This post is best read on a computer. Also spoilers for the Adventure Zone: Balance campaign and the corresponding graphic novels.

Hail and well met, weary internet traveler! And welcome to a social network analysis of the Adventure Zone: Balance.

I stumbled upon the Adventure Zone in the fall of 2018. Before long I had streamed the entire show and, like many other fans, was looking forward to "good" Thursdays when the McElroys released a new episode.

I do a lot of social network analysis for my work, and I thought it would be fun to examine relationships between the fictional (and four non-fictional) characters of the Balance campaign using those techniques. I formed a network¹ in which each node represents a unique character from the show and an edge between two nodes represents how many episodes featured both characters. For example, Magnus and Taako are in all 69 episodes, and so the edge between their nodes would have a weight of 69.

The resulting "social" network was run through a community detection algorithm². In network science a "community" refers to a close-knit group of nodes who tend to have more edges between themselves than the rest of the network. A community in this setting would consist of characters that frequently appeared in episodes together.

I have plotted the network as an interactive graphic below. Characters have been arranged according to the arc³ of their first appearance with the McElroys, their PCs and the TAZ Announcer placed as the "Main Cast" group at the top. Hovering over a dot reveals the character it represents as well as their connections to others. You can toggle the algorithm's community assignments by clicking the "Community Color: Off/On" button. Explore and have fun!

I arranged the network in this manner because I found it most interesting to compare the communities found by the algorithm to my own preconceived notions. I thought that the communities would break along arcs, but that was not the case.

For example, characters first appearing in "Here There Be Gerblins" were split into three separate communities. Barry, understandably, was split into the finale community. Klaarg and his Gerblins are grouped with the "Petals to the Metal" crew due to Klaarg's triumphant battle wagon return. Meanwhile, Killian drags everyone else into the "Crystal Kingdom" community given her prominence in that arc.

Two more fun examples are Angus and Garyl. The Caleb Cleveland loving boy detective's elevation to recurring character drags the entire Rockport Limited into one of the Bureau of Balance's communities. On the other extreme, Garyl is sorted into a community of "Eleventh Hour" characters, despite having a meaningful role in "Petals to the Metal".

What I find most fun about this project is how the events of the Balance campaign are reflected in the network. Consider the Red Robe as an example. While he is introduced at the end of "Petals to the Metal" and appears in every arc that follows, he is sorted into the, fittingly red, "The Suffering Game" community. This follows the story's narrative.

I enjoyed making this network and I hope you got some enjoyment out of it as well. I plan on performing additional TAZ social network analysis with Amnesty, Graduation and the ongoing Ethersea campaigns.

Thank you to the McElroy family and the Maximum Fun podcast network for the Adventure Zone. If you are not already a Maximum Fun donor, please consider joining during the next MaxFun pledge drive. Also thanks to TAZ Transcribed for providing transcript files for every episode. Finally, thanks to Carey Pietsch for her gorgeous illustrations in the Adventure Zone graphic novels.

Notes

1. Data to create the network was found by scraping the transcripts provided at TAZ Transcribed and is stored on my corresponding GitHub repository. These data do not include live shows.
2. Specifically I used the Louvain algorithm as described here, Blondel, Vincent D., et al. "Fast unfolding of communities in large networks." Journal of statistical mechanics: theory and experiment 2008.10 (2008): P10008., on the sub-network not including The McElroys, Magnus, Taako, Merle and the TAZ Announcer. This is because their appearance in every episode distorts the results of the algorithm.
3. Characters appearing in the Moonlighting arc or any Lunar Interlude have been grouped under the "Bureau of Balance" label.