The Gamers

Cover of The Gamers Director's Cut DVD

The Gamers is a 2002 film written and directed by Matt Vancil and produced by independent movie company Dead Gentlemen Productions. It is an affectionate spoof of role-playing games, depicting both a group of gamers playing a session of their ongoing fantasy campaign, and their characters (played by the same actors) in the game world of that campaign.

The movie was very popular on its release and often shown at gaming conventions. It spawned a franchise with several sequels and spin-offs.

As of May 2020, The Gamers is the highest-rated Dungeons & Dragons-related movie on IMDb (although the rpg played in the film resembles but is distinct from D&D).

Plot

In a college dorm, a group of gamers meets to play a session of their ongoing fantasy campaign. The noise often disturbs a girl who lives down the hall, who is trying to study for an exam the next day and repeatedly shows up to tell them to be quieter.

In their game, they are journeying through a world of fantasy and wonder to defeat a being known as "The Shadow" and rescue a princess. This is theoretically a heroic quest, but while the GM attempts to foster a narrative, the players tend to be more interested in their characters' tolerance for ale, trying to apply the sneak attack damage multiplier to siege weaponry, et cetera.

The movie both makes fun of gamer stereotypes and plays the discrepancy between an optimal RPG plot and the events of an actual RPG session for maximum absurdity. Characters attempting something dangerous freeze as the sound of clattering dice can be heard in the distance. The party thief picks the pocket of a bystander, then steals that bystander's pants—not because he wants the pants in any way, but solely to see if his skill statistics allow it. One character, while present, does not interact with the others for most of the game, as his player is absent. When an unlucky dice roll causes the death of one character, the other players' characters mourn him for a moment, and then immediately start squabbling over the items he was carrying. Characters spring to action, then keel over as their players forget and are reminded that the characters are asleep, players argue and make snack runs, and their game is frequently interrupted by a girl from the same dorm who demands they keep quiet so that she can study.

The Shadow is eventually defeated, after a long quest, and the characters find themselves in a strange tunnel. On the other side of the door, they hear voices—the voices of their players, who are narrating the action in the hallway outside. Bursting into the room (as dictated by the players), the characters slaughter the gamers, then begin picking over the room for treasure. They discover that their entire adventure has been documented by the "strange sorcerers" they have just slain via their character sheets. In the midst of these revelations, the "Princess" (the girl who needs to study and is constantly interrupted by the gamers' noise) bursts in and reads them the riot act, thinking their outfits to be mere costumes; after she leaves, the adventurers seem quite stunned that their beloved Princess has such a foul mouth and temper.

Style

The Gamers depicts and make reference to many aspects of role-playing and nerd culture, including:

• Character statistics: The stats for the in-game characters are shown at the start of the movie. They each have seven stats (unlike D&D's six), which are Str, Sta, Dex, Int, Gle, Chr, and Luck.
• Player absence: One of the players, Mark (the only named player), is absent for the session, and his character (also called Mark) is shown in the background of the in-game scenes doing nothing. The other players often forget his character is there, at which point the actor is not present in the scene.
• Unhelpful recap: At the start of the campaign, the GM asks who can remember what happened at the end of the previous session, but none of the players can. They all think of emotionally dramatic and personal moments about their own characters, rather than the GM's plot.
• Swingy dice rolls: Rogar falls unconscious after a failed Stamina check from drinking dwarven ale, despite there being only a 10% chance of that result. Later, Rogar (Strength 19) fails to open a gate because of a failed Strength check whereas Newmoon (Strength 4) opens it successfully because of a better roll. (Also an instance of multiple checks, which will in general always lead to at least one success and at least one failure.)
• Inconvenient unconsciousness: After Rogar fails his drinking check, he falls unconscious (is taken out) for the remainder of the scene and part of the next, to the frustration of his player. Later, several players forget that they are asleep during a scene with Rogar receiving a vision; their characters are at one moment involved in the scene, then collapse when the players are reminded that they are still asleep.
• Abusing free actions: When the thief Nimble wants to sneak attack Hunk the mercenary, he considers a dagger, a sword and then constructs an entire ballista behind Hunk while none of the other characters are moving. Later, the GM attempts to use the principle that talking is a free action to deliver a villain monologue, to the annoyance of Newmoon's player.
• Railroading: The GM wants his villain the bandit king to deliver a monologue, but Newmoon repeatedly tries to shoot him before he has finished, which the GM disallows each time it happens. The GM uses surprise rules to justify this, and eventually resorts to rule zero, aka the GM is always right, to make it happen regardless.
• Natural 20: Newmoon wants to attack the fleeing bandit king with his bow, but could only succeed on a roll of 20. He manages to do so to great rejoicing.
• Nerd references: The gamers make several references to nerd media. For instance, after Mark visits temporarily, he tells them "Have fun storming the castle", in reference to The Princess Bride.

Sequels and spin-offs

The Gamers has spawned several sequels and spin-offs, including two feature-length sequels called The Gamers: Dorkness Rising (released in August 2008) and The Gamers: Hands of Fate (funded via Kickstarter and released in 2013).

In 2013 Zombie Orpheus Entertainment in cooperation with Dead Gentlemen Productions and Lynnvander Inc produced two mini miniseries, Natural One and Humans & Households, set in the Gamers universe. Both series mirror the structure of The Gamers by showing both players of a roleplaying game and the fictitious characters they are playing.

Natural One features the characters Leo and Gary (both are main characters in Dorkness Rising and Hands of Fate). The plot revolves around Monica, Gary's sister, who wants to marry her fiancé, Ryan. However, since Ryan is not a geek and an old agreement between Gary and Monica states that both of them may only marry geeks, Ryan has to prove his geekiness by beating a roleplaying game scenario before Gary gives his blessing to the wedding. The fictitious roleplaying game featured in the film is an homage to the popular cyberpunk roleplaying game Shadowrun.

Humans & Households (the title is a reference to Dungeons & Dragons) turns the concept of The Gamers on its head: characters in the fantasy world of The Gamers play a roleplaying game set in our world.

In April 2015, a web series continuation of the plot of The Gamers was announced. Called The Gamers: The Series, the show would bring back and unite the players and characters from every major incarnation of The Gamers so far, leading into a feature-length finale movie (known provisionally as Gamers 4). Season 0, which brought the fantasy adventurers from Dorkness Rising into the real world but mainly focused on what has happened to the adventurers from The Gamers since they were stranded there, was released in December 2015. The first full episode, "Episode 1 - The Shadow Menace", in which a new set of players take over the roles of the original adventurer characters, was released in August 2017.

External links

• Official site
• The Gamers (film) at Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
• The Gamers on IMDb
• The Gamers - The full movie on YouTube