A Chronology of D&D in Popular Media

[Voros]

The Analog Game Studies site is an academic site dedicated to analogue table top games, including RPGs, board and card games and experimental games of all sorts.

The articles are, not surprisingly, hit or miss but this recent one that tracks media portrayls of people playing D&D and the modern popularity of Actual Play videos and podcasts is pretty good and fun with some nice video links to the Mazes and Monsters TV movie, the classic 'Disco and Dragons' Freaks and Geeks episode, Community and more.

Really interesting to me is the LA cable access show Dungeon Majesty from 2004. I had never heard of it and it looks pretty fun.



Also interesting to see Satine Phoenix in the first episode of I Hit it with My Axe as she was recently hired as the social media maven/community manager for WotC. I've always liked her and I'm happy for her scoring that job.

 

[TristramEvans]

Article really glosses over the 80s. No mention of D&D in E.T., the reference in Gremlins, the Emmy-award winning cartoon series, the D&D type games in Skulduggery, The Dungeonmaster, Cloak & Dagger, and Shakma, the British D&D-themed kids game show, etc.

 

[A Fiery Flying Roll]

Dungeons and Dragons reference in one of the Grange Hill annuals as well.

It was brilliant; a satire of Mazes and Monsters.

In it, the geeky Roland Browning is roleplaying and has gone missing. So some of the other students decide he's obviously failed to differentiate between reality and fantasy and gone into the sewers as his goblin.

A bit later, Roland reemerges from getting his lunch, looks at them, mutters "weirdos" and wanders off

 

[TristramEvans]

Anyone remember the BBC mini-series The One Game? It was about a businessman who sold these RPG/LARP-like fantasy games being inadvertently drawn into a deadly version of one of the fantasy games by his bitter ex-partner?

 

[finarvyn]

Anyone remember the BBC mini-series The One Game? It was about a businessman who sold these RPG/LARP-like fantasy games being inadvertently drawn into a deadly version of one of the fantasy games by his bitter ex-partner?

No, but it sounds like a fun series to watch.

 

[TristramEvans]

No, but it sounds like a fun series to watch.

No idea how well it's aged, I think it was late 80s, but I remember really enjoying it as a kid. Had a bunch of allusions to Arthurian legends and Welsh medieval music.

 

[Lunar Ronin]

Article really glosses over the 80s. No mention of D&D in E.T., the reference in Gremlins, the Emmy-award winning cartoon series, the D&D type games in Skulduggery, The Dungeonmaster, Cloak & Dagger, and Shakma, the British D&D-themed kids game show, etc.

On a tangent, I remember getting my parents to rent Cloak & Dagger at the local video store thinking it would be related to the Marvel Comics duo, only to be disappointed. Still a good movie though.

 

[thedungeondelver]

One that people always miss is in the movie Taps, an early 80s film starring Tom Cruise, Sean Penn and IIRC a young Timothy Bottoms. Real quick, the plot is: a West Point like military academy is going to be closed, to the dismay of the students. The general (played by George C. Scott) in charge of the school is arrested, the students seize the school's armory (which is inexplicably filled with enough small arms to outfit an infantry brigade) and stand off inside the school grounds with tragic results.

Anyway, the D&D reference is a blink-and-you'll-miss-it bit of dialogue when Cruise is walking through the hallway before all the heavy shit goes down and a passing classmate asks him if he's going to play Dungeons & Dragons that night, he smiles and says no, he has to study.

I always thought it was an interesting nod.

 

[Voros]

Article really glosses over the 80s. No mention of D&D in E.T., the reference in Gremlins, the Emmy-award winning cartoon series, the D&D type games in Skulduggery, The Dungeonmaster, Cloak & Dagger, and Shakma, the British D&D-themed kids game show, etc.

Also the D&D episode of Greatest American Hero, which is deliciously confused about the game. He does admit he will miss things in his intro though.

 

[soltakss]

It looks very US-focussed to me.

it is missing a reference to D&D in Tucker's Luck (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tucker's_Luck) where Tucker plays D&D and want to "Nut" his opponent, but isn't allowed to (Nut means to head-butt, in case you thought it meant something else). Always stuck in my mind as he could have done it in RuneQuest.