What A Cartoon! - Dungeons & Dragons "The Night of No Tomorrow"
Added 2020-09-21 04:00:01 +0000 UTCThis week we're joined by one of our top Patreon supporters, Devin, to discuss the 1983 cartoon adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons! How did the controversial and groundbreaking role-playing game become a Saturday morning favorite? Which anime company produced it? And how do the first adventures hold up to modern scrutiny? Grab your D20 and listen along to this week's podcast!
Comments
Really enjoyed the history portion about D&D the game. My friends & I had a 4 year running campaign with the first edition AD&D books which I still own. Part of that was reading DUNGEON magazine where Gary Gygax had his own column. One of which where he notoriously disparaged Tolkien by claiming nothing in D&D was taken from his work (yeah right!) and that the ONE RING was just and I quote "a ring of invisibility with a curse on it." I bring that up because of your comment about his claim that John Boorman was once attached to direct a D&D film. That is incorrect. Boorman was originally assigned to a LORD OF THE RINGS film as reported in many sources including STARLOG magazine. That project collapsed due to budgetary reasons & an inability to condense the material to one film. That project eventually became the film EXCALIBUR. But I can totally believe Gygax making false claims. Lastly I surprised you are not aware of the live action DUNGEONS & DRAGONS short film/TV commercial made by Renault that utilized the original characters from the cartoon and brought them home. Renault seems to be making a series of these live action cartoon adaptations as they also did a WACKY RACES commercial. Here is the D&D ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msDp_k-Fid4
James Babbo
2020-09-29 04:30:39 +0000 UTCI was there front and center at the TV for the premieres of Saturday Supercade and Dungeons and Dragons. It was quickly obvious that Supercade was crap, even by the low standards of cartoons at the time. But DnD....wow! I had just gotten into Tolkien the pervious spring and summer and to see a cartoon kinda sorta based on it just blew my mind. Despite how it tried to push boundaries, the censorship got on my nerves. For example, I always wanted Presto to use a spell like "Allakazam Allkazeen, what I need know is an M-16". At one point you brought up the question of the rules of magic. Well, in one episode when Eric was granted the powers of the Dungeon Master, DM told him point blank magic cannot create: if he makes a water fountain to quench his thirst, he's taking the water from somewhere else and implying someone had to go thirsty. Definitely heavy to my 11 year old mind. The lack of a final episode always bugged me but in college a friend swore she had heard one was made but never aired. This being the very earliest days of internet bulletin boards and the spread of many false urban legends of pop culture, she said the final episode had the party learn that they were about to enter a much darker and more dangerous phase of their adventures. Dungeon Master told them he could send one (and only one) home but they had to choose. Eric of all people said Bobby should go, so the final scene had the group deliver a sleeping Bobby to his bed at home and then return to the realm. To me this sounded plausible enough that I believed her for years until I investigated myself.
Stephen C. Nedell
2020-09-27 17:41:26 +0000 UTC
