The middle school is putting on a big Fright Night celebration for Halloween. Lizzie wants to appear as Vampira, the dungeon mistress, but Kate is in charge and she keeps the job for herself, making Lizzie clean out the janitor's closet and then giving her the role of a clown handing out balloons. Miranda brings her parents, who are helping her celebrate a Mexican holiday, the Day of the Dead. They bring by several items including skulls and skeletons which are meant to represent ancestors who are being honored. Kate is all smiles when Miranda's parents are around (""Toon Lizzie"" calls Kate ""phonier than cafeteria cheese""), but once they leave she yells at Miranda to get rid of that junk they brought. Miranda warns Kate that by disrespecting the dead, she is risking their wrath.

Gammy McGuire sends Lizzie one of her frequent ""birthday"" gifts--a role-playing game called Dwarflord: The Conquest. Mom insists that Lizzie play it at least once, so she recruits reluctant Miranda and Gordo for a game. The girls can't understand the incredibly complex rules but Gordo likes it. In fact, Gordo joins a ""Dwarf Tribe"" at school (led by Tudgeman, of course) and begins to spend all his time playing and thinking about the game. Gordo gets so obsessed that he even quits studying and, unbelievably, gets an ""F"" on a test!

Lizzie and Miranda try to talk some sense back into Gordo but he refuses to see he is addicted to the game. Matt agrees to help the girls capture Gordo and help to deprogram him. They stealthily invade a Dwarflord game, abduct Gordo and hold an intervention in which they finally convince him to go back to his old lifestyle.

Gordo is feeling a little left behind: the girls are going crazy over Ethan Craft, who gets a new dirtbike for his 14th birthday, just like all the ""men"" in his family have. Even Larry Tudgeman is shaving now, though not very well! Gordo now wishes he had celebrated his bar mitzvah, the Jewish ceremony performed on the 13th birthday that marks the passage of a boy into manhood. Concerned about what makes a boy a man, Gordo takes his camera interviews many different men to get their experiences. He tries several different ""manly"" things that they mentioned, even going to a tattoo parlor! But he decides they are not for him. He asks his parents why they didn't insist on a bar mitzvah for him. They tell him they trusted his judgment then, and that at the time he didn't think it was necessary or important. But Gordo has made up his mind now--he wants to be bar mitzvahed. The ceremony is held with all his family and friends in attendance.

Lizzie and her mom become best friends after reading a book in social studies.