The Dungeon Masters

I love and hate this documentary. Technically, it's very well shot, edited, and does a good job of telling the story of the three subjects it follows. It is not very objective, though. It's not about Dungeons and Dragons as much as it is about three awkward underachievers who happen to play this game. There is a big number of gamers that aren't making the most of their lives and others who you'd never want to be stuck in an elevator with, but there are also tons of very successful, intelligent, (and physically fit) people whom play these games. This film is like a documentary about Football, but where they only followed the middle-aged guys who peaked in high school and just play on the weekends.

My friends (also D&D nerds) and I watched this film and were entertained by, but it's paints a terrible picture of the people who play D&D.

If you want to see a great example of D&D, the a show on Youtube called "Critical Role." It films D&D played by a bunch of successful voice actors who happen to play, and I feel it paints a better portrait of the game.

Why couldn't they find any role players with a stable life? It was interesting enough but a very narrow biased perspective. The one guy is just a horrible person that I wouldn't care to be around. The lady and the author guy had good stories but this just seemed to reinforce the stereotype of the directionless gamer type who would never go anywhere. It didn't really delve into much of the game playing or what goes into designing a campaign, or even the history of the role playing games. I don't feel like it was a waste of time so it's got that going for it. But it could have been a much better documentary if it showed the diversity of game playing community.

For the most part this movie focuses on 3 individuals that have serious social and personal issues. Oh yea and they play role playing games. The men are disturbing, and delusional. One of them left his family and moved across the country. He is a control freak about how he runs his game and in other parts of his life as depicted by the movie. The other is lazy with the work ethic of a koala. They are all depicted as socially awkward and at times you are very worried about how they survive in society. Overall this movie relates only 1% to its title of gaming and being a dungeon master, and more about three peoples personal lives. If you film at GenCon, surrounded by a hundred thousand people playing games you should have talked to any of those people and had more to relation to a game master than what this film shows. The cinematography is well done, and general film techniques are good. Just not the film it would present itself as.

I have been playing role-playing games (mostly Dungeons & Dragons) for about 26 years, give or take, and I can nod agreeably to some of the things in this documentary, but wow it really, and I do mean really, puts a derogatory light on role-players as people, as it showcases some of the more extremes of people. This movie really makes role-players (or gamers) stand out like social inadequate misfits.

I love Dungeons & Dragons, otherwise I wouldn't have played for this many years, obviously, but this movie was just a tad too much. It was all about hanging people out to dry. There were times when I was thinking that this is so staged and fake, because no one could seriously have that sad existences.

How about if the director had opted to show people who weren't socially challenged, overweight, nerdy and alienated from the 'normal' world around them? During my 26 years of gaming and having had multiple people in and out of the gaming groups, I can honestly say that the way these people were portrayed, I can only name one in my experience of gaming that would qualify to be part of the ensemble in this movie.

I don't believe that this documentary does justice to the role-playing game, or the people that play these games, one bit.

And as for the LARPing (Live Action Role-Playing), then I am at a loss here. I can't take that serious. Full-grown people dressing up in costumes and armor, brandishing latex weapons and throwing paper at one another to symbolize magic. What the... It is acceptable when children or young teens do it, but when people in their thirties with a house and family start doing it, you might as well just turn the key and admit to the ultimate defeat. LARPing is lame on an epic scale. And the way that it was portrayed in this movie, really didn't help to improve on that faltering image that it is.

What was good about the documentary was that you got to see the aspects of these people's obsession with role-playing and got to delve a little bit into their mindsets, who they were and what drove them on. But I have to say, again, that it was all painted out in a grotesque way to make role-playing gamers stand in a bad light.

At the end I was sort of disappointed by this movie, and it didn't really prove to have any entertainment value. If you want to be entertained by something from the role-playing milieu, then perhaps the 2002 movie "The Gamers" is a better choice.

Considering that there are hundreds of thousands of roleplayers in the world, and these "documentarians" managed to find three players that confirm everyone's worst prejudices against gamers, I have to think they did it on purpose.

I guess they wanted to make a film about weirdos and figured roleplayers were an easy target? And then they edited the film to make the weirdos look even more weird.

You learn practically nothing about what roleplaying is from this documentary, but you certainly pick up that these three people's hobby is considered weird by their significant others, family and friends.