Did you ever watch the D&D animated TV series?
Despite being a Dungeons & Dragons fan in the 80s — and checking out D&D Stormreach (MMORPG) last weekend — I don’t remember an animated TV series of the same name. Sure enough in 1983 there was a relatively short lived (27 episodes) D&D series.
Tonight while doing some grocery shopping, I saw they had the entire animated series on DVD for $34.99 USD. It is also available at Amazon (Dungeons & Dragons - The Complete Series, affiiliate) for about the same price and as of this writing has a 4.5 star out of 5 rating. This package included the official Dungeons & Dragons Animated Series Handbook Game Supplement which is 30 pages of character profiles from the series, stats, magic items and an adventure that is a prelude the animated episode “The Dragon’s Graveyard.” This bridges the gap between the game and the animated TV series.
Doesn’t come with any dice, but when our local Wizards of the Coast store went out of business we went there and bought a ton of Role Playing Game stuff for as much as 90% off the regular price.
RPG dice in SL?
Curious, I decided to do a little checking around inside Second Life and see if anybody had created an RPG dice roller. Sure enough Drakon Lameth had a DM/Player RPG dice rolling set for L$65 (affiliate) at SL Exchange (SLX). I had L$707 sitting in my SLX account so I ponied up and bought one.
I received the box, opened and rezzed in world. Pictured above, it’s a single prim base with prim boxes to click and roll the following dice: 1d4, 1d6, 1d8, 1d10 and 1d20. The Dungeon Master (DM) is red and the player board is cyan. When players click on the appropriate dice, it echoes back to the channel what player touched the dice and the resulting roll for all nearby to see.
Back to the D&D TV show
I’m starting to feel like I’m going through a TSR collector’s period with a couple of RSS watchlists for games from the late 70s and early 80s. The animated TV series was in the right place at the right time. I have no idea if the show is any good or not and will try to get back to this post or write a follow-up on that later, but I was curious if any fellow virtual world and RPGers are familar with this animated series?
Where were you in 1983? And was D&D on your radar? Be honest now!
February 21st, 2007 • 
TD Goodliffe • 
comment | February 21, 2007 at 08:22 | individual comment-link
I’ll fess up. I was a HUGE fan of the D&D cartoon! I wanted that bow that shot the light arrows so badly. I might have even written some fanfic about it.
pingback | February 21, 2007 at 10:17 | individual pingback-link
[…] morning at VTOR I wrote about one of two DVDs I bought last night. The other DVD was Sliders (pictured) which was a good deal for $19.99 at the […]
comment | February 21, 2007 at 11:15 | individual comment-link
Wow! I remember watching it religiously as a kid! When I was at secondry school there was a teacher there we called Dungeon Master. Spitting image he was!
Wouldn’t mind seeing it again. I’m finding that a lot of programs I used to watch as a kid have a lot of secondary meanings behind a lot of the dialogue (inspector gadget and Dangermouse for startes. Talk about double entandres!)
comment | February 21, 2007 at 14:14 | individual comment-link
People are playing D&D in SL too:
http://www.secondlifeherald.com/slh/2006/10/scripted_dice_r.html
Oh, and yes, I do remember the animated show. When I was a kid, I wanted to be the barbarian chick. But now that I am all growed up, I lean towards rangers or rogues. I wonder what that says about me?
comment | February 21, 2007 at 14:31 | individual comment-link
Very cool, Zorn, thanks for that link. Maybe I’ll run these folks down to see if they are still playing in world.
comment | February 22, 2007 at 00:36 | individual comment-link
Oh I totally know the cartoon - really good fun, although not entirely sure that it was closely related to the game. Actually I ended up getting into Games Workshop / Warhammer stuff more than D&D (but that’s probably the Brit connection). Like rikomatic, I wanted Hank’s bow with the light arrows - very cool.
pingback | February 28, 2007 at 21:07 | individual pingback-link
[…] maybe not “by popularity” exactly, but when I last posted about buying the complete animated Dungeons & Dragons TV series a couple different people commented saying they wanted to have Hank The Ranger’s Energy […]
comment | October 15, 2007 at 11:55 | individual comment-link
Okay, okay. I fess up. My brother and I watched it Saturdays mornings growing up. Doesn’t the Dungeon Master remind you of Yoda?
comment | October 21, 2007 at 07:14 | individual comment-link
Every single day that it was on, I was on my settee, eyes glued to the screen(figuratively speaking lol).
I purchased this DVD(as well as our UK versions) and I am very pleased with it. The fan movie on there as well, was very enjoyable to watch, and good to see there are still people out there producing fan material other than me.
Luv da show, luv da DVD!!
pingback | November 18, 2007 at 13:25 | individual pingback-link
[…] a game, offers more of the D&D free range exploration and creativity. After writing about the D&D Animated TV series, I learned that people play D&D inside Second Life. Still haven’t been able to catch up […]
comment | December 20, 2007 at 19:53 | individual comment-link
Wow, it’s nice to see my stuff making it to a blog post. Some notes about my die rollers:
the cyan one, aka the Player roller, does what is said:
rolled a on a .
The DM one reports to its owner what is rolled, as would be proper for something of the DM’s.
That being said, some random person standing near TD would have heard:
d20: TD Goodliffe rolled a 7 on a d20
but would not have heard the “You have rolled a 14 on a d20″ from the DM roller.
Just a heads up for anyone who was curious