A Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon RPG

While watching the 1980s Dungeons & Dragons cartoon I was thinking about how it managed to be both fun and entirely unlike the actual roleplaying game. This led to some pondering on what people who’ve never played the game but saw the show must assume the game to be like. In turn, this led me to speculate on a roleplaying game based solely on the cartoon, with no outside influences like any edition of the game to pollute it.

From a commercial standpoint, it may not be entirely outside the realm of reason. Follow my warped logic here for a moment. The cartoon was a co-production between TSR and Marvel. Since then, Marvel has been bought out by Disney, and Disney has this thing about claiming copyright over anything and everything they’ve ever touched. If Disney ever decided it wanted the rights to the characters, images, and storylines, they wouldn’t think twice about getting into a legal pissing contest with Hasbro. They’d be unlikely to claim the Dungeons & Dragons name, so they’ have to change the title or pay a licensing fee. The possibility of licensing the material within the cartoon from Marvel or Disney, in order to produce a game based on the cartoon, is fraught with red tape and paperwork and not worth the effort, but is theoretically feasable.

I’m thinking of the movie Never Say Never Again, the non-canon Jame Bond film starring Sean Connery. The writer of Thunderball made a copyright claim, seeking the rights to the characters and situations in that film for himself. He won. Theoretically, he could make his own James Bond films. NSNA was really just a poor remake of Thunderball, but it got made, and if it had been successful and if anyone really wanted to go up against MGM, there’s still the possibility of a competing bond franchise. (This is also why certain characters and organizations were left out of the James Bond roleplaying game in the 1980s — they would need to be licensed from the Thunderball rights holders, in addition to the “official” Bond license holders.)

Truthfully, there’d be no money in a competing D&D game based on the cartoon. It would be an expensive boondoggle. That doesn’t mean you couldn’t hack together a homebrew. I know that when they released the boxed set, there was a booklet that had 3rd edition D&D stats included. Bah. I don’t like the idea of using D&D for a D&D cartoon game. It has to go off the rails. I’m thinking Risus.

Give your character a name. For extra-special fun, everyone can play his or her self. They all get together and go into.. something… and come out in The Realm. In the cartoon, it was a dark ride. It could be a cave. They could be at summer camp, all fall asleep and wake up in The Realm. Switch it up from the cartoon, the possibilities are endless. There, they meet the Dungeon Master. It could be the little dude from the cartoon, or it could be an entirely different Dungeon Master. Then each player picks 3 cliches: a class, a magic item, and a personality trait. Easy. They get a Major Recurring Villain, Venger or an original character. They wander around, fight a bunch of random monsters, try to prevent the villain from stealing their magic item, and try to get home (and get the rug yanked out from under them whenever they get close).

This is so simple, I’m adding it to my list of low-prep one-shot “filler” games when we can’t play a regular campaign, as well as my convention/game day file.