schneefink | Entries tagged with the adventure zone

Over a year ago, in January 2020, I pre-ordered the "The Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance" game. It finally arrived on Friday! It is so pretty. I got the limited edition and the voidfish cover is gorgeous, and I enjoy the 3D Fantasy Kostco too. We also got extra dice, D20 that go from 1 to 6 – except that the dots are wrong, so technically the dice are 1-5 and 9 ^^
DD and I tried it out yesterday and it was a lot of fun. It's remarkably close to playing an actual simplified D&D game. You don't need a DM, only a team leader (which I think would be a great first step for people who are interested in being a DM but not confident enough yet.) The level of actual roleplaying is up to the players, but the game does a lot to encourage you to flesh out the story (various challenges have extra story points etc.) Yesterday we explored the catacombs beneath the wine cellar of a palace to find the Dandelion Staff and fought the lich Konstanze von Hyazinthenbrunn, a former 18th century German aristocrat. Playing with two people was fine, which is good because right now meeting up for game evenings is not really an option, but 3-5 is probably better. Next weekend we'll try playing two characters each and see how that goes.

Fittingly, last week I also finally remembered to get the third TAZ graphic novel, Petals to the Metal. It's been a while since I listened to the podcast so there were multiple times where I wasn't sure if this specific part had been in the show or not, and more things I had forgotten that I was surprised by. I enjoyed it a lot, and I really look forward to The Crystal Kingdom that comes out in July.

Fyi, until tomorrow preorders are open for the upcoming The Adventure Zone card game: TAZ: Bureau of Balance. The art is gorgeous and it sounds like fun (I haven't watched the play-test video yet, because I'm meant to be studying, but we already ordered because I'm impatient and will be busy tomorrow.)

(DD and I ordered it together and then I had my first "but what if we ~~get divorced~~ stop living together one day!" crisis, and we concluded that obviously we'll just have to meet up regularly to play.)

Back to studying, since I'm totally not procrastinating, nope.

Part 1, more to come later.

( Reply All/TAZ:Balance, The Book of Margery Kempe, Frederican RPF, The Book of Esther, Nirvana in Fire, The Lion in Winter, Temeraire, The Untamed )

It took a while, but eventually via waiting lists and just showing up I got into all the uni classes I wanted :) Well, almost, but tbh it's probably better to be cautious with how many I take anyway. So that's a double portion of tax law this semester… at least then that's over with. And tax law can be interesting too, it's just been really annoying to study so far, although that might change now that we're past the basics (in theory) and mostly looking at case studies. And in addition to that I take criminal law, I look forward to that.

Exam on Friday, and I'm nervous about it to constantly varying degrees, so I took Thursday off from work. I'm pretty sure that how well I do depends almost entirely on how much time we have. DD has been helping me study by being very strict: I finally ordered the TAZ "Here There Be Gerblins" comic and she told me I could only read one chapter after each studying sessions, so I only finished it tonight. It's a great adaption of the podcast, the art is amazing, especially the facial expressions, and I really like the character designs too. I'm not completely sure how I feel about the inclusion of Griffin-the-DM but it doesn't bother me either.
Idk how well it works for people not familiar with TAZ. Some scenes, like Magic Brian's death, where just not as funny not in audio format, but on the other hand there are a lot of great details and faces etc. that are not in the podcast and I think it would work on its own as well. Though best is both together.
I look forward to the next books.

Fyi, for the next ~24 hours HumbleBundle still has a cookbooks bundle, and especially the things in the first tier, for one dollar, look very good.

There's a new TAZ:Balance episode, the San Francisco live show: These boys are so stupid and I love them. ( Spoilers )
I've been meaning to check out TAZ:Amnesty, especially now that there are several episodes out already and I can binge them, but I'm already behind on other stuff.

I was recced "Black Sails" multiple times (most often by

rydra_wong) and always thought that I would watch it one day, but it sounded a bit too dark for my current preferences. But DD decided she wants to watch it, so I started watching it with her. We were both told that season 1 is bad (but at least short) and that the show gets a lot better later.

We're now halfway through season 1 and we both like it? I don't think it's bad at all so far. Now we're both very nervous about how the second half of season 1 may screw things up. I already want so many of these characters to succeed but there are so many things that could go very wrong.

A new TAZ:Balance live show was put online, and man I missed these characters. Even though I tend to forget how often they are jerks, and sometimes (like this entire episode) it's just silly, they're also so much fun. My favorite parts of the Dallas show were ( spoilers )
I'm not listening to TAZ:Amnesty yet because in my experience TAZ works better for me when I binge it, but I'm planning to catch up soon.

I'm also not caught up with Critical Role, I'm a few episodes behind (in the middle of 15) because the episodes are long and I don't do as much other stuff where I could easily listen to it in the background and it's (unsurprisingly) not as captivating yet as the finale of a multiple year campaign was, but it has a lot of potential.

I am caught up on "The Bright Sessions", which seems to alternate between really emotional episodes and those that are a bit lighter/quieter. ( 52-54 episode notes )

I almost forgot to mention it: I wrote two short fic snippets for

fandom_stocking.

Connection to the Unknown, a Steerswoman/Star Trek: Discovery crossover. ( Disco spoilers )

ice+fire, a TAZ:Balance h/c snippet. I almost didn't post this on AO3 because it's so short and not very polished, but then I told my inner perfectionist to shut up.

Speaking of, my reaction to the last two Star Trek Disco episodes: ( Spoilers )

Before the first play episode of the new TAZ campaign, have a selection of some TAZ:Balance vids I like a lot. Favorite scene animations hopefully to come soon.
(This fandom seems to switch between vid, AMV, and animatics, idk what the best term is.)

Balance Arc Trailer by artisticazurite: not sure how it works as a trailer for people who haven't seen it, but I like it and without context it's only a little spoilery. ( iirc the others all have spoilers )

Notes for the last two live shows: ( Nashville and Tacoma )

I've been listening to TAZ:Balance again, both just because it's great and because I want to see what I missed and what things look like in hindsight, and also because I'm two and a half chapters into writing a WIP that I really like so far (but I told myself that I can't continue until I have at least a first draft of my Yuletide fic. Bears.)

( Crystal Kingdom )

( The Suffering Game )

( Lunar Interlude V - Reunion Tour )

( The Stolen Century )

( Story and Song )

And something new: I like TAZ:Commitment so far :) Not as much as TAZ:Balance, but that would be really hard with something so short. ( Read more... )

I usually don't really celebrate Halloween, and I don't like the trend coming from the US to treat it like an anything-goes costume party (that's what Fasching/carnival is for) instead of an event for scary costumes in particular. So I had no plans for Tuesday until Monday when I got an invite to a party, and because several people were going that I hadn't seen in a while I agreed to go. So then of course I needed a costume, something simple and cheap but Halloween-appropriate. Fortunately I did come up with an idea: something TAZ:Balance-themed, since that's been on my mind. Aaand then I realized that the whole costume is a technically a spoiler for the entire plot, oops ^^ So I hoped that the people I was hoping to get to listen to TAZ wouldn't think about the details and also not ask for the name, because imo TAZ is much better without being spoiled beforehand. I think LK is interested, so it worked :)

( Costume: spoiler for The Adventure Zone: Balance )

The decorations in the flat were amazing btw, they had a huge plastic spider in a terrarium and spider webs everywhere and fake blood on the mirrors etc. etc. There were several zombies, one devil, and a couple of other costumes (including one guy who was a character from Braveheart, but I forgave him because he brought an actual sword.) And we played Cards Against Humanity, which is clearly well suited for Halloween. There was some dancing too, it's been a while. And food and drinks (I like being slightly drunk every once in a while because I hug people) and meeting friends and all in all it was the most fun I had on Halloween in many years.

I just finished listening to "The Adventure Zone" (and by that I mean I literally finished it ten minutes ago, I was typing this up during the last two episodes) and it was amazing and I need to ramble about it. I started it and it didn't really draw me in, I only kept listening because I saw so many people recommending it. Eventually it got better, then around The Eleventh Hour I started to actually enjoy it (finally some character stuff), The Suffering Game wasn't my favorite but that arc's end and the following Lunar Interlude is where the overarching arc got really interesting, and then The Lost Century was really great, and Story and Song was fantastic. It took a long time, but in the end it was worth it. So many feelings. Especially about Taako and [spoiler] *flails*

( Spoilers )

I bet it would be fascinating to listen to the whole story again, see how it all looks different now that I know the background, especially because I listened to most of it at work and definitely missed some details. (Not sure I will, at least not right away, because there's a lot of other stuff I want to listen too (live session and Q&As from TAZ alone), but I'll see.)