Thanks to the generous support of over 4000 fans, The Gamers: Hands of Fate is funded!

ACHIEVED! $325,000 – Every supporter who has pledged $100 and above receives a kickstarter-campaign-exclusive miniature of The Shadow.

ACHIEVED! $340,000 – Every supporter who has pledged $100 and above receives a DVD of The Gamers: Live, plus every supporter gets to see the online video early. See the trailer here.

ACHIEVED $346,000 – Mini Stretch Goal: Hands of Fate is now the second-most funded film on Kickstarter ever and the most-funded narrative feature!

ACHIEVED $380,000 – AEG will produce the 15th Anniversary "Romance of the Nine Empires" Boxed Set, a fully playable card-based set! Additionally, every supporter will receive a card from the game, signed by us.

ACHIEVED $385,000 - We will produce a Brother Silence miniature. The $20 set of minis will include Brother Silence at no extra cost.

ACHIEVED $400,000 - Exclusive The Gamers: Hands of Fate embroidered patches for every contributor!

Original Information:

In The Gamers: Hands of Fate, the cast of internationally acclaimed The Gamers: Dorkness Rising returns for another dice-hurling, waffle-devouring, GM-infuriating romp through worlds of sword, sorcery, and surrealism. In Hands of Fate, the gamers must expand their horizons past pen-and-paper RPGs to explore two whole new realms of geekdom – Collectible Card Games (CCGs) and game convention life – and face off against their arch-nemesis: The Shadow!

What is The Gamers?

From its inception in 2001 in a college dorm basement, the oft-quoted and genre-inspiring The Gamers went on to become a viral online hit in the years before YouTube and is used to this day by role-playing gamers to show why they love gaming. Still beloved after over a decade, The Gamers is considered required viewing in RPG circles worldwide. Its sequel, The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, is a feature film released in 2008 that exploded over Netflix and Amazon. It expanded the world of The Gamers, took an in-depth look at the lives and loves of gamers away from the table, and forever answered that age-old question: who would win in a fight, pirates or ninjas*? Since 2008, Gamers fans has been clamoring for another installment in the series.

And who are you?

We are Zombie Orpheus Entertainment and Dead Gentlemen Productions, creators of The Gamers, Demon Hunters, Wranglers of Death, and JourneyQuest (now in it second season, thanks to the success of last year’s Kickstarter campaign!). We release our shows for free online under a Creative Commons license and are entirely Creator Distributed and Fan Supported.

About the Rewards and How to Pledge

We wanted to offer you some of the best rewards we could, and in fact, many of the rewards that we’ve put together were requested by fans! This is a big project with a lot going on, so we’ll be updating this section regularly to help guide you through all of the choices.

From $1.00-$100, we’ve kept things pretty simple, although note that the first 100 pledges at $100 will receive either screen-featured dice or cards as an early bird bonus.

Above $100, the choices get a lot harder and rarer. (We’ve even thrown in a few unique items. And we may add some rare or additional unique drops randomly during the campaign.) If you’re thinking about pledging at one of those levels, please read the descriptions carefully. The SPONSOR rewards are for companies, gaming groups, or others who want to receive partial or full-screen sponsorship credit on the web release and in the feature credits. Note that some high-level rewards require discussion with Matt before you pledge.

We’re also adding TIPS, EXTRAS, and SHIPPING to this campaign.

A TIP is a $1 pledge that allows you to order certain items a la carte, although any pledge level can also do so. EXTRAS are those items. SHIPPING is to cover international shipping costs. In order to get an EXTRA or SHIPPING, please increase your pledge by the appropriate amount. For example, if you pledged at $50 and also wanted a t-shirt and a Blu-ray upgrade, you would add $10 + $10 to your $50 pledge for a total of $70. If you were also ordering from Canada, you would add an extra $8 for shipping, for a total of $78.

We'll send you a survey after the Kickstarter concludes so you can tell us what you want. Note the differing shipping times on some of the options.

Instructions: when you go to pledge, put the total number you are pledging (including any EXTRAS and SHIPPING) into the box at the top of the page, then select your desired reward level.

SHIPPING

$8.00 CANADA Shipping

$10.00 UK/Europe/Australia Shipping

$12.00 Other International Shipping Destinations

EXTRAS

$10.00 Gamers 3 Kickstarter Supporter T-shirt [Exclusive]

$20.00 The Gamers: Dorkness Rising Special Edition DVD, Signed

$20.00 The Gamers Special Edition DVD, Signed

$15.00 The Gamers: Hands of Fate Soundtrack Download

$20.00 Additional Hands of Fate DVD

$10.00 Upgrade Hands of Fate DVD to Blu-ray or no-DRM .MKV image download

$15.00 E-book editions of Matt Forbeck's "Dangerous Games" trilogy

$15.00 JourneyQuest Season One DVD, Signed

$15.00 JourneyQuest Season Two DVD, Signed

$6.00 Dorkness Rising Miniature: choose from Sir Osric, Daphne, Flynn the Fine, or Luster (double set, male and female)

$20.00 Dorkness Rising Miniature Set, includes Sir Osric, Daphne, Flynn the Fine, and Luster (double set, male and female)

$10.00 Dorkness Rising HD Download (720p .mp4)

$10.00 JourneyQuest Season One HD Download (1080p .mp4)

$8.00 The Gamers SD Download (480p .mp4)

$20.00 Demon Hunters & Dead Camper Lake DVD, Signed

$10.00 "Mask of Death" Module, Color PDF

$15.00 "Mask of Death" Module, B&W Softcover

$20.00 "Mask of Death" Module, Color Softcover

$10.00 Upgrade "Shadow's Dungeon" Module from B&W to Color

$10.00 Mound of Dead Bards Miniature

Mound of Dead Bards – Also comes with extra weapons to stick into the pile

What is The Gamers: Hands of Fate?

A feature film set several years after the events of Dorkness Rising, this film follows Lodge, Joanna, Cass, Gary, and Leo to Gen Con Indy, The Best Four Days in Gaming, to spend four days gaming. It’s an ambitious project that we couldn’t have made until now!

In fact, we shot much of the film at Gen Con Indy in August of 2012 – while this Kickstarter campaign was running – in order to capture crucial footage we could only get at the convention itself.

Following the conclusion of the campaign, we move into preproduction for the rest of the shoot in October and November of 2012, then spend many months in post-production for an online release and premiere at Gen Con Indy in August 2013.

Will my favorite characters return?

Yes! All of the leads from Dorkness Rising and their fantasy counterparts will be returning for the new adventure: Cass (Brian Lewis), Gary (Christian Doyle), Lodge (Nathan Rice), Joanna (Carol Roscoe), and Leo (Scott C. Brown). Jen Page will be returning as Luster and as a new character in the real world. You can count on appearances and cameos from many of your favorite actors from the DG/ZOE community, and we have uncovered some brilliant new talents and characters to share with you.

Why this story?

Of all the stories we considered, this is the one that we felt most passionate about. We wanted to innovate and try something new, while still retaining the comedy and heart of the prior films. (We also start to reveal more pieces of the meta-story we’ve been telling with every one of our projects since the beginning, including how The Gamers ties in with JourneyQuest.)

At the end of the Dorkness Rising, Lodge had completed a major character arc and finally learned to trust his players. In Hands of Fate, Cass must learn how to play a collectible card game in order to impress a girl and to prove there’s not a game in the world he can’t beat.

Who else is involved?

GEN CON LLC – We’re thrilled to have the support of Gen Con LLC, who will not only be allowing us to shoot scenes from the movie around the convention, but have also worked with us to build a truly unique event for Friday, August 17th. The big conclusion of Hands of Fate takes place on a CCG tournament stage –an actual event we will be staging at the con! Attendees can register for the event at this link. In addition to shooting part of the movie, we’ll also be staging The Gamers Live, a live comedy improv event with our cast, where the audience is the GM!

PATHFINDER ­– For years, fans asked us if we would consider using the Pathfinder Roleplaying Game in the next Gamers film. We heard you! Paizo has not only cleared us to use their awesome gaming system, but will be co-sponsoring The Gamers Live at Gen Con Indy, assisting us with distribution, and letting us steal Sean Reynolds for the following tie-in project.

THE SHADOW’S DUNGEON – A killer dungeon crawl by designer Sean Reynolds, this RPG adventure module will feature the dungeon that our heroes have been trying to conquer. We’ve asked Sean to make this as twisted and devious as possible and we’re drawing on the entire Gamers history to put it together. Backers pledging $100 and above will receive printed copies of the adventure!

DANGEROUS GAMES – Renowned novelist, comic book writer, and game designer Matt Forbeck recently completed a Kickstarter campaign for his "Dangerous Games" books, a murder mystery trilogy also set at Gen Con Indy. We spoke with Matt and discovered that with both stories set at the con we had the opportunity to do a really cool crossover: Matt Forbeck and Matt Vancil are sharing scripting notes with each other to allow the character of Leo (Scott C. Brown) to cross back and forth between the novel and the movie! We're offering ebooks of the Dangerous Games novels as an EXTRA below that you can add to your pledge to get the full story of Leo's encounter… with murder!

AEG – We’re huge fans of Legend of the Five Rings, the fantastic storyline-driven collectible card game that helped inspire Hands of Fate. When AEG, the publisher of L5R, agreed to be the in-movie publisher of the fictional CCG, we were elated. Now we’re working with them to develop the look and feel of the game, the card art and design, and the backstory of a fictional game that 15 years of player-guided storyline decisions have created.

About the Romance of the Nine Empires

Romance of the Nine Empires is a fictitious interactive Collectible Card Game set in the fantasy world of Countermay. Players assume command of one of nine vastly different warring factions -- including steampunk aliens, a dark god-king's crusade of conversion, displaced WWII-era America GIs, and a risen empire of the undead -- to expand, glorify, or defend their empires. Through its fictitious 15 year history, players have shaped the world of Countermay through their individual and collective achievements, and the results are reflected in the story and the current state of the empires.

Where can I watch your other projects?

Gamers: Dorkness Rising and JourneyQuest can be seen on YouTube. New episodes of JourneyQuest will be released weekly for the duration of this campaign. You can also watch JourneyQuest on Hulu. Our movies are also available for sale at www.fansupported.net, www.paizo.com, www.drivethrurpg.com, and www.amazon.com

I want to help, but I can’t pledge financially.



That’s okay! You can help us just by letting anyone who might like our show that we’re out here. Tweet us, share us, like us on Facebook—any extra exposure we get helps people who can contribute find our project.



Where can I learn more?



You can find us and ask us questions at the sites listed below. Additionally, you can ask us a question with the “Ask A Question” button at the bottom of the FAQ; we’ll be sure to get you an answer!

www.zombieorpheus.com

www.twitter.com/zombieorpheus

www.facebook.com/zombieorpheus

www.facebook.com/deadgentlemen

*Pirates and ninjas are both defeated by pizza. True fact!