The History of the Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon

The role-playing game Dungeons & Dragons was created in 1974 by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson and published by Tactical Studies Rules (TSR). The concept was to create a war game in a Lord of the Rings type environment. In the game, each player takes a role of a different character. They are guided through the game by the Dungeon Master, who serves as narrator and also interprets the rules. D&D became a cult hit in the 1970s and 1980s.

The original idea for the D&D cartoon was created by Dennis Marks and called Swords & Sorcery. It was loosely based on Dungeons & Dragons and was originally pitched to NBC, who rejected the idea. The show was produced by the newly formed Marvel Productions, Ltd, which was owned by Marvel Comics. Marks served as creative director.

In 1982, Marvel teamed up with TSR to create the D&D cartoon around the concept the Marks had created and sold the show to CBS. Marks and the other writers at Marvel had written outlines and scripts, but CBS brought in a script doctor, Mark Evanier, to tighten up the story and characters. Evanier’s contribution was to simplify the show. In 48 hours, Evanier took Mark’s concept and turned it into the D&D we all know and love, writing the “bible” (the story and character information given to the writers) and the script for the pilot episode.

Dungeons & Dragons was one of the first cartoon series produced by Marvel. Marvel Comics purchased the small animation studio DePatie-Freleng in 1981. DePatie-Freleng was founded by David H DePatie and Friz Freleng in the 1960s, and is most famous for doing the Pink Panther cartoons. They also worked on animation for the first Star Wars film. In 1981, Freleng retired and DePatie sold the company to Marvel. DePatie served as head of Marvel Productions until 1984, when he retired and was replaced by Margaret Loesch, who would become one of the most influential people in animation history. Loesch was previously vice president of Hanna Barbara where she was directly responsible for developing The Smurfs (which would wreck havoc on D&D’s ratings).

D&D debuted on September 17, 1983 at 9:30 am. CBS' lineup at the time was: Biskitts, Saturday Supercade, D&D, Dukes of Hazzard the Cartoon (later replaced by Plastic Man), Charlie Brown & Snoopy, Benji, Zax & The Alien Prince, and Bugs Bunny/Road Runner. Dungeons & Dragons was airing against: Pac-Man on ABC and Smurfs on NBC.

The third season consisted of only six episodes. The final episode was Cave of the Fairie Dragons, written by Kathy Selbert.

The cancellation had nothing to do with any sort of controversy or parents or religious groups complaining about the show. It was simply a cost issue. The cancellation was the same as most sci-fi tv series that are head of it’s time. The ratings were declining and the show was too expensive to continue. Networks also had no problems airing repeats of cartoon series over and over again, so unfortunately there wasn’t any need for additional episodes. Other sources point to time issues at Marvel as one of the contributing factors to the cancellation. At the time Marvel was producing hundreds of episodes of shows per year (including GI Joe, Transformers, Jem, Muppet Babies and many more), and was simply overwhelmed.

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