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| - Dungeons & Dragons (often referred to by fans as the "D&DC" in order to distinguish it from the game) was an animated television series based on the role-playing game where six friends (Hank, Diana, Eric, Presto, Sheila and Bobby) take a ride in an amusement park and suddenly find themselves in a Heroic Fantasy setting simply called The Realm. They are instantly garbed in clothes fitting their character classes and quickly gain a companion in a unicorn foal named Uni. A Mysterious Benefactor, known only as Dungeon Master, gives each of them a magic weapon to help them survive in that world and promises to help them find a way home.
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abstract
| - Dungeons & Dragons (often referred to by fans as the "D&DC" in order to distinguish it from the game) was an animated television series based on the role-playing game where six friends (Hank, Diana, Eric, Presto, Sheila and Bobby) take a ride in an amusement park and suddenly find themselves in a Heroic Fantasy setting simply called The Realm. They are instantly garbed in clothes fitting their character classes and quickly gain a companion in a unicorn foal named Uni. A Mysterious Benefactor, known only as Dungeon Master, gives each of them a magic weapon to help them survive in that world and promises to help them find a way home. Together, the kids look for a way home, but the malevolent villain, Venger, is determined to hunt them down for their weapons as a means of gaining supreme power. Dungeon Master mysteriously appears at seemingly random times, restricting his help to quest assignments and giving advice in the form of cryptic riddles that frustrate the kids no end. This series distinguished itself as one of the better Saturday Morning Cartoon productions in the time-slot's heyday. You can almost feel the creative crew champing at the Media Watchdogs bit and struggling against the reins as far as they dared. The show could be unexpectedly dark, with the young characters often visibly shaken by their close brushes with death, or by the hopeless desperation of this desolate, alien world. For instance, one of the more celebrated episodes is "The Dragon's Graveyard" [sic], where the show breaks the formula where the kids, frustrated at Venger ruining yet another escape attempt, balk at Dungeon Master's latest quest and demand he help them kill Venger. He reluctantly submits and advises The Dragon's Graveyard, where the kids lure Venger into battle and come within a hair's breadth of killing the villain before backing off on principle. But such dark themes would hardly be a surprise to anyone familiar with the career of series writer Steve Gerber, who did groundbreaking work in dark, realistic stories at Marvel Comics in the late seventies before moving to cartoons. For the tabletop game this is based on, see Dungeons & Dragons.
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