The Gamers - Dorkness Rising
We got the DVD "The Gamers - Dorkness Rising" from Netflix yesterday, and watched it last night.

I will be buying the DVD shortly. It was... excellent.

Okay, a qualified excellent. It could have been cut by about 15 minutes (especially the ninja / pirate pizza delivery sequence), and it's very obviously a low-budget production by film-school grad types. Still, it is better (and longer, with less foul language) than it's also-awesome predecessor, The Gamers.

The Gamers: Dorkness Rising is a parody of pen-and-paper roleplaying gaming. But it's a loving parody - in a similar vein to the most-excellent-comic Knights of the Dinner Table. It alternates perspective between the in-game characters and story, and the story of the players themselves in the real-world. It is particularly fun to see the effects of rules, retcons, and silly things players try to pull off in a game play out in the game world. But where that was pretty much all there was to the first movie, this one goes a bit further. Buried within the good-natured ribbing of things like male players playing female characters, asian-style monks in European fantasy settings, the bard class, and critical failure rolls, there is an underlying story of the players themselves and why we love these games.

And if you are a pen-and-paper Role-Playing Gamer, you simply Must See This Film. That's all there is to it. Even computer / MMO RPG players who have never rolled a 20-sided die in their life may still find a lot to enjoy here. If you have seen the previous movie, you may enjoy a few of the "inside" jokes thrown around referring to it, but otherwise this movie stands on its own.

And here's a trailer so you know what I'm talking about:



Enjoy!

Labels: Geek Life, Movies, Roleplaying Games

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