[image description: a tweet by Justin McElroy @JustinMcElroy that reads, “Seeing men, women, and non-binary folks all cosplay as Taako and all equally crush it is so incredibly rad for me. #thezonecast” //end id]
Look, The Adventure Zone is a fine podcast, but not every gay wizard is Taako from The Adventure Zone. There is allowed to be more than one gay wizard.
What she means: Merle is one of the most forgiving and unashamed characters to exist ever. He makes friends with the enity that is chasing him throughout 100 lives in 100 universes and had killed him many times. He faces the hunger and humbles himself by bringing his enemy into the parley space. He dies over 50 times making friends with a nihilistic monster who kills him at the end of every interaction. He had the chance to get his arm back with the chalice but he bared his mistakes and learned from them. He said ‘I like that guy’ about the grim reaper who tricked him into loosing his hand in the first place. He stayed with the people he gave faith to on the mushroom planet where he gave an honest speech about his own insecurities about life and death but still gave hope to the people. He gave 40 of his hit points to heal Taako for 20 in Wonderland. Merle didn’t rush in but he always followed his friends into danger anyway. He asks the leader of the hunger if he’s his friend and waits 30 years for John to realise they were friends all along.
I think one of my absolute favourite things about TAZ is that Griffin got to write a campaign in which the three free agents, the three moving parts that he relied on to make his story work, were the three people he knows best in the whole universe. People talk about Griffin’s story being ‘on rails’ but it’s not. It’s just that – unlike most DMs – Griffin can predict his family’s behaviour in advance in a way most people couldn’t hope to do. If he were playing with a different group, the story never would have turned out the way it did, but because he knows his family, he could fairly accurately predict the big decisions.
He writes a voidfish into the story, because he knows his brother is kind to animals, knows he’d never leave a sentient baby jellyfish on a planet about to get eaten, not even narratively. He’s not writing Travis into a corner, Travis would never consider doing anything else. He writes Taako a sister – a best friend, a twin, a soul mate – because he knows that Justin is a big brother to his very core, knows that his instincts will always fall in line with sibling loyalty and devotion, even when he’s playing an aloof elf who doesn’t care about anyone. He writes his dad into the trickiest position of them all – facing true horror, sitting across the table from the end of the world – and he knows that his father will respond with compromise and understanding, with love and joy and compassion, because he’s seen that grace in his father his whole life. Griffin was betting on those qualities that he already knew his family possessed, and it was the safest bet he ever made! Because they were amazing, and he always knew they would be.
i think my fav thing about griffin as a dm is that instead of going “unfortunately the ooze is immune to slashing damage :/” he says “if you were making a pb&j sandwich and you dropped some jelly on the counter, would you take a knife and just start cutting at it you dumb son of a bitch”
Pass Through Fire 