The first campaign in the podcast The Adventure Zone was called Balance.
The Adventure Zone began as a special episode of My Brother, My Brother and Me in August 2014, when the McElroy family played Dungeons & Dragons. It became a separate biweekly podcast later that year, with Griffin McElroy serving as Dungeon Master for the opening campaign, eventually known as the Balance Arc.
Balance ran for 69 main episodes and follows Taako, Merle Highchurch, and Magnus Burnsides as they become involved with the Bureau of Balance and its effort to recover seven dangerous Grand Relics. The opening quest, “Here There Be Gerblins,” loosely drew on the Dungeons & Dragons Starter Set adventure Lost Mine of Phandelver before developing into a much larger original story.
The title can be confusing because the show’s terminology changed over time: fans and creators have used “campaign,” “arc,” and “season” somewhat interchangeably. Ethersea, Amnesty, and Graduation are later settings or campaigns, not the first one. Balance also inspired a bestselling graphic-novel adaptation beginning in 2018.