This is one of those shows that I
really wish I had paid more attention to as a kid. I know I watched
more than a handful of the animated Dungeons and Dragons series, just
because of the details I'll get to in a bit. The sad thing is,
though, this was on when I was only five or six years old, as I
recall, and that was a little young to really appreciate the themes
of the show and associated board game of the same name.
One of the more major details I
remember is the general premise of the show. It involved a group of
kids, presumably friends, who got on a D&D themed roller coaster
and were taken off to the world of the board game, where a little
gray-haired guy sent them on a quest to stop the evil Lord Venger.
What few other character names I remember all on my own are Eric the
Cavalier, Presto the Wizard and, presumably his familiar, Uni the
Unicorn, and Dungeon Master, who was the gray-haired dude.
The other principal characters were
also rough analogies to character classes in the game. I do believe
the others were supposed to be a Viking, a thief, an archer and an
acrobat, which was some other class in the game.
There are other things that stuck with
me over the years as well, and I would come to learn since then that
these things actually fit rather well into the actual game mechanic.
For example, there was Uni's ability to teleport. Since she was such
a young unicorn, she could only use that power once a day, which is a
lesson she learned the hard way while trying to escape from Venger
one day.
The one episode I can say I remember
much about is the one where Eric the Cavalier got to griping about
how easy he thought Dungeon Master had it. Being the rather powerful
little guy he was, Dungeon Master gave Eric the power to do his job
for the day. By the end, Eric had learned that being a DM isn't
nearly as easy as good ones make it seem, and ultimately, he was still stuck
with some magic.
And then there's Presto the Wizard. I
remember him because I always have rather liked magic-wielding
characters in this particular setting. Considering the kind of
characters I've actually wound up playing in the role-playing groups
I've been in as an adult, it's odd that I'd have that preference.
To explain that, I need to go back to
what I was saying at the start of the article. As a kid, I really
had no idea what this whole role-playing game thing was all about,
and was just watching because it was a neat story. I didn't really
get much into the actual gaming aspect of it until my teenage years,
when I became acquainted with the original Dragon Warrior game. In
much more recent years, I've gotten into play-by-email RPG groups on
Yahoo. The last one I had a very active role in was a space-themed
game where my primary character was the captain of a merchant ship,
and the role of anything that might be called magic in the sense that
D&D might use it was minor at best. Thing is, though, I'm not
entirely sure I would ever have gotten into any of this other stuff
had I not watched the D&D show on a somewhat regular basis.
I do remember having watched this show
on occasion, but how often or for how much of it's run, I can't
really say. From what I've heard, the show didn't last long enough
to finish its story arc. There was an ending to the story planned,
of course, and what that plan was managed to work its way onto the
Internet over the years.
The rumors I've heard about the planned
series finale is that the party would have its epic final battle with
Venger and wind up back on the roller coaster, which would take them
back home to a sad ending. Sad, in this case, meaning that the gang
was supposed to have all died somehow, either as a result of the
battle with Venger or the trip back home.
I'm not sure how much truth there is to
that, as I've never seen the actual source documentation for that
story myself. Heck, I'm not even sure I remember exactly where I
heard that little tale.
On a something of a final note, for as
much as I've come to appreciate the RPG genre as whole in my grownup
years, I still find the idea of joining an actual live gaming group a
little bit intimidating. I'm sure that it's at least a little bit
because I'm intimidated by groups of people. Plus, what I've learned
from my time with the Yahoo group, such things can actually be quite
a lot of work, even with existing gaming modules.
At any rate, that wraps up what I can
recall about the Dungeons and Dragons animated series. It was fun,
and probably got me into some modern hobbies, but that's about it.
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