Fictional Actual Play

[ricmadeira]

If you want RPGs in film (more specifically D&D) I don't think you can do better than this one here:

El Corazón del Guerrero
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0205843/

It's a serious (well... not much, okay) Spanish movie with a serious budget with a very serious script and serious actors; and deals with RPGs all the way.

It starts with a terrific and totally cliche (even down to the Conan references - Crom, Ishtar, etc.) dungeon crawl by a group of adventurers... and then you realize it's 200% cliche simply because this is the product of the imagination of a group of friends that are playing D&D (they actually mention D&D in the movie) on the rooftop of a building. That night one of the gamers starts to hallucinate things and having visions about the adventures of his character. These visions start to intrude upon his daily life, and he slowly becomes convinced these RPG characters really live in another dimension and that he's been cursed and that the guild of evil wizards are also active in this world and trying to take over. He's the only one who believes in it, and he's the only one who may be able to stop them.

Is it all real or just his imagination? Well, I won't spoil it for you... The result is a sad yet uplifting, a comic yet tragic, a funny yet gritty, movie. It's really impressive. An authentic tour de force by a young Spanish director. You have scenes filmed around the game table (the DM is quite a character!), you have scenes filmed around the character's adventures, and you have the tragic hapennings in the hero's daily real(?) life. All with great FXs, all wrapped into an intelligent and original plot. This film simply could not have been created in the USA. You have a teenager in deep love with a prostitute he thinks is his girlfriend in the RPG, you have the same teenager running from the law trying to murder a presidential candidate because he's suposed to be an evil wizard from another dimension and you have a great crazy ending that is way, way far from happy. Disney would be shocked...

This is not the movie that will put parents fears about their son's roleplaying sessions at ease... but it's a great movie (even though the gaming scenes were over-simplified for the benefit of the general audience). I can not recommend it enough. It's one of my favorite films ever. Don't sleep until you find this one true gem. The Spanish DVD has English subtitles, so no excuses!

[simon_hibbs]

The One Game

A Uk TV series from 1988 in which the young, rich owner of a leading games company finds himself trapped in a 'reality game' masterminded by the creative genius Magnus who helped him found the company years before. Almost anyone he meets can turn out to be an agent of Magnus playing a part in the game. There's also a great 'jousing on motorbikes' scene. It's very remeniscent of some episodes of 'The Prisoner', with some Arthurian mythological themes.


Simon Hibbs

[Tav_Behemoth]

Wow, those both sound cool! Thank heavens for IMDB, and for jousting on mototbikes...

[M. J. Young]

The concepts seem to be getting a bit further afield; I think we're far enough out that The Game with Michael Douglas probably fits the bill.

The starting point is that the wealthy and successful but driven and lonely businessman Douglas is approaching his birthday--the one at which his father committed suicide, and that bothers him. His younger brother says that he's got a present for him, but he needs to go see some people at this company to take a quick quiz so they can customize it for him. The quick quiz takes all day, with psych profiles and a physical workup, and then he's told he won't be right for this.

Then strange things start happening; someone is playing psyche games with him. They get more and more intense, people get shot, and they drive him pretty much to the edge.

Probably you've seen it; it's worth a look if not.

--M. J. Young

[Rob Carriere]

Existenz. I've only seen this one on TV and I missed the opening credits, so I can't attribute properly. Basic story: company has produced a VR game, competition wants it, sabotage of VR equipement occurs, the woman who designed the game and the man who's helping her escape get trapped inside the game, which at this point is running on a VR deck that's dying.

And then there turns out to be another layer behind that. And another.

If you know whether the end is in reality or in some level of game, you weren't paying attention. The people in the movie are in the same position, and they all commited murder at various points, some or all of which, they come to realize, may have been real.

Favorite quote:
"Existenz is suspended!"
(followed by the speaker falling face down in his soup.)

It's not the world's greatest movie, but it is one of those very rare occasions where filmed science fiction approaches a concept with something resembling the level of sophistication that fans of written sf find normal.

You might, BTW, also look at some of Sheri Tepper's early work. I don't have the titles handy, but it's a trilogy with each title a chess piece followed by a number ("King's Pawn 4" is the first part if memory serves). You start reading, come to the conclusion that this is transparently a game recast as a story...and then that turns out not to be the case.
SR
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