With 'The Legend of Vox Machina,' a Dungeons & Dragons web series rolls the dice

Fantasy television series have grown thick on the ground — Game of Thrones, The Witcher, His Dark Materials, Shadow and Bone — and there's more on the way: the Game of Thrones prequel series House of the Dragon later this year, and the Lord of the Rings prequel The Rings of Power, this September.

It's getting so you can't swing a dead elf without hitting an orc, or a Darkling, or a Trolloc.

All of these series are adaptations from other forms of media thick with lore, dense with history and heavy with elaborate worldbuilding. The process of adapting works so rich with detail and backstory into compelling episodic television is, of necessity, an exercise in winnowing, distilling and, in some cases, mercilessly hacking and slashing. Characters whom fans adore get roughly combined or disappear completely. Established, intricately overlapping chronologies get cruelly bent to the will of clear, easy-to-follow story