This kid is in trouble. He's wild-eyed, panicking, and has unfriendly-looking tattoos all over his face. He looks at the other faces looking at his: a heavily scarred warrior with uneven teeth, a pointy-eared sorcerer sitting too close to a fire, and a sleepy-eyed dwarf wearing gym weights as bucklers.
The warrior named Mora tries to soothe the child.
The sorcerer named Tally knows it's better to shoot first, ask questions later.
The dwarf named Luzum, however, has seen the kid's face markings before. In his (thankfully not Scottish) accent, it sounds like he's saying the kid is to be sacrificed to something called JYAH-mutt. But upon multiple listens, you realize he's saying Tiamat. That's the five-headed Queen of Dragons. She's been around as long as D&D has existed and is inarguably one of D&D's most recognizable villains.
The kid then sees horrible flashes of a huge red dragon, grabs the paladin's sword, and mistakenly runs it deep into the paladin's gut.
The sorcerer has seen enough. "That's it. You're gonna burn, kid." Which is exactly what a fiery sorcerer would and should say in that situation. You can't convince me otherwise.
This perfectly-cropped snippet is taken from an episode called "Dungeons & Dragons: The Queen's Cradle." You can find the whole animated series—called Secret Level—on Amazon Prime right now. Only the first episode is D&D. The other 13 each center on a different game, e.g., episode 4 is Unreal Tournament, episode 6 is Pac-Man.
Prime dropped the first eight episodes all at once on Tuesday, December 10. The remaining seven episodes will drop on Tuesday, December 17. Secret Level is from the makers of Love Death + Robots. And now you know why this series is already so good.
Pause whatever your tabletop group is doing right now—I don't care if you're in the middle of beating your own campaign-spanning big bad—and watch the Secret Level D&D episode right now. It's a sucker-punching response to all the naysayers out there who think D&D has been getting soft in its old age. Not one person will be left thinking that after watching that episode.
