The Gamers: Hands of Fate - - September 2013

I haven't been writing on this blog for some time now because time and duty didn't allow. But today is a day of epic proportions.


I have always said that The Gamers: Dorkness Rising  is one of my all-time favorite movies (a hit so big that they came out with The Gamers: Dorkness Rising special edition DVD). The sequel of the very low-budget cult hit  The Gamers  produced by Dead Gentlemen Productions, Dorkness Rising renewed my love for tabletop role-playing games after burning out on the hobby in college. (I was gamemaster most of the time, and continuously coming up with scenarios can squeeze the fun out of the game and making it a chore.) Gaming was made fun again.

Then came the news of a "Gamers 3" movie in the works. Through online contact with Dead Gentlemen and their partner Zombie Orpheus Entertainment, I heard of the call for support to make the movie The Gamers: Hands of Fate. Since I loved Dorkness Rising and their web series JourneyQuest, I just had to support this film however I can, as limited as my funds may be. I made a minimal pledge under the name of my gaming group, The Tavern Adventurers.

And respond the fans did! DG and ZOE set their budget at a whopping $320,000, and the initial response was overwhelming. But there came days toward the end that it looked like the pledges won't be enough so much so that they got the cast together to make a plea:



Then came a flood of support, making Hands of Fate the most funded film in kickstarter history:

And the budget of $320,000? By the end of the  Kickstarter campaign, the pledges ran up to $405,917!


What I love about this is that it is under  Creative Commons license, which, as I understand it, people are allowed to download it, share it, re-mix it, screen it, do anything with it -- so long as they don't make money out of it. It is completely fan-supported and so, as long as the fans want it enough to support it financially, it will never get cancelled. I can download it and share it to my friends and it won't be illegal!

So happy I threw in my support for this project. And, as a bonus, the Tavern Adventurers will have its name in the credits, thereby gaining a small bit of geek immortality.

Watch out for it around this time next year! I know I am. And I just may get me a copy of the then-fictional game that will be featured in the film, a game that was made real as one of the stretch goals of the fund-raising campaign.