Darkon is Live Action Role-Playing, where the characters in the game assume different personas of their own creation and partake of different warring nations and factions in the Darkon universe. Not entirely unlike traditional Dungeons & Dragons, except the focus is not upon the stat-sheets and one's imagination, but the actual grandiose foam-weapon battles between armies.
The documentary focuses on a drawn-out Darkon campaign fought between two warring faction leaders: Skip Lipman/Bannor (he's Bannor in Darkon), and Kenyon Wells/Keldar. Of the two, Skip is the more likable character, a stay-at-home dad with the utmost exuberance for Darkon's potential as a fulfilling and self-empowering creative channel. Kenyon/Keldar seems to stand for similar things, but then he doesn't take the Darkon fantasy as seriously as the other members of the documentary. Instead he uses it as a medium for him to channel his expansive, greedy determination.What is revealed by all this, is that these Darkon characters are not necessarily escapes or pure projections in another universe, but simply extended, exaggerated branches of their respective personalities inside the world of Darkon.
That isn't to say Darkon is a strange, negative or absurd enterprise by any means. In fact, the documentary is positive for making the viewer re-examine all the real Live Action Role-playing and fantasy elements that take place in our communities (American football and sports, martial arts and "Reality-Based Self-Defense", New Agers and "shamans", yoga, religion, etc.) because they have long since been accepted by mainstream society as normal. But when fantasies become vivid enough to the ones enacting them, those fantasies bleed into real life and how we develop as members of our daily communities.
The documentary focuses on a drawn-out Darkon campaign fought between two warring faction leaders: Skip Lipman/Bannor (he's Bannor in Darkon), and Kenyon Wells/Keldar. Of the two, Skip is the more likable character, a stay-at-home dad with the utmost exuberance for Darkon's potential as a fulfilling and self-empowering creative channel. Kenyon/Keldar seems to stand for similar things, but then he doesn't take the Darkon fantasy as seriously as the other members of the documentary. Instead he uses it as a medium for him to channel his expansive, greedy determination.What is revealed by all this, is that these Darkon characters are not necessarily escapes or pure projections in another universe, but simply extended, exaggerated branches of their respective personalities inside the world of Darkon.
That isn't to say Darkon is a strange, negative or absurd enterprise by any means. In fact, the documentary is positive for making the viewer re-examine all the real Live Action Role-playing and fantasy elements that take place in our communities (American football and sports, martial arts and "Reality-Based Self-Defense", New Agers and "shamans", yoga, religion, etc.) because they have long since been accepted by mainstream society as normal. But when fantasies become vivid enough to the ones enacting them, those fantasies bleed into real life and how we develop as members of our daily communities.