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What A Cartoon! - Dungeons & Dragons "The Night of No Tomorrow" (Patreon)

Published:
2020-09-21 04:00:01
Imported:
2026-06
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This week we're joined by one of our top Patreon supporters, Devin, to discuss the 1983 cartoon adaptation of Dungeons & Dragons! How did the controversial and groundbreaking role-playing game become a Saturday morning favorite? Which anime company produced it? And how do the first adventures hold up to modern scrutiny? Grab your D20 and listen along to this week's podcast!

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Comments

Joe Hodgson

I went through my own D&D phase when I was in middle school. This was during the Advanced era and before the third edition. It was kind of fun, but I mostly just enjoyed reading through the various manuals and then got into some of the novels, in particular Dragonlance. I think it was around this time that Cartoon Network got the rights to this show and started airing them again. I had never watched it in the 80s and was pretty excited for a D&D show, but man was I disappointed. I don't know if I ever even made it through a single episode. And it's not as if this is the only piece of D&D media to absolutely suck outside of the game. 12 or 13 years ago there was an animated, direct-to-DVD, Dragonlance movie titled Dragons of Autumn Twilight released that was absolutely putrid. I knew it would suck, as it was destiny, so I actually felt bad for the authors of the original book as they tried to defend it and convince themselves the sequels would surely be better. There were no sequels. It would seem only the video games are able to avoid this curse. Maybe the time is right for a new cartoon, but I will continue to remain guarded until proven wrong.

Deadybones

This was so fun! I’ve been playing D&D regularly since college, which was...longer ago than I like to think about, but even then this series was a bit before my time. Back in the day I only ever got to encounter it as a sort of weird fandom artifact (often spoken of in hushed tone with reference to the phantom final episode where everyone dies.) Even so, after I got to see a bit of it, I can’t help thinking it’s SERIOUSLY ripe for a reboot, too! Particularly since the Gayest Episode Ever podcast put a spotlight on the one where noted rich douchebag Eric basically meets a snarky male love interest, I realized was really a lot you could do with these characters in what amounts to a D&D isekai setting nowadays. If the right creative team gets their hands on this, it’s an idea whose time has come. I for one need something to fill the She-Ra-shaped queer 80’s throwback hole in my heart.

Brian Hortin

Lol, the promo that you guys played for the premiere of Dungeons and Dragons mentions that Bo and Luke are back for the premiere of The Dukes. This is promoting the premiere of the 2nd season of The Dukes; I checked and the dates in IMDB do match up. That weird Dukes of Hazzard cartoon had 2 seasons. The 1st was made when the leads who played Bo and Luke had left the show due to contract disputes, so just like the live action show the cartoon had the replacement characters of Coy and Vance. The 2nd season had Bo and Luke voiced by the actors who had returned to the show by then. I have no history with D&D beyond that Marlon Wayans movie, but I have plenty of history with awful cartoons.

Kat Heagberg

Maurice LaMarche DOES have a cameo. Last year for my fiancé’s birthday, I asked him to recite “Frozen Peas,” and he did, and it was delightful.

Devin Hoffarth

You know I feel stupid for not recognizing it sooner but Venger and Tiamat are sort of enemies in this show. Venger's voiced by Peter Cullen under voice modulation and Tiamat's voiced by Frank Welker in his rasp. I have to wonder if Marvel Productions and Toei used this cartoon as a measure for the two leads of Transformers. Now if only they got Donny Most to play Starscream...

Dylan (batmanboy11) Freitag

I thought this show was so fucking goofy in the opening minutes, but I quickly found myself actually really sold on it. It's so cheesy and bizarre (and admittedly, dumb) that I couldn't help but love it. -- It's so goddamn stupid that Dungeons & Dragons had such a satanic panic around it. Playing it requires imagination and socializing... parents should have loved the idea of their kid getting a bunch of friends together to do all this crazy shit together (especially if one of them was the DM and putting in so much work), but I guess these media panics never make any fucking sense anyway. I think the modern equivalent for them now, since conservatives barely pretend to care about morals anymore, is people screaming about how something is "TOO POLITICAL" and/or is "sjw propaganda." It's for a similar purpose, to discredit and boycott the media because of a nonsense understanding of it "corrupting" people who engage with it, but it throws away the veneer of religion and is more blatantly stupid.

RVG

The .mp3 file being named DungDrag makes me miss Divine.

Alexander Maw

Edit; commented before quite finishing, nm

crystalhearts

The more you mention it the hungrier I get for Laverne & Shirley in the Army (1981)

Calvin Lindfors

Everything Devin says about D&D is correct. 4e is the best edition, D&D is horrible for theater of the mind play and is explicitly a miniatures game, and alignment is stupid bullshit.

ToonJay723

Back in January Christian groups were upset about "The Owl House" because they claimed Disney was teaching children Satanism, but they gave up complaining after a month. It seems these people no longer have the energy to complain about things for years on end.

Keaton Johnson

Browsing the tabletop section in Target a few weeks ago, I noticed a "Rick and Morty" themed D&D adventure guide. While a few steps removed from Bob's proposed Minions variant, licensed versions of D&D are here. With zero experience playing D&D but having knowledge of D&D tropes and experience with RPG video games, I enjoyed the first miniseries of Rick and Morty D&D comics. I recommend reading that series if you enjoy R&M and have a passing to strong familiarity with D&D.

Justen Brown

You guys brought up the question of how the kids got there. In the mini-adventure that came with the ridiculously well packaged 2006 DVD set, it's explained that Dungeon Master has been summoning heroes to his world to fight Venger for a while and it specifically says they all failed. So yeah, Dungeon Master is a monster who rips children from our world to the their death against his half-fiend archmage son. And yeah, all the kids' items are minor-artifacts worth 25,000 gold each. Presto's hat in particular can create spell components at will up to 1,000 gold in value and Eric's shield can generate a forcefield bubble around him. A friend ran an adventure where we killed the kids and took their stuff because as the old D&D adage goes "If it has a stat block, it CAN be killed."

Seth Short

Bob's comment about rolling a 20 to critically hit blasting rope was the definite high point of the episode.

Stephen C. Nedell

I was there front and center at the TV for the premieres of Saturday Supercade and Dungeons and Dragons. It was quickly obvious that Supercade was crap, even by the low standards of cartoons at the time. But DnD....wow! I had just gotten into Tolkien the pervious spring and summer and to see a cartoon kinda sorta based on it just blew my mind. Despite how it tried to push boundaries, the censorship got on my nerves. For example, I always wanted Presto to use a spell like "Allakazam Allkazeen, what I need know is an M-16". At one point you brought up the question of the rules of magic. Well, in one episode when Eric was granted the powers of the Dungeon Master, DM told him point blank magic cannot create: if he makes a water fountain to quench his thirst, he's taking the water from somewhere else and implying someone had to go thirsty. Definitely heavy to my 11 year old mind. The lack of a final episode always bugged me but in college a friend swore she had heard one was made but never aired. This being the very earliest days of internet bulletin boards and the spread of many false urban legends of pop culture, she said the final episode had the party learn that they were about to enter a much darker and more dangerous phase of their adventures. Dungeon Master told them he could send one (and only one) home but they had to choose. Eric of all people said Bobby should go, so the final scene had the group deliver a sleeping Bobby to his bed at home and then return to the realm. To me this sounded plausible enough that I believed her for years until I investigated myself.

James Babbo (edited)

Comment edits

2026-09-07 10:00 Really enjoyed the history portion about D&D the game. My friends & I had a 4 year running campaign with the first edition AD&D books which I still own. Part of that was reading DUNGEON magazine where Gary Gygax had his own column. One of which where he notoriously disparaged Tolkien by claiming nothing in D&D was taken from his work (yeah right!) and that the ONE RING was just and I quote "a ring of invisibility with a curse on it." I bring that up because of your comment about his claim that John Boorman was once attached to direct a D&D film. That is incorrect. Boorman was originally assigned to a LORD OF THE RINGS film as reported in many sources including STARLOG magazine. That project collapsed due to budgetary reasons & an inability to condense the material to one film. That project eventually became the film EXCALIBUR. But I can totally believe Gygax making false claims. Lastly I surprised you are not aware of the live action DUNGEONS & DRAGONS short film/TV commercial made by Renault that utilized the original characters from the cartoon and brought them home. Renault seems to be making a series of these live action cartoon adaptations as they also did a WACKY RACES commercial. Here is the D&D ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msDp_k-Fid4
2020-09-29 04:30 Really enjoyed the history portion about D&D the game. My friends & I had a 4 year running campaign with the first edition AD&D books which I still own. Part of that was reading DUNGEON magazine where Gary Gygax had his own column. One of which where he notoriously disparaged Tolkien by claiming nothing in D&D was taken from his work (yeah right!) and that the ONE RING was just and I quote "a ring of invisibility with a curse on it." I bring that up because of your comment about his claim that John Boorman was once attached to direct a D&D film. That is incorrect. Boorman was originally assigned to a LORD OF THE RINGS film as reported in many sources including STARLOG magazine. That project collapsed due to budgetary reasons & an inability to condense the material to one film. That project eventually became the film EXCALIBUR. But I can totally believe Gygax making false claims. Lastly I surprised you are not aware of the live action DUNGEONS & DRAGONS short film/TV commercial made by Renault that utilized the original characters from the cartoon and brought them home. Renault seems to be making a series of these live action cartoon adaptations as they also did a WACKY RACES commercial. Here is the D&D ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msDp_k-Fid4

Really enjoyed the history portion about D&D the game. My friends & I had a 4 year running campaign with the first edition AD&D books which I still own. Part of that was reading DUNGEON magazine where Gary Gygax had his own column. One of which where he notoriously disparaged Tolkien by claiming nothing in D&D was taken from his work (yeah right!) and that the ONE RING was just and I quote "a ring of invisibility with a curse on it." I bring that up because of your comment about his claim that John Boorman was once attached to direct a D&D film. That is incorrect. Boorman was originally assigned to a LORD OF THE RINGS film as reported in many sources including STARLOG magazine. That project collapsed due to budgetary reasons & an inability to condense the material to one film. That project eventually became the film EXCALIBUR. But I can totally believe Gygax making false claims. Lastly I surprised you are not aware of the live action DUNGEONS & DRAGONS short film/TV commercial made by Renault that utilized the original characters from the cartoon and brought them home. Renault seems to be making a series of these live action cartoon adaptations as they also did a WACKY RACES commercial. Here is the D&D ad: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msDp_k-Fid4