Dungeon Master is a main character in the 1983 Marvel Productions Ltd., D&D Enterprises and TSR nonlinear animated series, Dungeons & Dragons. Dungeon Master is voice acted by Sidney Miller.
When six children are teleported myseriously into an alternate world known as the Realm and immediately set upon by a voracious hydra all seems lost until a small gnome appears and begins changing them into a variety of Dungeons and Dragons classes. He is Dungeon Master, and, as he explains to the children, he is around to guide them in "the realm of dungeons and dragons."
Dungeon Master is an unusual character. Taken on the surface this white-haired, red-robed midget might seem to be merely an annoyance. In fact he is single-handedly responsible for keeping the children in the Realm and saboutaging their attempts to get home.
Dungeon Master generally leaves the children to their own devices. He appears towards the start of each episode with a quest for the children and a warning that is always hidden in a complicated riddle that is a verbal pun (for example, that they should know their enemy by his white hair - which in fact turns out to be a white hare). When the characters try to question him further the skittish Dungeon Master flees behind a rock or tree and literally vanishes. Towards the middle of the episode Dungeon Master will appear again, and add slightly to what the children already know. At the end he appears a final time, often to tell them they have taken their "first step home" or are closer than they were before - though their situation has not altered.
Dungeon Master is not completely defenseless. When attacked by bullywugs in the episode In Search of the Dungeon Master he is quite adept at fighting them off. He causes a volcano to errupt and cover his opponents in lava later in the same episode. His non-offensive magic is also tremendously powerful. In Dungeon at the Heart of Dawn he teleports the children and himself to the other side of the Realm, back, and then miles beneath the earth - all this after having sustained a deadly attack from one of the most powerful fiends in the universe. When critically wounded and out of power in the labyrinths below, Dungeon Master fades in and out of existence. When he comes close to death near the end of the episode he fades completely away, so perhaps his appearance as a gnome is mere illusion.
Dungeon Master has an unusual relationship with the children's arch enemy, Venger. He ends up healing Venger on several occassions of his wounds, and alternately calls the undead demon both his "son" and his "mistake."
While Dungeon Master always seems to have a portal back to the real world hidden up his sleeve, the children somehow never manage to make use of them. In The Girl Who Dreamed Tommorrow Dungeon Master deliberately demands they destroy a portal before passing through it, but tries to disguise the order as a riddle to confuse them.
Dungeon Master appears in each episode to make a little speech, indicating he must be closely following what the children are doing. Despite this, he refrains from helping them even when they are in life-threatening danger. This helps explain the bodies of the knights the children find in Venger's Maze of Darkness - who were also disciples of Dungeon Master.
In The Winds of Darkness, Martha confronts Dungeon Master, yelling at him that he has ruined her life several times before. In The Last Illusion the townspeople quake and back away when the little man arrives. Clearly, Dungeon Master is quite unpopular in the Realm.
While it may be debatable as to just whether Dungeon Master wants the children dead or not, it seems obvious that he intends to keep on giving them quests neverending. In the episode The Dragon's Graveyard, seconds after Venger has destroyed yet another portal home, Dungeon Master arrives and begins babbling about the "Lord of Darkness in the land of..." before the children manage to shut him up.