Tales of the Rampant Coyote

Adventures in Indie Gaming!

The Gamers: Hands of Fate

Posted by Rampant Coyote on August 15, 2013

It looks like this Kickstarter-funded movie, the sequel to The Gamers and The Gamers: Dorkness Rising, is now available for streaming for about two weeks. This is the “festival cut”, so it is not the final, release version of the movie.

The Gamers: Hands of Fate

And hey, my name is in the credits! Along with literally thousands of others…

The Gamers: Hands of Fate follows the same characters from The Gamers: Dorkness Rising. Their regular RPG sessions are not making much progress, as real life keeps interrupting. One of the interruptions (for Leo) is the growing popularity of a collectable card game (CCG), Romance of the Nine Empires, at his store. Cass, who despises CCGs, meets a girl who is a high-ranking tournament player, and begins to play in order to impress her. He finds himself embroiled in the politics of the tournament scene, where tournament winners are allowed to make choices for the storyline and rules for the entire game for the following year.

Overall, I liked the movie, but it’s too long and not as good (IMO) as Dorkness Rising.  I understand they are doing a hyperlinked make-your-own-movie interactive thing with it at some point on youtube, so we’ll see what happens. For the DVD, they’ll have a new, (hopefully) improved “extended cut” version in addition to this one. As I said, this one feels too long as it is, so I don’t know about the extended cut thing.

I wanted to see more Lodge and Joanna, really.  But I guess the last movie was more their story. This one is mostly about Cass. (UPDATE: The filmmakers just announced that the extended cut will feature much more Lodge and Joanna).

I gotta admit, the card game, “Romance of the Nine Empires” (based loosely on Legend of the Five Rings) sounds pretty cool. If convoluted. One of the stretch goals for the movie was for AEG to actually produce the game. It will probably just be a novelty thing, but it’d be funny if it’s successful and takes off.

For a taste, here’s one of the scenes that was cut…

Would I recommend it? To my gamer friends, especially those who have played CCGs, I’d say “definitely.” That would mean everybody regularly reading this blog.

To interested non-gamers, it may be a little too steeped in gamer lore and culture (not to mention CCG convention) to really get into. Dorkness Rising was a little better in this respect, as a non-gamer with a passing familiarity with Dungeons & Dragons could understand most of what was going on, and actually gain a bit of understanding of how RPGs work, and why players love them so much. Could this do the same for CCGs? I’m not sure. My daughter, who has at least been introduced to Magic: The Gathering, had a little bit of trouble following what was going on, but not so badly that she didn’t enjoy it.

 


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