Don’t rush me. I’m right in the middle of watching mst3k. I’ve now seen… two.

When it comes to d&d the new introduction box/kit/whatever for the forth edition is supposedly pretty good. It guides players both through an encounter and character creation.

I’m defiantly familiar with the persecution that magic players and gamers can get in high-school. The Magic players had the same issue with the teachers ready to bust them for “gambling” while the kids who were playing blackjack and actually gambling didn’t even get a passing glance.
The people who admittedly played video games were all on Columbine watch and would periodically get their bags and lockers searched until some asstard planted a fake bomb and backpacks got banned outright (but gym bags weren’t, ironically).
I think you are right when you say that this movie is a better example of the power of obsession with a game, any game, rather that the evils of D&D. I can speak from experience about how badly an MMO can suck you in. But I didn’t start thinking that I could cast firebolts or summon water elementals >.>.
As far as the intro, I just didn’t care for the song. The video was fine but the song sounded too much like.. I don’t know… some bad emo rock cover of the song. It just doesn’t fit.

You know what worked to get the moral worriers to relax? I accepted going to one of their sermons if they came and played one game. Not only did it calm them all down, but one of them actually wanted to become a permanent member. He was actually pretty good too.There was actually more of a back lash at my school to Pogs then to Magic Cards. Pogs got banned for gambling but not Magic Cards, go figure.

You should do your movie with hand puppets. They have no shame, you can do all the voices(you were great as gerily spoon :p), and it wont be x-rated.

Just write the script the the same as you would have before.

I really do think this was one of your strongest and funniest reviews yet. Were it not for the intro, I would call it an absolutely perfect gateway spoony video, as it really shows your humor, subtlety, relatability, intelligence, and insight. This is almost the video you could show a non-spoony fan as the ultimate example of his skills as a comedian and a reviewer.
Nothing against the new song, but I think the Irresponsibles version is just more accessible to the casual viewer.

Love the new intro- it should be used more often!

J.J. committing suicide? Nah, the setup to kill his character for his own campaign. Otherwise, makes no sense. An in-game cry for attention. Also, wonder if you’d ever pull off your movie idea, Spoony. Maybe a small-scale version in RPG Maker?

I have to admit the first time I saw that intro I was a little taken aback. However, the more I watched it the better it got. Eventually I even started to sing along with it (not that my voice is anything amazing mind you). I think it was really well done and as far as your intro videos go I think it’s probably your best the syncing is expertly done and you used the music to tell a short story almost which is a great thing to achieve. I’m glad that your finally feeling better but please don’t overdo it, your health is the one thing that you should not place over work. Take care everyone Peace.

Well that really IS a self defeating attitude. Spoony should know how many crappy movies are made by people who have no talent at all! How many millions of dollars went into “The Room”?

I would totally watch that movie if it was made.

Your character has died. And thus so shall YOU!

Hahahahaha

Gamerz is hilarious, man. I mean… I hope it’s a comedy, anyways. As I was watching this, prior to your mentioning it, I was curious if you’d ever do a review of it

Yea, this one resonates with so many gamers, especially those in my age range and a little older. We lived through the frenzy. You find a few remnants of it here and there, but a lot of other pop culture scapegoats have finally overtaken it.

BTW, am I the only that massively lol’d at the all candle lit gaming area? If our GM tried it, it would be “Dammit, Connor, turn on some light and put those out before you burn this trailer down, will you?!”

For what it’s worth, I liked the song.

Man I LOVE the new song and opening… change and evolution can be good! Its a shame you won’t keep that one around sometimes… maybe one for movies, for games, etc.

Ah how I remember playing DnD during high school, even though I started well after all that crazy I grew up in a smallish town where they didn’t really understand alot of the whole Magic:The Gathering or Dungeons and Dragons stuff. I remember specifically getting sent to the counselors office every other day during one week where I was doing nothing but drawing my paladin, they were worried about me since he had armor and a sword :| The counselor on the other hand just knew what was going on and we would just talk about stuff, she was pretty cool.

On the subject of the theme song I really liked it…

Good afternoon, Spoony and fellow Spooners.

1. About the rock theme, my only issue was that it seems like EVERY reviewer has a rock theme. So I’d prefer you not go down that road. But that’s just me.
2. My friend’s mom worried about us playing AD&D back in the day. My dad’s response was basically, “Would you rather them be out on the street, getting into trouble?” And that was the end of that. Sorry to hear it wasn’t so easy for you.
3. You sound better. This is good.
4. If you really want your projects put out there, I’d recommend getting into novels rather than movies. You don’t have to worry about actors and budgets and whatnot.

I just moved to Portland, leaving behind the friends I used to meet once a week to game with. I tried meet ups and stuff, but there isn’t much of a community for D&D here unfortunately. I even went into Things From Another World to try and meet people, but I’m kind of shy so it didn’t really work. D:
Oh well, maybe someday…

This was a great review, by the way. Love your commentaries too.

okay, as someone who has read the wikipedia article about the mazes and monsters fiasco(OMG hao do u hav tym 2 play MW2???!!!) I have to say the kid that went missing played DND for awhile but he RAN AWAY to his uncle’s place when the story/movie happened. He worked in a mine for awhile and tried to get “back on track” before his suicide. There was alot of normal, hillbilly life he lived before his death. If anything, DnD would’ve kept him around… if only to see Planescape return to DnD.

I loved the theme song but I would like to hear an orchestrated version just for shits and giggles and I’m glad you’re well enough to do a commentary. The M&M was the first review of yours I saw and it’s my personal favourite, although I myself was banned from DnD I still find it interesting, I might pick it up some day but for now I’ll just listen to your game on Lord Kat’s livestream (Do you know when the next time you might be doing it? :3 )

spoony i love your reveiws but i need to correct u on somthing in thedoom games they found exact copies of the classrooms and cafetirea where the shootings took place it wasnt just random blaming of the game industry. thx 4 hearing me out chao

I loved this intro! WTH is wrong with you people???Aside from that, when I was in high-school I also played Magic the Gathering, only at the time I found out about it I was really young and it was already the 4th edition, I never understood how to play, until a teacher came along that saw us with the magic cards and he asked us about it, we told him we didn’t really know how to play and he taught us. The cool thing is that we eventually actually made a tournament at school, we still managed to get about 10 people or more to compete, cant really remember how many we were xD.But before all that I was really pushed aside, I was actually “popular” in a way, only in a bad way, everyone knew who I was, the fact that I was the son of a teacher and this is a small town helped, I was always called a Satanist, some people said I would hang around the towns cemetery (Which I never actually set foot on), that my bed room walls were painted black, all sorts of things like that. Well my tastes didn’t help since I was into metal, video games (specially the legacy of kain at the time), one of my favorite movies as a kid was the nightmare before christmas. Anyways, it’s pretty normal for the internet, but here it’s really not and it was really hard on me as a kid, luckily I did have some good friends and that’s all you really need to just be able to say fuck everyone who hates on me.

Was there a lot of controversy over the intro? Huh, don’t see why there would’ve been, honestly, I never thought it was going to be permanent (I think I still remembered the midi-esque mix of the intro that Skitch or somebody did earlier, which was also one-time-only). I liked it, but I personally thought the chorus wasn’t heavy enough for me compared to the instrumental intro. *shrug*

And I guess I should count myself lucky I grew up in a time when we weren’t allowed to play DnD in school simply because we couldn’t stay in the building after hours… nobody ever thought me a Satanist. :B

“Lightly maim” lol… Spoony, bring back the Twitter feed! Doooo eeeet!

Spoony, the founder of Nerdsploitation. To be honest, that movie sounds utterly horrifying and not at all like anything I would ever watch, but at the same time much like the Jack T Chick tract I don’t think it would be entirely possible to take it 100% seriously no matter how dark it was. I mean, cults and D&D really don’t go together and have no real world connection outside of paranoia, and seeing the two juxtaposed together draws attention to just how silly the connection really is.
Even so, I think it would be awesome to have a scene like something out of a Hammer Dracula film, where the detective confronts the head DM with a crucifix and the DM tries to shield himself with his Dungeon Master’s screen. Or a scene where the cultists go to a country tavern looking for ‘quests’ that resembles the scene where the Ring Wraiths attack the Prancing Pony. Or a scene where one of the gamer cultists tries to summon a devil but doesn’t take the proper precautions and is killed.
It would also be ironic if the detective formed a band of unlikely characters to do battle against the evil cult. At the end the dying DM could say “LOOK AT WHAT YOU HAVE BECOME!”

Since I’m Mormon, the thing about Mormon students going up to you just struck me as really funny. Possibly since I remember another Mormon kid telling me that Pokemon was evil when I was about 5. People are just stupid when it comes to things like this. Oh, conservatives, you crack me up.

Also, I really liked that remix of your theme. Even if it was what you used from then on, I would have been happy. I do like the other version just as much, though.

Well, I wouldn’t condone the movie that you want to make, since you want to apparently take the subject matter seriously, despite you yourself being a gamer. If it had some kind of self-aware satire thrown in, then perhaps I would like it, but from what you said, it seems like you want to just flat out make a “gamers are evil” film, and I don’t want to be told that, and it makes it no different than Mazes and Monsters in that regard.

This commentary was really underwhelming, but alas…

If A Serbian Film can get funding, your nerdsploitation film can.

I didn’t care for the alternate intro then, and I don’t care for it now. I’m not going to bust anyone’s chops over it, just my personal taste.

Dude Spoony if you need someone to play the satanic cult leader in your movie, I’M YOUR MAN!!!! I love to watch and laugh at stupid satan related exploitation movies!

Loved your review and I always get a kick out of your indepth commentaries.

Wow… The Mormon students seriously got on your case about playing D&D? Living in Utah and being Mormon, I find that pretty hilarious, cause SO many of us play D&D around here. Those kids must have had those weird parents that wont let their kids watch anything above a G rating and think that the word ‘stupid’ is bad.

Yeah that gambling stuff was bullshit. If we want to get technical up in here anything could be used to gamble with. I could start a gambling ring playing rock, paper, scissors if I wanted. I guess they would have to take away my hands then. As for the video games and violence thing I personally think it’s crap. Blaming video games is just people passing blame onto something else. It’s mindboggling that people are defending cold blooded murderers by saying a plastic disk did it. That’s like blaming a gun for a crime instead of a person. At the end of the day they just need to accept that it was the individuals responsibility because if we start blaming negative stimuli for the problem then that opens the door to a lot of other shit we blame instead. I would personally blame the monster in my closet, it would sound more original that way….I like the alternative intro by the way.

Yeah that gambling stuff was bullshit. If we want to get technical up in here anything could be used to gamble with. I could start a gambling ring playing rock, paper, scissors if I wanted. I guess they would have to take away my hands then. As for the video games and violence thing I personally think it’s crap. Blaming video games is just people passing blame onto something else. It’s mindboggling that people are defending cold blooded murderers by saying a plastic disk did it. That’s like blaming a gun for a crime instead of a person. At the end of the day they just need to accept that it was the individuals responsibility because if we start blaming negative stimuli for the problem then that opens the door to a lot of other shit we blame instead. I would personally blame the monster in my closet, it would sound more original that way….I like the alternative intro by the way.

I loved the Heavy rock version. Living Illusion did Linkara’s song too, and that was great as well. I think you should definitely bring it back every once in awhile. Also, the video you put together was pretty cool, definitely fit the mood of the music well. I think if you do reviews/videos of darker material you should use that one to “set the mood”

I personally thought that the Living Illusion version of the song was Bad Ass. I downloaded it from their site, and I thought it was an awesome change up for the site. Not an every time thing, but I like a little variety every once in a while. All those people who gave you all that backlash, Spoony, they definitely don’t speak for all of us.

hey Spoony, you should write a memoir entited “Magic cards and Satanism”

I still like the Living Illusion version of the song, but then I have a wide range in tastes.

Tragedies like Columbine happened where I live as well.
And media as well as politicians blamed all these ‘assassinations’ on games too. Which is quite interesting due to the fact, that nobody really put the effort to investigate about those peoples social lives and how someone becomes a ‘psycho gamer’.
Media hasn’t really changed.

I liked the Living Illusion version of the song and to be honest the negative lash the song got really pushed me away from your forums (I registered about the time your monsters & mazes review came up). Seriously those people were so tense about A THEME SONG. And it was obvious you will use it once maybe twice since the video for intro was also switched.

Seriously sometimes I just don’t understand if people don’t have more important things to worry about (like not starving and such) than a theme song for a completely free show on the internet.
Ehhh…

I like the line “they all look like nerds, they look like me, they look like you, they look like harmless people” but perhaps you’ve never seen a nerd in a monocle.

Spoony! I’ll be an actor in your movie and I’ll work for free! I’m pretty sure I’m not alone too.

I only ever had one person at school who thought D&D was dangerous. He didn’t so much think of it as evil, but just seemed to be afraid that it sent you mad or something. Beyond that people either didn’t care or just must’ve thought “nerds!”.

Now-a-days it’s much more widely accepted (just like playing computer games, etc). Truly Revenge of the Nerds xD

Am I the only one thinking that a movie review isn’t really an epic production and it doesn’t need a commentary track? Come on, it’s a review, no big deal. And you, Spoony, are a reviewer, so review something, like you used to do. That’s why I visit your site. Not to watch some random clips from Youtube, not to watch you talking about your footage I’ve already seen, but to know your opinion on stuff I’m also interested in.

I’d like to see old Spoony back. The new one is really disappointing.

I really love the Living Illusion cover and if they ever did a full version my mind would be blown. The lyrics really work well with the tune. As a permanent theme I can understand somewhat the hostility because they are used to the old one but I really loved this version. I find myself humming it to myself from time to time.

And I love this review. In fact I mentioned it in my film class when we were talking about book to movie adaptations as well as when we were talking about modern propaganda films (i.e 70s to now) and I actually got the professor to pull up the video in class and we watched it.

That was fun

Nice commentary, Spoony ^^ !

It’s funny how you mention American media demonizing the old Doom game. Here in Germany, whenever our paranoid media talks about EEEEVILL video games that turn innocent kids into mass-murdering psychopaths, they talk about Counter-Strike – or show at least the cover of the game to let the people now what they’re talking about.
Interestingly, they practically never SHOW any of the “ultra-violent stuff” going on in CS because of how old it is…

Weather you return to blogging/reviewing or not, just hope you get better Spoony.

I liked that opening by Living Illusion. I like the classic opening too. Use them as little or as much as you like. You generally have my taste in music.

Honestly if people don’t like what you do, then they can go screw themselves. Sure fans matter, but you should be able to do what you want. I actually loved the opening on this one.

The same stuff over and over is just too monotonous.

I had to deal with the whole “D&D/MTG is used to indoctrinate kids into witchcraft” thing too. Though it doesn’t sound near as bad as what you had. But then again I didn’t play that much in high school. Funny thing is, I’m Mormon. I’ve NEVER seen anything wrong with playing D&D/MTG (unless, of course someone developed an unhealthy fixation). I don’t accredit the fear towards D&D at the religion, I’m sure the Mormon kids that you grew up with were just ignorant towards the game and had only the best intentions. Ignorance breeds fear.
Another odd thing is I know a witch (white) and she stopped playing MTG and D&D.
I am a very odd person.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I would watch the SHIT out of “Creatures and Caverns”.

Yes, you must make Creatures & Caverns

Even though I am not an exploitation fan, if you want to write a movie, just go for it. I myself am writting a story, now it isn’t good and I didn’t come far, but since I start early (BTW same counts for you spoony) I can always change it or better it, until it is exactly what I want :)

As a Mormon that grew up in a suburb of Salt Lake, I can understand the demographics of a high school like the one you attended, what with the high concentration of LDS people in the Mesa and Tempe areas of Arizona. And, as a person who graduated in 2000, I can also understand the time period. I think part of the problems you may have suffered in high school at the hands of misguided Mormons stems mostly from misunderstanding. MTG was kind of a new thing at the time (at least it was in my high school), and since most high schoolers at that point had been too old to play Pokemon, the idea of CCG’s was a foreign one, and likely many people thought Magic cards were like some sort of tarot deck or something.

Most humans are lazy by nature, so it was probably easier to ignore the weirdos with their strange game who didn’t go to church on Sunday, or make token attempts to “bring unbelievers into the fold” so they’d feel good about accomplishing their missionary goal for the week, than to actually get to know what really goes on in other peoples’ lives. And people at high schools where Mormons make up the dominant population are especially bad at this. It’s easy when their group of friends at school is the same group of friends at church on Sunday, or during church activities during the week, but if one of them befriends someone outside that group, then suddenly they’ve got to adapt to a whole different set of values (which may not even be that different; Mormons don’t have the market cornered on morality, that’s for sure) and now they can’t talk about the funny thing that Brother So-and-so did Wednesday night at the young men’s activity without having to explain a lot of basic details to their one different friend, or be sad that he wasn’t there. Most high schoolers aren’t mature enough to deal with that kind of thing, so they either feel that they either have to convert you in order to befriend you, or just ignore you, justifying it with a thought like, “Well, it’s OK that I don’t hang out with Spoony: he plays that devil game” without even getting to know either you or the game.

I can’t excuse this kind of behavior. In fact, it’s fairly abhorrent and against a lot of what Mormons and Christianity in general actually stand for (you know, the whole “judge not, lest ye be judged” thing). I guess I just wish to say that I doubt it was you, or even D&D, but simply a large group of immature minds not wanting to deal with something they didn’t understand that helped make your gamer group social outcasts or whatever. D&D was probably just a scapegoat. And I want to apologize on behalf of Mormons everywhere for the ignorant, intolerant behavior of high schoolers that make otherwise perfectly good people into some sort of social pariahs. I saw it happen to a lot of good people (even other religious people; I had a good friend who was a devout Catholic that ended up moving out of Utah so people would stop inviting him to seminary and LDS institute classes). I know an anonymous Internet apology probably doesn’t make up for years of unrighteous persecution, but hey, it’s a start. Most Mormons are pretty good once they get out of high school and grow up, just like most people.

Also, oddly enough, I played my first D&D campaign as a freshman attending BYU, and you can’t get much more Mormon than that. Although, our group of gamers was made up of outcasts even there, but I don’t know if we were outcasts *because* we played D&D or we were all social misfits anyway and so congregated together and decided to play D&D. We did have one player leave the game because he felt it was getting too dark, but that was mostly because we had another player who was playing a Chaotic Evil barbarian who spent most of the campaign torturing gnomes by pulling their toes off. I was playing a gnome at the time, but I still thought it was hilarious.

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i like the rock song better is there anyway to download it

i like the rock song better is there anyway to download it

The closest I can find to Gorevil is Grovyle which is a pokemon… but this was out just a little bit before pokemon, so that doesn’t count. For some reason though, Gorevil sounds familiar. I think a GM of mine once used the name for a homebrew monster in his 3.5 edition game, which makes for some delicious irony.

I really liked this song more then the current one.

the song on this video was the lamest shit i ever heard. … suppose you kids like that music (lol iam 23) … but… really… the music is siiimply frrooooootteee -break me dont break me break me-
- G A Y -

I actually really like this song ^_^

I think I have found a way to make the monsters for this game that would even have an explained disappearance.

Imagine a mage with a coastal hold and Sahuagin for his servants. If you take them and make a 50% cross with Pseudodragon you would not only have an appearance match but you would have a resultant creature that is prone to be Lawful Neutral instead of Neutral good (pseudodragon) or Lawful evil (sahugin) and the natural defense of the pseudodragon is a chameleon ability.

Doesn’t that seem like it would be a good servant and also fit the Gorville’s disappearance?

I thought the throwing the wrong hand high was a joke not a mistake.

If you ever do get your insane movie idea together I would love to see it but I do not have the budget to attempt helping with it.

My only problem with the “harder” theme is that they stuck too tightly to the break me lyrics. It could have been made to fit a little better if they allowed themselves more liberty.