What A Load Of Old Kröd...

Well, I wanted it and it finally showed up on our shores. Kröd Mändoon And The Flaming Sword Of Fire debuted last night on BBC2 with an hour-long (two-episode) special; and it wasn't half bad.

It's not going to win any awards, but as the first full-on fantasy comedy series that I can think of it does a pretty good job of presenting a world that should be familiar to most Dungeons & Dragons players.

Like the current iteration of Robin Hood on BBC1, but more so, if viewed as dramatised LARP or based on a script of an actual role-playing game, you can kinda see where they're coming from with the anachronisms and cheap sex gags.

I wouldn't have minded if the writer and creator Peter Knight had sacrificed some of the easy smut and obvious innuendo for a bit more genuine witty banter, irony and more subtle material, but it was still way funnier than a lot of comedy shows that run and run and run, so there's hope for it to get another season.

As well as an outstanding example of party dynamics at work, Kröd Mändoon And The Flaming Sword of Fire scores massive brownie points with me for the thought and depth Peter Knight (no relation by the way) has clearly put into the creation of the world his characters exist in.

I'm also sure more villains in campaigns around the globe will start behaving like the brilliant Chancellor Dongalor (Matt Lucas), who pretty much steals the show with the aid of his excellent sidekick Barnabus (Alex MacQueen). These two certainly get the lion's share of the best lines.

Comedy has always proved a great source of material for my games; a long(ish) running campaign I ran during my last year or so at school (using The Fantasy Trip system) and then revived again in early 1988, as a heavily houseruled Dungeons & Dragons game, drew in large part from the Radio 4 comedy series Horde Of The Things - which is finally being released on CD later this year.

Hitchhikers Guide To The Galaxy has also served as a major inspiration in many games. At prep school my friend Tom ran one of my characters through a dungeon based on the plot of the first season of the radio show; "leaves" became a viable currency for a while in our campaigns, we had game statistics for the effects of a Pan-Galactic Gargle Blaster and I believe I created a dungeon based on the second season, complete with statues of Arthur Dent, giant birds, hobbling soldiers in ill-fitting shoes etc, but I don't remember actually running it.

As for poor Kröd, with most of the decent geeky shows ending - or coming to an end - around this time of the year, it'll be one of my few chances for a fix of new genre goodness (at least for the next four episodes) - as well as source of ideas for my own campaign.

I happen to know Nick and Clare of The Tuesday Knights were going to watch to see if Clare could get any ideas for her character, Sister FitzRovia, Priestess Of The Love Goddess Veneria, from India de Beaufort's character Aneka! Looking forward to seeing how that works out...

* As an aside, I find it odd that some people refer to Kröd Mändoon And The Flaming Sword of Fire as a sitcom.

The other day Nick was talking about "that fantasy sitcom" and I didn't know what he meant. I see Kröd more as an "action comedy" or some such nebulous descriptor.

The Big Bang Theory and Cheers are sitcoms, I' would have bracketed Kröd with light-hearted action pieces like Chuck or Xena, Warrior Princess... but what do I know? I suppose it is a sitcom in the same sense that Red Dwarf is a sitcom.