The Gamers Live is a stage show recorded live at GenCon 2012, part of the series The Gamers. It seems to be set between The Gamers: Dorkness Rising and The Gamers: Hands of Fate. Lodge, Gary, Leo, and Cass are playing a side campaign, as Joanna is busy at a tech rehearsal. Guided by suggestions from the audience, they send their characters on a quest for the Vorpal Blender of Mordor. The action switches between the game table and the in-game world, as it does in the movies.
The party for the night's game:
- Cass: Klepty Snatch'n'grab, human rogue
- Gary: Samson, human fighter
- Leo: several characters created with audience input.
- Brutar, dwarf wizard
- Wiejyoudothat (pronounced "Why'd you do that?"), gnome alchemist
- Carl, Borg gunslinger
- Bob, half-ogre cavalier on a pony
- The pony's name is Rainbow Sparkle
Writer Matt Vancil reprises his role as Mitch (Lodge's housemate) and also appears as various characters in-game.
Further live shows, with slightly different casts, have been performed at every GenCon since.
The show provides examples of following tropes:
- Artifact of Doom: The Vorpal Blender of Mordor.Lodge: It's really powerful, and it's obviously evil, and you need to cast it back into the KitchenAid factory that made it.
- Audience Participation: Audience members give suggestions and also come onstage to fill in for characters in the game world.
- Critical Failure: Gary rolls a one during the goblin fight. Lodge tells him the result is that he manages to throw his sword and pull a hernia.
- Den of Iniquity: Crazy Isolde's brothel. With waffles.
- Foreshadowing: When Lodge tells the group about the Vorpal Blender of Mordor, Cass says it sounds like it makes really terrible margaritas. Gary responds, "Really good head-margaritas, though." Later, when the blender is finally found, Gary (as Samson) yells, "Sweet! I'm making some head-margaritas." The guardian statue animates immediately afterward. Samson defeats it by jamming the blender over its head and pressing "puree."
- Fourth-Wall Observer: For the early part of the show, Lodge is the only member of the cast who regularly interacts with the audience. The other characters occasionally ask about the strange noises in his house (applause) or wonder why he's talking to himself when he addresses the audience. As the show progresses, they move closer to No Fourth Wall, commenting on costumes worn by audience members, etc.
- Girl Scouts Are Evil: They're actually goblins in disguise.
- Improv: The whole show.
- Intercontinuity Crossover: Borg showing up in Lodge's fantasy world.
- My Hovercraft Is Full of Eels: Klepty attempts to speak to the goblins in their native language. According to Gary's translations, he actually says, "Wow, aren't my pants shiny?" and "It itches down there."
- Punny Name: Lots.
- Cass plays a rogue named Klepty Snatch'n'grab.
Gary: Oh right, he's from Lower Larcenia, isn't he?Cass: That's right. In Takethatsomethingfromia. Northern region.- The game opens in a tavern in the town of Questsnear—named, as the bartender helpfully explains, for its proximity to quests.
- Leo's second character, Wiejyoudothat.
- Sizeshifter: Crazy Isolde, thanks to an "enlarge self" spell.
- Sole Survivor: After a near-Total Party Kill, the only character left standing is Samson.
- Take That!: The group has switched to playing Pathfinder since Dorkness Rising. At one point, unimpressed by Lodge's GMing, Gary snorts, "If you're not even going to try, we'll play Dungeons & Dragons."
- The Quest: Finding and destroying the Vorpal Blender of Mordor. In the end, Samson decides to sell it to their world's Big Bad instead of destroying it.
- Who Names Their Kid "Dude"?: It goes with all the punny names.
- Lodge's reaction to hearing the name of Cass's character.
Lodge: You're playing a rogue named "Klepty Snatch'n'grab"? That's the name his parents gave him?- When Gary hears the name of Questsnear, he turns to Lodge and asks if he's "just making this shit up."
- Lodge reacts with a disbelieving "Really?" after an audience member suggests the name Wiejyoudothat.
- Written-In Absence: Joanna is busy at tech rehearsal and can't game that night.
- You All Meet in an Inn: Justified in that they're playing a one-shot side adventure and don't have a lot of time, so they don't want to do an elaborate set-up.
