What I'd Do With... #22: Dungeons & Dragons
It's been a while since I've done one of these, but, well, here's another.
So, the 80s have been strip-mined for material for a while. Remakes, reboots, reinterpretations. The latest (as I start this), is the release of the first look at the new Thundercats cartoon.
It doesn't look too bad, actually, based purely on look. Anime-esque, of course, which is not my favorite style, but I can live with it. But this is not about that.
The Thundercats peeks are what got me thinking along the "What I'd Do With..." lines. What would I do, if I could take an abandoned property from the 80s and remake it for the modern age.
The hard part would be choosing one that's not already been done, but surprisingly, I do have a choice, one that would have been in my top 3 even if I didn't limit myself in that way.
Dungeons and Dragons.
As usual, this is partly planned, partly extemporaneous thoughts, so sometimes I'll state an idea and then decide against it later, or come up with something on the fly and then get really excited about it. I should also not that I specifically decided NOT to try to rewatch the series in preparation for writing this. Last time I rewatched this it didn't live up to how awesome it was in my memories (production values and animations and stuff mainly), and I didn't want to suffer that again. Also, it would take a lot more time than I was willing to invest. So, although I did research, it was mostly reading up on fan sites, wikipedia entries, and such. Consequently, some of what I say might not be strictly speaking, correct. If I was doing it for real, I'd probably immerse myself much more in the original series, but for the purposes of this, my faulty memories and internet research are good enough.
As I see it, we have three basic approaches, and I'll deal with each in its own section:
1) The Reboot
This one, we do basically what Thundercats looks to be doing... taking the general premise and characters, but updating it and making a few changes.
So, the changes:
The original series of course, had the kids riding a roller coaster that deposited them in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Given that this IS a licensed property, I think you have to consider the licensee. And what they'd probably want is to drive people who like the cartoon into another, already available form of media. So, they're actually going to be drawn into D&D through... D&D. I'm not sure why the original show didn't do it, I guess it's the lack of a 'doorway'. However, rather than tabletop (which I might prefer), the doorway to the D&D world will be Dungeons and Dragons Online (which would look better on screen).
Now from this premise, even before we get to the detail, we get can into the first of the character changes. One of the biggest, physically speaking, is Bobby (the Barbarian). He was the youngest of them in the original, and so he will be in this one... but not by as much. In the original, he was 8, and the others ranged from 12-16
(according to wiki).
In this one, he will still be the youngest, but he'll be closer to 12, about the same age as Presto. The others will be aged up a little, so they're all in the same class (and have a reason to be together), probably 15-16. In addition, we're going to try to tie the characters origins and personalities a little more to their 'class' in game terms, but let's deal with that a little later.
But the people who get us into the world of Dungeons and Dragons (we'll call it The Realm) are the team of Bobby and Presto, both gamer kids who love the world of Dungeons and Dragons online gaming. Bobby is talented in terms of reflexes and raw ability. He plays a Barbarian character who's one of the highest levels in the game. Presto's the strategy guy, playing a magic user, a bit lower level possibly due to him being more uncoordinated, but they make a good team.
Once they actually enter the alternate fantasy world, they're the source of local knowledge, able to explain things the viewers might not be able to grasp immediately (orcs are bad!), but their expectations also get them into trouble.
The mechanism for getting everybody to The Realm is the game. Bobby and Presto are playing, while, meanwhile, the other four are working on a class project together. They're doing it at Bobby's house, because Sheila is Bobby's older sister and isn't supposed to leave him home alone. Anyway, in the first episode, while we establish the character dynamics, Bobby and Presto uncover a new level to the game that nobody's ever seen before.
A face appears on the screen and, much like in a game, offers them a quest, their skills are needed to save a land from evil. If they agree, he will cast a spell to bring them there. They accept, and an actual, literally portal opens, but it's more like a vortex. It causes enough noise that Sheila goes to investigate and the others follow, and all get sucked in, too.
It closes behind them, and the Dungeon Master welcomes them to the Realm.
He seems a little surprised though that these are not the heroes he expected, and decides the only thing to do is to make them into them, gives each of them their magic item and appointed Class, and then tells them a little about what's going on. Mostly, though, the group just wants to go home. DM tells them it's not in the cards. Bringing someone is always easier than sending them back. Their only hope is to defeat Venger who might have a magic item that can do the job, or seek out someone else who is able to cast the proper spell.
So, the characters:
Bobby: He's a Barbarian, and so in temperment. First to rush into action, and, being a male of the age where he's not quite civilized (if we ever are), probably more than a few jokes about him being disgusting, eating like a pig, not caring about washing himself or his clothes, etc.
He tends to think of himself as his character in the game, which leads him to get in over his head. His character might be able to defeat a dragon single-handedly, but Bobby himself is still only twelve, even if he has a magic club.
Eventually he probably will rescue a Unicorn. If we can get away with it, maybe some jokes about how Unicorns traditionally only attach themselves to virgins, and he'd probably pretend to not like it and want it to go away, but secretly grow attached.
Presto: The Wizard. In this context, that means that in the human world, he's a brain, and a geek. Shy, unsure of himself, what he knows is strange and arcane to everybody else, but what he knows, he knows well.
Bobby's knowledge of the game is related to monsters and his character, but Presto actually learns stuff unrelated to it, read the game sourcebooks, knows histories of characters and locations that aren't actually in the game. He doesn't know everything (which would be boring), but when somebody needs to play Exposition-Boy, it's usually Presto.
And, of course, when things from the game need to be WRONG, to hammer home the thought that 'this is real, not some game, just because the rules say that elves hate orcs doesn't mean that this elf and this orc can't be happily married' (or whatever).
Magic item is of course, the hat. No significant changes, although I never really did like the rhyming, without it, he's just pulling things out of a hat and it usually being silly. Maybe that could be one of his first 'things don't always work like the game' moments. In the game, he never has to come up with a poem to get the magic, he just chooses a spell from his list.
Presto is probably his gamertag, and what Bobby calls him, and so what everybody else does.
Diana: In the original series she was an Acrobat. Thief-acrobat was a class then, but it's not
really now. However, an interesting compromise would be to put her in the role of the Monk.
So Diana's a sporty type, and particularly excells at martial arts. She's probably the only one who could win a fight with an opponent in the realms just on her own skills, although she's still a teenager, not some super-elite-martial-arts-expert, so she's still fallable.
She of course is given the magical quarterstaff. In the original series all it seemed to do was grow or shrink as needed, and block arrows and things when spun (I think). Might also add a 'channeling strike' thing, so she can break things by ramming the wall. Or maybe it returns to her hand when thrown.
Eric:
Cavalier suggests knight, which suggests wealth and nobility. That means Eric is from a rich family, a little bit of a spoiled brat, and, like the original, the complainer, and maybe a bit of a coward, and some level of comic relief. I see a little bit of Sokka from Avatar in him too (in fact, he might be a good voice actor), in that he does have a lot of common sense, and there'll be plenty of times when he can say "I told you so". We might play with him being a big skeptic, to the point that he believes, at first, everything happening to them is a bad dream, but once he accepts it he still scoffs at and is distrustful of magic (he'll use his magic item, but wouldn't want anyone to cast a spell on him, no matter how beneficial it's supposed to be).
Since we're going with 4th edition, Cavalier is as out of date as a class name as Acrobat, but neither Warlord or Paladin really suits either. WE COULD go with "Fighter", and have a bit of a pun (in that he's the one who fights with everyone in the group), although it doesn't sound as good.
He gets his Force-Shield-Shield, even though he claims he wishes he got a sword, he's relieved to have an item that protects him from all the nasties. Maybe we could have it so that at first it just protects him (even if, say, a wall of fire was rushing towards them all, it might only cover him), but eventually he's able to protect others, because he grows to care about them.
Hank: Rangers typically suggest nature guardians, so Hank should be one of those pro-active do-gooder types. You know, the ones who aren't just class president but also organizing the school's recycling efforts, etc. Maybe so much that he almost gets annoying in his own right.
He gets his magic bow with energy arrows. The only thing I'd change is make it a bit more limited. It's JUST a bow... he can't use the energy arrows to make a bridge, or a net. Maybe if we're limited in how much violence we can do on the show, tying people up, but I'd rather, if that was the case, just make it so that the arrows stun rather than kill.
Sheila: The biggest personality change, and probably the most controversial. Sheila is the Rogue, and so let's make her a ROGUE, BEFORE she gets sucked into the Realm.
She's got a juvie record. She's got a reputation. In short, Sheila becomes the Bad Girl.
I know, I know. Sheila was one of the sweet one in the original series. I'm not entirely comfortable with it either.
In any event, she's not evil, she's still pretty nice and in fact she's actually trying to reform, maybe a bad crowd of old friends, at an old school, lured her into badness. Her family changed schools to get away from them, but her reputation still followed her.
In the Realm, she's torn between the fact that she's once again acting like a sneaky thief, and even her own group not trusting her. Her brother in particular (who used to idolize her and fell hard into suspicion) probably thinks the worst of her whenever it looks like she's doing the wrong thing.
Since other people can be drawn into the Realm, at some point her old boyfriend gets drawn in (perhaps by an antagonist wanting to split up the group).
And other characters of the Realm:
Uni: I want to leave her out entirely, or just have her be in an episode or two, but not the main cast. But I suspect I'd be persuaded to bow to nostalgia and have the Team Pet. No talking, though. And if she's going to be there, she might as well be story-fodder... make her be the last unicorn (known), and unicorn horns being stupendously valuable. So any time anybody sees her, they want to take her. Maybe the dungeon master gives her an item that hides her horn but it's not reliable.
Dungeon Master:
He's the one who summoned them all, but he claims he can't send them home. Like Uni, I never really liked him all that much, but I think part of it was the "he just shows up, spouts a few riddles, and leaves". Sometimes he can be captured, sometimes there are imposters, but he's also 'all powerful'.
I think I'd rather remake him into powerful, but also seemingly in hiding. Maybe he claims that he holds something that is the last thing standing between Venger and total Realm Domination, and if Venger finds him, all is lost. So, Dungeon Master doesn't randomly show up. Instead, after the initial contact where they meet him the first time, he goes into hiding and only contacts them from afar. Maybe he gives them a crystal ball, and when they want to consult him, they use that to contact him, or he sometimes uses it to force contact. Among other things, Venger seeks to get the Dungeon Master's location from the kids, or the crystal ball.
They'll generally believe he's good, but come to suspect he's not dealing fairly with them and that they're the reason they can't go home, and so consider actually giving him up, or threatening to do so. Possibly this leads to a time (second season?) when the group are left completely without the Dungeon Master, and must make their own way in the Realm.
Venger:
More or less as expected. We'll even keep the "he's actually the DM's son!" But he's striving for world domination... he's not there, yet. There are a few holdouts of good, and a number of rivals.
Venger is the big bad, but, unlike the original cartoon, he's not there ALL the time. In the cartoon, as I recall, he was in virtually every episode... maybe not as the main antagonist, but sometimes just showing up randomly to cause drama. Here, he's a lurking menace who most of the time doesn't appear, and a lot of times they face other people with their own interests, totally unconnected to Venger.
To make Venger distinctive, and to make it so the kids consider dealing with him, he's (to use the old terms), Lawful Evil. If you make a deal with him, he will stick to the letter of it, even if it costs him. Of course, he'll try to find loopholes, but he'll stick to his word. OF course, if YOU betray HIM, he'll never make a deal with you again.
Although he's powerful enough to engage foes directly, mostly he operates through his armies, of orcs, kobolds, and tieflings. They do most of his day-to-day-evil. Venger intervenes when he thinks there's a chance of getting his hands on the Dungeon Master (which is how they meet him in the first episode). He'll encounter the kids more often than others would, sometimes because he finds them, sometimes because they go after him. He's got his own kingdom, a city that is more under his thumb than all the rest - think an oppressive dictatorship. In his palace, though, may be the means for the kids to get home (which probably
leads to an episode or two where they try to go directly for it while he's busy elsewhere).
Venger is one of the two main antagonists who WOULD try to expand their reach to take over the real world, given the opportunity... at first he thinks the kids are just heroes that the Dungeon Master assembled and trained, but once he learns of Earth and some of the weaponry there, he plans to make his own portal and lead armies there. Before that, though, he can do smaller things - summon people from there, for example. Bringing people from Earth is easier than sending things to there, the Dungeon Master was right about that. He does have some magic items that might let him open a gateway there, but only with significant preparation and obscure, hard-to-find components.
Tiamat:
Queen of Dragons, and we might as well make her the queen of the Dragonborn, too. They compose the second largest 'kingdom' in the Realm. Venger himself brought Tiamat there, using his magic, then learned he couldn't control her, so they've been struggling for territory ever since... actually Tiamat has a particular hate-on for Venger, we'll say because she used to be the ruler of a whole dimension, but in binding her to this realm it made her mortal.
Some of the other kingdoms are relieved at this because keeping both their attention on each other keeps them busy. The Dungeon Master claims that Venger and Tiamat are bound. If Venger falls, Tiamat is free to return to her own plane.
Anyway, we might try to get a little bit of a Dragonlance vibe off Tiamat and her forces, with dragonborn being like Draconians, and evil Dragons being major enemies, and one of the minor quests can be to try to restore the good dragons.
Other Antagonists:
I always liked Kelek, an evil wizard who was in an episode or two (and got imprisoned for all eternity by Venger). It might have to do with the fact that I had an action figure of him (and probably still do, but I think his costume's gone and his face and one hand's been chewed to all oblivion by a childhood pet. I think he'd be good as another medium-level antagonist, perhaps one who looks good at first glance but then turns out evil. He would be the other one who's very interested in Earth and may be the source of one of the "hey, look, we're going home... oh no, we can't or the consequences will be too bad!"
I don't think I need to get too into the plot outline beyond that, there'd be a mix of remakes of old eps and new ones, but with stand-alone episodes mixing with an ongoing plot.
So, that's option one. Option two is...
2) Dungeons & Dragons: The Next Generation
(maybe we could call it Advanced Dungeons & Dragons!)
This one's pretty self-explanatory. The original series all happened, and at some point, they came home, grew up, and (some of them, at least), had kids. When their kids are teenagers, they find a portal to the Realm, and begin having their own adventures. Presumably we'd have Hank and Sheila's kids, maybe one kid of Diana and Eric, and a couple who are just unrelated. I imagine Hank and Sheila's kids being the nucleus of the show, which allows us to bring their parents in later.
So, the details:
I think in this context, we do away with the "Trapped and looking for a way home" idea for the most part (although the first adventure probably has elements of that), and merely have them being a group of friends who stumble upon a portal to the Realm, and have adventures there. They'll for the most part be able to go back and forth between the real world and the Realm. We can have one element of it the fusion of modern day technology and magical worlds, with, say, the characters bringing things that might be helpful for one particular adventure (Iphones with 'apps' that they can creatively use, computers, walkie-talkie type phones).
How do they get there? Well, I have this idea that their "fun uncle Bobby" bought the theme park and self-appointed himself a guardian, but the kids find the portal and think they're the only ones who know, not able to conceive of the idea that their parents would know anything about it. Maybe at some point they (or some of them) get trapped there more permanently and their parents have to come in and save the day.
Still, generally some of the basics are the same: Kids wind up in The Realm, a Dungeon Master gives them each a magic item and a 'role', and they go on adventures.
Let's start with our cast of caracters:
6 is a good number. However, we'll even out the gender ratio a bit, three girls, three boys. I see three as being descendents of the originals, maybe another brother/sister team as Hank/Sheila's kids, and a son of Eric/Diana. The rest are friends, or, in one case, an antagonist that turns into a friend.
Anyway, because in this scenario we're not reproducing the original characters, we can be more original, both with the classes and the magic items. Once again, we're in 4ed (and looking up stuff for this reminds me how much I dislike the class system in 4th ed, in addition to... well, lots... but ESPECIALLY tieflings. Fundamentally, whenever I read up on other editions, I get an urge to want to roleplay again, create a character. When I read up on 4th edition, I get annoyed and start to aggressively not care about D&D... but this isn't a rant about it), so I imagine the layout would be like this:
Paladin:
I imagine that one of the reasons the original cartoon didn't have a 'cleric' was for fear of people being offended by a character worshipping different gods, or shoehorning magic powers into Christian belief.
Paladins would have a similar problem, but I don't think it's as bad. You can describe them, in the cartoon, as paragons of goodness, warriors who fight but also help.
Paladins have a 'lay on hands' ability, so maybe some sort of healing device would be appropriate. Maybe a combination healing/defensive tool. Maybe some kind of gauntlet that can expell energy that can heal or
repel. I don't know.
Probably Hank/Sheila's son would be the best for this role. Compassionate, but a bit impulsive and maybe lacking in common sense at the expense of idealism.
If Paladin is problematic, another potential option is 'bard', with a musical instrument that can both heal and create various energy walls and such for defense, but for a cartoon it would be very hard to do well. It would have to be an old-style musical instrument (maybe a lyre?) and I have a hard time picturing the music improving the story. But I'm not a music-person in general. Anyway, if we did go this route, he would be more of a music geek, naturally, but probably keeps it hidden - afraid of failing and embarassing himself, he only sings in the shower.
Druid:
I'm thinking this might also be one of Hank/Sheila's kids, the daughter. She's naturey having taken to her parents camping visits (her dad's a Ranger and her mom spent months roughing it... I can't see them not taking their kids camping) more than her brother, enough that she's drawn to animals and the nature role.
Her magic item would either be some sort of amulet that lets her turn into any animal, or maybe a set of animal figurines, which can be activated one at a time, each of which grows and comes alive. I sort of go back and forth in terms of which I prefer, but I'm leaning towards the amulet since it would be fewer items to keep track of.
Monk: Since the original didn't have one, this one can, it makes it different. Probably a natural for Diana/Eric's kid, though it doesn't have to be. Sort of a dependable, best-friend type. He's the sort of friend who'd tell you that he doesn't think what you're doing is a good idea, but if you went through with it would be right there to help.
His magic item I think would be boots of speed/jumping.
Fighter: Our female warrior type. Magic item is a sword, something like a vorpal sword. Light, thin, but can cut through everything (save certain magic stuff). Make that function will-based though, which lets her NOT kill everybody... because she doesn't really want to, her mind rejects cutting through actual people, and other things (a really beautiful wall, for example).
I kind of like the idea that, perhaps the Dungeon Master was pushing the healing item towards her and meant the sword for Hank (might work even better if it was the Bard item), but she was all "Screw that, if we're going up against monsters, I'm taking a sword".
She's outspoken, also impulsive like Hank, but a real funloving type. After the first bout of scared and "I want to go home", actually becomes something of a Realms-addict, because adventuring is fun. She becomes one of the people pushing them all to keep coming back.
Rogue: Once again, we can use the 'bad kid (with a heart of gold)', like we tried to do with Sheila, although in this case, it might work better if we sort of put him directly into the Eric archetype - the complainer/CYNICAL voice of reason (as opposed to the Monk, which is the gentle voice of reason)/outcast, but who's also right surprisingly often. Maybe he starts off as a bully to the group but when they stumble on this shared secret, he reluctantly joins them and begins to bond. I kind of like that, the 'semi-bad-guy getting reformed' as an arc (I've used it in other imaginary-productions).
One of his primary motivations, early on, might be that he comes from a very poor family and, in the Realm, gold and jewels are more easily acquired, so he can help his family out.
His magic item, I'm thinking something along the lines of a Shadowwalking Cloak. It lets him teleport from one dark place to another (as long as it's nearby), maybe melt into his own shadow temporarily, or a couple other tricks as the plot demands. Probably doesn't work in bright light.
I imagine one of his former bully friends could follow them to the realm and start using it for his own nefarious purposes, maybe even forming his own Anti-Party.
Sorcerer: This would be one of the friends, and I'm thinking probably a girl. Maybe closer to the 'popular girl' type, concerned with looks and things like that because she's secretly doesn't really feel she has anything to offer beyond that, but having the power to actually change a world begins to awaken her nobler spirit.
The sorceror's magic item is a wand, which operates similar to Presto's hat and a Wand of Wonder. She can try to conjure up a specific effect, but about half the time, it goes wrong. Still, potentially the most powerful of the items, just taking study.
Although they're described in terms of classes, in this version, we'd make it clear that they're on the "path" of that class. That is, they might one day actually become a Sorceror/Druid/Paladin etc, but right now they're just operating in that spirit, and with magical items that help give that skill.
If we were in 3.5th edition we might have them all start out named after Prestige Classes, which might well sound cooler:
"Bladesinger, Shadowdancer, Archmage, Beastmaster", etc.
But no, 4th edition had to remove those. Okay, technically, you could probably do the same with paragon paths, but I'd have to look more into 4th edition than I'd like to, in order to deal with them. But it's certainly a viable option if this was actually going to become a series.
Oh, and we need a team pet, don't we? How about Rusty, the Rust Monster?
No?
Okay, let's skip the Team Pet this time, and move on to...
Setting and Set-up:
The Realm is more-or-less the same type of place as it was in the first series. However, since time is wonky (it was established in the first series that people from all sorts of time periods and dimensions can be drawn in, and also they suggested at least once that for all the months they were gone from their perspectives, it was still the same weekend at home). So, something like a thousand years or something have passed. New kingdoms arise, new threats. Maybe things like Dragonborn are a new civilization, for example. Anything else desired too. The Realm still draws people in from varying worlds and times, and some of them stuck in the last milennia.
To let them both explore a wide variety of areas, and return home, the portal they use to get to the Realm 'wanders', opening in a new place every visit, exposing them to a variety of new situations. On Earth it's always in the same place. But in the Realms, it stays in the same place until you pass through again, which allows the group to get temporarily trapped, until they find the new place it lets out. Or maybe it's not "once you leave it", but it's an "every X amount of time" thing. (But because time stretches on the Realm side, almost every time they return home and go again, it will have moved by the time they get back, unless they keep the door open which keeps the timeflow consistent.
The FIRST adventure probably has the door close behind them, possibly due to the Rogue following them and wanting to make trouble, and the first quest is to find out where it opens next. This lets the group experience the Realm and notice the possibilities, and bond because they have to work together.
In that first adventure, the group starts getting involved in situations randomly, occasionally goes looking for treasure, but are mostly trying to get home, and succeed. After that, they find they want to keep going back. The Dungeon Master explains how the portal works and they think they can handle it, so they do so. They don't always have to all go in together, sometimes only a few will want to go together (while the others are having an Earth-based social-life-style adventure).
The Original Cast:
The original cast appear briefly at first, but growing importance as the series goes on.
As for what happened to them after the series, just off the top of my head:
Hank and Sheila and, for some reason, Eric and Diana seem to be the fan-favorite couples (although Diana had a brief Nazi love interest... really!) in the show, so it's only natural that they got together, as mentioned when we talked about the kids. But other than getting together and having kids:
Hank: We could be cute and say: Park Ranger. Hank was generally the 'heroic leader' of the group, though, so one could easily imagine him as the 'ranger' of the urban jungle. A police officer, in other words.
Sheila: I can't think anything cute that relates to either her thiefdom or her invisibility. In some foreign versions, she wasn't called a thief, but rather an Illusionist, so I suppose you could put her in the role of an artist, but... I don't know. I'd rather give her a job that's fairly normal, but, like Hank, a job that keeps her away from home and thus lets the kids be unsupervised enough that their trips to the realm go unnoticed. Artist, unless on a celebrity level, doesn't seem to offer that. So, maybe a doctor?
Eric: We can assume he grew up a little and his 'heart-of-goldness' came shining through more, but he always was the argumentative one, so I'm going to say Lawyer. But, because he was a Cavalier (knightly), one who champions 'the little guy' and the wrongfully accused. Naturally this puts him in regular contact with Hank, sort of buddies who are antagonistic at times.
Diana: She was supposedly an Olympic-level gymnast, so let's assume she actually is an olympic medalist, and after that, had a small career in TV/films. Maybe even a news anchor?
Bobby: Grew up but 'never really grew up', becoming the kind of fun uncle. He and Presto bought out the old amusement park. I'm thinking that Bobby actually got wounded, a car accident, and walks with a cane (carved from his old club?), so he can't adventure like he'd want to, but still visits the Realm on a regular basis, using magic items they acquired to help himself.
Presto: Ran the amusement park with Bobby for a while, but, a few years ago, disappeared. Into the Realm. The others know, and let him go, to find his happiness (maybe he was going through a difficult time). I'd actually be really tempted to make the Venger-like antagonist turn out to be Presto, having become corrupted by power, and, much like the unproduced finale would have revealed that the kids purpose was to redeem Venger, in the Next Generation, they have to redeem Presto. The other option is to make him the new Dungeon Master. But I'd prefer he be bad. Yes, I like that.
Uni: Glue factory. Oh, I'm terrible. I never really liked Uni that much, and it's hard to imagine that she might have made it to the Real World. I guess she could be an attraction in the theme park, but that somehow feels so... base, for a noble beast like a unicorn. So she stayed in the Realm. A thousand years have passed. But because she's a unicorn, she's immortal. Maybe she serves as a recurring good character, sort of like... well, the opposite of how Tiamat was in the series. She's good, but she disagrees with the dungeon-master character the people encounter.
Venger: We'll assume that the unproduced finale episode happened more or less as described. So he actually was redeemed and became a good guy. But since so much time has passed in the Realm, he's died. The new antagonist is probably similar.
The Dungeon Master: Somebody finally got sick of his riddles and stuffed him in a sack. There is a new Dungeon Master, revealed to be an inherited role. Or, MAYBE, Bobby himself is the role of the Dungeon Master. Not in terms of having magical powers and being all-knowing, but secretly knowing where the kids are going and giving them cryptic advice, leaving them notes, things like that. I do kind of like the notion of the old player becoming the Dungeon Master.
Ooh, and giving Bobby that role would also put him into the role of the person trying to engineer Presto's redemption, and put him in the friendly-adversarial relationship with Uni. You know, the more I think about this, the more I like it.
Check this out: Bobby regularly visits the realm to try and do what he can for Presto. Maybe he keeps what's happened to him from the rest of the group because he doesn't want to tarnish their memories. The next generation group accidentally follow him into the Realm, without knowing they're doing it, but never actually see him there... When the door closes, Bobby realizes they're trapped there, temporarily, so whips up a dungeon master disguise (maybe just being a disembodied voice, using Sheila's cloak of invisibility).
He watches over them, guides them, gives them their weapons (from a bag of holding type object Bobby keeps), and gets them to the other side. After seeing what good they do, he tries to push them towards visiting the Realm on a regular basis. As Bobby he pretends he doesn't know what's going on, but he's always watching out for them.
Of course, as I said, eventually we get an episode, or series of episodes, where the kids are in danger and the adults finally figure out what's going on and don their old roles to help rescue them. They're angry at Bobby at first but he later convinces them to let the kids continue playing because it's character building.
You know, I'm actually loving this setup. If I wasn't creating it, I'd totally watch it. Well, I suppose that's not saying much because if I didn't like it I'd hardly be doing it, but, still. Obviously the main characters need to be fleshed out more, but in terms of general concept, I like. Even if we did have Rusty the Team Pet.
But, since many things come in threes, there's still a third option to if I had a chance to make a modern Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. This one is more pet-projectish. It's:
3) The Throw-it-all-out-but-the-title-and-a-concept-or-two
And probably won't even keep the title.
But let's strip down the Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon) concept to it's most basic level, IMHO: It's about a bunch of modern teens travelling through a fantasy universe.
If that and that alone was the directive for creating a show, I wouldn't reboot Dungeons and Dragons, or make a sequel (well, maybe I would, I'd probably have trouble deciding, honestly... but let's say for whatever reason the other options are off the table). I would look to my all-time favorite campaign setting, one built around magic portals and the idea that somebody from ANYWHERE could wind up there.
That's Planescape. For those who don't know, it was an AD&D 2nd edition campaign setting, based around Planar Travel. The Planes include the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, the Prime Material Plane (where all the traditional AD&D game worlds exist), the Inner Planes (elemental based: Fire, Earth, Air, Water, plus combinations), and the Outer Planes (belief based, basically one for each alignment, among other things, holding the realms of the gods and the afterlife for their alignment). It also had a bit of a fantasy steampunk (more in terms of the aesthetics than the actual steam) vibe to it, with the central city, Sigil, sort of moderned on Victorian London. Sigil is a city built on the inside of a closed ring, sort of a nexus of the universe. In Sigil, any archway may be a portal to anywhere else in the multiverse, if you've got the right key (which might be an object, a password, or an action). Portals also exist between other points, but Sigil is full of them.
Anyway, it would focus on a group of kids on Earth who open up one of the only portals to Sigil. I'm thinking we have some of the characters have a family history... their parents came from the outer planes and settled on Earth because it was one of the safest places, there are only a handful of portals there, and the keys are very rare. More details behind the cut.
Since Planescape operates on the Rule of Threes, let's say that this family has three kids. And the third child of a third child (one of their parents) of their particular family line, inherits the ability to open any portal, by hand. These Openers are highly sought after. The kids father (or mother, it doesn't really matter, but just for sake of argument let's say father) knows of this, but doesn't think it applies - he only has an older brother. But HIS father had a child he never knew about, from youthful indiscretions, which makes the prophecy hold. Since they don't think the Opener is an issue, their part of the family destiny is guarding a door and a key. The key is not to the door. It's to another door, a special door, in another plane, and probably sought over by many different factions.
Anyway we have the kids... let's say two girls and a boy. Brother and sister who are either twins, or very close in age, like maybe a year apart. Probably 16ish. And a younger daughter, thirteenish, who is the Opener. (We could also have an older sibling who's off-scene, maybe attending college, and just have the two siblings. I don't know why, maybe it is just residue from Dungeons and Dragons cartoon love (with a dash of Firefly), but I think if you've got a big cast, having two characters related is the ideal number. Three might be too much, one seems too little. But I always like the sibling dynamic in general. It's probably why I retconned two of the characters in the Runaways comic into being (unbeknownst to them) siblings in my Alternate Runaways Volume 3 WIDW. But I digress.) The kids don't know about the door, at least not that it's a real thing. It's never been opened, going back to their grandfather. Even their father probably has his doubts it's more than a family legend. I actually might make it so that the 'family destiny' thing has been 'lost', because nothing magical has ever happened since the grandfather's day, so the father/mother never really believed it or took it seriously, and the kids just heard it as a silly story their grandfather used to tell.
I say 'door', but in Planescape, as in here, 'doors' can be any archway or enclosed opening, whether it opens and closes or not. So the 'door' can be the tunnel under a bridge, a window, or it could even be something like a picture frame. I like the picture frame notion, it makes it moveable and innocuous... but, on the other hand, making it big and immovable serves the plot better. In fact, it's at a location that's not a home, but rather a public place, maybe a museum or even the school, some sort of historical landmark that's preserved.
Aside from the siblings, the characters are a geeky friend, a friend of the sister, maybe a group of bullies who get swept up in things (so we can do the bully redemption, at least one one of them). I'm leaving them very sketchy and undefined.
So, the parents are away on some sort of trip (they're rich due to gold and gems being plentiful in fantasy settings), and our group, composed of the brother and sister and a couple friends (but not the younger sister) are hanging out one evening, near the door. Maybe we learn the family legend. The bullies are also around, making a bit of trouble. All of a sudden, the portal opens. First to come out is a girl, half demon (alu-fiend, in Planescape terms). Warns everybody to run, "They're right behind me" but they don't listen, especially as nobody seems to be right behind her. The portal opens again, and demons come out... also, the sister goes through the other side. The portal closes, trapping her on the other side.
After an initial conflict, the demons escape (they're not actually interested in the kids) and starts on their nefarious plans.
I do have many more detailed thoughts (magical keys playing a big role in the story, also magic spells being on playing card type things rather than a traditional spellbook might be visually cool and commercializable), but I don't want to bore... the basic idea is that, at first, we have two parallel story paths. One is set on Earth, with the brother and the half-demon girl and their friends trying to deal with the demons on Earth, and find the key that opens the portals so they can go after the sister. There's some ambiguity on whether the alu-fiend girl is actually good or out for her own interests (the truth is probably a little of both).
The other path, of course, is the sister's adventures off in the planes. Hers is a more straightforward fantasy adventure, maybe with her own group of companions, who are more otherworldly. I would like to use a little bit of the 'modern technology and thinking isn't all bad' type stories, with that being her major contribution (the thinking... she might have a laptop or something but it's the point of view that's her real asset). I'd also toyed with the idea of, since it's a cartoon and a moral for kids wouldn't be amiss, to have a big change - that basically reading is a virtually unknown art in the planes, and in many cases, magic just requires READING the spell off a magical book/scroll/card. If someone was fluent in reading, they could become a great wizard, just like that. (There'd be a little more to it, like the reading summons the spell but internal factors and practice help shape it). Anyway, with her side of the plot, we have a time displacement factor. Maybe 10 to one... an hour on Earth is ten on most of the planes (although some have their own factors). So the Earth story might only take a few days, but much longer is going on with the sister.
Later, the Earth team fail to discover the key, but learn the next best thing... that the younger sister is an 'opener', and they all go out to try and rescue the sister on the planes.
The parents are a bit of a problem here, since we are essentially wanting a situation where the daughter can go missing for some time and nobody knows about it but the kids. Maybe it's some literal 'incommunicado' situation (exploring the Amazon), maybe instead of being 'away', they're missing, and their 'evil' uncle is taking care of them, even though they suspect he might have done it for the fortune, but that's a little melodramatic. I remember once having a solution (I've had this general idea germinating for a few years), but I can't recall it at the moment. Maybe the demons abduct the parents right away and use them as hostages to force the kids to find the key, and of course they have to cover it up while they investigate it. That might work. (Alu-Fiends have shapechanging abilities, so she could pretend to be the sister at school, or more likely, impersonate an exchange student that the sister has suddenly signed up for).
Anyway, that should give you the gist, if any of you read this far. I should note you COULD do this whole thing without involving either Planescape or Dungeons and Dragons at all. You can just change Sigil to a generic other worldly city with magic portals (it's not a common enough idea that it'd be copyrightable), remove all other specific D&D references. I love Planescape mostly for the flavor, so if I were ever to be in a position to make a series like this happen, I'd do whatever I could to get the license and use all that flavor, which is part of why I'm including it in this WIDW post rather than making a new one, but the idea stands on its own and is doable without.
So, there it is. 3 Dungeons & Dragons style shows for the modern age. Which would I choose, given the choice? I think.... it's between the Next Generation, and the Planescape-style one, because I could make it more mine. I'd probably choose Next Generation to WATCH, and Planescape if I was going to create one.
But I wouldn't turn up my nose at watching or producing any of the three options. So, if you run a network and happen to have the license to produce such a show... please, hire me and give me a show-runner position! Or steal my ideas and give me something good to watch.
And if you don't, just comment, if you feel so inclined.
(As usual, the WIDW tag contains all the prior installments of What I'd Do With...).
So, the 80s have been strip-mined for material for a while. Remakes, reboots, reinterpretations. The latest (as I start this), is the release of the first look at the new Thundercats cartoon.
It doesn't look too bad, actually, based purely on look. Anime-esque, of course, which is not my favorite style, but I can live with it. But this is not about that.
The Thundercats peeks are what got me thinking along the "What I'd Do With..." lines. What would I do, if I could take an abandoned property from the 80s and remake it for the modern age.
The hard part would be choosing one that's not already been done, but surprisingly, I do have a choice, one that would have been in my top 3 even if I didn't limit myself in that way.
Dungeons and Dragons.
As usual, this is partly planned, partly extemporaneous thoughts, so sometimes I'll state an idea and then decide against it later, or come up with something on the fly and then get really excited about it. I should also not that I specifically decided NOT to try to rewatch the series in preparation for writing this. Last time I rewatched this it didn't live up to how awesome it was in my memories (production values and animations and stuff mainly), and I didn't want to suffer that again. Also, it would take a lot more time than I was willing to invest. So, although I did research, it was mostly reading up on fan sites, wikipedia entries, and such. Consequently, some of what I say might not be strictly speaking, correct. If I was doing it for real, I'd probably immerse myself much more in the original series, but for the purposes of this, my faulty memories and internet research are good enough.
As I see it, we have three basic approaches, and I'll deal with each in its own section:
1) The Reboot
This one, we do basically what Thundercats looks to be doing... taking the general premise and characters, but updating it and making a few changes.
So, the changes:
The original series of course, had the kids riding a roller coaster that deposited them in the world of Dungeons and Dragons. Given that this IS a licensed property, I think you have to consider the licensee. And what they'd probably want is to drive people who like the cartoon into another, already available form of media. So, they're actually going to be drawn into D&D through... D&D. I'm not sure why the original show didn't do it, I guess it's the lack of a 'doorway'. However, rather than tabletop (which I might prefer), the doorway to the D&D world will be Dungeons and Dragons Online (which would look better on screen).
Now from this premise, even before we get to the detail, we get can into the first of the character changes. One of the biggest, physically speaking, is Bobby (the Barbarian). He was the youngest of them in the original, and so he will be in this one... but not by as much. In the original, he was 8, and the others ranged from 12-16
(according to wiki).
In this one, he will still be the youngest, but he'll be closer to 12, about the same age as Presto. The others will be aged up a little, so they're all in the same class (and have a reason to be together), probably 15-16. In addition, we're going to try to tie the characters origins and personalities a little more to their 'class' in game terms, but let's deal with that a little later.
But the people who get us into the world of Dungeons and Dragons (we'll call it The Realm) are the team of Bobby and Presto, both gamer kids who love the world of Dungeons and Dragons online gaming. Bobby is talented in terms of reflexes and raw ability. He plays a Barbarian character who's one of the highest levels in the game. Presto's the strategy guy, playing a magic user, a bit lower level possibly due to him being more uncoordinated, but they make a good team.
Once they actually enter the alternate fantasy world, they're the source of local knowledge, able to explain things the viewers might not be able to grasp immediately (orcs are bad!), but their expectations also get them into trouble.
The mechanism for getting everybody to The Realm is the game. Bobby and Presto are playing, while, meanwhile, the other four are working on a class project together. They're doing it at Bobby's house, because Sheila is Bobby's older sister and isn't supposed to leave him home alone. Anyway, in the first episode, while we establish the character dynamics, Bobby and Presto uncover a new level to the game that nobody's ever seen before.
A face appears on the screen and, much like in a game, offers them a quest, their skills are needed to save a land from evil. If they agree, he will cast a spell to bring them there. They accept, and an actual, literally portal opens, but it's more like a vortex. It causes enough noise that Sheila goes to investigate and the others follow, and all get sucked in, too.
It closes behind them, and the Dungeon Master welcomes them to the Realm.
He seems a little surprised though that these are not the heroes he expected, and decides the only thing to do is to make them into them, gives each of them their magic item and appointed Class, and then tells them a little about what's going on. Mostly, though, the group just wants to go home. DM tells them it's not in the cards. Bringing someone is always easier than sending them back. Their only hope is to defeat Venger who might have a magic item that can do the job, or seek out someone else who is able to cast the proper spell.
So, the characters:
Bobby: He's a Barbarian, and so in temperment. First to rush into action, and, being a male of the age where he's not quite civilized (if we ever are), probably more than a few jokes about him being disgusting, eating like a pig, not caring about washing himself or his clothes, etc.
He tends to think of himself as his character in the game, which leads him to get in over his head. His character might be able to defeat a dragon single-handedly, but Bobby himself is still only twelve, even if he has a magic club.
Eventually he probably will rescue a Unicorn. If we can get away with it, maybe some jokes about how Unicorns traditionally only attach themselves to virgins, and he'd probably pretend to not like it and want it to go away, but secretly grow attached.
Presto: The Wizard. In this context, that means that in the human world, he's a brain, and a geek. Shy, unsure of himself, what he knows is strange and arcane to everybody else, but what he knows, he knows well.
Bobby's knowledge of the game is related to monsters and his character, but Presto actually learns stuff unrelated to it, read the game sourcebooks, knows histories of characters and locations that aren't actually in the game. He doesn't know everything (which would be boring), but when somebody needs to play Exposition-Boy, it's usually Presto.
And, of course, when things from the game need to be WRONG, to hammer home the thought that 'this is real, not some game, just because the rules say that elves hate orcs doesn't mean that this elf and this orc can't be happily married' (or whatever).
Magic item is of course, the hat. No significant changes, although I never really did like the rhyming, without it, he's just pulling things out of a hat and it usually being silly. Maybe that could be one of his first 'things don't always work like the game' moments. In the game, he never has to come up with a poem to get the magic, he just chooses a spell from his list.
Presto is probably his gamertag, and what Bobby calls him, and so what everybody else does.
Diana: In the original series she was an Acrobat. Thief-acrobat was a class then, but it's not
really now. However, an interesting compromise would be to put her in the role of the Monk.
So Diana's a sporty type, and particularly excells at martial arts. She's probably the only one who could win a fight with an opponent in the realms just on her own skills, although she's still a teenager, not some super-elite-martial-arts-expert, so she's still fallable.
She of course is given the magical quarterstaff. In the original series all it seemed to do was grow or shrink as needed, and block arrows and things when spun (I think). Might also add a 'channeling strike' thing, so she can break things by ramming the wall. Or maybe it returns to her hand when thrown.
Eric:
Cavalier suggests knight, which suggests wealth and nobility. That means Eric is from a rich family, a little bit of a spoiled brat, and, like the original, the complainer, and maybe a bit of a coward, and some level of comic relief. I see a little bit of Sokka from Avatar in him too (in fact, he might be a good voice actor), in that he does have a lot of common sense, and there'll be plenty of times when he can say "I told you so". We might play with him being a big skeptic, to the point that he believes, at first, everything happening to them is a bad dream, but once he accepts it he still scoffs at and is distrustful of magic (he'll use his magic item, but wouldn't want anyone to cast a spell on him, no matter how beneficial it's supposed to be).
Since we're going with 4th edition, Cavalier is as out of date as a class name as Acrobat, but neither Warlord or Paladin really suits either. WE COULD go with "Fighter", and have a bit of a pun (in that he's the one who fights with everyone in the group), although it doesn't sound as good.
He gets his Force-Shield-Shield, even though he claims he wishes he got a sword, he's relieved to have an item that protects him from all the nasties. Maybe we could have it so that at first it just protects him (even if, say, a wall of fire was rushing towards them all, it might only cover him), but eventually he's able to protect others, because he grows to care about them.
Hank: Rangers typically suggest nature guardians, so Hank should be one of those pro-active do-gooder types. You know, the ones who aren't just class president but also organizing the school's recycling efforts, etc. Maybe so much that he almost gets annoying in his own right.
He gets his magic bow with energy arrows. The only thing I'd change is make it a bit more limited. It's JUST a bow... he can't use the energy arrows to make a bridge, or a net. Maybe if we're limited in how much violence we can do on the show, tying people up, but I'd rather, if that was the case, just make it so that the arrows stun rather than kill.
Sheila: The biggest personality change, and probably the most controversial. Sheila is the Rogue, and so let's make her a ROGUE, BEFORE she gets sucked into the Realm.
She's got a juvie record. She's got a reputation. In short, Sheila becomes the Bad Girl.
I know, I know. Sheila was one of the sweet one in the original series. I'm not entirely comfortable with it either.
In any event, she's not evil, she's still pretty nice and in fact she's actually trying to reform, maybe a bad crowd of old friends, at an old school, lured her into badness. Her family changed schools to get away from them, but her reputation still followed her.
In the Realm, she's torn between the fact that she's once again acting like a sneaky thief, and even her own group not trusting her. Her brother in particular (who used to idolize her and fell hard into suspicion) probably thinks the worst of her whenever it looks like she's doing the wrong thing.
Since other people can be drawn into the Realm, at some point her old boyfriend gets drawn in (perhaps by an antagonist wanting to split up the group).
And other characters of the Realm:
Uni: I want to leave her out entirely, or just have her be in an episode or two, but not the main cast. But I suspect I'd be persuaded to bow to nostalgia and have the Team Pet. No talking, though. And if she's going to be there, she might as well be story-fodder... make her be the last unicorn (known), and unicorn horns being stupendously valuable. So any time anybody sees her, they want to take her. Maybe the dungeon master gives her an item that hides her horn but it's not reliable.
Dungeon Master:
He's the one who summoned them all, but he claims he can't send them home. Like Uni, I never really liked him all that much, but I think part of it was the "he just shows up, spouts a few riddles, and leaves". Sometimes he can be captured, sometimes there are imposters, but he's also 'all powerful'.
I think I'd rather remake him into powerful, but also seemingly in hiding. Maybe he claims that he holds something that is the last thing standing between Venger and total Realm Domination, and if Venger finds him, all is lost. So, Dungeon Master doesn't randomly show up. Instead, after the initial contact where they meet him the first time, he goes into hiding and only contacts them from afar. Maybe he gives them a crystal ball, and when they want to consult him, they use that to contact him, or he sometimes uses it to force contact. Among other things, Venger seeks to get the Dungeon Master's location from the kids, or the crystal ball.
They'll generally believe he's good, but come to suspect he's not dealing fairly with them and that they're the reason they can't go home, and so consider actually giving him up, or threatening to do so. Possibly this leads to a time (second season?) when the group are left completely without the Dungeon Master, and must make their own way in the Realm.
Venger:
More or less as expected. We'll even keep the "he's actually the DM's son!" But he's striving for world domination... he's not there, yet. There are a few holdouts of good, and a number of rivals.
Venger is the big bad, but, unlike the original cartoon, he's not there ALL the time. In the cartoon, as I recall, he was in virtually every episode... maybe not as the main antagonist, but sometimes just showing up randomly to cause drama. Here, he's a lurking menace who most of the time doesn't appear, and a lot of times they face other people with their own interests, totally unconnected to Venger.
To make Venger distinctive, and to make it so the kids consider dealing with him, he's (to use the old terms), Lawful Evil. If you make a deal with him, he will stick to the letter of it, even if it costs him. Of course, he'll try to find loopholes, but he'll stick to his word. OF course, if YOU betray HIM, he'll never make a deal with you again.
Although he's powerful enough to engage foes directly, mostly he operates through his armies, of orcs, kobolds, and tieflings. They do most of his day-to-day-evil. Venger intervenes when he thinks there's a chance of getting his hands on the Dungeon Master (which is how they meet him in the first episode). He'll encounter the kids more often than others would, sometimes because he finds them, sometimes because they go after him. He's got his own kingdom, a city that is more under his thumb than all the rest - think an oppressive dictatorship. In his palace, though, may be the means for the kids to get home (which probably
leads to an episode or two where they try to go directly for it while he's busy elsewhere).
Venger is one of the two main antagonists who WOULD try to expand their reach to take over the real world, given the opportunity... at first he thinks the kids are just heroes that the Dungeon Master assembled and trained, but once he learns of Earth and some of the weaponry there, he plans to make his own portal and lead armies there. Before that, though, he can do smaller things - summon people from there, for example. Bringing people from Earth is easier than sending things to there, the Dungeon Master was right about that. He does have some magic items that might let him open a gateway there, but only with significant preparation and obscure, hard-to-find components.
Tiamat:
Queen of Dragons, and we might as well make her the queen of the Dragonborn, too. They compose the second largest 'kingdom' in the Realm. Venger himself brought Tiamat there, using his magic, then learned he couldn't control her, so they've been struggling for territory ever since... actually Tiamat has a particular hate-on for Venger, we'll say because she used to be the ruler of a whole dimension, but in binding her to this realm it made her mortal.
Some of the other kingdoms are relieved at this because keeping both their attention on each other keeps them busy. The Dungeon Master claims that Venger and Tiamat are bound. If Venger falls, Tiamat is free to return to her own plane.
Anyway, we might try to get a little bit of a Dragonlance vibe off Tiamat and her forces, with dragonborn being like Draconians, and evil Dragons being major enemies, and one of the minor quests can be to try to restore the good dragons.
Other Antagonists:
I always liked Kelek, an evil wizard who was in an episode or two (and got imprisoned for all eternity by Venger). It might have to do with the fact that I had an action figure of him (and probably still do, but I think his costume's gone and his face and one hand's been chewed to all oblivion by a childhood pet. I think he'd be good as another medium-level antagonist, perhaps one who looks good at first glance but then turns out evil. He would be the other one who's very interested in Earth and may be the source of one of the "hey, look, we're going home... oh no, we can't or the consequences will be too bad!"
I don't think I need to get too into the plot outline beyond that, there'd be a mix of remakes of old eps and new ones, but with stand-alone episodes mixing with an ongoing plot.
So, that's option one. Option two is...
2) Dungeons & Dragons: The Next Generation
(maybe we could call it Advanced Dungeons & Dragons!)
This one's pretty self-explanatory. The original series all happened, and at some point, they came home, grew up, and (some of them, at least), had kids. When their kids are teenagers, they find a portal to the Realm, and begin having their own adventures. Presumably we'd have Hank and Sheila's kids, maybe one kid of Diana and Eric, and a couple who are just unrelated. I imagine Hank and Sheila's kids being the nucleus of the show, which allows us to bring their parents in later.
So, the details:
I think in this context, we do away with the "Trapped and looking for a way home" idea for the most part (although the first adventure probably has elements of that), and merely have them being a group of friends who stumble upon a portal to the Realm, and have adventures there. They'll for the most part be able to go back and forth between the real world and the Realm. We can have one element of it the fusion of modern day technology and magical worlds, with, say, the characters bringing things that might be helpful for one particular adventure (Iphones with 'apps' that they can creatively use, computers, walkie-talkie type phones).
How do they get there? Well, I have this idea that their "fun uncle Bobby" bought the theme park and self-appointed himself a guardian, but the kids find the portal and think they're the only ones who know, not able to conceive of the idea that their parents would know anything about it. Maybe at some point they (or some of them) get trapped there more permanently and their parents have to come in and save the day.
Still, generally some of the basics are the same: Kids wind up in The Realm, a Dungeon Master gives them each a magic item and a 'role', and they go on adventures.
Let's start with our cast of caracters:
6 is a good number. However, we'll even out the gender ratio a bit, three girls, three boys. I see three as being descendents of the originals, maybe another brother/sister team as Hank/Sheila's kids, and a son of Eric/Diana. The rest are friends, or, in one case, an antagonist that turns into a friend.
Anyway, because in this scenario we're not reproducing the original characters, we can be more original, both with the classes and the magic items. Once again, we're in 4ed (and looking up stuff for this reminds me how much I dislike the class system in 4th ed, in addition to... well, lots... but ESPECIALLY tieflings. Fundamentally, whenever I read up on other editions, I get an urge to want to roleplay again, create a character. When I read up on 4th edition, I get annoyed and start to aggressively not care about D&D... but this isn't a rant about it), so I imagine the layout would be like this:
Paladin:
I imagine that one of the reasons the original cartoon didn't have a 'cleric' was for fear of people being offended by a character worshipping different gods, or shoehorning magic powers into Christian belief.
Paladins would have a similar problem, but I don't think it's as bad. You can describe them, in the cartoon, as paragons of goodness, warriors who fight but also help.
Paladins have a 'lay on hands' ability, so maybe some sort of healing device would be appropriate. Maybe a combination healing/defensive tool. Maybe some kind of gauntlet that can expell energy that can heal or
repel. I don't know.
Probably Hank/Sheila's son would be the best for this role. Compassionate, but a bit impulsive and maybe lacking in common sense at the expense of idealism.
If Paladin is problematic, another potential option is 'bard', with a musical instrument that can both heal and create various energy walls and such for defense, but for a cartoon it would be very hard to do well. It would have to be an old-style musical instrument (maybe a lyre?) and I have a hard time picturing the music improving the story. But I'm not a music-person in general. Anyway, if we did go this route, he would be more of a music geek, naturally, but probably keeps it hidden - afraid of failing and embarassing himself, he only sings in the shower.
Druid:
I'm thinking this might also be one of Hank/Sheila's kids, the daughter. She's naturey having taken to her parents camping visits (her dad's a Ranger and her mom spent months roughing it... I can't see them not taking their kids camping) more than her brother, enough that she's drawn to animals and the nature role.
Her magic item would either be some sort of amulet that lets her turn into any animal, or maybe a set of animal figurines, which can be activated one at a time, each of which grows and comes alive. I sort of go back and forth in terms of which I prefer, but I'm leaning towards the amulet since it would be fewer items to keep track of.
Monk: Since the original didn't have one, this one can, it makes it different. Probably a natural for Diana/Eric's kid, though it doesn't have to be. Sort of a dependable, best-friend type. He's the sort of friend who'd tell you that he doesn't think what you're doing is a good idea, but if you went through with it would be right there to help.
His magic item I think would be boots of speed/jumping.
Fighter: Our female warrior type. Magic item is a sword, something like a vorpal sword. Light, thin, but can cut through everything (save certain magic stuff). Make that function will-based though, which lets her NOT kill everybody... because she doesn't really want to, her mind rejects cutting through actual people, and other things (a really beautiful wall, for example).
I kind of like the idea that, perhaps the Dungeon Master was pushing the healing item towards her and meant the sword for Hank (might work even better if it was the Bard item), but she was all "Screw that, if we're going up against monsters, I'm taking a sword".
She's outspoken, also impulsive like Hank, but a real funloving type. After the first bout of scared and "I want to go home", actually becomes something of a Realms-addict, because adventuring is fun. She becomes one of the people pushing them all to keep coming back.
Rogue: Once again, we can use the 'bad kid (with a heart of gold)', like we tried to do with Sheila, although in this case, it might work better if we sort of put him directly into the Eric archetype - the complainer/CYNICAL voice of reason (as opposed to the Monk, which is the gentle voice of reason)/outcast, but who's also right surprisingly often. Maybe he starts off as a bully to the group but when they stumble on this shared secret, he reluctantly joins them and begins to bond. I kind of like that, the 'semi-bad-guy getting reformed' as an arc (I've used it in other imaginary-productions).
One of his primary motivations, early on, might be that he comes from a very poor family and, in the Realm, gold and jewels are more easily acquired, so he can help his family out.
His magic item, I'm thinking something along the lines of a Shadowwalking Cloak. It lets him teleport from one dark place to another (as long as it's nearby), maybe melt into his own shadow temporarily, or a couple other tricks as the plot demands. Probably doesn't work in bright light.
I imagine one of his former bully friends could follow them to the realm and start using it for his own nefarious purposes, maybe even forming his own Anti-Party.
Sorcerer: This would be one of the friends, and I'm thinking probably a girl. Maybe closer to the 'popular girl' type, concerned with looks and things like that because she's secretly doesn't really feel she has anything to offer beyond that, but having the power to actually change a world begins to awaken her nobler spirit.
The sorceror's magic item is a wand, which operates similar to Presto's hat and a Wand of Wonder. She can try to conjure up a specific effect, but about half the time, it goes wrong. Still, potentially the most powerful of the items, just taking study.
Although they're described in terms of classes, in this version, we'd make it clear that they're on the "path" of that class. That is, they might one day actually become a Sorceror/Druid/Paladin etc, but right now they're just operating in that spirit, and with magical items that help give that skill.
If we were in 3.5th edition we might have them all start out named after Prestige Classes, which might well sound cooler:
"Bladesinger, Shadowdancer, Archmage, Beastmaster", etc.
But no, 4th edition had to remove those. Okay, technically, you could probably do the same with paragon paths, but I'd have to look more into 4th edition than I'd like to, in order to deal with them. But it's certainly a viable option if this was actually going to become a series.
Oh, and we need a team pet, don't we? How about Rusty, the Rust Monster?
No?
Okay, let's skip the Team Pet this time, and move on to...
Setting and Set-up:
The Realm is more-or-less the same type of place as it was in the first series. However, since time is wonky (it was established in the first series that people from all sorts of time periods and dimensions can be drawn in, and also they suggested at least once that for all the months they were gone from their perspectives, it was still the same weekend at home). So, something like a thousand years or something have passed. New kingdoms arise, new threats. Maybe things like Dragonborn are a new civilization, for example. Anything else desired too. The Realm still draws people in from varying worlds and times, and some of them stuck in the last milennia.
To let them both explore a wide variety of areas, and return home, the portal they use to get to the Realm 'wanders', opening in a new place every visit, exposing them to a variety of new situations. On Earth it's always in the same place. But in the Realms, it stays in the same place until you pass through again, which allows the group to get temporarily trapped, until they find the new place it lets out. Or maybe it's not "once you leave it", but it's an "every X amount of time" thing. (But because time stretches on the Realm side, almost every time they return home and go again, it will have moved by the time they get back, unless they keep the door open which keeps the timeflow consistent.
The FIRST adventure probably has the door close behind them, possibly due to the Rogue following them and wanting to make trouble, and the first quest is to find out where it opens next. This lets the group experience the Realm and notice the possibilities, and bond because they have to work together.
In that first adventure, the group starts getting involved in situations randomly, occasionally goes looking for treasure, but are mostly trying to get home, and succeed. After that, they find they want to keep going back. The Dungeon Master explains how the portal works and they think they can handle it, so they do so. They don't always have to all go in together, sometimes only a few will want to go together (while the others are having an Earth-based social-life-style adventure).
The Original Cast:
The original cast appear briefly at first, but growing importance as the series goes on.
As for what happened to them after the series, just off the top of my head:
Hank and Sheila and, for some reason, Eric and Diana seem to be the fan-favorite couples (although Diana had a brief Nazi love interest... really!) in the show, so it's only natural that they got together, as mentioned when we talked about the kids. But other than getting together and having kids:
Hank: We could be cute and say: Park Ranger. Hank was generally the 'heroic leader' of the group, though, so one could easily imagine him as the 'ranger' of the urban jungle. A police officer, in other words.
Sheila: I can't think anything cute that relates to either her thiefdom or her invisibility. In some foreign versions, she wasn't called a thief, but rather an Illusionist, so I suppose you could put her in the role of an artist, but... I don't know. I'd rather give her a job that's fairly normal, but, like Hank, a job that keeps her away from home and thus lets the kids be unsupervised enough that their trips to the realm go unnoticed. Artist, unless on a celebrity level, doesn't seem to offer that. So, maybe a doctor?
Eric: We can assume he grew up a little and his 'heart-of-goldness' came shining through more, but he always was the argumentative one, so I'm going to say Lawyer. But, because he was a Cavalier (knightly), one who champions 'the little guy' and the wrongfully accused. Naturally this puts him in regular contact with Hank, sort of buddies who are antagonistic at times.
Diana: She was supposedly an Olympic-level gymnast, so let's assume she actually is an olympic medalist, and after that, had a small career in TV/films. Maybe even a news anchor?
Bobby: Grew up but 'never really grew up', becoming the kind of fun uncle. He and Presto bought out the old amusement park. I'm thinking that Bobby actually got wounded, a car accident, and walks with a cane (carved from his old club?), so he can't adventure like he'd want to, but still visits the Realm on a regular basis, using magic items they acquired to help himself.
Presto: Ran the amusement park with Bobby for a while, but, a few years ago, disappeared. Into the Realm. The others know, and let him go, to find his happiness (maybe he was going through a difficult time). I'd actually be really tempted to make the Venger-like antagonist turn out to be Presto, having become corrupted by power, and, much like the unproduced finale would have revealed that the kids purpose was to redeem Venger, in the Next Generation, they have to redeem Presto. The other option is to make him the new Dungeon Master. But I'd prefer he be bad. Yes, I like that.
Uni: Glue factory. Oh, I'm terrible. I never really liked Uni that much, and it's hard to imagine that she might have made it to the Real World. I guess she could be an attraction in the theme park, but that somehow feels so... base, for a noble beast like a unicorn. So she stayed in the Realm. A thousand years have passed. But because she's a unicorn, she's immortal. Maybe she serves as a recurring good character, sort of like... well, the opposite of how Tiamat was in the series. She's good, but she disagrees with the dungeon-master character the people encounter.
Venger: We'll assume that the unproduced finale episode happened more or less as described. So he actually was redeemed and became a good guy. But since so much time has passed in the Realm, he's died. The new antagonist is probably similar.
The Dungeon Master: Somebody finally got sick of his riddles and stuffed him in a sack. There is a new Dungeon Master, revealed to be an inherited role. Or, MAYBE, Bobby himself is the role of the Dungeon Master. Not in terms of having magical powers and being all-knowing, but secretly knowing where the kids are going and giving them cryptic advice, leaving them notes, things like that. I do kind of like the notion of the old player becoming the Dungeon Master.
Ooh, and giving Bobby that role would also put him into the role of the person trying to engineer Presto's redemption, and put him in the friendly-adversarial relationship with Uni. You know, the more I think about this, the more I like it.
Check this out: Bobby regularly visits the realm to try and do what he can for Presto. Maybe he keeps what's happened to him from the rest of the group because he doesn't want to tarnish their memories. The next generation group accidentally follow him into the Realm, without knowing they're doing it, but never actually see him there... When the door closes, Bobby realizes they're trapped there, temporarily, so whips up a dungeon master disguise (maybe just being a disembodied voice, using Sheila's cloak of invisibility).
He watches over them, guides them, gives them their weapons (from a bag of holding type object Bobby keeps), and gets them to the other side. After seeing what good they do, he tries to push them towards visiting the Realm on a regular basis. As Bobby he pretends he doesn't know what's going on, but he's always watching out for them.
Of course, as I said, eventually we get an episode, or series of episodes, where the kids are in danger and the adults finally figure out what's going on and don their old roles to help rescue them. They're angry at Bobby at first but he later convinces them to let the kids continue playing because it's character building.
You know, I'm actually loving this setup. If I wasn't creating it, I'd totally watch it. Well, I suppose that's not saying much because if I didn't like it I'd hardly be doing it, but, still. Obviously the main characters need to be fleshed out more, but in terms of general concept, I like. Even if we did have Rusty the Team Pet.
But, since many things come in threes, there's still a third option to if I had a chance to make a modern Dungeons and Dragons cartoon. This one is more pet-projectish. It's:
3) The Throw-it-all-out-but-the-title-and-a-concept-or-two
And probably won't even keep the title.
But let's strip down the Dungeons & Dragons (cartoon) concept to it's most basic level, IMHO: It's about a bunch of modern teens travelling through a fantasy universe.
If that and that alone was the directive for creating a show, I wouldn't reboot Dungeons and Dragons, or make a sequel (well, maybe I would, I'd probably have trouble deciding, honestly... but let's say for whatever reason the other options are off the table). I would look to my all-time favorite campaign setting, one built around magic portals and the idea that somebody from ANYWHERE could wind up there.
That's Planescape. For those who don't know, it was an AD&D 2nd edition campaign setting, based around Planar Travel. The Planes include the Astral Plane, the Ethereal Plane, the Prime Material Plane (where all the traditional AD&D game worlds exist), the Inner Planes (elemental based: Fire, Earth, Air, Water, plus combinations), and the Outer Planes (belief based, basically one for each alignment, among other things, holding the realms of the gods and the afterlife for their alignment). It also had a bit of a fantasy steampunk (more in terms of the aesthetics than the actual steam) vibe to it, with the central city, Sigil, sort of moderned on Victorian London. Sigil is a city built on the inside of a closed ring, sort of a nexus of the universe. In Sigil, any archway may be a portal to anywhere else in the multiverse, if you've got the right key (which might be an object, a password, or an action). Portals also exist between other points, but Sigil is full of them.
Anyway, it would focus on a group of kids on Earth who open up one of the only portals to Sigil. I'm thinking we have some of the characters have a family history... their parents came from the outer planes and settled on Earth because it was one of the safest places, there are only a handful of portals there, and the keys are very rare. More details behind the cut.
Since Planescape operates on the Rule of Threes, let's say that this family has three kids. And the third child of a third child (one of their parents) of their particular family line, inherits the ability to open any portal, by hand. These Openers are highly sought after. The kids father (or mother, it doesn't really matter, but just for sake of argument let's say father) knows of this, but doesn't think it applies - he only has an older brother. But HIS father had a child he never knew about, from youthful indiscretions, which makes the prophecy hold. Since they don't think the Opener is an issue, their part of the family destiny is guarding a door and a key. The key is not to the door. It's to another door, a special door, in another plane, and probably sought over by many different factions.
Anyway we have the kids... let's say two girls and a boy. Brother and sister who are either twins, or very close in age, like maybe a year apart. Probably 16ish. And a younger daughter, thirteenish, who is the Opener. (We could also have an older sibling who's off-scene, maybe attending college, and just have the two siblings. I don't know why, maybe it is just residue from Dungeons and Dragons cartoon love (with a dash of Firefly), but I think if you've got a big cast, having two characters related is the ideal number. Three might be too much, one seems too little. But I always like the sibling dynamic in general. It's probably why I retconned two of the characters in the Runaways comic into being (unbeknownst to them) siblings in my Alternate Runaways Volume 3 WIDW. But I digress.) The kids don't know about the door, at least not that it's a real thing. It's never been opened, going back to their grandfather. Even their father probably has his doubts it's more than a family legend. I actually might make it so that the 'family destiny' thing has been 'lost', because nothing magical has ever happened since the grandfather's day, so the father/mother never really believed it or took it seriously, and the kids just heard it as a silly story their grandfather used to tell.
I say 'door', but in Planescape, as in here, 'doors' can be any archway or enclosed opening, whether it opens and closes or not. So the 'door' can be the tunnel under a bridge, a window, or it could even be something like a picture frame. I like the picture frame notion, it makes it moveable and innocuous... but, on the other hand, making it big and immovable serves the plot better. In fact, it's at a location that's not a home, but rather a public place, maybe a museum or even the school, some sort of historical landmark that's preserved.
Aside from the siblings, the characters are a geeky friend, a friend of the sister, maybe a group of bullies who get swept up in things (so we can do the bully redemption, at least one one of them). I'm leaving them very sketchy and undefined.
So, the parents are away on some sort of trip (they're rich due to gold and gems being plentiful in fantasy settings), and our group, composed of the brother and sister and a couple friends (but not the younger sister) are hanging out one evening, near the door. Maybe we learn the family legend. The bullies are also around, making a bit of trouble. All of a sudden, the portal opens. First to come out is a girl, half demon (alu-fiend, in Planescape terms). Warns everybody to run, "They're right behind me" but they don't listen, especially as nobody seems to be right behind her. The portal opens again, and demons come out... also, the sister goes through the other side. The portal closes, trapping her on the other side.
After an initial conflict, the demons escape (they're not actually interested in the kids) and starts on their nefarious plans.
I do have many more detailed thoughts (magical keys playing a big role in the story, also magic spells being on playing card type things rather than a traditional spellbook might be visually cool and commercializable), but I don't want to bore... the basic idea is that, at first, we have two parallel story paths. One is set on Earth, with the brother and the half-demon girl and their friends trying to deal with the demons on Earth, and find the key that opens the portals so they can go after the sister. There's some ambiguity on whether the alu-fiend girl is actually good or out for her own interests (the truth is probably a little of both).
The other path, of course, is the sister's adventures off in the planes. Hers is a more straightforward fantasy adventure, maybe with her own group of companions, who are more otherworldly. I would like to use a little bit of the 'modern technology and thinking isn't all bad' type stories, with that being her major contribution (the thinking... she might have a laptop or something but it's the point of view that's her real asset). I'd also toyed with the idea of, since it's a cartoon and a moral for kids wouldn't be amiss, to have a big change - that basically reading is a virtually unknown art in the planes, and in many cases, magic just requires READING the spell off a magical book/scroll/card. If someone was fluent in reading, they could become a great wizard, just like that. (There'd be a little more to it, like the reading summons the spell but internal factors and practice help shape it). Anyway, with her side of the plot, we have a time displacement factor. Maybe 10 to one... an hour on Earth is ten on most of the planes (although some have their own factors). So the Earth story might only take a few days, but much longer is going on with the sister.
Later, the Earth team fail to discover the key, but learn the next best thing... that the younger sister is an 'opener', and they all go out to try and rescue the sister on the planes.
The parents are a bit of a problem here, since we are essentially wanting a situation where the daughter can go missing for some time and nobody knows about it but the kids. Maybe it's some literal 'incommunicado' situation (exploring the Amazon), maybe instead of being 'away', they're missing, and their 'evil' uncle is taking care of them, even though they suspect he might have done it for the fortune, but that's a little melodramatic. I remember once having a solution (I've had this general idea germinating for a few years), but I can't recall it at the moment. Maybe the demons abduct the parents right away and use them as hostages to force the kids to find the key, and of course they have to cover it up while they investigate it. That might work. (Alu-Fiends have shapechanging abilities, so she could pretend to be the sister at school, or more likely, impersonate an exchange student that the sister has suddenly signed up for).
Anyway, that should give you the gist, if any of you read this far. I should note you COULD do this whole thing without involving either Planescape or Dungeons and Dragons at all. You can just change Sigil to a generic other worldly city with magic portals (it's not a common enough idea that it'd be copyrightable), remove all other specific D&D references. I love Planescape mostly for the flavor, so if I were ever to be in a position to make a series like this happen, I'd do whatever I could to get the license and use all that flavor, which is part of why I'm including it in this WIDW post rather than making a new one, but the idea stands on its own and is doable without.
So, there it is. 3 Dungeons & Dragons style shows for the modern age. Which would I choose, given the choice? I think.... it's between the Next Generation, and the Planescape-style one, because I could make it more mine. I'd probably choose Next Generation to WATCH, and Planescape if I was going to create one.
But I wouldn't turn up my nose at watching or producing any of the three options. So, if you run a network and happen to have the license to produce such a show... please, hire me and give me a show-runner position! Or steal my ideas and give me something good to watch.
And if you don't, just comment, if you feel so inclined.
(As usual, the WIDW tag contains all the prior installments of What I'd Do With...).