The Film Reroll is a podcast where a collection of NYC based actors and show business types play through movies as table top role playing games using GURPS. Each session starts at the beginning of a movie and rolls forward with divergences coming from the dice rolls. It's a really basic concept and it has no right to be as good as it is but the cast and the occasional run of good or bad luck creates an extremely engaging show. The players are mostly trained performers and it shows in the banter and the acting. It features:
Paulo Quiros: It's his podcast. Not in any sort of formal sense but he is the Game Master for more than half of the episodes and he appears in every single one. Paulo is an absolute powerhouse of creative output as a GM and solid player when he's not.
Pitr Strait: self deprecating, Jon's nemesis, trans woman, deeply insecure? There are a lot of words to describe Pitr. None of them ever fully capture her. She's one of the only people in the world to experience schadenfreude about her own suffering.
Andy Hoover: A very sweet man who plays surprisingly dark characters. If we were assigning members as body parts Andy would be the heart. His commitment to characterization is matched only by his talent at portrayal.
Jon Miller: The man with the plan. Jon is the rules lawyer, optimizer, technical wiz of the crew. He's also Pitr's frenemy and the second GM of the group.
Jocelyn "Joz" Vammer: Imagine a player who mixes the archetypal elements of Manic Pixie Dream Girl, Murder Hobo, Mama Bear and you may have the vaguest notion of Joz. She has the highest kill count of any player by several orders of magnitude.
And Many More: Scott Aiello, Tim Nolan, Carolyn Faye Kramer, Jonathan West, Lisa Kopitsky, Courtney Alana Ward, Lane Moore, Aram Vartian, Steve Jackson, Alex Demers, Daniel Kibblesmith, James D’Amato, Brian McManamon, Luisa Menzen, Mirirai Sithole, Paige Patterson, and probably some I missed.
Notable movies include:
The Wizard of Oz: What started as a charming romp through a dreamland slowly evolves into an epic. Will Dorthy decide to stay in Oz and is she its salvation or its doom?
E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial: The actual film leaves a lot of questions unanswered. The necessity of fleshing out the setting and the machinations of players expand the scope of the story to astronomical proportions.
Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure: An utter triumph of on the fly world building and righteous adventure.
Aladdin": Evil monkey gods, cyclic apocalypses, and perhaps the most convoluted wish in the history of fiction. This one goes so far off the rails they aren't even visible anymore
Ocean's Eleven: Jon devises a modular, flow charted, plan to rob the Bellagio so comprehensive the rest of the crew conclude that he could actually be a master criminal.
Memento: featuring Andy Hoover as Leonard Shelby, Pitr Strait as Leonard Shelby, Joz Vammer as Leonard Shelby, Jon Miller as Leonard Shelby ...
Of all of the podcast I listen to, the Film Reroll is the purest fun. It mixes the raw joy of funny, charismatic people hanging out with the drama of actual stakes. Dice rolls kill characters. Some rerolls terminate in what can only be called the bad ending and even when they don't it's often more bitter sweet or just more ambiguous than a typical motion picture. I've listened to dozens of actual play podcasts and this is the best by a significant margin. You can listen to it here.
IRON NODER XIV: THE RETURN OF THE IRON NODER