[7:32 PM]Matt Vancil: Hi! My name is Matt Vancil, and I am the writer/director of The Gamers: Dorkness Falls, aka Gamers 4, which is Kickstarting until June 29. We are currently 53% funded and we haven’t even hit the midpoint of our campaign, so spirits are high.
[7:34 PM]Matt Vancil: The film is the fourth in the Gamers series, which began with The Gamers (2002), but didn’t branch into features until The Gamers: Dorkness Rising (2008), which had a sequel in THe Gamers: Hands of Fate (2013). There were other short series and another whole series that’s crowdfunding its second episode in July.
[7:35 PM]Matt Vancil: The series features gamers gaming. The movies have been called “the real Dungeons & Dragons movies” by folks who say that sort of thing. Years back, Ranker did a list of the top 10 D&D movies, and Dorkness Rising and The Gamers took the top two spots.
[7:35 PM]Matt Vancil: That’ll do for an introduction. What would you like to know?
[7:36 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Thanks, @Matt Vancil! The floor is open to questions!
[7:37 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Do I remember correctly that The Gamers isn’t connected to the other movies?
[7:39 PM]Matt Vancil: Yes and no. We filmed that for fun when we were all in college and had no idea it would blow up the way it did. We were told after the fact by producers that the film was unmarketable because of its length (48 minutes) and its technical quality (we’d filmed on a Sony mini-DV cam). Because, again, we had no idea it would become a thing. We made it because we wanted to see it, and it turns out gamers did too, and we somehow went viral in the days before YouTube and wound up selling hundreds and then thousands of DVDs of our unmarketable film at cons and online.
[7:41 PM]Matt Vancil: So, it became clear, early on, that we needed to do a sequel, and that the sequel should be “marketable” and appeal to a wider audience. The issue with making a direct sequel was that we’d killed all the characters at the end of the movie. Mainly because I couldn’t figure out how to wrap it up, and it needed an ending. The Gamers was never (originally) meant to be more than a bunch of gaming jokes strung together, so we weren’t super invested in the characters. As you can tell from them all getting killed.
[7:43 PM]Matt Vancil: So, yeah, can’t really make a sequel with a dead cast. So in writing Dorkness Rising, I wanted to expand past the concept and scope of the original short. In DR, for example, the players are the real people, not the characters — in The Gamers, the players didn’t even have names; when we were in the game room scenes, the lines were for “Rogar’s Player” or “Nimble’s Player.” In the sequel, we took the action out of the gameroom and saw the players in their day to day lives. We made them human, and I think that made the movie far more accessible.
[7:44 PM]Matt Vancil: So, to answer your question in super long-winded fashion, the first movie both is and isn’t connected. There are pieces from The Gamers that show up in Dorkness Rising and its sequels, but Dorkness Rising was the beginning of the feature trilogy that we’re concluding with Dorkness Falls.
[7:44 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): How would you describe the overall story arc, and how does Dorkness Falls wrap it up?
[7:48 PM]Matt Vancil: The overall story arc follows the players introduced in Dorkness Rising through different eras in their lives and different forms of play. DR was a traditional TTRPG campaign that saw character growth in the players through their heroics and silliness in the game. We didn’t just want to make the same movie over and over again, so in Hands of Fate, we brought in a different game — a fictional CCG — and took our players to its world championship tournament at Gen Con. We actually filmed at Gen Con 2012 on their main stage, with 600 extras in attendance. Fantastic experience.
[7:49 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Wow! I didn’t know that.
[7:50 PM]Matt Vancil: Hands of Fate was a much different story, and focused on a different protagonist. Dorkness Rising was Lodge’s story. He was the party’s DM, and he had issues trusting that his players wouldn’t just destroy his game world if he didn’t keep them under control. His arc was about trust — both of his players, and of himself as a storyteller and worldbuilder.
[7:51 PM]Matt Vancil: Hands of Fate was Cass’s story. Cass is the rules-lawyering power-gamer, which made his entry into CCGs pretty easy. I don’t want to spoil it, but he went into the tournament for the wrong, entirely self-interested reasons. By the end of the film, he had fallen in love, but with the game and its community — which he had come to respect and admire, and was only able to succeed when he stopped holding it, and its player base, at arm’s length.
[7:54 PM]Matt Vancil: Hands of Fate also ends on a cliffhanger. The Shadow is the villain from the original Gamers short film, and he’s mentioned (though he doesn’t appear) in Dorkness Rising. He does appear in Hands of Fate, in a climactic scene that keeps getting punted until a later session because life keeps interrupting the game. At the end of the movie, The Shadow finally exacts his revenge and pulls the gamers into the game world itself. It’s kind of like the end of Evil Dead II, with Ash getting sucked into medieval England. Those movies were faves of the group.
[7:56 PM]Matt Vancil: So! Dorkness Falls picks up where Hands of Fate left off, with the gamers stuck in the actual world of the game. This is the ultimate escalation — they’ve been preparing their whole lives for a challenge like this. At least, that’s what Cass says. Lodge rightly points out that they can die here, and they have no powers — no class levels, no abilities, spells, feats, nothing. And there’s a crazed genius villain who wants to kill them. So they did what any sensible people would do and hid for the last dozen years. That’s the state of things when this final installment of the Dorkness Trilogy begins.
[7:56 PM]Matt Vancil: By the way, you can watch any and all of these movies at http://www.watchthegamers.com or at http://www.zombieorpheus.com. You can also watch them for free on Zombie Orpheus’s YouTube channel or by searching for them on Amazon Prime. (edited)
[7:57 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): One of our regulars just recently point that out! How long have they been available for free on your website?
[7:57 PM]Matt Vancil: For years
[7:58 PM]Matt Vancil: I don’t recall the exact date they went up… (edited)
[7:58 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
Well, at any rate, that’s very cool.
[7:58 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Where will Dorkness Falls be available when it comes out?
[8:00 PM]Matt Vancil: It’ll be on YouTube and Amazon Prime. DVDs and Blu-Rays will be available as well. We have a distribution deal with Paizo. The golem’s been very kind to us over the years. They handled distribution for the earlier Gamers films to the TTRPG industry.
[8:00 PM]Matt Vancil: I actually used to work at Paizo. I was a warehouse rat. They even trained me to drive the forklift.
[8:01 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Hey, I drove a forklift for a bit during a hell job last year! high fives
[8:01 PM]Matt Vancil: high fives
[8:01 PM]Matt Vancil: Hell yeah! Did they make you watch that horrid forklift accident video?
[8:02 PM]Matt Vancil: It was hilarious.
[8:02 PM]Matt Vancil: And awful. Don’t get me wrong. (edited)
[8:02 PM]Matt Vancil: Also kinda hilarious.
[8:02 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Heh. Nope, although it sounds classic. Just a boring website thingy.
[8:03 PM]Matt Vancil: Ah. Think John Carpenter directing The Room.
[8:03 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Wow.
[8:03 PM]Matt Vancil: “Oh hi Mark.” arterial hemorrhaging
[8:03 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Well, at least you were hoisting TTRPG goodies. Me? I was in a warehouse. Full of warehouse supplies.
[8:04 PM]Matt Vancil: Yeah, yours sounds less fun. I could go down the stacks and review every Pathfinder Adventure Path ever printed.
[8:05 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Speaking of which, was the Paizo connection the reason the eponymous Gamers were playing Pathfinder in 3? (I can’t recall about 2.)
[8:05 PM]Matt Vancil: Indeed it was!
[8:05 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Go me! \o/
[8:07 PM]Matt Vancil: In Dorkness Rising, WotC let us use D&D 3.5 in the game. Cass holds up the PHB during the character creation scene. They also let us film the Pizzajitsu sequence in an unused wing of their office building. You can tell it’s Wizards because when Jeff Grubb walks out of the elevator at the start of the sequence, he passes by a poster frame filled with Magic cards.
[8:08 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): That’s cool.
[8:10 PM]Matt Vancil: Here’s another fun bit of “I can’t believe they let us do that:” we got Star Wars stormtroopers for Hands of Fate. Most of the movie takes place at a con, and one of the coolest groups of folks we’d met on the con circuit was the 501st. Their founder, Albin Johnson, was a fan of the movies and a friend of Scott C. Brown, and when it came time to film Gamers 3, he asked how he could help. We swung for the fences and asked if he could convince Lucasfilm to let us have honest to God Stormtroopers in the movie. And they let us! (edited)
[8:10 PM]Matt Vancil: This is before the Mouse took over, of course.
[8:10 PM]Matt Vancil: Albin is in the movie himself. He’s the Stormtrooper who kicks Gary out of his hotel room after he assaults Chibichan.
[8:11 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): That’s amazing!
[8:12 PM]Matt Vancil: It was nuts.
[8:12 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (Speaking of the Mouse, I learned just this evening that if we’re going to host the new Planet of the Apes game here, Randomworlds will have to be vetted by said Mouse.)
[8:12 PM]Matt Vancil: Not only did they let us use Stormtroopers — Albin also got us a Boba Fett and a Jabba’s Palace Leia.
[8:12 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Sweet!
[8:12 PM]Matt Vancil: Oh wow!
[8:12 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Yeah! We’ll see how that goes.
[8:14 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): What is the relationship between the Dorkness Trilogy and the other incarnations of The Gamers that I only just learned about, like The Natural One, The Shadow Menace, and The Gamers: The Series? (edited)
[8:15 PM]Matt Vancil: It’s tangential. Think of it like different Star Trek shows — same universe, same rules, mostly different characters.
[8:16 PM]Skipper (They-Them): Question: Would I have to have watched the other movies to get this one?
[8:16 PM]Matt Vancil: Natural 1 was a cyberpunk RPG that featured Gary and Leo from Dorkness Rising and Hands of Fate. They joined a new group that was playing a Shadowrun clone. It had some great combat sequences.
[8:16 PM]Silverlion: How many movies are there, now?
@Skipper (They-Them)Question: Would I have to have watched the other movies to get this one?
[8:17 PM]Matt Vancil: No, but this one would make more sense if you do. The movie stands on its own, but it’s also a reunion of returning cast and characters.
[8:17 PM]Silverlion: Is it hard working with actors/gamers?
[8:17 PM]Rephath: What kind of runtime are you aiming for?
@SilverlionHow many movies are there, now?
[8:18 PM]Matt Vancil: Let’s see… The Gamers, Dorkness Rising, Hands of Fate, Humans & Households, Natural 1, and Gamers the Series: Episode 1, so… six. Not counting the Gamers Live! performances at Gen Con every year.
1
[8:19 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (brb)
@SilverlionIs it hard working with actors/gamers?
[8:19 PM]Matt Vancil: Depends on the actor. You learn peoples’ quirks and strengths over the years and develop a rapport. Just like with your players
[8:19 PM]Matt Vancil: The advantage I have is that most of my actors are gamers, so…
@RephathWhat kind of runtime are you aiming for?
[8:20 PM]Matt Vancil: Ninety minutes to two hours, unless we get into stretch goals. Then we can afford to film some really kickass sequences that we just couldn’t include otherwise.
[8:21 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (back)
[8:21 PM]Matt Vancil: As for those other Gamers projects that aren’t part of the Dorkness Trilogy:
[8:22 PM]Matt Vancil: My favorite of these was Humans & Households, which was basically a reverse D&D. It features fantasy world heroes playing as mundane people in our world, with character classes like athlete, doctor, activist, etc. They take it way too seriously and see danger in everything. Just utter ridiculous majesty. It still makes me giggle.
[8:23 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh, now I need to check that out.
[8:24 PM]Matt Vancil: I mentioned another series earlier. Gamers the Series released its first episode, The Shadow Menace, in 2018. That series follows the (SPOILER) gamers who crossed over to Earth and killed their players in the original Gamers short. The series is about what they’ve been up to here.
[8:26 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Was The Gamers the first TTRPG comedy of its kind that you know of, and what is your opinion of some others that have come out since then, like Gamemaster, Gamemaster, What Have You Done? and Gamers (no The), which somehow managed to get Beverly D’Angelo and Kelly LeBrock?
[8:27 PM]Rephath: What’s the biggest film budget you’ve worked with before?
[8:27 PM]Matt Vancil: To my knowledge, The Gamers was the first TTRPG comedy of its kind. We had seen RPGs in movies before, but it was never positive. The films always treated it as something clandestine or weird. We wanted to embrace the hobby and the players because we were gamers ourselves.
1
[8:29 PM]Matt Vancil: Any show that wants to showcase the positives of the TTRPG gamer experience is fine by me. I think it’s fantastic that the hobby has gone so mainstream and is now considered something cool. What a turnaround!
@RephathWhat’s the biggest film budget you’ve worked with before?
[8:29 PM]Matt Vancil: I actually can’t say. I’ve signed a lot of NDAs.
[8:29 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Actually, I think the gamers in E.T. seemed relatively normal back in the day.
[8:30 PM]Matt Vancil: Good point! I’d forgotten that bit.
[8:30 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (Even if they did grab kitchen knives to go face the “monster” in the backyard.)
[8:32 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Do you find it more difficult doing gaming humor when you get further away from a “normal” (very relatively speaking) gaming setting to something like Dorkness Falls, and is that even a concern at this point?
[8:35 PM]Matt Vancil: That’s a great question, because you’re getting at what any creator of a series needs to do to keep the audience interested while not repeating themselves. The keys are authenticity and escalation, but that escalation has to be logical. It can’t just be a bunch of random stuff happening, and it has to be motivated — the situation must make logical sense.
[8:36 PM]Matt Vancil: One of the challenges of the earlier movies was stakes. There was nothing at stake for the players in the game world — their entire party could be horribly killed, and while the players would be annoyed, they’d walk away fine. So it was critical to create real stakes for the players themselves within the fictional framework of the game. The separation of the game and real worlds also lent itself easily to the absurdist humor that’s at the heart of these movies.
[8:38 PM]Matt Vancil: So, with Dorkness Falls, the stakes are easy — it’s life and death for the gamers themselves, trapped as they are inside the game. The humor benefits from that. Pro tip: no one in a comedy thinks they’re in a comedy. They don’t think anything happening to them is funny. That’s why it works. If they found their own circumstances amusing, that would break the spell and take us out of the story.
[8:39 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Good point.
[8:39 PM]Matt Vancil: As for gaming humor, we have tons of it. It’s just a different sort. The players are still abusing player knowledge, but this time they’re doing it to meta-game their way through the quest. The whole movie is swimming in meta.
[8:40 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I think that’s why many comedy TTRPGs don’t work quite right: They don’t get that it’s the players (as the “actors”) who have to do the heavy comedy lifting.
@Matt VancilAs for gaming humor, we have tons of it. It’s just a different sort. The players are still abusing player knowledge, but this time they’re doing it to meta-game their way through the quest. The whole movie is swimming in meta.
[8:41 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Nice. I can see that.
[8:41 PM]Matt Vancil: It’ll still make sense to a non-gamer audience, but for folks in the know, it’ll be that much more authentic. It’s similar to how you don’t need to know anything about Star Trek to enjoy Galaxy Quest, but if you are a Trekkie, the experience is just that much more amazing.
[8:41 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Yeah, I get what you’re saying.
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)I think that’s why many comedy TTRPGs don’t work quite right: They don’t get that it’s the players (as the “actors”) who have to do the heavy comedy lifting.
[8:42 PM]Matt Vancil: Exactly. Drama is not the opposite of comedy. The opposite of comedy is farce, which is comedy where the characters don’t take themselves or the world seriously. Think Marx Brothers, Three Stooges…
[8:43 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe):
As an aside, I think the funniest comedy TTRPG session I ever had was with the Red Dwarf game, and that’s because the game presented an amusing setting without making it farcical and depending upon the actual participants to bring the comedy.
[8:44 PM]Matt Vancil: And the opposite of drama, for anyone who’s curious, is melodrama. Melodrama is drama where the characters don’t take themselves or the world seriously. Best examples? Soap operas and professional wrestling.
[8:44 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (Did my last paragraph show up as red to anyone else?)
[8:44 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (Did it even show up? I was talking about Red Dwarf.)
[8:45 PM]Silverlion: That’s odd
[8:45 PM]Linkmaster General 🔗: no, it didn’t show
[8:45 PM]Matt Vancil: No, I didn’t see it
[8:45 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): As an aside, I think the funniest comedy TTRPG session I ever had was with the Red Dwarf game, and that’s because the game presented an amusing setting without making it farcical and depending upon the actual participants to bring the comedy.
[8:46 PM]Merkwerkee: If it’s red, message failed to send permanently
[8:46 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Yeah, something odd’s happening. Also, welcome to Randomworlds, @Merkwerkee!
[8:46 PM]Matt Vancil:
[8:46 PM]Linkmaster General 🔗: discord doesn’t want us talking about Red Dwarf.
[8:47 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Not just me, huh?
[8:47 PM]Merkwerkee: It was a real bear to get into the server, as well
[8:47 PM]Linkmaster General 🔗: nope
[8:47 PM]Merkwerkee: Nope
[8:47 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Hmm. Well, I guess we’ll press on. Looks like clicking the “retry” button works if you get the red text.
[8:48 PM]Matt Vancil: Cool. I’ll try that next time.
[8:49 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Let’s see, what was I going to ask…
[8:49 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh, I remember!
[8:50 PM]Silverlion: Huh..
[8:50 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Let’s say Bill Gates or the like decides to back your Kickstarter for a bajillion simoleans or whatever… How would you make the most of it in this movie?
[8:51 PM]Matt Vancil: Oh wow
[8:51 PM]Matt Vancil: There are actual medieval villages in Europe, I think in Romania and the UK, that have been restored and renovated for film crews. I’d take us to one of those.
[8:52 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh, that would be cool.
[8:52 PM]Matt Vancil: They have actual for real castles in Europe. One of the challenges we always face on these productions is finding suitable locations that we can dress and decorate well enough to look like dungeon corridors or castle walls.
[8:53 PM]Matt Vancil: Also, if there was enough left over, I’d take at least enough to film the pilot of my next project. If not the whole first series.(edited)1
[8:53 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Wise man!
[8:54 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Out of the existing movies, what is your favorite gag?
[8:54 PM]Matt Vancil: I don’t know that I have a favorite
[8:55 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Probably like trying to pick a favorite child, I suppose.
[8:55 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I know mine, at least:
[8:55 PM]Matt Vancil: Yeah, I’m drawing a blank. Don’t have a fave.
[8:56 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): The Wall of Dead Bards.
[8:56 PM]Linkmaster General 🔗: Earlier you mentioned that Dorkness Rising is Lodge’s story, and Hands of Fate is Cass’ story. Is there a main protagonist in Dorkness Falls?
[8:56 PM]Merkwerkee: It’s not just this server either
[8:56 PM]Matt Vancil: Exactly
[8:56 PM]Silverlion: That was fun.
@Linkmaster General 🔗Earlier you mentioned that Dorkness Rising is Lodge’s story, and Hands of Fate is Cass’ story. Is there a main protagonist in Dorkness Falls?[8:56 PM]Matt Vancil: No spoilers
[8:57 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (Since I think the server ate my comment) My favorite gag was the Wall of Dead Bards from 2.1
[8:59 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Mainly because as a kid, I can recall players who would have tried that multiple copies of characters trick.
[8:59 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): @Matt Vancil What is your own history with TTRPGs?
[9:01 PM]Matt Vancil: I was introduced to D&D with 2nd edition. My grandparents — my conservative grandparents — got me the 2nd ed PHB for Christmas when I was twelve. I was blown away and I never looked back.
[9:02 PM]Matt Vancil: I was always more of a reader than a player, though. I cut my teeth on the Endless Quest and Lone Wolf gamebooks of the mid 1980s.
[9:02 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (brb)
[9:02 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (back, sorry)
[9:02 PM]FightDesigner: Does the fact that the real characters are in the world mean that the design and world have to be more realistic and less goofy, or is that just the world they got sucked into? Inquiring minds want to know…1
[9:04 PM]FightDesigner: Will there still be things like giant cats, or random changes based on knocked over minis…?
[9:04 PM]Silverlion: My mom was a devout Baptist. And she read the red box, and said “You know the difference from reality and fantasy?” “Eye roll, yes mom”
[9:04 PM]Matt Vancil: The goofiness was more due to the players’ creative abuse of the rules than to an inherent silliness in the world. That said, I cannot rule out the presence of giant cats.2
@Matt VancilI was always more of a reader than a player, though. I cut my teeth on the Endless Quest and Lone Wolf gamebooks of the mid 1980s.[9:04 PM]Silverlion: I loved Lone Wolf, and EQ, and Fighting Fantasy.
@SilverlionI loved Lone Wolf, and EQ, and Fighting Fantasy.[9:05 PM]Matt Vancil: Those were the BEST! I also loved Grail Quest and Narnia Solo Adventures.
[9:06 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): You said that The Gamers: The Shadow Menace deals with the game characters from the original The Gamers in the real world. Will Dorkness Falls touch on what happened to the PCs that the players got swapped with at the end of Hands of Fate?
[9:06 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): There were Narnia Solo Adventures?
[9:07 PM]Matt Vancil: No. That storyline is being explored in Gamers the Series. Trying to address that story thread in this movie as well would have led to a massive muddled mess.
@Matt VancilThose were the BEST! I also loved Grail Quest and Narnia Solo Adventures.[9:07 PM]Silverlion: I once stumbled upon the romance version, Hearts Quest (for girls.) I love the idea. But didn’t buy it because poor
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)There were Narnia Solo Adventures? [9:08 PM]Silverlion: Yes.
@SilverlionYes.[9:08 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): They must not have been advertised very well. Maybe the publishers thought they were Narnia business.
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)There were Narnia Solo Adventures? [9:08 PM]Matt Vancil: Yes! And they had a great mechanic that I’d never seen in a gamebook before. The map at the front of the book was a grid. Each grid had its own mini sequence of possible choices, and when you completed it — or when you bonked on it because you hadn’t completed necessary requirements — you got to choose to move to an adjacent map square and begin the mini quest there. It added a whole new level of player agency.
[9:09 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Huh! I’ll be darned.
[9:10 PM]Matt Vancil: https://gamebooks.org/Series/List
@Matt VancilNo. That storyline is being explored in Gamers the Series. Trying to address that story thread in this movie as well would have led to a massive muddled mess.[9:10 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Wait, I thought you said that the fantasy characters in Gamers the Series were the ones from The Gamers. They’re the ones from the Dorkness trilogy?
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)They must not have been advertised very well. Maybe the publishers thought they were Narnia business.[9:11 PM]Silverlion: Do you remember book advertisements in the 80’s/90’s?
[9:11 PM]Matt Vancil: Not quite. The characters in Gamers the Series are the PCs who survived the original Gamers short.
[9:11 PM]Matt Vancil: The Dorkness crew is an entirely different party
[9:11 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Ah, so you’re saying it would be too confusing to have two groups of fantasy PCs in the real world.
[9:13 PM]Matt Vancil: That’s exactly it. That, and I learned the hard way from Hands of Fate not to have too many subplots. Can you imagine crafting a narrative with nine separate character arcs, each one of which has been building for years, and needs a satisfying and definitive conclusion? You’d have time for that in, say, an 8–10 episode limited series, but not in a feature.
[9:13 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Yeah, that makes sense.
[9:14 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh, just because someone asked me this the other day: What is the relationship between The Gamers, the Dead Gentlemen, and Zombie Orpheus Entertainment?
[9:18 PM]Matt Vancil: The relationship is a continuation of a group that formed in college. Before there was Zombie Orpheus, there was Dead Gentlemen Productions. And before Dead Gentlemen Productions, there were the Dead Gentlemen, a group of bohemian college students who met at coffee houses to vent angst and lament being single. We also gamed a lot. That group made our first two movies, the horror comedies Demon Hunters (1999) and Demon Hunters 2: Dead Camper Lake (2000) with no expectation of careers in film or that we’d still be making movies 20+ years later. The Gamers was my first foray into directing, and it led to the formation of both of those production companies.
[9:18 PM]Silverlion: I would watch an entire series about Dorkness rising characters (the game characters)1
[9:19 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): So Dead Gentlemen Productions became Zombie Orpheus Entertainment?
[9:20 PM]Matt Vancil: Zombie Orpheus grew out of it. ZOE calved off when DG got bogged down and had trouble producing films, and carried the torch for a decade.
[9:21 PM]Matt Vancil: ZOE, DG, Cabin 9 — the production companies may have changed, but the core of that group hasn’t. It’s still the same folks, with the same passion, but now with actual years of experience!(edited)
[9:22 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I’m trying to recall… Does Don “Silent Jim” Early appear in any of The Gamers films?
[9:22 PM]Silverlion: That’s cool!1
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)I’m trying to recall… Does Don “Silent Jim” Early appear in any of The Gamers films?[9:23 PM]Matt Vancil: He does! He’s hard to spot, but he’s in the final throne room scene in Dorkness Rising.
[9:23 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Ah, cool.
[9:23 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): (My wife has a crush on Silent Jim. grumbles…)
[9:24 PM]Matt Vancil: Heh.
[9:24 PM]Matt Vancil: They always go for the strong silent type.
[9:24 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Right?
[9:24 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): She was so happy when she got her picture with him at GenCon.
[9:24 PM]Matt Vancil: Don was born to play that character
[9:24 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): He really was.
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)(My wife has a crush on Silent Jim. grumbles…)[9:24 PM]Kage: It might be the “Silent” part of that. 2
[9:25 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Speaking of Demon Hunters, were you involved in the TTRPG based on those movies, and if not, have you ever considered creating a TTRPG of your own?
[9:26 PM]Matt Vancil: I was involved in the first version of the RPG, but not the second. We actually filmed a Demon Hunters Orientation Video for that RPG. It was a lot of fun. Let me see if I can track down a link…
[9:26 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh yes. That orientation video was perhaps the funniest thing you guys have ever done, IMHO.
[9:27 PM]Matt Vancil: Oh, thank you! Can’t seem to find the film, though…
[9:27 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): “You magnificent son of a birch.”
[9:27 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I know where it is!
[9:28 PM]Matt Vancil: As for RPGs of my own, I had a phase — I think we all did — where I wanted to make my own games. I dinked around with rules systems and world-building, but I was always better at the narrative stuff than the rules.
[9:28 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): https://www.zombieorpheus.com/demon-hunters/Zombie Orpheus EntertainmentZombie OrpheusDemon Hunters – Zombie Orpheus EntertainmentDemon hunters kill demons, dragons, and other things that go bump in the night in order to keep the people of the world safe from harm.
[9:28 PM]Silverlion: Me too.
[9:28 PM]Silverlion: But that hasn’t stopped me.
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)”You magnificent son of a birch.”[9:28 PM]Kage: I have never been more interested if that’s a joke of the quality that I can expect from this mysterious “Gamers” thing,.
@KageI have never been more interested if that’s a joke of the quality that I can expect from this mysterious “Gamers” thing,.[9:28 PM]Matt Vancil: Unfortunately, it is.
[9:29 PM]Kage: Oh, no. I’m very much serious that it is a selling point for me.
[9:29 PM]Kage: I will have to look up that link that Beelzebubbles gave me.
@KageI have never been more interested if that’s a joke of the quality that I can expect from this mysterious “Gamers” thing,.[9:29 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): It’s regarding a gunman who is a tree. Or perhaps a guntree. Or maybe a naughty guntree — a sintree.
[9:30 PM]Kage: Well, etymology of sinister and all that.
[9:30 PM]Matt Vancil: Tree is his own man. And he’s what happens when the script is due in the morning and you’re shamefully drunk.
[9:30 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I can see that.
[9:30 PM]Kage: I think you mispelled “proudly”.1
[9:30 PM]Matt Vancil: Same with the snowman
[9:31 PM]Matt Vancil: We had to give the snowman a scarf because otherwise you couldn’t see his raised middle finger1
@KageOh, no. I’m very much serious that it is a selling point for me.[9:32 PM]Matt Vancil: “Beelzebubbles…” was that a Black Adder reference?
[9:32 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Well, I don’t know how you’re doing for time, but since we’re at two hours, I should probably ask if there’s anything we haven’t covered that you’d like to bring up. (And you are more than welcome to hang out and answer questions as long as you like!)
[9:32 PM]Matt Vancil: I’ve got some time
@Matt Vancil”Beelzebubbles…” was that a Black Adder reference?[9:33 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): He was referring to @Beelzedude, a long-time regular here.
[9:33 PM]Matt Vancil: Until 8pm my time
[9:33 PM]Matt Vancil: Ah, gotcha.
[9:33 PM]Matt Vancil: Black Adder is my all time favorite sitcom. Hands down.
[9:33 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): It’s pretty awesome.
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)He was referring to @Beelzedude, a long-time regular here.[9:33 PM]Kage: But he will always be Beelzebubbles to me. And, yes, it was a Blackadder reference.
[9:33 PM]Matt Vancil: Woo hoo!
[9:34 PM]Kage: Though I have a sneaking suspicioun that something was mentioned in the (?) fourth Discworld novel by that name, too.
[9:34 PM]Kage: Something about Death’s horse being called “Binky”. I’m probably misremembering as it has been a long time since I read those books.(edited)
[9:35 PM]Kage: Ah dear lord, I’m going to regret this but it was just a drive-by comment. Back to night-working on professors’ courses. Have a great rest of your conversation and respective times of day.(edited)
[9:35 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): So The Gamers was you guys doing something for a goof… How did you find the actors for Dorkness Rising?
[9:35 PM]Kage: s
[9:35 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Take care, @Kage!
[9:36 PM]Matt Vancil: We held auditions. They were posted to the local theater call boards. We saw several dozen folks over a few days, and most of the core cast rolled out of those.
[9:36 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Were any of them already gamers?
[9:38 PM]Matt Vancil: Yes. Some were active, and some had played in years past, but most everyone had at least some TTRPG experience. I think that’s why their auditions felt so authentic — they were playing the experience, not the negative stereotype of how gamers behave.
[9:39 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): That’s cool. I was going to follow that up by asking if they weren’t gamers, how hard was it for them to get into that mindset. Sounds like that was a non-issue, though.
[9:40 PM]Mike Coxon (Striker, ZGF): that’s what I was about to ask – of those who had no experience, how did they go?
[9:40 PM]Matt Vancil: They adapted pretty quickly. I remember seeing the light bulb go on — “Oh, it’s a play within a play!” — and they were set.
[9:40 PM]Mike Coxon (Striker, ZGF): ah the Black Vegetable is back, I…I mean Black Adder1
[9:41 PM]FightDesigner: Jumping back to the tree from Demon Hunters… was it a… carnifer? Conifore?
[9:42 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): It was a tree who would give you what fir.
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)It was a tree who would give you what fir.[9:42 PM]Mike Coxon (Striker, ZGF): oh god, he’s at it again
[9:42 PM]FightDesigner: The needler gun… that was a different early RPG… what was that sci fi game? Can’t remember now.
[9:43 PM]Matt Vancil: It was a fake Christmas tree, which is why he never shed any needles. He also broke apart in the middle, which meant we could “puppet” him to lean, look, and twist in reaction. It was hilarious.
@FightDesignerThe needler gun… that was a different early RPG… what was that sci fi game? Can’t remember now.[9:43 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Gamma World.
[9:43 PM]FightDesigner: Ah, Star Frontiers!
[9:43 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh, that, too, probably.
[9:43 PM]Matt Vancil: The big issue was, where was his face? We solved that with a hat and gun. That created enough of a “face” to communicate where he was looking at and reacting to. Such a dumb, wonderfully absurd character, and it worked because Nathan played that shit straight.
[9:44 PM]FightDesigner: Kept it rooted in reality?3
@FightDesignerKept it rooted in reality?[9:44 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): You’ll do well here, @FightDesigner.
[9:44 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Take a bough.2
[9:45 PM]FightDesigner: Glad the reaction is laughter and not wreath.1
[9:45 PM]Mike Coxon (Striker, ZGF): yes, yes otherwise the oak would be on him etc1
[9:45 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): @Matt Vancil What other TTRPGs have you played, and of them, which one(s) would you like to make a movie about?
[9:45 PM]FightDesigner: On Hands of Fate, we had a Red Card system/perk for Kickstarters, which were often called on puns…
[9:46 PM]FightDesigner: Ooh, good question.
[9:46 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Thank you!
[9:47 PM]Matt Vancil: The RPGs I enjoyed playing the most were the ElfQuest RPG (Chaosium, circa 1984?) and James Bond 007 (Avalon Hill, 1983). Don was/is a huge Bond fan and ran the campaigns with poise, panache, and flair. I played my favorite character ever in one of his campaigns.
[9:48 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Oh, yeah, I’d imagine that Don is a great GM.
[9:48 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Or should I say, Silent GM?
[9:49 PM]Matt Vancil: But if I had to make a movie out of a game, I would go with Lee Garvin’s Tales from the Floating Vagabond (1991). That game was madcap farcical crazy genre-bending adventure, and I loved it. Imagine Hitchhiker’s Guide meets Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon but with pulp adventure heroes and space Nazis. I had the chance to meet and get to know Lee at a couple of Gen Cons. Still hurts that he’s gone.
[9:50 PM]Matt Vancil: I think I loved that RPG so much because one of the two most formative computer games I ever played was Leather Goddesses of Phobos, a text-based Infocom game from, I think, 1986. I somehow got my 8-year-old hands on a bootleg copy and I played it on lewd mode. Learned a lot of new vocabulary. Anyway, I played that game for literally years before I finally got a printout walkthrough when I was in high school, which let me finally finish the game. Good times.
@Matt VancilBut if I had to make a movie out of a game, I would go with Lee Garvin’s Tales from the Floating Vagabond (1991). That game was madcap farcical crazy genre-bending adventure, and I loved it. Imagine Hitchhiker’s Guide meets Callahan’s Crosstime Saloon but with pulp adventure heroes and space Nazis. I had the chance to meet and get to know Lee at a couple of Gen Cons. Still hurts that he’s gone.[9:51 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Did you know that his friends recently published the long-lost 2nd edition?
[9:51 PM]Matt Vancil: The other most formative game was The Fool’s Errand. It remains unchallenged as my greatest video gaming experience.
@Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe)Did you know that his friends recently published the long-lost 2nd edition?[9:51 PM]Matt Vancil: I didn’t know it was out! I backed it, but lost contact after he passed. Thank you, I need to look that up!
[9:52 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Yup! It’s on DTRPG. I even reviewed it already.
[9:52 PM]Matt Vancil: That makes me so happy.
[9:52 PM]Matt Vancil:
[9:52 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Right? Lee ran it for me and some other folks at GenCon years back, and I thought it was lost forever.
[9:53 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Lee was a good guy, and a frequent guest here. I considered him a friend and miss him.
[9:53 PM]Matt Vancil: Let’s raise a glass to him tonight
[9:53 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Good idea!
[9:54 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): So after Dorkness Falls, do you have anything else coming down the pike that you can discuss?
[9:56 PM]Matt Vancil: I have a few projects in development. The next most likely one is the second season of Liberty Cabbage, our sketch comedy show with a loose meta narrative. We just released our digital rewards to our backers, with physical rewards due to ship later this month after the discs are replicated. We’ll release it to the public on Amazon Prime and YouTube once all the backers have received their rewards.1
[9:57 PM]Matt Vancil: You can watch the pilot episode here: https://vimeo.com/578578216VimeoYour Lame FriendsLiberty Cabbage Season 1 Pilot
[9:57 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Random question: In your own mind, do The Gamers and Demon Hunters exist in the same universe?(edited)
[9:57 PM]Matt Vancil: Oh yes
[9:58 PM]Matt Vancil: In my own mind, everything exists in the same world. Demon Hunters, The Gamers, JourneyQuest, Hopjockey, The Fatal Frontier… all of it is, or at least once was, part of the same umbrella universe
[9:59 PM]Matt Vancil: And with that, I must depart. Thank you @Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe) for the invitation, and for hosting!
[9:59 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Thanks so much for joining us, @Matt Vancil!
[9:59 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Usual reminder: If you’ve enjoyed this Q&A and would like to treat me to a coffee or two, you can do so at https://www.ko-fi.com/gmshoe. Anything’s appreciated! Ko-fiBuy Dan Davenport a Coffee. ko-fi.com/gmshoeBecome a supporter of Dan Davenport today! ❤️ Ko-fi lets you support the creators you love with no fees on donations.
[9:59 PM]Kieyotie: Thank you for your time!
[10:00 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): Sorry we got off to a slow start!
[10:00 PM]Dan (Hardboiled GMshoe): I’ll get the log posted and get you the link! If you can’t stick around for a minute, I’ll give it to you on FB.1
[10:00 PM]Matt Vancil: My pleasure! And no worries! Thank you for having me on, and for spreading word about the campaign! It would be remiss of me not to share it: http://www.dorknessfalls.com/KickstarterGAMERS 4: DORKNESS FALLSYou seem trustworthy. Would you care to join us on our noble quest?