Sharp-eyed readers and hardcore gamers who pick up Dangerous Games: How to Play (my new thriller novel set at Gen Con) may recognize a man by the name of Leo Lamb. Leo is one of the characters from The Gamers series of fantastic and funny films created by Ben Dobyns, Matt Vancil, Don Early, and the rest of the crew at Zombie Orpheus Productions and Dead Gentlemen Productions.
Leo debuted in The Gamers 2: Dorkness Rising as the owner of the gaming store at which the friends in the film play their games. He also appears in the upcoming sequel The Gamers 3: Hands of Fate. Scott C Brown does a fantastic job of playing both Leo and his alter-ego in the crew’s roleplaying game, an ill-fated bard known as Flynn the Fine. Scott also plays the orc professor Strong Like Bull in Zombie Orpheus’s web series, JourneyQuest.
When Matt and Ben were working up their Kickstarter for Hands of Fate, they approached me with a wild idea. They had a spot in the film during which Leo was slated to meander off and not come back for a while. They wondered, since the film was set at Gen Con, if he might be able to wander into one of the Dangerous Games books.
Having loved both The Gamers and The Gamers 2 – and having known Matt and Ben for years through Cindi Rice, former Dungeons & Dragons guru and an executive producer on both films – I jumped at the chance.
When you watch the film, you’ll see Leo stroll into the dealer’s hall at Gen Con. Later he comes out shocked and disturbed, but with little explanation as to why. If you read Dangerous Games: How to Play, you’ll learn exactly what happened to him.
