I will return Monday from my unannounced hiatus. But,today being Friday the 13th, I leave you with this hilarious nugget of joy:

Exciting News! After being announced four years ago (has it really been that long?), “The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising” finally has a release date. It will release August 14th at Gencon Indy. What makes this extra exciting (for me, anyway) is that I’ll be at Gencon this year to promote a Board Game that will be released at the con. A handy coincidence, if there ever were one. (Read: I’ll be watching the film that Thursday night from my hotel room)

The first Gamers movie was a surprisingly funny low-budget look into the world of gaming. Some of the jokes may have fallen flat, but overall it was a fairly true-to-life look at the overall fun and silliness that hardcore geektastic gamers have. If you haven’t seen it, it’s definitely worth picking up and watching (or you can watch it, in it’s entirety, on Youtube. If you’re broke. Or a cheapass). The second film looks to up the ante with an actual budget, higher production values, and (gasp!) what appears to be a real plot. It’s sad, but it looks like it could be better than the two Official live-action D&D films that have been released. But don’t take my word for it, check out the trailer below.

Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising will be available at Gencon, at Paizo, and a surprising number of a bigger box retail stores. MSRP: $19.95

Apparently superdeluxe.com is being shuttered and rolled into Adult Swim’s website. The reason being that the humor on both sites is very similar. I guess this makes sense, in my Internet Video post I mentioned that the two sites were fairly similar. There has actually been somewhat of an outcry online, with people comparing Superdeluxe.com to Arrested Development and other great cancelled shows. While I may not go that far, the site was pretty cool, and I liked it a lot better than funnyordie.com. The silver lining of this story is that two of the site’s more popular video series have already been picked up to be turned into a TV show. Here is a nougat-y sample of what that show could be:

I don’t know if any of you were watching SNL this weekend. I was sort of half-watching while I was running a DnD Session, but I did manage to catch one of the funniest sketches I have ever seen on the show. These are likely to go down in the hall of fame, forever.

A note to NBC: The fact that I had to pull two of these off of YouTube proves that you still don’t “get it”.

EDIT: NBC eventually added parts 1 & 3 to the Part 2 I had posted originally. As a result, I removed the YouTube versions (which were liable to be taken down soon anyway). That said, NBC you’re still on Notice.

You’ll have to forgive the lack of updates this week, the arrival of spring has knocked my sinuses on their collective asses.

I do have some energy, though, to highlight this weeks Game of the Week. The honor this week goes to the venerable roleplaying game, the king of dice, the sultan of stats. I, of course, am referring to Kobolds Ate My Babies, the original Beer and Pretzel game.

In KAMB, you play the role of a Kobold. You’re job is to roam into the countryside and bring back fresh human babies for King Torg’s (All Hail King Torg!) feast. Failure means certain death, though in this game, death is fairly certain regardless. The game itself is fairly easy. You have four stats: Brawn, Ego, Extraneous, and Reflexes (B.E.E.R., get it?). Creating your character is done mostly at random; which is fine, as your characters die often enough that you don’t want to invest too much time into building them. One person is selected to play the mayor (KAMB’s version of a DM). Unlike most roleplaying games, there is a clear winner to KAMB. Nine times out of ten, it’s the Mayor. (Yes, the DM can, and usually does, win)

The fun of the game comes from getting together with some friends, and just being silly for silliness sake. There are a wide assortment of house rules, and just about anything you do gives you the chance to die on one of the many “horrible death charts”. Unlike in other systems, your character’s death isn’t the end of the campaign or even the session. You stand on your chair, give a brief soliloquy of your characters accomplishments and hop right back in. Sessions are usually accompanied by raucous laughter and amusing anecdotes. You know, the sounds of fun. You remember playing RPG’s to have fun, right?

Kobolds Ate My Babies is currently available in a hardcover edition for the cheap price of $15. There is also an older paperback version available secondhand, for around $5. At prices like this, you have no excuse to not get your Kobold on.

As YouTube gains in popularity (is it possible for it to be more popular at this point?), its signal-to-noise ratio continues to decrease. For those that flunked ratios in math, this means the amount of junk on YouTube is increasing faster than the amount of watchable stuff. As a sort of fallout to this, we’ve seen several sites crop up since then to take on the user-generated giant. There have been many sites that do the exact same thing as Youtube, allowing anybody to upload anything for any reason. More interestingly, specialty video sites have also been cropping up lately, which focus on one particular genre: comedy. While these sites are too narrow to become a true successor to Youtube’s throne, some of them could become hugely popular in their own right. Perhaps even replacing Youtube as the goto site for comedy videos.

http://www.atomfilms.com/

This site actually predates Youtube, serving up funny films since 1999 (six years before the big ‘YT’). It used to be famous mainly for Star Wars fan videos and flash animations. Lately, in response to Youtube’s dominance, it’s tried to shift the focus more prominently to general humor, though they still host videos of all genres. While Atom Films has some sticking power, I think they hit their peak a few years ago.

Some famous AtomFilm videos:

In “President Bear”, the question is asked: Would the Nation Notice if the President was replaced by a bear? Maybe not, though the first lady might. This is the first in a series of videos about the follies and foibles of President Bear.

The Star Wars Gangsta Rap, came out in 2002 and helped propel Atom Films into prominence. I remember thinking this was the coolest thing since sliced bread when it came out. In hindsight, not so much.

http://www.funnyordie.com/

The first major success following the YouTube revolution, FunnyorDie is interesting in that it mixes both major name players and regular people’s videos and just sort of lets the funniest ones rise to the top. Will Ferrell has been a huge contributor to this site, though other celebrities (like Bill Murray, for instance) have been known to appear. I think it has a fairly good selection of videos, though I am sort of disappointed that the most viewed videos are usually the celebrity-made ones. Some might think that it has peaked with The Landlord video (see below), but I think the site has some serious potential. The next “Evolution of Dance” could be brewing somewhere deep within Funny’s labs; waiting to pounce on an unsuspecting populace.

Some famous Funny or Die videos:

This video launched the site, in fact to most people, this video IS the site. It has been viewed over 55 million times. Consider this: If it were on Youtube, it would the fourth-most viewed video of all-time. Chances are you’ve watched it before. In fact, me posting it here almost seems redundant.

Canadian Jon Lajoie (who has, perhaps, the most Canadian name in history) raps about what it’s like to be an everyday normal guy. Instead of a tricked out SUV, he takes the Bus to work and instead of being a smooth operator, he’s socially awkward. This is one of my personal favorites, perhaps because it rings so true.

http://www.superdeluxe.com/

This is the new kid on the block, the upcoming rising star. In a sort of backlash to the Web 2.0 movement, it’s not user generated like the other sites. Instead Turner Broadcast Systems (who delivers us our Adult Swim) pays professional comedians to generate content for the site. Since it’s owned by the same company that owns Adult Swim, it features a lot of the same type of humor that’s broadcast on Adult Swim. Since people are paid to make the videos, the production quality usually is better than other sites. Though the two most viewed internet videos of all time, “Star Wars Kid” and “Evolution of Dance” weren’t known for their production quality. If you like the surreal humor of “Tim & Eric Awesome Show Great Job!”, you’ll love this site. While I think this site has the ability to be a moderate success, it’s sense of humor is a bit too narrow to be a giant mainstream success.

Some famous Super Deluxe videos:

This one is simply bizarre. Craig Bierko interviews celebrities in the oddest of places: a bathtub. This video features Craig and John “Being John” Malkovich sharing a bathtub. Craig asks some fairly standard questions that John answers, all the while Craig is bathing John. The funny definitely comes from the ability of both performers to completely pretend that this is a normal and routine situation.

DJ Douggpound stars in his first ever “poundcast”, a surreal parody of the T.V. Show “Cheaters”. This is a Tim & Eric video and is full of their oft inexplicable and surreal humor. I think the flava-flav-esque rival rapper is worth the price of admission alone.

http://www.superdeluxe.com/sd/series/positions_of_the_day
I’m not going to embed this video series as it might be considered a bit NSFW. These videos create humorous sexual positions that seem like they would be rejected from the Kama Sutra. They’re done comedically through simple animations, but are quite hilarious.