The animated television series Adventure Time concluded last month after an eight year run and ten seasons. Drawing inspiration from a variety of sources including Dungeons & Dragons, creator Pendleton Ward later returned the favor as a story consultant for Tomb of Annihilation. Here's why it matters.
[h=3]The First Adventure[/h]Adventure Time is the story of a young human boy named Finn (characterized by Ward as a "paladin in training") and his constant companion and adopted brother Jake (John DiMaggio), a shapeshifting dog. Finn (Jeremy Shada) grew up on the show and his voice changed accordingly, as did the characters within the fictional universe -- a universe more akin to Gamma World than traditional Dungeons & Dragons, set after a great apocalypse in which technology and magic blended together with sentient robots, sentient candy, and elder gods.
Ward played 2nd Edition D&D in junior high with his friends and then picked up the game again with 4th Edition, DMed by Riley Swift (of Dungeon Majesty and Multinauts). D&D was influential in the show's creation, as explained to the AV Club:
Ward elaborated on how the D&D influence manifested in the episodes in an interview with Wizards of the Coast:
Ward would get the chance to give back to the game that inspired him.
[h=3]Adventure Time and Again[/h]Wizards of the Coast asked Ward to act as a story consultant for Tomb of Annihilation. Chris Perkins explained Ward's involvement:
It's easy to summarize Ward's contributions as merely an enthusiastic and irreverent take on D&D tropes. But after eight seasons, the Adventure Time's finale is a more mature take on the life of a typical "murder-hobo." Where young Finn was all about killing monsters and taking their treasure, adult Finn does everything in his power to stop a war, save the souls of his enemies, and bring peace to the land.
Adventure Time is a series that took the time to develop villains into people, expand relationships beyond species and gender, and let a boy grow into a man before our eyes -- or at least, before our ears. It was hilarious and beautiful and sad at turns, but it was never just a kid's cartoon.
In the end, Adventure Time was brave enough to give its characters an ending while still recognizing that you can always roll up new characters for the next adventure. There's even an official role-playing game in Spanish, published by Nosolorol, ensuring that the "fun will never end."
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
[h=3]The First Adventure[/h]Adventure Time is the story of a young human boy named Finn (characterized by Ward as a "paladin in training") and his constant companion and adopted brother Jake (John DiMaggio), a shapeshifting dog. Finn (Jeremy Shada) grew up on the show and his voice changed accordingly, as did the characters within the fictional universe -- a universe more akin to Gamma World than traditional Dungeons & Dragons, set after a great apocalypse in which technology and magic blended together with sentient robots, sentient candy, and elder gods.
Ward played 2nd Edition D&D in junior high with his friends and then picked up the game again with 4th Edition, DMed by Riley Swift (of Dungeon Majesty and Multinauts). D&D was influential in the show's creation, as explained to the AV Club:
And at the beginning, when we didn’t have any time to play Dungeons & Dragons anymore because we were all working so hard on the show, we realized, “Well, we can still play sort of, just by writing the stories we’d want to be playing D&D with.” [Laughs.] I remember Pat McHale would write out a cool, dandy storyline, and it was fun because we were sort of living it out as we wrote it, which is a lot like playing D&D. So we did a lot of that.
Ward elaborated on how the D&D influence manifested in the episodes in an interview with Wizards of the Coast:
When I'm writing an episode it feels like I'm playing D&D with the characters. The last episode I wrote was called Rainy Day Daydream. I was drawing Finn crawling into this room where he kept a load of magical items, armor and weapons from past adventures—and because I was just winging it at that point in the story, it had the same feeling as playing D&D and stumbling upon a treasure room full of the craziest loot. I was in control of which weapons Finn could pick up, it was fun. I started by drawing Finn picking up a missile, and then I drew Finn and Jake bickering about which magic gauntlet they should choose, until they were attacked by an invisible troll and the troll's invisible wife.
Ward would get the chance to give back to the game that inspired him.
[h=3]Adventure Time and Again[/h]Wizards of the Coast asked Ward to act as a story consultant for Tomb of Annihilation. Chris Perkins explained Ward's involvement:
This story, because it's kind of there's a grimness to it, a bleakness to it, it was very, very important that we have humor to offset it. There is a lot of humor embedded in the story. To help us strike that balance, we tapped Pendleton Ward who is a D&D player, longtime D&D player, he's the creator of Adventure Time, the cartoon series, which if you've seen is a sort of very quirky take on D&D. There's no denying, it's the love of D&D bleeds through that entire show. We brought him in and tapped him to help us refine the story, come up with elements that we can inject into the story that would be new and unexpected that nobody's ever seen in a D&D story before and also get at the humor that's going to sort of offset the deadliness and the meanness of the adventure.
It's easy to summarize Ward's contributions as merely an enthusiastic and irreverent take on D&D tropes. But after eight seasons, the Adventure Time's finale is a more mature take on the life of a typical "murder-hobo." Where young Finn was all about killing monsters and taking their treasure, adult Finn does everything in his power to stop a war, save the souls of his enemies, and bring peace to the land.
Adventure Time is a series that took the time to develop villains into people, expand relationships beyond species and gender, and let a boy grow into a man before our eyes -- or at least, before our ears. It was hilarious and beautiful and sad at turns, but it was never just a kid's cartoon.
In the end, Adventure Time was brave enough to give its characters an ending while still recognizing that you can always roll up new characters for the next adventure. There's even an official role-playing game in Spanish, published by Nosolorol, ensuring that the "fun will never end."
Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.
