For When Your DND Sessions Get Too Easy
"So what do six gamers do when the game just gets too easy? They get real, of course. A chance encounter with a professor and the lads have a historically accurate adventure for their characters. Soon they're up to their poisoned daggers in battles, travels, molten hot medieval chicks, and naughty bishops. But will the guys have the opportunity to discover that with history, it's what you don't know that will kill you?"
— Jason "Loki" Janes, Director and Producer
Welcome to Reality is a 2008 fantasy adventure comedy film by Lokean Productions. The story follows a group of Dungeons & Dragons players who have grown bored of their weekly sessions as they feel the game is getting too easy for them. A chance encounter with a professor of medieval history waiting for his son has the group asking him to create a historically accurate adventure in an attempt to see how well they would do in such a scenario. He accepts and needless to say, Be Careful What You Wish For and Hilarity Ensues.
This film includes examples of:
- Butt-Monkey: Theo, The Bard of the group. The group considers the Bard class as a "Useless" class and Theo suffered much grief in their previous sessions, in particular the group's brief bouts of "scoff the bard". It becomes inverted when the group start their historically accurate adventure as the professor states that bards was the 10th Century equivalent of a sex symbol as they were a source of entertainment, news, cultural sophistication and matters, while also skilled in conversation, flirtation, music, and the use of weapons, welcomed in towns and villages due to their wit and refinement, and in the know of all the latest gossip, all of which had the ladies throwing themselves at them. Needless to say the rest of the group are dumbfounded while Theo spends the rest of the session in high spirits.Theo: It's good to be the bard!
- Cloudcuckoolander: Devin/Malone, the wizard/alchemist.
- Product Placement: Just before the start of their adventure, the group pull out bottles of Mountain Dew so they don't have to (pretend) drink what was considered ale in the 10th Century (a thick fermented porridge thing). Scott/Aaroc even lampshades that they are trying for a product endorsement, GM Ben Hunter tries to protest it but changes his mind and joins them.
- Shout-Out: At one point Theo finds and bangs coconuts to mimic horse movement just like how it was done in Monty Python and the Holy Grail, when Jakob asks where he got the coconuts, Malone quickly shuts that line of questioning because in real life quoting from the The Holy Grail has become such a tradition among DND players due to its close association with Medieval Fantasy, that sometimes players can end up quoting the whole movie before moving on with the session.
