Support Game Content in 2025
Starting with a D&D Cartoon adventure!
TLDR Version: I could really use some help to start this year, which will allow me the breathing room to offer everyone a downloadable, fully playable adventure based on the Dungeons & Dragons cartoon from the 1980s—one of my most popular convention events that debuted at GaryCon 2019. Click here to help with a $20 pledge.
2024 was a roller coaster for a lot of us, and the last chunk of the year was especially challenging. Most recently my dog had a litter of unexpected puppies that she promptly rejected for nursing—putting me on bottle-feeding duty every 3-4 hours for the past several weeks. Fortunately they’ve just begun eating semisolid food for the first time and will level up over the next few weeks to fully weaned puppies. Soon I’ll be able to sleep again!
The extra time, expenses, and exhaustion have caused me to fall behind, so I’m asking my community for a boost to help me catch up. With the breathing room I’ll be able to get to work on the content I’ve been planning for 2025. Some of it I announced on my post from several months back. But I wanted to start with …
“Land of Forever”
A Dungeons & Dragons Cartoon Adventure
In 2019 I returned to my adopted hometown of Lake Geneva, Wisconsin to run games at my very favorite convention: GaryCon! I wanted to offer something special that would be a treat for gamers and fans who’ve been around since the good ol’ days, but stood apart from a typical old-school adventure. (Those types of games are awesome, but are well represented at GaryCon.) At the same time, my very young son was watching my old DVDs of the classic D&D cartoon from the early 80s and it sparked an idea.
So before the cartoon cast started making cameos in movies and appearing in products, I brought 80s animated action to D&D 5th Edition to the convention that celebrated the life and work of Gary Gygax.
While I was doing some research to put the characters together I found a transcript of the original series bible, written by Mark Evanier in March 1983. It not only offered some insight on our main characters, but it included episode ideas that were never produced! I grabbed the main concept of “The Land of Forever” story idea and married it with an idea shamelessly stolen from Stephen King. The first time I ran this event my players gave me a standing ovation at the end of the adventure—one of the most fun game sessions I’ve run in forty years.
Since this was a convention event I put a lot of love and attention to detail into the character sheets and had my artist daughter paint miniatures that I ordered from a 3D printed site. (My old links are dead so I’ll try to find the sames ones I used, though the 50th anniversary gave us many more options for miniatures of the D&D cartoon cast.)
The adventure, however, exists as a loose collection of notes and stat blocks and some of it still resides solely in my head. I just needed enough so I could run the event comfortably (which I’ve done several times now) but to be useful for anyone else I need to write it out properly.
Running Cartoon D&D
“But wait!” you say. “Didn’t Wizards of the Coast just put out a free adventure featuring the D&D cartoon cast?”
They did! “Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn” is available on D&D Beyond right now with pre-made characters and a short adventure. I think the adventure itself is a lot of fun and captures some of the spirit of the cartoon—not afraid to be a bit silly in places.
But while I think the D&D Beyond adventure is great and accomplishes its goal of being a fun introductory scenario that shows off the D&D 2024 rules, I don’t know that it gives players and Dungeon Masters great tools to run a game that feels like the cartoon series. The characters are pretty much generic examples of their class, only given some extra flavor through their special magic items—and aged into adults to boot with a random extra character thrown in.
Additionally, while the D&D Beyond adventure has a lot of charm and flavor, there are no guidelines on how to run D&D in a way that feels like the cartoon. There are guidelines and tropes I used that didn’t change the rules, but interpreted them differently in the narrative. (Hank doesn’t shoot a guard with his bow, he shoots the chandelier above his head to trap him. Presto makes a goofy rhyme for every spell he casts. You get the idea!)
So in addition to “The Land of Forever,” I’ll include alternate characters and some guidelines that I believe will make “Uni and the Hunt for the Lost Horn” even more fun and in the spirit of the original series. You’ll have two adventures ready to go when you’re in the mood for this kind of game.
A Little Help!
Regardless of contributions, I will write out “The Land of Forever” using the D&D 2024 rules and publish it here with the new character sheets as free fan-created material. (Though I certainly have some professional experience writing D&D adventures.) From there I’ll be presenting new game content on a regular basis and building up subscriptions from those who want to support my content on a monthly basis.
Whether you toss in a twenty dollar pledge today, share the link on social media, or simply enjoy any of the stuff I make … thank you. I’m grateful for you all. Game on!
