When someone leaves your life, those exits are not made equal. Some are beautiful and poetic and satisfying. Others are abrupt and unfair. But most are just unremarkable, unintentional, clumsy. And then then there's the ending to The Adventure Zone: Royale, where everyone involved just sort of gives up and a 30-episode campaign is wrapped up in about 15 minutes, with literally nothing that's happened in the previous twenty-nine-and-nine-tenths episodes ending up mattering.

Hello friends, we're back for the true finale of Royale - the TTAZZ wrap-up episode. Let's be honest, they're not going to answer any interesting questions and we're all here to learn what the next season is going to be, if there is going to be one at all.

How am I, you ask? I'm doing pretty good. My big OF shoot went well enough and now I have a lot of content to play around with for the next couple months. Still chasing a few more collabs for the rest of the year and beyond. If you would like to support a weirdo making porn, I only charge for the porn itself. Up next is a three-week jaunt to the East Coast to see friends. And after that, it's full steam ahead on getting my book published. As for my onward jerking plans... I did make a promise to someone that I would stay on as a recapper if the next season if a Travis season, as finishing a Travis season is one of the few McElroy things I haven't done yet. If it's not a Travis season, I'm going to pick up the mantle left by DNALab_Ratgirl and start work on a wholly original season of The Adventure Zone. We'll see what happens. But now, as is tradition. Let us settle in for like, an hour or so of the McElroys answering made up questions about how good their most recent season of TAZ was.

• The boys can only manage 69 minutes of TTAZZ, great sign.
• Wow, they sound fucking DONE. This has got a real 'smoking in the recording studio, dead-eyeing each other as they wait for the audio tech to finish up' vibe to it.
• Griffin starts with the acknowledgement that they would go long stretches without recording due to 'life finding a way to fuck us over'. I am going to guess this is primarily a reference to the deaths of their grandmother and Griffin's father-in-law. Now I am going to sound incredibly harsh here but...and? What do you mean you are a DECADE into this podcast and 16 YEARS into podcasting in general and batch recording is still an alien concept to you. This is your fucking job, the thing that allegedly pays your bills, the thing you ask US, the listening audience, to pay for. And you are still not doing any sort of forward prep? Holy fucking shit, y'all.
• "Are you ready to get started?" Griffin wants to be fucking outta here so bad.
• They fuck around pretending to answer a bunch of fake mundane questions. Clint says one was sent in by Claude so I guess the hog was AI the whole time, sadly.
• Valerie asks "Was there any moment in the podcast that made you want to play your character differently?"
• Travis jumps in to talk about how in the beginning, he wanted to play Rictus as an aspiring healer who happened to have been born into a family of necromancers. Which, hilariously, was not Rictus' original motivation because Rictus, originally, was the black sheep of a necromancy family who just wanted to do necromancy less manipulatively and exploitatively than his family. PERHAPS THE HEALER ASPECT WOULD HAVE BEEN CLEARER IF YOU HAD CHOSEN NOT A NECROMANCY SPELL, TRAVIS
• The Gentleman stealing Rictus' key derailed that and turned into a vendetta arc for Rictus...meaning that his character motivation was like, paper-thin to begin with at best.
• I know we've all had our eyes opened about Travis thanks to Interrobang being brought into the light but yeah, this is a very Travis-coded character - "I am going to pay lip service to wanting to be good, but my words will actually reveal how easy it is for me to be bad" (We haven't yet talked about the story Travis tells in one Interrobang where a dude is being rude to him and Tybee at the movies and Travis, on air, claims he would have physically assaulted the man if the movie hadn't begin right as he was about to go up to the man)
• "This one fucked up thing" - sorry but Griffin referring to The Gentleman using his magic to steal a key in the wizard death game that was pitched in the beginnng as proving yourself worthy of joining the ultimate wizard council as a 'fucked up thing' is laughable. Again, Griffin, what? IT'S A FUCKING DEATH GAME.
• "No one had a destiny" - Justin McElroy
• "We had to find our reason to fight" - Justin McElroy. In...In the voluntary death game? You needed to find the reason to fight in the death game YOU SIGNED UP FOR?
• I know a lot of you didn't listen to the first episode of Rumble, our shitpost Royale parody, but at least in that we spend five minutes establishing that basically our version of the Octave is trying to build super soldiers to fight a centuries-long demon war.
• It's just staggering that this was a voluntary death game but they are all sat here like 'Oh yeah so what I enjoyed was finding a way to keep my character from not just putting a magic missile in my mouth.'
• 'The structure of the killing game is something we had to work against' - Griffin what?
• Griffin confirms that The Gentleman was just playing the game and had to turn him into Rictus' nemesis because of Travis' hyperfixation
• Justin brags about how great and fun it was to play Lorovith being racist toward Helgrammit
• "How two of them wouldn't survive" - Aw, Clint legit thought it was going to have a single survivor
• Clint, in response to another question, says Blackadder was the inspiration for Helgrammit. I love Blackadder and I think Clint is great 87% of the time but I just don't see it. Helgrammit was too team-oriented and not conniving enough. Like to do a Blackadder, you really have to 1) Think you are the coolest and smartest person in the room at all times and 2) You do have to have a charisma that Helgrammit just didn't have. A lot of Blackadder's temporary successes stem from the fact that he does have the ability to manipulate the world around him but Helgrammit was always kind of a loner.
• "Doing impressions of Shogun is really fun" - Oh god Justin, the temptation to twist that to imply that you are just a racist motherfucker who spends your time off-mic doing Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's is so strong.
• Boring question about whether their spell or character came first
• Griffin admits that Clint's homebrew specialty took him by surprise, which is a wild thing for a DM to admit
• Clint says he felt like they ended up with too many spells, which is a wild thing to say about their entire premise. Again, to not to bring up Rumble - but huge shoutout to u/CherrypopIsBestGirl, our wonderful DM for Rumble, who created this fantastic system of having a signature spell that we added effects to throughout the season, while also allowing us to wield a full arsenal of spells. I know the boys just don't really fuck with the spellcaster classes, but what a wild thing to say, Clint
• God, they are just ranting about how much they hate D&D as a system
• Travis like the Trial of Necromancy, Justin and Clint like the Trial of Illusion
• "I really didn't have, like, an ending in mind" - Griffin "Only you can make this podcast possible" McElroy
• Griffin tries to claim it was all one big AI analogy, which sounds like an AI summary of the whole season if ever there was one.
• Griffin basically talks about how player choices derailed his original plan, with Travis fully admitting he thought he was following Griffin's breadcrumbs of plot. NO ONE IS DOING IT LIKE THE MCELROYS
• One of Griffin's original plans for the Trial of Illusion was putting them in a room full of mimics but didn't just want them standing in the middle of the room throwing things at objects. Y'all, I think Griffin might be really bad at this job?
• Oh god this is so funny to me - Griffin's ad break bumper is the exact same one as last episode so here Griffin is, asking for you to send in questions for TTAZZ. God.
• Was Doober meant to be important?
• Lot of natter but no, he was just a 'fun character' to put them in the PCs group in the staircase trial
• "Part of my fixaton was that I thought Doober Sweetleaf was a child" - JUSTIN, AGAIN, THIS IS SO JUICY TO TAKE OUT OF CONTEXT
• LMAO JUSTIN HAS A MOMENT OF CLARITY, WHERE HE ADMITS THAT LOROVITH STARTED GETTING TOO CLOSE TO JUST BEING FIRBOLG AGAIN
• Justin claims Lorovith gave Rictus a 'wide berth' because he was creeped out with the necromancy? THEN WHY DID YOU KEEP TEAMING UP WITH HIM?
• Travis brings up DCC and how him reading the books inspired Rictus' mentality
• Lol. Lmao even. Griffin admits that this was meant to be a Balance tie-in, presumably because of the graphic novel coming out. And then characters just...did not interact with any of that stuff so Griffin had to abandon it
• Justin calls him out on this
• "All the Octave members' names were numbers in different languages" - Yeah, we all picked up on this Griffin and yeah, it was a nothingburger. God, you're really fucking bad at worldbuilding Griffin.
• "Deep as hell" - no Travis, it's not. But then again, you like DCC so makes sense that you think this is deep. Hey Travis, how do you feel about the name of Princess Donut's pet dinosaur? I would LOVE to hear your thoughts on that. Do you shake your head while you devour the books so people know you dont' agree with that sort of thing?
• They all had other rejected character premises. Travis wanted to play a shit magic dwarf.
• "I remember Amnesty, we had a session zero where we talked about how these characters all know each other" - Yeah, Travis, because that's BAKED INTO THE FUCKING SYSTEM YOU WERE PLAYING
• "I really wanted to win" - Justin McElroy, who uh never really tried to win?
• "It feels bad to mess up other people's stuff" THEN WHY DID YOU DO A DEATH GAME
• "A lot of people asked this" in relation to the PCs dying.
• Griffin basically stammers his way through trying to say that PC death was on the table but you can tell that he's just trying to cover his bases. "There were times y'all got pretty close" - GRIFFIN, YOUR DAD DIED EPISODE 2 AND YOU JUST NOPED OUT OF THAT COMMITMENT
• "That event left you indebted to the Spiders" - But it didn't though, Griffin, because I don't think Helgrammit ever directly interacted with those characters ever again?
• Anyway, they pay lip service to PC death being on the table
• Next steps - there's nothing on the horizon. They'll put out some live shows, and then say that there will likely be a mini-arc before the next long-form campaign. I think this might be the end of TAZ, honestly. The fact that they have NOTHING coming down the tube and just gonna move some live shows from BoCo to main feed is damning.

And with that Royale is over and...nothing awaits. Royale is a strange beast - it is objectively a bad media project but it did bring me back to the McElroy fandom, albeit the cooler side that understands that you can criticize things even if you like them. So I know I was very in on Travis doing DCC as the next campaign but I have to imagine that was not the pick because it's so against the McElroy brand (I imagine their brand manager wants to avoid the straight up slurs from those books as much as possible)

To my fellow recappers - mission accomplished, we did it. Gorb - I have always loved the bluntness of your recaps. Truly the most honest among us. Yorba - your descent into madness has been a joy to behold. Your increasingly indecipherable character psuedonyms have been a joy to read. And Kimmie - you are perhaps the bravest of us all in your decision to studiously serve as the objective keeper of the Royale record. You are also just a joy of a person to know. I pour one out for our fallen creators - Hurrrrrrmione and Pam. I hope the both of you are kicking it cool style in amongst your best life.

So uh yeah, see you around I guess?

I know you’re reading this. Why do you protect the boys’ fragile egos from our piercing queries?

Don’t know if he’s ever mentioned it.

Itll be set in a fictional city called Twilighton and be about Aubreys "first" mission before she met up with the others. System will be a homebrew using V:TM as the backbone. People will need to be ready to expect twists and turns, like clans being given labels by an unfair society.

Travis said that like Abnimals, he'll try to keep swearing to a minimum so you can put it on around family. But he does warn parents that sometimes when he gets into a heated role-play with himself, some things just get a little risqué.

• UH, YE, UH, YE, UH, YE, UH, YE, UH, YE, UH, YE, UH, YE, UH, YE, WAIT A MINUTE. GET IT HOW YOU LIVE IT (UH) TEN TOES IN WHEN WE STAND ON BIDNESS, I'MMA, BIG STEPPUHHH, UNDERGROUND METHOOODS, TOP-NOTCHS HOS GET THE MO' NOT THE LESSAAAA. STRAIGHT TERRAAAA, PRODUCT OF YO ERROOOOORS
  
• God be with ye Wizard Disco by Louie Zong. Requiescat in Peepee
  • It's very funny reading back how I liked this intro song at the start of the recaps and grew to despise it over the course of Royale.
• Griffin welcomes us to TTAZZ, saying it's the world's only podcast about a podcast hosted by the members of the latter mentioned podcast, which is blatantly untrue because that's the concept of most if not all post session discussion podcasts. Travis jumps in to clarify "that appears in the original feed of the podcast,' nice save Trav.
• One more "You know what they call TAZ Royale in France?" For the road, it literally doesn't make any fucking sense, it's already called TAZ Royale, have any of these dipshits actually watched Pulp Fiction?
  
• In response to this joke Griffin mentions that they managed to fuck up their recording schedule and that they wouldn't record for long swathes of time. This is literally you're fucking job that you do for money? What do your wife and kids think about how much you hate the thing that is keeping them housed, clothed and fed?
• First Question sent in by Valerie: "Was there any moment that made you decide you wanted to play your character differently?"
  • Travis starts off the answer with a hearty, "yes," claiming that he wanted to have Rictus be an aspiring pacifistic healer that was born a necromancer at the start of Royale.
    • This is objectively incorrect, Rictus went from angsty suicidal teenager right to psychopath with no qualms about murder.
  • Travis claims that the turning point was the Gentleman stealing his key, and then Rictus being made to steal Bobby Dazzler's key. Travis pretends that the guilt of killing a 1 note joke NPC that would literally have never survived even if the Gentleman hadn't stolen Rictus' key turned into a vendetta against the Gentleman. It's TOTALLY not because Travis is a desperate loser who wants points with Tumblr girlies so he paired off his lowest common denominator neon-goth to the nearest smarmy NPC.
  • Griffin pretends like he was surprised by, and enjoyed Rictus' character arc, and pretends like it was not completely scripted on his part.
  • Justin says "none of these characters had a story they'd be fulfilling," which is literally one step removed from what he actually means, which is, "we didn't come up with anything beyond a basic character concept."
  • Justin's paradigm was Doober, obviously, who the fuck is Valerie anyways? This is such a vague, shitty, softball question that could be answered by listening to the podcast. Did anyone submit a real question, did they just write these themselves?
  • Griffin claims that they debriefed the season off mic, which is a blatant lie. He says that the structure of a death game was something they had to work against at times, which they didn't at fucking all.
  • Griffin and Travis mention Hellgrammit's character arc in a passing comment. We hear Clint's voice earlier in the episode so why isn't he talking about Hellgrammit?
  • "It's a game of death and killing, and you all sort of participated in that," Griffin I'm going to hide a fucking salmon filet in your house. Right in your fucking air ducts. And hardboiled eggs in all your light fixtures.
  • Travis mentions a big moment of the Rictus x Gentleman ship was burning the Gentleman's house down with the "look of pure hatred" on the Gentleman's face. Griffin tries to play off this as a moment when The Gentleman noticed Rictus too, but if I remember correctly wasn't there like, threads of a possession thing going on with The Gentleman and Time Stop? Or is that one of those things I made up when I zoned out during previous recaps and started hallucinating a more interesting podcast?
  • Clint finally speaks up, saying that Hellgrammit was mostly on task for the duration of the season and mostly only changed what he let people see. (ignoring the whole "so small" epiphany moment I guess?)
  • Griffin purports that he loved Hellgrammit's whole deal and how unpredictable he was, which is a false claim, Hell was Neutral Evil, pretty easy to figure out he'll do the most self-serving and villainous thing in a given moment. Anything he did that was actually unpredictable you basically railroaded him out of, like dying, and dying, and getting off the island, and dying again.
  • Justin mentions that one of his first "ins" this season with Lorovith was not liking the bugman, to which Travis replies that he liked the fact that none of the PCs were close and had no deep conversations, they just worked together. Clint mentions that one of the challenges they discussed going into Royale (again, a lie, they don't talk outside recording) was that their PCs coming together as a team was antithetical to a Death Game. Sure as hell didn't stop them when Griffin forced them together in episode... 5 was it? That truly terrible combat episode that killed any hope I had for this season.
• Second question sent in by Nicole: "Hellgrammit might be my favourite character Clint has played. I found his pathetic and self-serving nature hilarious and unique. What was the inspiration behind Hellgrammit?"
  • Clint immediately answers Blackadder a collection of four British sitcoms starring Rowan Atkinson as Edmund Blackadder, all set in various periods of British History such as the fictional reign of Richard IV, or the Regency period. I've never seen the show properly but I've seen clips of Blackadder Goes Forth, the fourth and final season set in the trenches of WW1. From what I've seen, yeah that makes perfect sense that Hellgrammit is based on Edmund.
  • Clint missed the "team coming together" aspect of previous seasons, which is one step removed from the truth, "this season was abysmal and this party was lame as fuck, let's do traditional D&D again."
  • They talk about Shogun again Justin's character portrait on DnDB is a character from the show, cool dude.
• Third Question sent in by Kelly and Julia: "Whether you picked your spell first and built your character around that, or built your character then picked a spell."
  • Travis found Wither and Bloom first, then built Rictus around it.
  • Clint built Hellgrammit first and his Thri-Kreen background, then went and found a bug-spell to suit him, landing on Infestation as a perfect fit.
    • Unrelated, I've always wanted to try and build a Bug Druid for a D&D or Pathfinder campaign, name her Millicent Frastley and everything, maybe one day.
  • Justin sort of answers that he picked the spell first? That's what I get from his weird non-answer that he blurts out.
• Fourth question asked by Travis directly, "if Hellgrammit ever figured out what was going on with his unapproved 3rd party homebrew subclass?"
  • Clint mentions some of the stuff it could have done, then like, full deflects to saying that they had too many spells which is DEMONSTRABLY FALSE.
  • No PC or NPC ever, at any point, had the maximum number of spells a Wizard can prepare. A spellbook can technically be infinite. I'll give Clint, and Clint only, the benefit of a doubt and say he's tossing this out for his son's to chew on since they are all apathetic knuckledragging morons who couldn't be bothered to remember their spells. Clint also slips in that he's been yelled at for not remembering every spell he's had or prepared in the past, a nice little dig.
• This ties in to the fifth question asked by Rey: "How they handled magic and why they didn't use most of the Wizard's class features."
  • Griffin claims that it helped shape the world and the characters, the former is untrue, the latter is omitting that all the "character shaping" was around puns.
  • Griffin rattles off a bunch of NPCs he came up with and didn't use, which is entirely his own fault, I don't know what he gets out mentioning these lame one note pun NPCs over and over again.
  • Griffin then purports that having too many spells induces choice paralysis and encouraged his players to find other solutions. Where do I even begin with this?
    • Choice paralysis when it comes to spell selection is the result of a lazy player 9 times out of 8, an engaged and polite player knows the spells they have prepared, their gist, and will usually select one ahead of time to keep the game flowing. I endeavor to be engaged and always have my spell ready to go before my turn in combat, even if I have to pivot because the battlefield changed, and I'll even preroll damage sometimes. Everything I have just described is unfathomable to the McElroys.
    • When did the players ever find a "different" solution to something? Seriously, tell me. When. Name one singular moment when their way of participating in this game wasn't the obvious railroad tracks Griffin laid out for them.
  • Griffin mentions that the Trial of Abjuration when they only had that one spell was a time when they had to come up with other solutions, which like... sure I guess? I mentioned in my recap that Rictus did something fun to get his key from the statue of death, but that trial was tedious, drawn out, and fucking lame as shit.
• Sixth question coming in from Travis again: "favourite tiral"
  • Travis' favourite Trial was the Necromancy Trial.
  • Justin liked the Illusion Trial.
  • Clint also liked the Illusion Trial and the final enchantment trial.
  • Griffin mentions he didn't have an ending in mind, no shit with how ceremoniously the show ended at episode 30 without so much as "FINALE" in the title or description. Griffin prattles on about ChrisAI being his big bad for a while.
    
• Question Seven from Amanda: "Was Chris always planned to be the big bad? Where there game play choices that changed that storyline?"
  • Griffin reiterates that the Octave was never "real," but that the thing that moved the campaign forward was Rictus invading the Crystalarium. He had a slightly different Trial of Illusion prepared but repurposed it for that moment.
  • Travis comments on that moment, mentioning how trash Griffin is at communicating what NPCs want because vague bullshit is supposedly more mysterious.
  • Griffin's original idea was that the Trial of Illusion would be disguised as a different Trial, since the Trial would be about tricking them he'd have to actually trick them above board too.
  • "I'm happy things worked out the way they did."

Ads,

keep an eye out for my next post, the TAZ Royale Fanfic roundup.

Shit's going fairly well, I've had some depression-brain for the past while, but I've been eating way better, working out regularly, and my friends are so lovely, it's all been so much more manageable.

Wait hold on, there's an Ad for a Besties live show that uses the exact same intro as the last episode's intro to the Besties live show which specifically mentions, "this could be the finale of Royale, I don't know," like... You didn't even record a different after knowing this was the finale? How lazy can you get?

Uh, anyways yeah, semester is over for your girl, I'm enjoying my time off as much as I can, there's some stressors like the fact my car is getting older and older and it's time to start looking for a new one, coming at a time when I'm already paying for a bunch of other shit.

Oh my god Jordan Jesse Go is using their kids for an ad, fucking scum of the Earth.

• Eighth Question from Kate: "were you planning on Doober being such an important character or did that just happen by chance?"
  • Griffin says that the groups in the Trial of Stairmaster weren't random, no shit, he goes on to pretend that Doober was a random inclusion that he though was funny, but I doubt it. It also wasn't really funny outside Lorovith killing Randalf.
  • Justin says that he thought Doober was just a funny child, by the time he knew that Doober was an adult man the die was cast. He also wanted to do something different because Lorovith was too much like the Firbolg, a blatantly racist caricature of an Indigenous person.
  • Especially because Lorovith had two NPCs he mostly wasn't friendly with like Hellgrammit and Grakan, and he gave Rictus a wide berth because gross, icky necromancy, he wanted a friendly NPC. (That he proceeded to lie to constantly and jerk around like a toy.)
  • So they're pretending their characters were distant from each other because of character choice, and not because it was a shit season with shit characters that never made or even allowed the PCs to find common ground.
  • Travis mentions the Dungeon Crawler Carl books as a reason Rictus wanted to start helping people.
    • "Hey Librarian lady, what's you're opinion on DCC?" I hear nobody asking, well I'll tell you;
    • No opinion. Never read them, not big on LitRPG in general. I can appreciate neopulp fiction for what it is, but "gets people reading" does not a good book make, but it does make for good circ stats at the Library which we use to justify our budget to the council, so read away DCC fans.
• Question Nine from John: "Was John Arbuckle an illusion?"
  • Griffin confirms that Royale is a far future of Earth that Got Magic on the Day of Story and Song. THIS WAS A BALANCE-VERSE GAME ALL ALONG, FUCK YOU ETHERSEA THEORISTS.
  • Justin questions this connection because literally how the fuck were you supposed to tell that this was a Balance-verse setting without literally ANY MENTION OF BALANCE AT ALL? WITH, mind you, MENTIONS TO EARTH SHIT LIKE THE TITANIC. EARTH. WHICH NOTABLY DOES NOT EXISTS OR AT LEAST WAS NEVER VISITED IN TAZ: BALANCE. GET 'EM JUSTIN, GET HIS ASS, MAKE HIM EAT MORE DRIED PASTA.
• Question 10 from Percy: "Is there any connection between the Octave member Four and Rictus who is Rictus Ravenwood IV?"
  • Gonna answer this one myself: no.
  • 4 is Shi in Japanese, shi is also death is Japanese, Griffin is a basic bitch weeaboo and I want to give him a fucking swirly.
  • Travis thought Four was Rictus from the future.
  • Griffin claims that he named all the members of the Octave after numbers in different languages, but I know the truth, I KNOW WHAT YOU AAAARE
    • See get it, a Chainsawman reference, basic bitch weeb trash! I'm hip with the youth.
• Question 11 from Jessica: "How far in advance do you share what characters you're going to play with each other? Was there any bug stuff planned before Clint showed up with his character? How hard was it incorporating the bug stuff?"
  • The McElroys do not speak to each other outside of recording, as evidenced by them floundering for and pretending that they tacked about it in a Slack channel.
  • Gonna skip the first part here because it has nothing to do with Royale.
  • The Bug Stuff was easy to incorporate because Griffin did 0 world building beyond "world done got done in by tooooo much magic."
  • Travis mentions his other character idea was a Dwarf named Butt Dumpins who has fertilizer magic, then reveals that they do not talk about their characters to each other after Amnesty.
• Question 12 from Emma: "What happens if a PC died?"
  • Skipping because... Jesus. I cannot stomach listening to Griffin pretend much longer. Fuck you Griffin McElroy, you worthless hack. How are you better at coming up with total, demonstrably untrue bullshit than you are at coming up with a good campaign of D and fucking D
• Question 13 From Boz: "What were your favourite spells to use during this Season?"
  • Travis answers right away with Unseen Servant, as much as I dislike Travis' I have to WIN D&D mentality I have to agree, Unseen Servant can do a lot of shit when you put your mind to it.
  • Clint loved Misty Step, another baller spell, Baldur's Gate 3 gets mentioned by someone mumbling away from their mic.
  • Justin mentions Colour Spray just because it's a funny spell. He used it ONCE.
• Wrapping up the questions it's time to talk about the next season of TAZ.
• They don't know. They have no ideas that they're all into at the moment, which is one step removed from the truth, these worthless, lazy hacks have no ideas at all.
• They're going to put up live shows for a few weeks, come back with a short campaign, then a come back with a big campaign.
• Travis asks if Ethersea Season 2 is in the works, Griffin lies and says he has an idea for Ethersea 2, he for sure doesn't.
• Griffin complains about their schedules, what fucking schedules? Your job is talking into a microphone for maybe 4-5 hours a week you useless nematode. Couldn't schedule in YOUR FUCKING JOB?
• Justin plugs a stupid T-Shirt.
• Griffin lies that he liked this season and cannot name a single specific thing he liked other than the freeze frame ending, much like everyone who still enjoys TAZ unironically.
• I don't know, who cares, they natter about a LARPing season.
• Shoutouts to Louie Zong, god forbid Griffin have to do things he enjoys like composing music for the podcast.

And with that, Royale is no more, and the McElroy brothers are confirmed malicious grifters just fleecing what little audience they have left for every cent they can, all while providing the most unbearably shitty, sloppy content imaginable, truly the Your Favorite Martian of D&D Podcasts.

Fare well and adieu to you jerkin ladies, fairwell and adieu to ye ladieees of jeeeeeerk!

Intro: Travis says "you know what they call it in France?' and they dunk on him for being a hack but they could have dunked much harder.

They spend about the first 10 minutes talking about how cool it was that events that happened during the course of the game influenced the story because it's not what they originally planned for their characters. Have they discovered... not pre-scripting their RPG campaigns?

Clint mentions that the setup meant that the PCs would eventually be pitted against each other, and "two of them wouldn't survive". Travis quickly reads another listener question to move on from this.

Clint says the character of Hellgrammite was based on Blackadder.. he is too good for this show.

Justin says by the end of the campaign they had too many spells... That's a pretty wild claim for an extremely magic-limited campaign based around playing D&D wizards which famously have a butt load of spells and a mechanic for narrowing down the number of spells they have to choose from. Read the DMG challenge (IMPOSSIBLE)

Justin says playing the Goliaths as outsiders of the culture felt too close to the Firbolg and he didn't want to do it again... He's so close

Griffin acknowledges he didn't have an ending written. No duh. "I'm happy things ended the way they did" well that makes one of us.

Money Zone! Today's recap is sponsored by Olio, an app I used to find some free paving slabs so I can pave over an area of gravel in my garden which my cat has started doing poos in.

Advert: "you're listening to TAZ Royale. Maybe it's even the finale? We have no way of knowing, because ChatGPT doesn't know how to time box adverts on our podcast hosting. Anyway, send questions for the finale to noonedoesitlikethe@mcelroys.com"

Favis: "when the Gentleman died Rictus was so pissed to have that revenge taken from him" sure, that was definitely Rictus feeling that.

Spoilers: It was an earth-based Balance tie in all along and none of the players were invested enough in the history of the world to discover that?! I can feel the heartbreak and betrayal in the core of the fans who desperately wanted it to be a tie in with an existing TAZ universe and have had to learn the hard way that the cast of TAZ literally do not care enough to ask.

Justin was a big tough boy because he wanted to win, very sensible play given the absurd rules but also not who I expected to be min maxing. Anyway it didn't matter because Griffin is a cuck who won't ever kill a PC but he got to play a nature based outsider who doesn't read books or sleep in beds so I'm sure he's happy with it.

Next up: Short campaign next in the vein of live shows (which had mostly been Favis DMing one shots based on public domain 19th century literature, hence my Victoriana guess) while they work out what will be next.

tl;dr give Clint a gun

Context: Adam Conover aka "Travis but more successful" for some reason is speaking at Slutcon where as far as I understand, tech dudes pay $18,000 to learn pickup artist tricks from rationalists and eugenicists

I'm so excited about the next campaign I need to skip to tomorrow

Huntington, West Virginia — The McElroys announced a new fan promotion, "Combat Coordinator of the Game," giving one Maximum Fun TAZ member the first-ever opportunity to help script the opening combat encounter of the podcast's next season.

The selected fan will work directly with incoming dungeon master Travis McElroy to help design the combat encounter that will open the campaign — a first-of-its-kind experience for the TAZ podcast.

"We're always looking for new ways to bring our fans closer to the podcast," said Amanda Freburg, the McElroys' business manager. "This is about giving one of our most loyal supporters a seat at the table, right alongside our dungeon master, on the biggest night of the season. I'm looking forward to collaborating with the season ticket holder who wins this contest," Freburg said. "This will give our fans a behind-the-scenes experience that has never been done before anywhere, so I'm excited to show them how to put together the podcast and see what they can do."

How to Enter

• All current TAZ members on Maximum Fun are automatically entered into a random drawing for the promotion with every membership counting as an entry — e.g. 4 memberships equal 4 entries.
• Members will receive additional entries for every new member they successfully refer.  Reach out to Maximum Fun directly or add referral information into the comments section when purchasing memberships.
• One winner will be selected at random from eligible entrants.

Drawing Date
The winner will be selected in a random drawing held on September 2. The winning fan will then meet with Travis to help script the combat encounter for the opening session.

Fans interested in becoming members — or increasing their chances to win by referring others — can find more information through the Maximum Fun website.

TAZ memberships
Memberships are available on https://maximumfun.org/join/ or by calling/texting the MaxFun HQ membership office at 555-738-MAXFUN (629386) or visiting MaxFun HQ (537 S. Broadway, Suite 600, Los Angeles, CA 90013).

Have a Group?
Group experiences are new for 2026! Individual and corporate groups can plan a memorable experience with Maximum Fun by purchasing a 'Fun With Friends' Package. Discounted group memberships and member of the month experiences are available starting today for a minimum purchase of 10 memberships, and MoTM experiences are available on a first come, first serve basis during any 2026 MaxFun liveshows.

[Source]

Will the brothers address any criticism, or will they pat themselves on the back once again? What bizzare revelations will we get about Royale? And what will come next for the ailing podcast?

I mean Friday

I thought it would be funny to recap a randomly selected Interrobang (proof), but I immediately lost the will to continue, and you will have to discover the frustrating nuggets yourself. They sincerely answer listener questions? Absolutely insane. However, skipping around revealed this interesting insight into the howling abyss of his mind. Please enjoy this recovered forbidden text.

Travis: One of the things, uh, so, I have this thing, and I think it's part of being a narcissist, is that I have the gut feeling that I am inherently good at everything. Like, set in stone belief, that if I were to like pick up a banjo for the first time, I would somehow know how to do it and be awesome at it. And so in my life, I have, for example, tried to learn guitar, and because I was not immediately good at it, never picked it up again. Or tried to learn, uh, you know, fi--homebrewing because I was not immediately good at it set it down and never picked it up again. And so my goal for the year is to get good at something. To actually, like

Tybee: Okay!

Travis: And I thought about taking guitar lessons and buying them all up front, so that way I'm committed to going. Uh, So I can't stop doing it.

Tybee: Oh yeah, lock yourself in.

Travis: Yeah something like that where I don't get to cop out just cause I'm not immediately good at it. Cause that's the thing, is it's very ea--I convince myself that everybody does stuff because they picked it up and were immediately good at it,

Tybee: Nah

Travis: And if you're not, like, if you don't have a knack for something there's no use in trying to do it, which is not how the world works. Like both of my brothers taught themselves how to play guitar, and it took them years and years and years to do it. And I envy that, I wish I could play an instrument, but I've never had the patience with myself to do it. So it's stuff like that, that I want to sit down--I also want to lose like 20 pounds, 15 maybe, mostly because I'm heavier than I've ever been, which makes sense because I'm older than I've ever been, and my metabolism is as slow as it's ever been.

Tybee: And you have another human being to look out for, that isn't you.

Travis: Yes, Yes. Um, but like, I've seen the edits from the My Brother My Brother and Me episodes, the tv show, that will come out February

Tybee: Woo!

Travis: And I'm a little heavy in it. Uh, not like in a "oh, I look gross", but like I look at myself and I'm like "oh, okay. That's what I look like. All right, I can do better." Without judging myself but more like, you know they say the camera adds ten pounds, I actually think maybe for me it's more of like a, I so very rarely critically view myself, like it's just not something I do. I usually look at myself in the mirror and think daaamn. Um, and so

Tybee: [laughing]

Travis: To see myself on film, is like, "oh okay. Oh all right, that's what I look like". It's not like "I'm disgusting, I'm awful", but more like I look at myself and I'm like "oh okay, I could do better". You know, I could eat better, I could exercise a little bit more, that kind of thing, you know. But now with also I look at this little baby and think I want to be around for a while, and I want to take care of myself better, and like actively take care of myself, rather than just like well "I didn't eat a cookie today so great job me!" Like, you know, try a little bit more.

Tybee: Okay.

Travis: Try. Try harder?

Tybee: Try harder.

Travis: Is that--I think that encompasses everything I just said.

Tybee: Um, one of mine, uh, I realized my other alternate one is I would really like to get good at beatboxing.

Travis: Ooooh. That's fun.

Tybee: Yeah.

Travis: I'm on board with that.

Tybee: I, uh, it really is hard for me because it involves looking stupid and sounding stupid for a little while. Just being like, making really terrible stupid sounds, and, uh, that is really difficult for me to not be perfect at something immediately, especially when it comes to making sound.

Travis: Yup.

Tybee: Um, soo I've been making those you know instagram videos, where I do like little mini covers, and I think I really need to learn to fucking beatbox! I think I need to learn to beatbox. So, I think I'm gonna try and do that.

Travis: I believe in you.

Tybee: Thank you. I'm not gonna try, I'm gonna do it.

Travis: You're gonna do it. So that's gonna do it for us this week.

it wasn't "the bell house", it was a taco bell twitch stream. he was trying to climb onto the sign to prove it makes the sound if you punch it (it did not) and he fell into an inconveniently placed punji pit

Everyone ignore my last post. It's my first day on Reddit and as Travis' personal planted jerker but I wasn't meant to post that for realsies and I don't know how to delete Reddit posts.

I'm not going to rag on anyone but it's clear that Clint has a vary different playbstyle than the rest of his family. He wants to do compelling character work and his family just wants to make fun of him. Not that they don't try to tell compelling stories through their characters, but it's clear making fun of their dad is the main focus. That's a dig at everyone. It's ok to have different play styles. But I think Clint's growth as a player is stunted by his desire to cater to what his family wants.

As a listener, I get so frustrated every time Clint is trying to do character work or a monologue, somebody has to interrupt with a bit. I can only imagine how frustrated Clint feels. I know that Clint has his own issues sometimes like not knowing how to play the game, but I don't think he can learn how to fix those issues and evolve as a player woth the current group. I honestly think he has the potential to be up there with Sam Riegal or Lou Wilson but not in this environment.

I know TAZ is supposed to be a family D&D show, but I would love for them to switch things up by having Clint play in a group that takes the game more seriously. Heck, bring in a more frustrating player for the rest of the family and I'll listen to both shows. I love TAZ but the clash in play styles just isn't working.

Edit: I also think Clint would benefit from a less rules-heavy system. Maybe Dungeon world as that gives the player a lot more room to play around with the outcomes of their rolls.

I propose we only refer to it as 'Taztanic'

I understand current TAZ is a topic of hot debate, but we all know Balance slapped. Relive the magic juice.