Dungeons & Dragons is the king of the table games, but we aren’t talking about something that everyone will appreciate as a common Monopoly or a funny Tabù. It is a game aimed for a small group of players, and they are very demanding. For this reason we tremble at the idea of a dedicated tv serie, will it be up to? Let’s find out it together.
Let’s talk a bit about Dungeons & Dragons
D&D, because it is with its acronym that the table game is usually called, it was created by Gary Gygax and Dave Ameson and it was released, for the first time, in the 1974.
It is a fantasy role playing game. Actually it is the forefather of a whole family of role playing games, which were born in the company Gygax, then passed through Wizards and, finally, landed in Hasbro.
D&D, intentionally inspired, especially in the very first editions, to the Lord of the Ring, sees fighting elves, dwarfs, half elves, ogres, dragons, halflings.
Who knows Dungeons & Dragons knows that the game in reality takes its shape while playing. But to help us to do it there are inside the editions the textbooks to follow. The very first edition was made by a box with three small textbooks. In the years many versions followed, but the game mostly had a big cultural impact.
The famous role playing game, infact, appears in many movies and tv series. In The Big Bang Theory, for example, it is a recurring theme. While the whole tv serie of Stranger Things is all created around the game itself. The famous, and feared, Demogorgon, creature of the Upside Down, is in reality a character mentioned inside the Monsters’ Textbook.
The announce of the tv serie
It was the same Hasbro, the current owner of the rola playing game to announce the realization of a tv serie live action inspired to Dungeons & Dragons.
“We are taking different approaches. There is so much myths inside Dungeons & Dragons to use for the live action tv serie and there is a strong interest. We talked with many streamers and terrestrial channels that were very interested to Dungeons & Dragons”.
But we have to be very careful, because this isn’t the first attempt. They already tried to bring the famous role playing game on small and big screen, but they it was one failure after another.
A serie of failures on the small and the big screen
The first attempt was about an animated serie, which was right called Dungeons & Dragons, its broadcast (since the 83 to the 85) was stopped at the third season, by leaving, moreover, viewers without the last episode (which was never released!).
Then it was the time of the big screen, with a movie, homonymous too, that was released in the 2000 but it was a total failure. Even though the very cold public reception, the movie had a sequel, that never arrived in the cinemas, but it was shown on tv. And then there was, even, a third movie, this time it was only released on Dvd.
Dungeons & Dragons is ready to born again
In the years D&D had a slow and inexorable decline, which was emphatized by the failure of the animated serie and of the movies. However the 2020 was the year of its re-birth. It was maybe even because of the quarantine?
However the sales increased of the 20% and even a fifth edition arrived on the marketplace. But in reality the ingredients of this re-birth are others. Once the fantasy wasn’t a trend. It was something for geeks and strangers. But today tv series like Stranger Things made the game popular and cult series like Games of Thrones shown how it isn’t something for children only.
No one knows nothing about the tv serie, in reality. Hasbro announced it and nothing more. We only know that it is a big challenge, as well as the expectations. The potentialities, instead, are endless. A complex and amazing world brillianty described in the fantasy literature. It only remains to wait and to hope that it won’t be another failure.
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