Murder on the Rockford Limited

The start of this volume (the second in the series) helped me understand why I don’t enjoy Adventure Zone.

It’s the Trumpian transactionalism. The classic D&D “what’s in it for me?” where the “storyline” has to be incentivised by some kind of reward; often monetary, always offering power.

Despite having stood by as an entire village was destroyed and all its inhabitants murdered: the characters (who we are asked as a minimum to enjoy being in the company of if little else) are offered a chance of redemption by joining a secret society aimed at destroying the kind of artefacts that create such devastation. Inevitably they ask: what do we get out of joining?

The answer really should be the chance to balance your moral balance sheet you toxic self-regarding narcistic dickheads.

The actual answer is, inevitably, wealth.

Now the idea of the Adventure Zone, like a lot of D&D derived material is that it is comedy. It takes all of tropes of D&D and opens it up to examination for all its absurdity.

However the comic renders the generated narrative from the game into a new form which presents the characters as protagonists. Now protagonists do not need to be likeable and these characters are certainly not. But if you don’t enjoy the characters, you find their actions abusive and exploitive rather than humorous then the only redemptive property of the work is to interrogate the narrative being portrayed and the nature of the characters in it.

That never happens. Instead the central thrust of the entertainment appears to be: what if a homage to Dragonlance was performed by incompetent narcissists with recognisably modern American attitudes?

In the second volume much of the fantasy element is ditched in favour of a steampunk magic-as-technology world. The Rockford Limited is an 1800s era train (you know the Wild West era, the best one). The plot revolves around the recovery of a Macguffin and it’s recovery requires the characters to engage with a murder plot that pastiches period detective plots like Murder on the Orient Express.

What’s particularly telling is the characters (and maybe by extension the players) are much more engaged in the tropes of this situation than they were in the stock fantasy of the previous volume. The understanding of the requirements of the narrative logic is clearer here.

One of the gags references CSI: Miami but genuinely I feel that the next volume will probably just be representing a TV show formula with fantasy cos play.

This volume sees the use of “Fantasy” as a prefix to allow elements of the modern world to be used. “Fantasy Costco” for example.

The players joke about their inability to remember a character’s name and instead use their archetype nickname “juicy wizard” instead.

Which is weird in a comic book version of a game because the character’s are given more or less full identities and more presence. They even have their little story arcs fully presented.

The book is full of these kind of dissonances, to the point that it is virtually a textbook of what is wrong about most D&D gaming. Why present any story arc for an NPC in this narcissistic hellhole? Is it really to illustrate what a great “storyteller” the GM is? That they understand what is needed to make complete stories in fiction.

The Trumpian disquiet extended through the whole book for me. The PCs mock and humiliate the NPCs, require constant praise and validation for their relatively minor feats. As an attempt to lampshade the story, one of the NPCs acknowledges the low bar the characters are clearing to be worthy of being the protagonists of this story.

At the end of this book, just at the end of the first one, a settlement is threatened with a catastrophe which it has done nothing to deserve and which serves no story purpose. The first reaction of the characters is to let it happen. Due to a flaw in the scenario construction their objective can be achieved without any need to avert the disaster.

And the different outcome in this volume illustrates two things to me. Firstly that the narrative requirement to accept the call of action is clearer here and harder to justify rejecting than it was before and secondly that this volume is more concerned with working as a story rather than a retelling of a session that people enjoyed.

In this volume for example in addition to meeting the basic requirements of a heroic story where disaster is averted and the status quo essentially maintained (this is after all a children’s story with a dirty mouth at its heart), story arcs that are properly resolved we also see a diversion from the first book’s perspective on the story as being that of the protagonist’s. Instead here we get cutscenes that expand the actions and the motivations of the NPCs unhampered by the buffoonery of the protagonists and with clearer emoted story signposting.

There are secrets and mysteries that are unknown to the protagonists.

In doing so Adventure Zone breaks from its initial premise of illustrating a recording of a roleplaying session and instead veers to the safer ground of a fantasy-themed mystery theme park.

In doing so it places a shield of unreality around the colossal dickery of its protagonists and tries to allow you to enjoy their entitlement without drawing the lines between their views and behaviour and that of contemporary American society.

All of which allows me to drop the series and leave it to people who like their comedy for “fans” and free of “politics”. Adventure Zone has clearly found an audience and I am happy to let it keep it.