The North Texas Apocalypse Bunker is hopping with projects, both large and small, as we struggle to finish out old business from last year and make room for new business. Our calendar is already filling up and we have a lot of things scheduled in each month to take us through the end of May. We will be out and about in 2024 on several field excursions into the Texas Post-Apocalypse Hellscape, and I will try to give you sufficient advance notice to come see us and maybe acquire a sticker or some other nifty N.T.A.B. swag.
Dungeons & Dragons
Last weekend, the nerdverse celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Dungeons & Dragons, which went on sale a few days and fifty years ago. And the world was gradually, over time, never the same since. I’m sure you all know that it was Dungeons & Dragons that gave way to the billion-dollar industry that is video games, not to mention turning on a whole group of people who otherwise wouldn’t have read any fantasy authors into fantasy and science fiction fans. While not being present at the outset, I was around for the late-seventies, early-eighties boom that took place and gave the bullies of the world one more reason to shove people into lockers.
I’ve mentioned before that there were a number of critical things in popular culture that contributed to me being who I am, and Dungeons & Dragons was a major influencer for me growing up. It gave me an outlet for creativity, along with a glorious list of books by authors who contributed to D&D’s DNA that I could read for myself (all hail Appendix N!). Conversely, it fueled the fires of Satanic Panic and made it very hard for kids who liked heavy metal music to be themselves, especially in small towns (Watch Season 4 of Stranger Things and marvel at Internet-Folk-Hero Eddie Munson, who was at some level, every one of us).
D&D has always been something of a dual-edged sword, and the current version of it, owned by a publicly traded company (Hasbro), has been beleaguered for the past year and a half, 90% of which is the fault of D&D’s new corporate overlords. Granted, they were the ones who pushed the 40th anniversary and the premiere of 5th edition D&D back in 2014, and talk about right place, right time. Stranger Things, and the YouTube sensation Critical Role, catapulted D&D into heights of popularity it used to only dream about. But there’s a saying in my house—the tallest and most lofty trees have the most reason to fear the thunder.
Over the years, D&D has been traded/bought/sold to bigger and bigger companies, and people have always speculated that it might fare better in the hands of a smaller, more hands-on company who can treat it with the care and respect it deserves. Ben Riggs, author of the book Slaying the Dragon: A Secret History of Dungeons & Dragons, disproved that theory quite handily. Even as D&D has become a proprietary eponym and stands, like it or not, for the whole of the tabletop role-playing game industry (well, cottage industry, in any case), it remains popular and thankfully free of Satanic Scandal, what with 50 years of not opening up a doorway to Hell behind it.
Despite what Hasbro would have you believe, the current game, now available in Target stores, for crying out loud, is far less valuable and important in this silver anniversary year than the cultural impact of the game itself. It was getting name-checked in movies as early as 1981 (Taps) and obliquely referenced to in other movies’ trailers as early as 1982 (The Sword and the Sorcerer). Computer games seemed to change overnight from Sargon Chess and Star Fleet Battles to dungeon crawls, using whatever means were necessary to make that happen. And in 1983, having a Saturday morning cartoon was one of the indicators that you had ascended to the next level. How cool was that?
Weirdly, D&D remained firmly in the category of sub-cultural phenomenon, meaning, you had to know someone to get into D&D, or you had to discover it at the fringes of society, at a Waldenbooks, or some hobby shop that had a magazine rack full of modules and game books. It remained there until the early 1990s when comic books boomed and then fizzled out, and somewhere along the way, they took role-playing games and these new-fangled Magic: the Gathering cards into national conventions that rivaled San Diego ComiCon in size and fervor. D&D was still getting name checked in movies like Airheads (1994) and TV shows like the X-Files (a scene from one of my favorite episodes) but it was still a sub-culture, albeit now a more pervasive one that at least everyone had heard about.
I don’t think I’m blowing anyone’s mind by saying that we didn’t come into our own (I’m speaking of the Geek Nation, here) until the X-Men movie, the first Spider-Man movie, and the Lord of the Rings trilogy all hit at the turn of the century. By the time 2014 rolled around, there was no downside to telling people you played role-playing games. It was just part of the larger conversation when discussing your “fandoms.”
As we sit here in 2024, scratching ourselves, family game night has become a thing again, although most people haven’t played Monopoly in years. Instead, it’s boardgames that are a lot more sophisticated in nature, or role-playing games, or Magic: the Gathering. The D&D movie came out last year, amidst the controversy that Hasbro fomented, and while it wasn’t quite what I wanted, most people who watched it seemed to like it well enough. The interest in D&D hasn’t waned, nor, I guess, its popularity.
This year will be filled with counter-narratives to Hasbro’s massive, money-driven marketing push that will entreat you to play older versions of D&D instead, or boycott Habro, or play any other role-playing games, fantasy or otherwise, for the good of us all, and hey, you know what? You do you. Mostly, I’d suggest dipping a toe into the pool if you’ve always been curious but never knew where to start. This is a good year to hop on. Or, if you’re a lapsed gamer, call up your old group and see if they want to play a reunion game. And if you’re one of the faithful, who never stopped dungeoning and dragooning, even when it wasn’t cool, wasn’t a media sensation, and didn’t come with any additional cultural cache or geek-street cred, let me just say, thank you for keeping the light on, and enjoy whatever victory lap you’d like to take.
Weekly Report from the N.T.A.B. Division of Media Review
Ted (Peacock)
This is the TV series based on the two movies from Seth MacFarlane, and in a statement that will surprise no one, if you liked the movies, you’re going to like the TV show. It’s that film’s premise, transferred to the early 1990s, so you get to bite down on both sides, making fun of 90s culture (oddly satisfying for me) and also you get more of the foul-mouthed, imbecilic, but highly articulate teddy bear’s musings (voiced by MacFarlane, of course). What special effects there are all revolve around making Ted a real thing and at this point, it’s functionally seamless. During one episode, Ted actually mouths “What-The-Fuck” and you can read his lips perfectly. If you don’t like sophomoric, stoner humor and if a show packed to the gills with Massachusetts equivalent of rednecks doesn’t appeal to you, give it a skip. If you liked either Ted or Ted 2, this is required viewing.
DMRA: 5
Oh God, yes, there's nothing better than stupid things coming out of that Teddy Bear's mouth. I don't know if MacFarlane is doing it on purpose, but there's a real "All in the Family" vibe going on with the show, at least contextually. If you break up Archie into Id, Ego, and Superego, that's the son, the father, and Ted, respectfully. Maybe not a one-to-one corollary but close.
The Venn diagram of jokes in Ted and what makes me laugh is almost a solid circle.