It's the 40th Anniversary of 1983's 'Dungeons & Dragons' Cartoon (newsfromme.com) 66
71-year-old Mark Evanier is a legendary comic book/TV writer. Today he posted on his personal blog that "Forty years ago, I spent about six days (cumulative) of my life writing the pilot script and small-b bible for a Saturday morning cartoon series called Dungeons & Dragons...
"I feel like I have now spent more than six days (cumulative) being interviewed about this series." It went on CBS on September 17, 1983 and lasted three seasons. Do not believe those who claim it was driven from the airwaves by pressure groups who saw satanic subtext in the series. It went off for the same reason most shows go off: Because the ratings were declining and — rightly or wrongly — the brass at the network didn't think it would have enough viewers to sustain another season. Yes, there were protests about its content but not many and CBS, at least in those days, was pretty good about ignoring such outcries if — and this is always a Big If — the viewers seem to want whatever is being outcried about.
From Wikipedia: The level of violence was controversial for American children's television at the time, and the script of one episode, "The Dragon's Graveyard", was almost canceled because the characters contemplated killing their nemesis, Venger. In 1985, the National Coalition on Television Violence demanded that the FTC run a warning during each broadcast stating that Dungeons & Dragons had been linked to real-life violent deaths.
The show ultimately ran for a total of 27 episodes. The blog post continues: It was a good show because of good writers, good producers, good artists, good voice talent, good everything...and I was mostly a spectator to all that goodness, having opted not to stick with it. Still, thanks to the gent who was my agent at the time, my name was seen for a micro-second in the credits each week so I get more kudos than I probably earned...
Quite recently, I sat for this video podcast with a fine interviewer and a major fan of the series, Heath Holland. It's almost an hour and we talked about some other things but it's mostly about Dungeons & Dragons...
The podcaster notes that the cartoon's six adventurers even made a cameo in 2022's live-action Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves — and several other companies are still celebrating the cartoon. Hasbro recently released a line of action figures based on the cartoon, while IDW has released a comic book mini-series called Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures.
In the series six children are transported from an amusement park's Dungeon's & Dragons ride into the game's realm, where a kindly Dungeon Master helps them battle various villains and monsters as they search for a way home. More lore about the series from Wikipedia: A final unproduced episode would have served as both a conclusion to the story and as a re-imagining of the show, had it been picked up for a fourth season. However, it was canceled before the episode was made. The script has since been published online and was performed as an audio drama as a special feature for the BCI Eclipse DVD edition of the series... A fan-made animated version of the finale appeared online in 2020 [according to TheGamer.com].
"I feel like I have now spent more than six days (cumulative) being interviewed about this series." It went on CBS on September 17, 1983 and lasted three seasons. Do not believe those who claim it was driven from the airwaves by pressure groups who saw satanic subtext in the series. It went off for the same reason most shows go off: Because the ratings were declining and — rightly or wrongly — the brass at the network didn't think it would have enough viewers to sustain another season. Yes, there were protests about its content but not many and CBS, at least in those days, was pretty good about ignoring such outcries if — and this is always a Big If — the viewers seem to want whatever is being outcried about.
From Wikipedia: The level of violence was controversial for American children's television at the time, and the script of one episode, "The Dragon's Graveyard", was almost canceled because the characters contemplated killing their nemesis, Venger. In 1985, the National Coalition on Television Violence demanded that the FTC run a warning during each broadcast stating that Dungeons & Dragons had been linked to real-life violent deaths.
The show ultimately ran for a total of 27 episodes. The blog post continues: It was a good show because of good writers, good producers, good artists, good voice talent, good everything...and I was mostly a spectator to all that goodness, having opted not to stick with it. Still, thanks to the gent who was my agent at the time, my name was seen for a micro-second in the credits each week so I get more kudos than I probably earned...
Quite recently, I sat for this video podcast with a fine interviewer and a major fan of the series, Heath Holland. It's almost an hour and we talked about some other things but it's mostly about Dungeons & Dragons...
The podcaster notes that the cartoon's six adventurers even made a cameo in 2022's live-action Dungeons & Dragons movie, Honor Among Thieves — and several other companies are still celebrating the cartoon. Hasbro recently released a line of action figures based on the cartoon, while IDW has released a comic book mini-series called Dungeons & Dragons: Saturday Morning Adventures.
In the series six children are transported from an amusement park's Dungeon's & Dragons ride into the game's realm, where a kindly Dungeon Master helps them battle various villains and monsters as they search for a way home. More lore about the series from Wikipedia: A final unproduced episode would have served as both a conclusion to the story and as a re-imagining of the show, had it been picked up for a fourth season. However, it was canceled before the episode was made. The script has since been published online and was performed as an audio drama as a special feature for the BCI Eclipse DVD edition of the series... A fan-made animated version of the finale appeared online in 2020 [according to TheGamer.com].
The show wasn't that great (Score:5, Informative)
I watched it as a kid. The Dragon's Graveyard was a pretty good episode, and it had an interesting moral lesson. But overall the show was corny schlock that was squarely aimed at kids. And it was designed to sell product (more or less). Let's not fool ourselves.
There were better children's shows out there, though admittedly the ones airing in 1983 were universally pretty bad.
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For its day, it was great. For its day.
And most cartoons were designed to sell something. This was one of the least blatant about it. Other than the name there was very little to do with d&d in the cartoon. It was a generic kid's fantasy borrowing the name.
Hell, how many cartoons were created and launched at the same time as a new toy or movie? Quite a few, iirc.
I came to this article to post that the cartoon had very little to do with the real game until thinking back to my grade school games whic
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Magic god hat of do anything - you don't need right now.
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And most cartoons were designed to sell something.
GI Joe, Transformers, He-Man, She-Ra, Jem and the Holograms... All of those shows were long ass commercials intended to introduce kids to their newest toys so that we could pester our parents to get them.
They were still fun to watch.
LK
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The cartoon coincidentally launched a few months after I started playing D&D, so I was pretty excited when it came out. I watched it religiously and my 12-year old self loved it. To this day, I still play D&D roughly once a month.
A decade ago or so, I had the idea to rent the series on Netflix (back when DVD rental was a thing) just for nostalgia's sake. Sadly, it is unwatchable as an adult and I couldn't even make it through the first episode. Still, I was pretty happy when I saw the cartoon charac
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TStill, I was pretty happy when I saw the cartoon characters making a cameo in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. I thought it was a nice little gift to us long-time fans, and they didn't have to do that.
Speaking on gift for fans, maybe you'd like to know that fans have animated and voice acted [boingboing.net] the original script from the unproduced last episode.
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Speaking on gift for fans, maybe you'd like to know that fans have animated and voice acted [boingboing.net] the original script from the unproduced last episode.
That seems so familiar... oh yeah there it is in the summary:
A fan-made animated version of the finale appeared online in 2020 [according to TheGamer.com].
Re: The show wasn't that great (Score:2)
You mean it wasn't a cartoon made for 35 year old Millennials? How shocking.
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Your math = bad. No 35 year old Millennial was alive watching that program when it was new.
I watched it as a kid and was not impressed.
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It was hobbled by being produced under US rules at the time, which basically required it to have a moral lesson and the characters couldn't use their weapons to actually hurt anyone.
Thing is, most shows had the same problem back then. Some of the non-US ones were better, like the French-Japanese collaborations Ulysses 31 and Mysterious Cities of Gold. Most of D&D's contemporaries, like He-Man, Thundercats, Transformers, they were all kinda terrible but also all we had. So out of that bunch, it was one o
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Thundarr also had Jack "King" Kirby of Marvel/DC fame doing production design. So it looked very good and dynamic compared to most Saturday morning cartoons.
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I think the moral bit at the end was a legal obligation. They had to show a certain amount of educational programming every day, and if they had the little moral lesson at the end they could claim the whole half hour counted towards the quota.
Transformers was the same, created after the toys which were repainted Japanese ones. Someone He-Man was much worse though... Filmation perhaps?
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Indeed, it was poorly written. I think they had to make it a really explicit lesson at the end to ensure it was counted as educational though. Probably some lawyer's opinion of what would be unquestionable.
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I came to say the same thing. I liked the fantasy genre even as a little kid before reading anything by Tolkien so I did give it a go. I didn't care much for it and went on to other cartoons. I remember it being pretty cheesy even for an 80s kids cartoon.
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It's one of those cases where more constraints might have been better. Like how Ren & Stimpy lost its charm when it was on a network where it didn't have any censorship. Although you can cer
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> But overall the show was corny schlock that was squarely aimed at kids.
A Saturday morning cartoon aimed at children? What!? Are you sure?! You must be some sort of genius studying and sorting through 40 years of evidence to uncover this.
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Wasn't that great? It was a terrible show. Even kids probably think it's bad. It's fun to watch though, precisely because it's so awful.
Why exactly are we discussing 80s kids TV now? (Score:1)
Because it was D&D themed? What's next, celebrating the 30 years anniversary of Captain N because it was an oversized commercial for the NES? Or just go all-out with exploitative advertisement-disguised-as-entertainment, let's talk about The Wizard.
But seriously. The D&D cartoon show wasn't exactly spectacular. It was a run-off-the-mill 80s kids cartoon. Complete with the shallow, predictable plots and the cringy moral lesson at the end. The D&D aspect was mostly reduced to giving the kids diffe
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Plots: have you seen Scooby Doo? Very successful. No one watched 80's cartoons for plots.
If you're not happy with this article perhaps something different like an article about the latest crypto exchange rug pull would be better? We haven't seen one of those in the last 12 hours or so.
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If you're not happy with this article perhaps something different like an article about the latest crypto exchange rug pull would be better?
Uh... Erh... yeah, when you look at it that way...
Hey! I love the article, it's the best ever!
It's all a matter of perspective...
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Lol, sorry I went there, bro. It was really late here when I posted that. I didn't intend to be cruel. :-)
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ExoSquad has a pretty good plot.
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Hmm, weird. I had to check wiki to see what that is. It didn't air where I was. I'll see if I can find it on YouTube or something. Thanks for the tip.
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There were some more involved animated things being produced back then, but less mainstream and not aired on Saturday mornings. Think more Ralph Bakshi or Rankin/Bass. Though if we go back to the 70s, the Star Trek Animated series counts as an exception. That was aired on Saturday mornings, and was really very well done for what it was.
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Scooby Doo works because of Shaggy and Scooby. No one cared about the other kids. But Shaggy (Casey Casem) and Scooby had the personality to float the show on, and were funny. The D&D cartoon didn't have any personality to it.
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Totally true. The d&d characters were all pretty flat as was the rest of the Scooby-Doo gang. But wow, seriously, scooby doo plots are so horrible they became a meme before there was an internet to have memes on.
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I have a hunch that the writers didn't exactly have the freedom to give them much of a personality. When you're supposed to write cardboard-cutout generic character-tropes, there isn't much leeway for character.
Re:Why exactly are we discussing 80s kids TV now? (Score:4, Funny)
Oh lord.
A Saturday Morning Cartoon Snob?
Now I've seen EVERYTHING.
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What? Yes, there were good cartoon shows. Yes, even in the 80s. Plus, they don't make intro music like that [youtube.com] anymore.
Re: Why exactly are we discussing 80s kids TV now? (Score:2)
It had its fans. But to put in perspective....the show was released just when gygax was publicly voicing his dissatisfaction with tsr. Remember the self proclaimed creator and self proclaimed owner of most of tsr's product line? They even had to redraw scenes to get him to agree to stop telling people not to watch it which he never quite did. He even said the show was glorifying child abuse, which he was accused of the same year the show first aired. They were lucky it lasted 3 season after announcing 7 sea
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Wow, who pooped into your cereal bowl? Sorry I offended your treasured childhood memory.
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> Or just go all-out with exploitative advertisement-disguised-as-entertainment, let's talk about The Wizard.
Imagine siding with people who fucked up Saturday mornings by passing laws against advertising toys to kids and thinking you'll get sympathy from a bunch of nerds who massively enjoy all the IPs that materialized in the golden age of kid's TV.
Go enjoy your Caillou and other shitty modern cartoons elsewhere.
Poison to the game (Score:5, Interesting)
Then that bloody cartoon. With flaming Uni in it. My god. Overnight, the name of D&D was utter social poison in the school. It was truly, truly terrible as a show and just killed any outside interest overnight.
Re: Poison to the game (Score:2)
D&D didn't exactly suffer any market loss here in the US because of the cartoon. It did dip a bit then recovered since everyone who was a critc of D&D used that cartoon to justify their views. Views that ultimately played a role in TSR closing its doors, and Wizards of the Coast being formed?
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It probably depends how old you are, for younger viewers it was something of a revelation. Much more mature than most of its contemporaries.
Back in the day I preferred Warhammer to D&D. Now that really was quite adult in many ways - your character went slowly insane from all the messed up stuff they witnessed, and you could never get powerful enough that even low level tavern fights were without real risk.
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Uni and Eric really made the show hard to watch sometimes. The writers seem to have sorted that out later in the show but by then it was too late.
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All the characters were essentially the usual cardboard cutouts that "had to be there" in a kids' TV show for the moralizing bullshit that permeated these cartoons in those days. Eric was the constant complainer and HAD TO BE wrong because that's what the kiddiwinks need to learn, that you don't complain but instead be a good team player.
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No, Eric should not have existed or at least he should have been eliminated quickly. Nobody needs a whiny, arrogant know-it-all who mistakes pointless nagging for cynical commentary.
Is that, by the way, why you post anonymously, did they eliminate your character?
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Kinda makes sense. You're 14-16, you're in that awkward phase where peer review matters more than ever, you ARE already a social pariah (hey, you're playing D&D in the 80s. You're NOT one of the cool kids, ok?) and in comes a cartoon that depicts your new pastime as something meant for elementary school kids.
Yeah. That's a kick in the ego, like any D&D nerd in the 80s needed one...
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>hey, you're playing D&D in the 80s. You're NOT one of the cool kids, ok?
Weird thing... I know I wasn't one of the cool kids, but one of the cooler groups did play D&D, and for God knows what reason they let me play with them once or twice. This would have been in the late 80s, almost a decade after the Tom Hanks "D&D is satanic" movie, so maybe nobody cared enough anymore to have an opinion about how cool is was or was not.
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Mark Evanier as in "Groo" (Score:2)
Much more notable work, there.
Doesn't hold up (Score:2)
If you enjoyed this as a kid, I'd strongly discourage you from watching it as an adult and damaging that memory.
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I didn't even enjoy it as a kid. It was one of the most moralizing drivel shows of the time.
Not a single one of the characters was actually interesting, but not even for the reason that the usual D&D player characters are boring to watch.
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I didn't even enjoy it as a kid. It was one of the most moralizing drivel shows of the time.
Not a single one of the characters was actually interesting,
Eric and Presto actually had good character arcs throughout the series. If the series finale ever would have been produced (it was written), you would have seen an interesting change in Venger, and vaguely sinister side to DM (he trapped the children to ultimately save Venger's soul).
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So yet another series that was eliminated before it could start to become interesting?
Sorry, but if you need 3 seasons to become at least tolerable and make sense, you're worse than Babylon 5, even they only needed one.
50% of the show: Uni!!! ....mmmmaaaaahhhhhhh (Score:3)
There was an episode where Uni found her home, but then decided to stay with the group at the end and I was like, crap. That effing unicorn.
I still remember a scene from the cartoon (Score:2)
When the Cavalier and Wizard was cornered by hordes of enemies and Wizard literally pull out an aircraft carrier out of his hat to crush them...
Loved it. (Score:1)
Who could forget the music (Score:1)
Golden Sound Orquesta also created a longer orchestral version of the music which can be listened to here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
the biggiest mistakes they made where (Score:3)
As a TV addicted child at the time... (Score:2)
Feel old yet? (Score:3)
Bobby, the Barbarian is 48 years old and living in Bellevue, Washington. He is a divorced dad with three adult children, and works in IT for a major tech company.
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In other words, he had a typical D&D player career.