Monster Camp

In the years that followed, the beloved game ceased being a bugaboo featured on 60 Minutes, preying on Boomer parents' fears of Satanism and suicide and, though I left it behind, it evolved. Some still sit at tables, tossing the customary 20-sided die, but others spend their time online with the massively-popular massive multiplayer online game World of Warcraft and its many, many offspring.

Still others go even further down the rabbit hole, bringing it from these virtual worlds to the real one, donning the garb and making the weaponry and memorizing yet even more arcane rules and regulations and joining the ranks of the Live Action Role Playing Game (LARP). This is the world that the film Monster Camp surveys.

This thoroughly absorbing documentary involves people descending upon state parks dressed as half-Orc Rangers, undead killer plants and the like, stalking around and striking one another with foam weapons while shouting "Magic plus 4! Magic plus 4!"

As you might imagine, this is deeply silly business, though the director, Cullen Hoback, has managed to make a film about it all that highlights the inherent humor with nary a whiff of condescension towards the players. The movie does a great job of not just showing the fascinating machinations of the game itself, but all of the complicated personal politics behind the scenes. The glimpses that Hoback gives of the players non-LARP lives both ground the film and deepens the viewer's connection to the world it depicts.

Almost makes a guy want to find his old Monster Manual and see if he still has a +15 Charisma, if you know what I mean {wink}.

See also: Darkon, King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters.