One Hit Die - The Devouring Dungeon

Our heroes are once again questing, this time into the Devouring Dungeon in search of the Fountain of Experience.  Yes, when they find it, they will level up.  Typical player motivation.  One-eyed Cassandra (Mikaela Cochrane) the Paladin has brought a bard along to raise morale.  Torvold (Andrew David Long) finds this mostly distracting, especially since he is trying to disable a trap.  Sasha (Julie Orton) finds Cassandra to be exasperating.  Azurus (Phil Burke) needs to pee.  To make matters worse, rooms shift at regular intervals, thus changing the dungeon layout.

Though the party has been in a dungeon in a previous adventure, this one constitutes the whole of the adventure.  Each room has some sort of trap, puzzle, or monster to overcome.  Oddly, one room only has a mirror.  Odder still, their reflections are not reversed.  With a shrug, the party moves on to the next room.  Then their reflected selves emerge from the mirror!  A mirror of opposition!  Very cool and well done.  As is inevitable when there are dopplegangers of everyone, the party must split up and then reconnect with the wrong people.  Good fun.  Once again, Azurus finds himself in an animation storyline, thanks to eating mushrooms while drunk.

Sadly, it would appear that this concludes the adventures of the party.  It has been 6 years since this final adventure.  Fun while it lasted.  The whole series is recommended.  

One Hit Die - Legend of the Lich Lord

Nerrena the Necromancer (Victoria Souter) has brought the Lich Lord to this realm.  Only one thing prevents the Lich Lord from unleashing hordes of undead across the land: his orb.  He dispatches Nerrenea with his 3 Shade Knights to recover his orb from the Druids of Alden Green.  Mwhahahahahahaaa!

Meanwhile, our heroes are once again questing, but something is different.  The Chosen One - Gwen the Healer - has been replaced by Cassandra the Paladin (Mikaela Cochrane).  The party has only just conquered a dungeon and recovered an amulet of resurrection.  They have hardly left the dungeon when they encounter Willard the Druid.  He is a Sapling from Alden Green and seeks aid against a necromancer and zombies.  The party gladly kills the zombified druids, much to Willard's horror, but then must flee when Nerrena and the Shade Knights arrive.

Though the plot is fairly straight forward, there are twists and turns to provide entertainment.  This was probably the first time I had seen the Girdle of Masculinity/Femininity portrayed.  Despite a warning, Torvald (Andrew David Long) tried it on and became a female version of himself (Joanna Gaskell).  That was funny enough, but it got even funnier when Azarus (Phil Burke) started hitting on female Torvald.  And it gets crazier from there.  Nicely done.  Other gags weren't quite as good.  The hat of invisibility was taken almost directly from Erik the Viking (1989).  Sasha (Julie Orton) acquires a magic weapon for use against the undead: a shovel.  Huh, that's really kind of appropriate.  The fancy runes sold it.

The production values are surprisingly good.  The special effects may not be top notch but still pretty good.  The use of animation while Azurus was under the effects of a hallucination potion was inspired.  I'm sure that saved a lot on special effects and worked just as well for the task at hand.

All in all, the Legend of the Lich Lord is great popcorn fun.  Highly recommended for gamers.

One Hit Die - Crushmas

Torvold (Andrew David Long) is haunted by a goblin he killed, just as Morley haunted Scrooge.  Before the goblin ghost can detail the 3 visitations that will purge the greed from Torvold, Gwen (Larissa Thompson) arrives.  The healer's presence destroys the ghost and the peril was no more.  Gwen offers Torvold a Christmas present: a face carved in wood.  He is indifferent.  Sasha (Julie Orton) arrives and tells how she used her carved face for kindling.  Neither Sasha nor Torvold got anything for Gwen.  It is then that Sasha describes the holiday of her people: Crushmas.  The goal is to travel into the woods and slay the white spirit of the forest and loot it.  Sasha, Torvold, and a reluctant Gwen trek into the snowy woods to find the spirit and kill it.  Azarus (Phil Burke) does not accompany them as he is combatting a gelatinous boob.  Through happenstance, the party encounters a snow troll, which Sasha gladly accepts as the spirit of the forest to be slain.  Comedy follows as the troll heals faster than they can injure it.

A 2-episode Christmas special, it is brief yet entertaining.  Recommended.

One Hit Die - Prologue

Gwen (Larissa Thompson) is a healer who is leading a party to recover the Orb of Maldova, an artifact that will allow them to defeat the Obsidian Sorcerer.  Her party consists of Sasha the Fighter (Julie Orton), Torvold the Rogue (Andrew David Long), and Azurus the Wizard (Phil Burke).  While trekking toward the Goblin Mines, Sasha slays something that looked evil.  That started an argument.  Torvold is angry that, yet again, Sasha has proven to be an experience hog.  Gwen is upset that she didn't get to talk to the creature; maybe it knew something about the Orb of Maldova.  Azurus is annoyed because he is suffering from a hangover.  No sooner have they resumed their trek than a goblin appears.

"Hello," the goblin says.

Sasha hacks the goblin, who does not die.  Torvold finishes it off with a stone from his sling.  "We share experience for that one!" he declares triumphantly.  Gwen is again upset that they didn't talk to the goblin.  Azurus is again annoyed when Torvold wants him to use magic to identify a clearly worthless dagger.

Titled Prologue, this 4-episode adventure introduces a mostly incompetent set of heroes on a failed mission.  They are not yet high enough level to tackle the quest and must return to the Rat Forest to slay rats and gain experience before they again venture back toward the Goblin Mines.  There were several times where the series clearly identified itself as a gaming session.  When Torvold ran the numbers on four standard goblins vs. his party and decided it would take the goblins 28 attacks to finish them while it would take 35 to take out the goblins.  Yes!  The complaints about experience point hogs and the constant reference to leveling up.  Good gamer fun.

Will the party return for further adventures or was this a pilot that didn't spawn a series?