First the good news. As of July 1999, Dungeons & Dragons was back on the air! The bad news (for a lot of us): in Australia. So, like the kids, those of us in the States keep looking for that darned portal...

It was probably too good to be true. There was the report by Marc Evanier that D&D may be returning to American TV--at least to cable. Well, August 15, 1998 has come and gone, Rupert Murdoch has taken over the Family Channel and redubbed it Fox Family Channel. Murdoch also got a lot of programming from Haim Saban, who bought the rights to air D&D from Marvel. So where are the kids? Still stuck in the Realm, apparently.

Having noted all that, there is still hope for those who wish copies. I have all 27 episodes on tape; Betamax, but I dub them onto VHS. Let me say up-front that this is not a commercial homestead, and I am not interested in making money off of dubbing the episodes. However, let me know if you need one (or a few) of them to complete your collection, or just to get in touch with your inner Saturday morning couch potato.

Will I stop making these episodes available if they are rebroadcast on cable? In a hot minute. Not that I haven't enjoyed making the tapes, meeting interesting and wonderful people literally around the world. But let's face it; a first-generation tape beats a fourth-generation tape. I would make exceptions for folks in other countries, or in very far-flung places in this country; places, in other words, that do not get the cable station, should it start up. But until the matter of the return of D&D is settled one way or another, I'll be doing mailings as usual. Although, after 2 years of making copies, the tape is starting to degrade a bit. I don't know how long I can keep this up, but be assured I will keep it up as long as I can.

I'm very open to swapping for other animation (especially Japanese anime; for a list of the anime I've already got, click here).
Japanese comics (not translated into English, please) are also an acceptable medium of exchange. In any event, we'll need to negotiate case-by-case.

From the MARCH OF PROGRESS Department, I've recently become aware that VCR manufacturers are giving up on the middle speed (LP) altogether, and making machines that playback and record only at SP or EP. Henceforth, I need to know if your VCR has LP capability before I send a tape your machine can't handle.

For a more detailed look at the policy, here are my answers to

How did you get the episodes?  I've been trying forever!

I happened to be in the right place at the right time with the right equipment. Specifically, I bought a Betamax VCR back in the early Eighties and started taping off of cable to build a personal archive. During its second season I discovered D&D, realized it was something special among the usual Saturday morning dreck, and started collecting.

Are the episodes complete?  I mean REALLY complete?

Well, if you mean are there credits, commercials and those little network "bumpers" between commercial and program, the answer is no. I just preserved the episodes. There's also one opening (from the second season) and one set of credits (from I believe the first season). Hey, I didn't know I'd be getting into dubbing and distribution; I was just building an archive. As it is, the 27 episodes (at 20 minutes each) run to 9 hours!

How's the quality?

Mostly good. (In my humble opinion, Betamax still had better picture quality than VHS.) A couple of the episodes were damaged in transfer from a taping cassette to an archival cassette, leaving a scratch acriss the top of the picture. Another had crimped tape at the beginning, and one or two others had tracking problems. For the most part, though, the episodes are of good quality, even for third generation.

So how much are the tapes?

Money can't come into the picture for one simple reason. I don't own the rights to the episodes, and making copies for profit is bootlegging. (Apparently, making copies AT ALL is bootlegging under a strict reading of intellectual property law). Granted, Marvel Productions lies in corporate ruins, but TSR, Inc. may decide to make someone a test case, and it ain't gonna be me.

What if I buy you a blank tape and pay for postage?

Since (see below) I think in terms of swapping tape for tape, the cost of buying blank tapes and mailing stuff to each other would cancel each other out.

Does it have to be Japanese animation?

No, but I prefer it.

I don't know the first thing about Japanese animation. What do I do now?

Get thee to a chain store. Places like Sam Goody, Tower Records, Borders Books & Coconuts now carry anime as a separate section.

Okay; we've negotiated titles. Now what?

An obvious point, but a necessary one: we swap snail-mail addresses. How else will the tapes get where they're supposed to go?

How long will the process take, beginning to end?

Lately I've cleared up a lot of the backlog of orders. I still have to check with a few other folks, but I've streamlined things to the point where I can get D&D eps in the mail to you within a week of getting your snail-mail address!

Do you have tapes of other series?

Let's not go there. At the moment, I can only transfer from Beta to VHS; I can't make VHS to VHS dubs.

Why isn't D&D on Cartoon Network?

Who knows? Personally, I hate the Hanna-Barberas hegemony at Cartoon Network (broken only by a few Japanese series: Voltron, G-Force, Dragon Ball, Sailor Moon and Speed Racer, although not all of these series are on at the same time). Write the net and ask them. Don't expect an answer, though.

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