"From the ashes of Phandalin, three new heroes arise. Let's see if The Flop House gang can survive one night in... The Adventure Zone!"
— The Announcer
See here for the main recap page.
You didn't think our heroes were the only adventurers in the world of The Adventure Zone, did you? In this episode, the hysterical folks from The Flop House take over, introducing the world to a new, lovable trio of mercenaries.
Strap in for a two-hour D&D session starring Stuart Wellington as DM, Elliott Kalan as the Dragonborn Bard Jeremy "Scales" Fangbattle, Dan McCoy as High Elf Druid Lucian Buttwatcher and Zhubin Parang as the noble Tanzer Silverview.
Tropes:
- As Long as It Sounds Foreign: The fake goblin charade utterly falls apart due to the fact that Lucian can speak Goblin and thus realizes that the "goblins" in front of them are speaking in utter gibberish.
- Breath Weapon: Scales, being dragon-born, has a lightning breath attack.
- The Casanova: Tanzer is a cad who beds a barmaid before the party gets out of the starting tavern.
- Casanova Wannabe: Scales tries to follow Tanzer's lead with a halfling lass, but he doesn't get lucky.
- Chronic Evidence Retention Syndrome: The document that Tapwell wants the heroes to retrieve from his house turns out to be a deed proving that he stole the property. No explanation is given for why he would allow such a thing to survive in the first place.
- Continuity Nod: Stuart includes a few details that establish the adventure's connection to the main Adventure Zone storylines:
- As an obvious one, the heroes pass through the obliterated town of Phandalin. It had been leveled to a plain of obsidian at the climax of the "Here There Be Gerblins" arc.
- When the fake goblins at Tapwell Manor give up the act, it's implied that they looted their gear from the goblins that the original heroes defeated in the very first episode.
- Dirty Coward: When the heroes return to Hogsbottom, they find the town's sheriff among the refugees fleeing a goblin assault while the guards are still holding the line.
- Exposition Cut: When Lucian explains the plot so far to Baron Von Bogenhoffen, Dan describes it as an Exposition Cut to save time. He specifically compares it to a scene from North By Northwest where redundant exposition is drowned by airplane engines.
- Fake Aristocrat: Tanzer Silverview goes way out of his way to remind everyone of his nobility. He harps so much on the point that the Silverviews made their fortune and fame from special powers of mineralogy that one suspects he's hiding a sketchier past. However, his claimed status is at least partly real, as the Silverview name does open doors.
- Fake Kill Scare: The heroes' first clue that the "goblin invasion" of Tapwell Manor is not what it seems comes when they spot that the corpses hanging from the gateway are straw-stuffed dummies.
- Hero of Another Story: The Hogsbottom Three are this to the main storyline.
- MacGuffin Delivery Service: Tapwell tries to set this up by hiring the heroes to retrieve from his ransacked home a document that incriminates him. The heroes turn it around by realizing that the home was never actually ransacked, and that the document is better off in the hands of the land's rightful owners.
- Practical Taunt: Scales uses a Vicious Mockery spell to damage and debuff Augustus Tapwell.
- Previously on…: This episode gets one of these just like every other episode, despite being the first installment of an almost completely unrelated story and group of characters. The clips are taken from much earlier in the series.
- "Scooby-Doo" Hoax: The goblin horde that drove the Tapwells from their home are actually a group of halflings in disguise. They only want to regain the land that's rightfully theirs, and they haven't harmed anyone (except maybe that one horse).
- Skewed Priorities: When Tanzer gets his whip around the neck of Augustus Tapwell, he's given the choice of simply rendering his foe unconscious. He chooses to kill because of his indignation that the Tapwells pretended to be on his social level.
- Unwitting Pawn: The heroes, who eventually realize that Tapwell's errand is intended to keep evidence of his illegitimate claim on his orchard in his own hands.
- Word of God: Main Adventure Zone DM Griffin chimes in at the mid-episode break, heading off any dispute by affirming that the events of the Flop House story are absolutely canonical in the overall continuity.
