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'Dungeons and Dragons' Returns!
dane23 writes: "Saw this over at AICN. Looks like my favorite Saturday morning cartoon from childhood is returning to TV. 'Dungeons and Dragons' is going to be run on the Fox Kids channel this summer. Times are 11:00 Eastern and 10:00 Central and Pacific." I saw this when I was watching cartoons yesterday, and I immediately called all my friends that remembered the original. I can't wait. Now only if they would bring back "Pole Position" and "Lazer Tag Academy."
Sergio
A quick search at yahoo revealed a couple of Dungeons and Dragons fansites. At least one of them had a link to this site which should be interesting to you. It has the script of the last episode that was never produced:f ace.html
:)
http://www.mindspring.com/~michaelreaves/D&Dpre
And btw, If I was a moderator I would moderate you down to (Score:-5 Spoiler...)
Of course, there is no real comparison in American TV. *Maybe* Gargoyles, but I'm pretty sure Disney put out the toon before the toys. *Maybe* the earlier GI Joe and Transformers seasons, but this is somewhat a stretch.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
However, the other half of the problem is that the people at CN are HB worshippers, including the flagship of the HB universe: Scooby Doo. Right now, CN airs 33 hrs a week of Scooby Doo. Yes, 33 hrs. It's understandable that right now in the teenage group, Scooby Doo is nice and retro but it's getting old way too fast; I suspect that the slow speed that the live action Scooby Doo movie is being put out (the one that Mike Myers is involved) will be on the edge of the lapse of interest in Scooby Doo, and it will run into trouble because of that. But in any case, a network that shows 33 hrs of Doo means that they have to sacrifice a lot for other shows. Many cartoon enthusiasts are upset at how CN is being run today. Sure, in a matter of time things will flatten out, but it's the waiting that's killing everyone.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
There is a D&D movie scheduled to come out this November. No real details on this.
TSR has released on CD ROM most of the stuff for 2nd edition (If I remember what I read in GAMES magazine right). Also, unrelated, 25 years of Dragon magazine is also out on CD rom similar to the MAD collection a while back.
Finally, the 3rd edition of AD&D is soon to be released.
Now, while I do like the cartoon, to push the blatent commercialism makes me sick, especially since at the beginning of the 90s, we were moving away from so-called "toyetic" cartoons ("toyetic" meaning to be centered around the commercialism for a toy; He-Man was a prime example of this). But now, toyetic cartoons are back, Pokemon leading the way, but followed by Max Steel on Kids WB and other such shows. This type of entertainment is not enjoyable, and doesn't have the same corniness and fun that those mid-to-late 80s cartoons had.
If FOX kids was just bringing it for no good reason I would praise them, but this is blatent commercialism.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Demon on the DM's Manual? Must be very first release of the 1st edition.
I have, in mint condition, the reprint of all of the 1st series of manuals. These are not the shitty 2nd edition ruleset, with rewritten rules for THAC0 and the like, but a reprint of the 1st edition.
What's all there... Player's Handbook, DM's guide (the one with the warlock in the green robe), Monster Manuals I, II and III, Unearthed Arcana and three or four others which were a little more specialized (one of them was for orient-centric adventures and characters, can't remember the name of this one). I believe there was also a Diety manual. God I miss AD&D.
My friend's brother was a fanatic about it and, being 8 years older than the rest of us, got us hooked. Of course, all my friends hated being DM, so I did it. If I look around hard enough, I'm sure I'll find maps of my cities, forests, character and NPC sheets, plot outlines... And my dice. I gotta find my dice. :-)
You killed my elf!
:-D
Two points: A) There is more to the world than the US, WhoTF cares if some cartoon is returning to US screens? /. has been getting American-centric recently, but this is borderline offensive. 2) D&D blows - it's dreadful. Give me Record of the Lodoss Wars any time.
Kind of reminds me of me when I was younger :) IIRC that was one of Tom Hanks first movies...he couldn't have been more than 17 or 18 when it was filmed. Unfortunately I also seem to remember my parents seeing it, and afterwards setting me down for a long talk on why "roleplaying games are evil" and how I should always avoid that "awful Dungeons And Dragons game" bacause it was satanic.
:) She thought "DND" was a creative storytelling game that promoted imagination and creativity, but Dungeons And Dragons was a devil worshippers game full of evil incantations and brainwashing. If she only knew...
The funny thing is, I really don't think she ever put two and two together...she actually used to make my friends and I lunch when we had our weekend-long "DND" games
There is nothing so pathetic as seeing a beautiful young theory roughed up by a tough gang of facts.
URL: http://mypage.direct.ca/c/crm114/dallas.html
I believe this to be a tolerably accurate summary of the issues in that case.
My blog: http://www.seebs.net/log/ --- My iPhone/iPad app: http://www.seebs.net/seebsfrac/
Now that D&D will be coming back to the small screen, I can only pray that someone is smart enough of is rich enough from a software IPO to buy the rights to The Lost City Of Gold. That cartoon was a masterpiece in almost everyway.
/. . I mainly never post because i already know my posts will never get read let alone a score of 1 or more and that there has never been a topic that has gotten me out of 'lurker mode'.
You had great writing (a rarity among 80's 'toons or any for that matter) that really made you think that these people were real and that were multi-dimentional.
The main story and even the episode plots were brilliant. I remember after each episode wishing that I was there with the kids and run arround the backyard of my grandparents house pretending.
And another great thing about the series was the fact that it was a very beautifuly animated. It was in that Anime style of the 80's that we all love (or hate). The action scenes from what I remember were very vivid in colors and style.
But what really bothers me is that i've only met a hand full of people that remember the show. But all of them loved it and would give their right testicle to see the series again.
I kinda wish Cartoon Network would shell out some dough for the series and all of the other cool 80s cartoons we grew up on (so far they have a nice spectrum of the 70s so I wont go into that) and have "80's Weekends" or even late nights. They could pull in so much money from the advertisers from all of us geeks that would actually watch it faithfully (look at Toonami and how big and profitable is became).
But internal politics at CN (as always with all Tunner owned channels) and many other reasons will make sure this dream never come to fruition.
The same thing will also never come true for my other wish, that of mtv bring back all of it's 80's content to be shown late nights when they dont have anything on and could actually score some ad cash from all of us 'kids' remebering our "big hair" phase.
Anyways thats it for my bi-annual posting to
Anyways comments would be nice, but money and/or food would be better. Thanks.
~Your Friendly Neighborhood Anime Man
I was shocked to open the story and not find a 15 page phycho-geek-analasis on why geeks like D&D.
On the light note, I must admit that between Dungeons & Dragons cartoon and the Dukes of Hazard, they must of been my favorite childhood shows. I also remember how excited I was to see the first PacMan Cartoon! (Geez, waking up at 6:30am to watch cartoons!!)
You want the really simple answer?
Try here
Of course this only makes sense if you know that TSR was bought by WOTC a while back.
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Now how hard was that?
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I've been watching GW too. I thought I had it figured out and then everybody changed sides, now (like the pilots) "I'm not sure who I'm fighting for anymore." Regardless I have added a Gundam F-91 model to my toy shelf at work. For a plastic snap-together model the thing is pretty cool, and way more poseable than my dinosour Megatron and QuakeII action figures...
I'll disagree with DBZ being any sort of "deep" though, the action is fun, but the characters are pretty shallow.
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Times are 11:00 Eastern and 10:00 Central and Pacific."
Dangit, I live in the "Mountain" time zone. Nobody ever tells us when stuff is on. It's discrimination and it needs to stop now. (Either that or do the obvious thing and just post it on the Net and I'll watch it when I dang well please)
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Thankfully, my parents also showed enough concern to take a look at the games I was playing. Although they weren't wholey thrilled at them (being a bit more "mature" in subject then they liked), they did note that it didn't do any harm. Eventually, they were more concerned that I would upset my grandparents than DnD ruining my life.
Its actually rather interesting how the anti-DnD crowd could manipulate fears. I met my future inlaws and wife on a local MUD. My inlaws were big puzzle and adventure game fans. Yet a couple of years later, my mother-in-law had attended one of these "education seminars" at the local school and began voicing concern over role playing games. I was shocked. Here was a paper-and-pen version of what she herself had enjoyed for as long as I knew her. And yet she was concerned for the safety of her own daughter (not the one I married). I had a long discussion with her and eventually her own experience kicked in and the paranoia droped down a few notches.
The trouble is, there IS a bit of truth to be found in this fear. The film Mazes and Monsters was supposedly (loosely) based off of a real-life event (students ran live-action roleplaying games in the university's steam tunnels, one snapped). I've met a rare handfull of people who might be candidates for more such movies. For a very, very small few there might be some kind of danger. But then, I would question whether it is DnD or something else that has put them in that state of mind.
For me and thousands of others, role playing games have been (and sometimes still are) a constructive and enjoyable form of entertainment.
For hundreds of "professionals" and morally charged do-gooders activities like role playing (and Quake as a different example) is an unknown - best get it all with the same brush.
Oh. I was plenty excited about it when I had first heard that they were creating it. I awaited eagerly for a Sat. morning rendition of a cherished hobby. Warriors, magic users, elves, and dwarves... battling horrific creatures found crawling the dank passages of a dungeon or perhaps narrowly escaping an ambush of Orcs in a dark forest. Adventure. Puzzles. Fantastic tales and amazing, treasured artifacts. All the stuff of good Fantasy.
That's not what the DnD cartoon delivered.
What we got was a popular commercial property shoe-horned in to the typical American cartoon formula: regular kids get dumped in to a strange world, are each given a unique power, and fight a bad guy for whom all the events in this strange world seem to revolve around.
Homogenized action-figure selling fun. As much story line and complexity as He-Man.
Oh. Boy. How. Exciting. And. New.
And what a waste of the "Dungeons and Dragons" name.
One can only hope that the DnD movie due out won't fall in to Yet Another Formula.
Where are the exploding hit points?
Bah...that's what you get when you cheapen and commercialize a national treasure like D&D...
telnet://bbs.ufies.org
Trade Wars Lives
Light a fire for a man and he'll be warm for a day. Light a man on fire and he'll be warm for the rest of his life.
....are you referring to cartoons such as "Gummi Bears", "Pac-Man", and "Rubik the Amazing Cube?"
What's even more sad is that I watched all three of those...
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Well this is interesting.
:-)
My fiancee (wife in five days!) and I were talking about cartoons last week. We grew up with the tail end of the 'classics' from Warner et. al. Bugs Bunny, the Road Runner (all before they got polite, I might add), and so forth.
Then came the really awful awful awful trash cartoons which were nothing but cheap rip-offs to promote games. The stories...weren't, the drama...wasn't, and the animation averaged about 2 frames/sec. They were SUCKY! Awful, in fact!
Now, with the aid of computers, animation quality has gotten much better again, and best of all--the cartoons out there now are being done by people my age, and half of the stuff out there is a great big tongue-in-cheek parody/tribute to those classics!
Now today I see that the cartoons I expect will be recognised as the worst in history are being reshown, and even more surprisingly, to appreciative audiences!
Ah well. Que sera, sera. Makes me feel old, though.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
80'S CARTOONS ALLIANCE. This takes me right back. I was horrified to find out how many of these cartoons I actually remembered (like MASK, Visionaries, Captain N etc). Anyone who enjoyed these cartoons should start here.
Anyway, I much preferred Cities of Gold and Ulysses 31. I even caught an episode of Mr Benn on tv yesterday... ah, happy, carefree days!
Scorchio, suddenly feeling much older.
My only major complaint with the old D&D saturday morning cartoon was that the characters each could only have one magic item. That always bugged me... I had trouble to sticking to only seven magic items for my paladins! So, I'm to gather that this party never could manage to accumulate or hold on to any items?
//
I know, I know it's just a TV show.
But don't you think that at least Cavalier could at least get a friggin' sword or something? Sure give the coward the best AC and no weapons!
--// Hartsock
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