filmreroll

TNMT 2 Part 2

I'm a big map guy. I think that's been discussed plenty in this little column. Maps give clarity and orientation, and create story through proximity. My players don't always get to see the map, but a lot of the story gets built through geography. How do I decide what happens next? I don't have to, the geography decides it for me: They're next to the bad guy's hideout, so they're gonna get spotted. Or they notice a general store, so they go in. Being specific with the space you're playing in d...

TMNT2 Part 1

Love this one. Feels like a return to basics to be doing a fairly silly movie with the original cast. I like it when we go off the rails, but this one we never even got on the train. But enough spoilers . . .

This is the kind of campaign I really love in that there's a clear world and iconic characters, but the plot of the original almost seems unlikely to happen once you put it in the hands of the players. This movie honestly doesn't have much of a plot, so rather than the plot driving...

B-Roll: Thelma and Louise

Ah, the murderous madams ride again with candy bars and curb stomping galore! Come chill while we discuss Thelma and Louise and how much we love this film, these women, and Carolyn's famous rap!

Mighty Ducks Ep 5

Joz: This isn’t a quippy intro because I have to acknowledge something important. We read an email in the mailbag and it sounds like I don’t reply after some very kind things are said about me. I tried but couldn’t because I was so choked up, so I’m replying now.

I see and always have seen myself as non-binary. I’m a me who from a very young age learned to play dress up, and I have continued to for the rest of my life. It’s not my identity. It’s an appeara...

B-Roll Update!

Frens! We will drop the Thelma and Louise B-Roll in the fourth week because of some bugs that were causing partial uploads! It should be fixed now so no worries, you’ll get all kinds of Carolyn and Andy goodness this month!

Mighty Ducks part 4

Joz:  Whoa. This is a crazy ep for many reasons. It was a 24 hr turn around, we couldn’t get Carolyn because of a wedding, Jon decided to set everything on fire, and The Irregulars will skate again in two weeks.

I’m usually the one known for the off the wall choices, so I thought perhaps we would be safe if I was just GMing. This would be a neat three episode arc. We’d have a fun romp and a nice tribute to a silly film. And then I made an off-handed choice that led to a Choic...

Reroll B-Roll: Jaws

Never fear, Jaws is here! Though no one knows how to say it or how to prevent public emergencies, apparently. 

(We're a little out of sync this month on delivery because of other Reroll scheduling, but we will return to our regularly scheduled programming in August!)

Enjoy our friendly needling as we remember our way through the chaos and calamity that was Jaws. We take it super seriously because, as in the rage screamed words of Kara Strait, "a girl has died" - her name was ...

Mighty Ducks 3

This one was a woahmygod. We have been flying by the seat of our poopypants this whole campaign, and this ep was no different. Recorded in two parts at two drastically different times while covering for players who couldn’t make it, I still love the insanity. Did I think we’d have this much poo in the ep? No. No, I did not. Does it still feel absolutely true to both the film and the humor of this screwball era in storytelling? 100%. I have no idea where the Mighty Irregulars are going to ...

Mighty Ducks part 2

Joz writes:

Hey Friends! Film Reroll is a nominee in upcoming podcast awards, and we hope you’ll get your vote on for us- the more awards we pull in, the easier it is to bring “Reroll Live!” to a con near you! In July there’s only one contest, but there’s four categories! Here’s how to help:

Go to podcastawards.com/app/signup from July 1-31, and vote for Reroll in People’s Choice (which is th...

The Mighty Ducks (Part 1)

I have long been a fan of the episodes with a lot of people in them for what they can bring to the story, the sheer number of different ideas and impulses at the table brings a real richness. But they're also a technical nightmare, so I avoid them unless I really can't resist their appeal. I would not have thought to go big cast for a movie like Mighty Ducks, but Joz's instinct was spot-on in that we got a reproduction of the madcap feel of ensemble kids comedies of the 90s.

Sports movi...

Reroll B-Roll: World Building

You've mentioned how you're building and running your own Reroll-style rpgs with friends, and we love Rerolls with frands, so we thought it was a good time to let you in on a little more of our processes, how we run games, how we set everything up, and what we do when things start to go awry!

(There's even a special guest who you haven't heard from in a while!)

Last Action Hero Part 4

Big thanks to Lisa for taking over blurb-writing duties:

A LESSON IN LISTENING

It's done! It's out there! It's over! ...For now....

What an incredible experience it has been taking the reins on a reroll. As many of you know, I was a listener to the podcast long before I joined the cast, so it is absolutely wild to me that I even get to be on the show, much less be in charge. It was listening to early episodes and seeing the complete and total off-roading that was possible wh...

Last Action Hero Part 3

It's hard to write blurbs for these when I didn't run them. Normally I have so many thoughts about what an episode could have been or where it could have gone or what the challenges were in creating the world that even at 3am when I'm writing these little blurbs as I wait for the upload to complete, I have too many thoughts to get out coherently. But as a player often my only thought is "That was fun."

Jack Slater is kind of a challenging role to play because he's a meme. Last Action He...

Reroll B-Roll: Speed

Somehow we got far enough off-topic that we reached Rescue Rangers and Talespin. Why was everyone needing a rescue in the late 90s/early aughts? Did Rescuers Down Under spark that trend?

Anyway, we tackle Speed. Which we wrapped up with great speed. So much so you could accuse us of being on speed, but you would be wrong. We're just a bunch of idiots with gusto.

I never know, starting these conversations, where they will go. We're all used to being candid on air now, and Kara defi...

Last Action Hero (Part 2)

We had our first con this past weekend (that's the main reason this episode is late). It was a ton of fun and we attempted to do Film Reroll Live for the first time ever, and in our opinion it was a huge success. I always thought this show might be a bit tricky to do live because there's no way to cut out the dice mechanics but I was completely wrong. The energy we got from interacting with the cloud and hearing laughs in the room as we played really brought us to the next level. We hope to d...

Shift in release days

Hey everyone!

You may have noticed our recent regular release schedule, and while we’re gonna stay regular, we’re just adjusting the time frame, so now Reroll eps will drop on the 1st and 15th of the month, and B-Roll on the 7th. The next Last Action Hero should drop tonight or tomorrow (the wi-fi at the con clearly could not handle our ridiculousness), and then the new schedule resumes with Speed on May 7th. We’re shuffling and planning for future projects, so thanks for...

Reroll B-Roll: Frozen

Frozen was the first time we really felt like we were finding a groove. It was the first time Jon ran a reroll, and I think we all benefitted from exploring our play styles in the framework of a different GM. It also proved to us just how crunchy and also how versatile GURPS is- it may seem like an unending set of rules (because it kind of is), but to effectively play in a certain world, you can get so specific about only what you need and leave the rest. As Jon does here, he selects the rela...

Last Action Hero

Yeah, so the next two movies both have a lot of people in them and are hard to schedule, it became clear that we were not going to have either of them ready in time to meet our schedule, so we brainstormed and remembered this movie that we had started just pre-pandemic and interrupted. We had always intended to keep going with it when we could be in a room together (it felt odd to do in-person and remote within a single movie) but then we kind of forgot about it. So when we were brainstorming...

Quick scheduling note

We'd told you guys that Mighty Ducks was next, but for scheduling reasons we weren't able to get that campaign ready in time. As such we've decided to complete a campaign we were working on before pandemic put a stop to live-recording.

The next movie we release will be . . . Last Action Hero!

Time Bandits 4

Time Bandits part 4 is up! I'm not sure if everyone likes the format of a campaign that comes back whenever it wants to, but I think it's fun in the context of the type of movie Time Bandits is (and the campaign we're running), and you have no idea how much easier it makes our lives to have a campaign that we can bring in for one episode whenever we need to plug a gap that we couldn't get the next thing schedule in time for the next release window. We are slowly rounding into form from the ol...

Reroll B-Roll: Labyrinth

Hey frambz!

We're back to recap Labyrinth! And we have Jon as a special guest so he and Paulo could get all nuts and boltsy about some deep game mechanics and world-building approaches. Hope you enjoy the chatter!

And Tulkon is coming up at the end of April in Tulsa, OK! We're so excited and so grateful to Scott Richardson and crew for making this all possible! We'll see you there with our kickin boots on!

Bear Hugs!

Aliens Part 5

Love what Jon did with this one. Action movies are actually kind of hard to keep interesting, because they can be so dice intensive, keeping action interesting and varied is a very different skill than doing scenes with characters, or running exploration or adventure. Action scenes can easily bog down, and the strategic process of grinding out a fight is a lot more fun for the player than for a listener, so there's a lot of care and energy that goes into keeping those types of scenes engaging...

Tulkon 2022!!

Hey Rerollers, we’re going to our first con Apr 29-May 1 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, for Tulkon 2022! Paulo, Joz, Kara, Andy, Jon, and Scott will be on fun panels! Kara might wear cute shirts! Jon might scowl the whole time! Paulo might sing! We might fuck up some movies up along the way!

Aliens part 4

I love when characters that I make up either in planning or off the top of my head become important to the story. But my favorite is when a character who was in the original movie but who had a tiny part becomes important. Of course the classic example of that is Danny Hodges. But Aliens is full of these, and not to call out one of my own characters, I've fallen in love with Private Ricco Frost.

I bring up Frost really to talk about a different topic, which is game balance: Balance is a...

Reroll B-Roll: Raiders of the Lost Ark

Guess who's back? Back again.

This time we relive Raiders, with all of the ptsd that came from opening the Ark. (It really did just belong in a museum.)

Enjoy Jon's exasperation (with a short and adorable appearance of the entire Miller clan!) at Kara and Joz's shenanigans, with Paulo occasionally getting a word in edgewise (especially about his apparently murderous plan for the prologue!), as we tromp back through the campaign that brought you #pinecones, Jeremy, an epic drinking...

Aliens 3

We return to Aliens at last! There's a section in the middle you'll notice that doesn't seem to make any sense, where we're laughing at Scott for ruining the edit. And that's because this episode was actually recorded across 2 sessions. The first session had been short and we decided in advance that it wasn't a full episode, so we started the second session trying to get a clean edit point to stitch the two sessions together, but of course, if we ask our actors to do anything technical, they ...

Halloween 3 Part 7

I can't believe we finished this. I mean, I know it's light entertainment, it's a bit of fluff built out from the carcass of some movies from 40 years ago, but there's so much that goes on underneath to make these things happen. The amount of world that goes into my head quickly grows exponentially, and anything like this that started pretty big and went long just feels like it's filling up my brain to keep it all in. Plus the first halloween started before Tim was on board, so I've always ju...

Reroll B-Roll: Back to the Future 2

So y'all have been asking and we finally got ourselves together to discuss the behind the scenes of each of the episodes of Film Reroll!

This first show was a little rough- we routed it through a bunch of tech to make all these awesome little touches happen, and then it wound up jumpy as heck, so, as a preview, we are making this first, slightly Nermal episode available to our entire Patreon base free of charge, no matter what you contribute. From here out however, the Reroll B-Roll epi...

Halloween 3 Part 6

In a previous blurb, I talked about the challenges of writing mysteries into your RPG's, but in that post I was talking about plot mysteries. What about mysteries about the nature of the world? The mechanics of magic and mythology.

From the very first Halloween I took a cue from John Carpenter interviews talking about the Gaelic festival of Samhain being an inspiration for his film, to develop an underlying mythology for my world. Borrowing their idea of another plane beneath the world ...

Halloween 3 Part 5

I didn't foresee Halloween 3 going this long, but here we are. Whatever. It's the end of a trilogy; it's earned it. To be honest, the best approach is always to let a story go as long as it wants to go. But I have an inherent instinct to not let any of these go past four episodes. If we're hurtling past four episodes I always feel like I've overstayed my welcome, but audiences consistently seem to like the longer stories, so it's probably just me.

In general I think longer stories are b...