Collaborative storytelling and canon fluidity in The Adventure Zone podcast

Abstract

Podcast fiction storytelling is an underdeveloped area of new media studies. There is a wealth of texts available suitable for exploration. The example of The Adventure Zone in particular presents a strong argument that the medium possesses its own singular strengths for storytelling. The Adventure Zone is a fictional, audio-only, serialised podcast in which a narrative of both considerable length and depth is constructed through the playing of tabletop roleplaying game Dungeons & Dragons. It is hosted by the McElroy brothers, Griffin, Justin, and Travis, along with their father, Clint. The Adventure Zone demonstrates the unique qualities and noteworthy potential the podcast medium possesses. The McElroy family collaborates utilising comedy improv practices, which are strengthened by the game’s mechanics and rules. The line between characters and players – along with the line between textual and metatextual, canonical and non-canonical, diegetic and non-diegetic data – is significantly blurred through instances such as self-reflexivity and popular culture references. The fourth wall is inapplicable to The Adventure Zone. It is necessary to re-imagine it instead as a permeable curtain separating the players from the characters. The listeners are provided with a clear view of not only the story of The Adventure Zone, but the construction of its creation. There are few mediums in which the audience can so effectively and candidly witness the storytelling process. Comparisons drawn from the original text – The Adventure Zone podcast – to its ongoing adaptations – The Adventure Zone graphic novels – illustrates this fact further. The collaborative, improvisational, metafictional qualities of the dynamic audio-only medium of podcasts are absent from static visual mediums.