abnormals.

One, because attention span for kids was kind of part of the goal, but also like prep time,

doing that sound design stuff, doing the post-production, doing all of that.

Like, we didn't maybe get to spend as much time on it as we would have liked.

I made no music for the entire season,

which, you know,

there's still some incredible sound work done by Rachel in there.

And a great theme song.

And an amazing theme song.

Just Justin and Eric and Jonathan really took it to the hoop on that one.

But that's like a part of the, that's a part of the show that I really enjoy doing.

And doing it every week, there's just not.

any time for it.

And also, we also got some feedback that like some folks had a hard time keeping up with, you know, a weekly release schedule for a narrative podcast like this so so there's a lot of reasons why we're going to jump back to bi-weekly so that we can uh you know spend a little bit more time on on this season tas royale and somewhat longer episodes yes the the episodes will be uh will be a bit longer so that's that's the next season june 5th is when it starts um and we hope you'll join us and september 14th is when it stops and we can't tell you why but i've just decided oh that's wild i hope not that's a short that's a pretty short season uh for me that's an actual long season yeah

um

but yeah that's what's next thanks for listening to it and if you're a kid or you let your kid listen thanks for the trust yeah we appreciate it absolutely that's this next season is not going to be kid focused i will i if you could say it's not going to be family friendly if you could there will be 65 swears in the first episode wow why well and also, if all things go according to plan, 63 character deaths, which is significantly more than Taz Abnimals.

So, um, yeah, we.

But I will say, as a final thing, along those lines, that the family-friendly kind of theme for abnormals was inspired by how many, um, like while we were doing meet and greets and convention appearances and stuff, how many, like, families came up of kids, you know, with kids that said that they listened with their parents and, you know, 12-year-olds and stuff who their parents had shared the show with them, and that's just wonderful.

It feels really good when

you know you find out that kids have gotten inspired to get into role-playing games and get into this kind of stuff because the stuff we do.

Um, so to the parents who have shared that with their kids and felt you know, uh, the trust in us to share stuff with their kids, it means a lot, it really does, and and we really appreciate it.

I would not make any promises to this effect, but I do feel like this season, Taz Abnimals, has moved me a little bit closer to the light of Christ in terms of

not necessarily weaving a tapestry of profanity

every other, every other sentence.

And so I hopefully it will be

fun to listen to with some kids, but it's not explicitly made

for them as Taz Abnimals was.

And prove that we can do it.

Sure.

Well, except for the 65 times that we blew it.

Yeah, but think of how many words we say in the course of a 28 episode.

That's true, Dad.

And think about the curse words we didn't say.

We've saved them all up for right now.

Yep.

Here we go.

Who?

Well, this has been a lot of fun, and thank you so much for listening.

We really appreciate it.

And stick around for the next season.

And we hope you enjoyed all the live shows.

That were saved up.

Those were a lot of fun.

We have more live shows coming up.

So we've put out the Taz versus robin hood and taz versus uh hamlet that were two uh taz versus live shows and if you enjoyed those you can uh come see them live uh coming up all the tour dates and information is at bit.ly forward slash uh mckelroy tours uh all those tickets are on sale now go get yours as well as the my brother my brother and me shows everything like that uh so make sure you check those out bye everybody thanks bye

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