I just bought the animated TV series of Dungeons and Dragons for my almost 12 year old. He loves to play D&D with his dad’s old books and is an avid reader of sci/fantasy.
Has anyone here ever seen the series? What are your opinions of it? Any one have the new DVD set?
Opinions, opinions!
I love the series. Gary Gygax was personally involved with it so even when it gets rules or names wrong, the feel of wonder and adventure is always right. Every roleplayer I’ve ever asked knows and loves this cartoon.
Your son will love it and love identifying monsters and spells that he sees.
“It’s Tiamat, the only chromatic dragon!”
“Venger’s assistant is a shadow demon as seen in the Fiend Folio!”
“The acrobat is from the Unearthed Arcana- and is hot!”
:eek: It’s out on DVD?! Aw man, geek flashback time!
It sucked.
Dull, boring, no monsters got killed.
Why are they putting this out, and not Kim Possible: The Complete First Season? :dubious: :mad:
Soulless heretic!
So, do you think a 12 year old will like it? I know nothing about D&D, so are monsters getting killed a huge part of it?
Thanks!
I wouldn’t call it dull or boring. YMMV of course.
In case you don’t know the premise a group of teens are trapped in the world of D&D, guided by the enigmatic Dungeon Master they fight evil and have adventures. There is comedy and drama and some of the monsters are a bit frightening.
Killing monsters is as big a part of D&D as the players and DM want it to be. Some groups are all about the killing. Other groups are into roleplaying characters or solving puzzles.
BTW Avoid the film. It sucks mightily. Lo, like a thousand black holes it sucks.
Yeah, during the 1980s, due to activists and such, there really couldn’t be violence in children’s cartoons. Tom Sito, an animator who was until recently the head of the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonist Union, commented on working on He-Man during the 1980s that they could not show He-Man using his sword to kill anyone. He once tried to animate a sequence in which He-Man threw a tree onto one of his enemies and got back a note saying they couldn’t even show trees being harmed. Mark Evanier, who created and wrote the D&D series, commented on a bizarre lesson he had to put into each episode which basically stated peer pressure is a good thing: one of the characters would not want to do what the other characters wanted and was eventually suckered into agreeing. This might have been the origin of the Buddy Bear characters from Garfield and Friends, which Evanier also wrote for.
I have no idea- that’s two different studios. Episodes of Kim Posssible are available on iTunes. I’d love to see Disney put more of their TV output onto DVD, but they should at least freakin’ advertise it. You’re Disney! You can advertise whatever you want and children will buy it. I’m sure there’s somebody out there who wants to buy DuckTales and the ilk on DVD- why are you putting them out if you’re not advertising them? You can’t live off of High School Musical royalties forever.
Ubergeek time.
The cartoon came out before Unearthed Arcana. The three classes in the cartoon that weren’t in the Players Handbook (Cavalier, Barbarian and Acrobat) were brought in with that book.
The early 80’s was a weird time for children’s television. The rules changed so that children’s programming could essentially be the thirty minute toy commercials that all children of that decade know and love, but part of that was the show’s producer had to include a certain amount of time for “educational” content. That’s where the odd morals like in GI Joe and He-Man came from. And mobo85 has already commented on the curious standards and practices rules that persisted until the late 90’s (things like not being able to say “kill” or “die”).
Allow me to commit some blasphemy here and say that I don’t think any cartoon from that period is good for anything more than nostalgia value. The D&D cartoon on the better side of the things produced in that period, but the restrictions they were under and the fact that these shows were produced as cheaply as possible as de facto advertisements undermines every program in the era.
I did, however, buy the set for a friend for Christmas. He’s a D&D guy from way back and has ancient taped off the broadcast cassettes so it was, like I said, nostalgic for him.
They had all, however, seen previous semi-official incarnation in the pages of Dragon magazine.
There the script for the final episode that was never filmed. I’d find it and read it. I felt a lot better about the series after reading it. You know what it was? Closure.
Michael Reaves, one of the writers for the series, has the script for the unproduced final episode on his website.
Man, I loved that 'toon, though the Gilligan’s Island premise started to wear a little thin (Dungeon Master: Oh, my children, you could have made it home, except the barbarian ate the radioactive coconut…)
Also, too many episodes hinged on “We could through the portal back to Earth but then Vengor will kill [well, not kill, but hurt] the villagers!” If it was me, I’d say screw the villagers! Hey, villagers, this is what I look like when I’m walking away! See ya, wouldn’t wanna be ya!
Nevertheless, I highly recommend it.
My son is more of an adventurer type player.
I heard the D& movie sucked along the likes of Erogan (or however it’s spelled!). We’re skipping Eragon too.
However, last night he was introduced to Monthy Python’s Holy Grail (I got his dad the new DVD for Hannukah).
Now that was fun! ('cept the Castle Anthrax part- We both forgot how explicit it got!!).
And then…the oral sex!
Yeah, I think if my parents had showed Grail to me when I was a kid and we’d gotten to that part, I’d just have melted into a big puddle of embarrassed and sunk behind the couch cushions.
Apparently, you’re not okay with oral sex, but you’re okay with mindless violence, the word “shit,” etc.
For an eleven year old- yup, that about sums it up!
But really- he doesn’t have any video game systems, he watches no TV or plays on the computer during the school week.
He reads, draws, runs around ouside with his friends, goes to Hebrew school, Karate and flute lessons.
So, I am pretty darn comfortable with the level of “mindless violoence” and mild swearing that he views once in a blue moon.
Whilst most of the 80’s cartoons were indeed 30 minute toy commericals, D&D wasn’t a bad cartoon at all. At times whimsical, funny and genuinely touching, it’s well worth a watch. Just my $.02.
Dungeons & Dragons was one of the gems of 80’s cartoon television. Instead of being a hasty license cash-in, it did an admirable job of giving the characters real characterization, and of setting up stories that played on shades of grey. Admittedly, the repeated use of “You could have escaped from the realm if only you abandoned the villagers” plot got old quickly, but it’s a small blemish on an otherwise great series.
Damn straight. I’d really loved to have seen that animated, just to provide a proper ending to the season (and the series).