The SomethingSomethingCast

There’s a podcast I really enjoy, and if we’ve ever talked podcasts with guests, I’ve almost always mentioned it. It’s called Film Reroll and the premise is pretty simple. Take a bunch of actors playing GURPs, but have them play out movies. The DM builds character sheets and plots based on the film, and sometimes if the dice go well, the heroes play a game that is similar to the movie. If the dice fly off the handle, the heroes may not get beyond the first action sequence. (One particular movie of note has this amazing ..but we didn’t even get to the movie.. moment) The final variation is the one where the players and plot go in wildly different directions from where the movie went or includes rules that allow for other plots and characters.

It’s fun. Tons of fun. It makes me want to play games in movie worlds. It makes me want to build an entire Planescape Cineplex Quantum Leap game where the characters won’t know what movie they’re in until .. well, until they know.

So I thought I’d give a little list here of some of the movies I have pondered building a roleplaying scenario around. Every single one of these movies has crossed my mind on being interesting enough to make a good ‘Reroll’ and I yearn for the day I get a chance to try them out.

Tremors – This has been the one flick I always go back to. Aside from the fact it is a favorite horror franchise of mine, it is such a great gaming scenario with a cool selection of characters with diverse skills. What’s the goal? To get away? To kill the Graboids? To warn the government?  Hell, I could imagine a game where the dice went sideways where the real goal is simply to figure out what the hell is killing people!  What happens when your party decide to go traversing in the tunnels or try and discover where these things came from!?  It’s my gold standard for what a cool Reroll game could be.

Nightmare on Elm Street – The first thing that’s great about the Nightmare franchise is that you have a whole big bucket of characters to work with. Sure, you could play Nancy and Glen… but what if your group were playing as the parents?  If I was to run this movie, my players would all be the kids, but the first session would be them as their parents confronting the real human of Kreuger. We know that because they burned him in the boiler room he is what he is… what if they drowned him? What if they poisoned him? What would the Nightmare Creature be in a world where the parents decided his fate differently?

Reservoir Dogs – One thing to note in Rerolls is that sometimes you have to change the rules so you can fight meta knowledge. It’s real easy to know who the snitch is if you started playing Dogs… so what if the players didn’t know?  One of you is a psychopath… but which one? Every player starts the game with a quirk and a private win condition, so when the game starts you don’t know who anyone is and the game is all the better for it.

Die Hard – Lastly, what if you turned an entire movie on its head. Instead of you playing as John McClane, what if it was the reverse of Tremors, where you are a group of bank robbers trying to pull the best job, but this one superhuman cop is just in your way?  Or, to play in an entirely different game, you were the hostages and this war is going on between good guys and bad guys all around you? Or, to give you one last bit to chomp on, one player is the hostages, one player is the cops, and one player is the media. Can you find ways to work together or is it just a bloodbath?

What movies do you love that you think would make a great roleplaying campaign?  Let us know in all the usual places!

The Anniversary Strikes… THE WHEEL with a list of 9 oriented topics, we spin the wheel, make the deal… annnnnnnd – BAD MOVIE DRAFT!

That’s right – Hatton and Podcast Rob are picking the best of the worst and letting you decide precisely who wins.  What was the worst? What was the best? Does one being better make it the loser? Did you like any of this dreck? How do you decide?

Head over to our TWITTER page and vote in the pinned poll!

Well, you’ll find out the rules, how to play, and the obvious winner by listening to this episode of…. THE WHEEL: BAD MOVIE DRAFT

Ok, here we ..god I’ve seen so many of these..

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Hey Somethings!

I know we don’t talk a whole lot about sports on our show, but I’ve been thinking about some blog topics lately, and today, I’m listing off the Most Memorable Sports Moments that, in some way, I was witness to.

Super Bowl XLIII 

I’ve been a Pittsburgh Steelers fan all my life, and this game ranks up there as one of their most memorable. Second quarter, Steelers leading 10-7 and on defense up against their own goal line, Arizona Cardinals QB Kurt Warner fires off a shot to receiver Anquan Boldin with 18 seconds left.  Steelers Linebacker James Harrison had faked a blitz and fallen back in coverage, intercepting the ball a yard into the endzone and begins to run it out.

What started as a fortuitous interception became the (at the time) longest return for a Touchdown in NFL history as the 6 foot tall, 245 lb Harrison ran the distance along the sidelines, his teammates blocking the whole way, to score a touchdown and put the Steelers up 17-7 at the half.

James Harrison runs 100 yards for Touchdown

Tony Hawk hits the 900

The time?  1999.  The place?  X Games V.  The TV coverage should have ended, but no one was going to deny Tony today.  Standing at the top of the half-pipe, other skates banging their trucks against the coping in time with the crowd cheering him on, Tony dropped in.  Attempt after attempt he failed, twice landing on his board only to have it slip out from under him.  One of the announcers can be heard saying “We know time is over, but we make up the rules as we go along.. let’s give him another try”.  It took him 10 failed attempts, but on the 11th he landed it, and I have to say, I don’t think I’ve heard a louder crowd pop when he did.  Watching the video still gives me chills.

Tony Hawk hits the first 900

The Intimidator at Daytona

Yes, this last one is a tragedy, but because of it an entire sport made amazing changes to do an even better job of protecting their drivers.

Daytona 500, Daytona Florida, 2001.  February 18th.

Daytona, like Talladega, is a restrictor plate track for NASCAR, designed to limit the top speed of cars on these super fast tracks.  in 2001, they instituted some new aerodynamic packages designed to keep cars bunched up and closer together, therefore allowing for more drafting and more exciting racing.

Headed in to Turn 4, final turn of the final lap… Dale Earnhardt Sr. was in 3rd behind Michael Waltrip and Dale’s son, Dale Jr.  Contact with Sterling Marlin sent Sr’s car up the track and in front of Ken Scrhader who collided with Earnhardt as both cars sailed up the banked turn of Daytona.  Dale slammed head on into the outside retaining wall at about 160 miles an hour before both cars slowly rolled back down the track to the infield grass.  Waltrip would win the race with Jr. second as infield safety crew raced across the grass to Dale’s car.  Dale was quickly taken to Halifax Medical Center where he was pronounced dead.  Less that 2 hours later, NASCAR President Mike Helton had to make the most devastating announcement he’d ever have to make.

2001 Daytona 500 Final Lap

– PCR

With 9 movies on the books, the Fast & the Furious Franchise, fun to say five times fast, seemed like the perfect spot for us to flex our Year 9 Anniversary muscles and go back behind the wheel to breakdown all of the hard turns the series have made.  How much is a drag? How much does the series drift off course? These are car puns.

Have you tire’d of these yet? Fine. I get it.

So – join the Somethings as they take nine movies and put them into a ranking… what sits atop the mountain? Only one way to find out – on Something in Review: Fast Ranked!

A minor note – we mention a couple of graphics Rob and I did years ago, when discussing Fast 7, the Seven Deadly Cars… here’s some examples:

Ok, here we go… but for family.

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Ok, yeah – Rob got to do his thank you letter to celebrate, so I’m doing one too.. sorta..

Quite a few of you came to the Somethingcast from my time over at Inside Pulse, with another podcast I did, or perhaps didn’t do, depending on if they deleted the evidence like I requested…

After doing professional wrestling news and shenanigans for a bunch of years, like a lot of us have, I got sick of it. When you are reading wrestling and comic book news day in and day out, you really stop enjoying it at all. What’s exciting when I know precisely who is showing up in the Impact Zone? Where’s the fun in being aware of the direction the entire company is going towards for Wrestlemania next year?  It just drags you down, so for that and a few other reasons I only talk about when I’m drunk, after doing it for less years than I’ve done this show, I bid adieu to the fine world of cutting edge wrestling and comic reporting.

It took two years before I got it stuck in my craw that I wanted to talk into a microphone again. The idea hadn’t been bobbing in my brain for long at all when I went to a local watering hole and I bumped into a guy I hadn’t seen in – no bullshit – fifteen? twenty? years.  We had a drink, shot the shit, and I invited him to Wild Pig Comics to play some games and spent the time in between deciding if I wanted to get back into podcasting. (spoiler… i did)

The rest is the last nine years of goofing on Lost, Sleuuuuuuththths, the Mysteries of the Universe, and throwing anything at the wall to see if it’ll make us laugh.

That said, I’ve had the occasional person ask me to guest on their show or I’ve hosted a burlesque show with a co-host, and not a single one of them holds a candle to the chemistry Rob and I have. We joke about it, and it is true, that he and I have entirely different ethos about getting shit done and what should work and what doesn’t. He throws an idea and I shoot it down because of some off the wall complexity. I throw an idea and I can tell immediately in his voice he has no interest in it.. and, let’s be clear, the times I get my way, he’s usually right. (Why you people don’t want to watch the last episode of Small Wonder is utterly beyond me…) Somewhere in the middle though, there is this vein of gold that we don’t always hit, but sometimes you walk away from an episode going ‘Dammit, that was a good time…’

Anyway, Rob went out of his way to thank all of you – and I obviously do too, but it’s rare I talk about my side of how we got to where we are and thank Rob for making it as good as it is.

So thanks to all of you, and thank you Rob.

Happy Birthday Somethingcast!

Ok, here we go and go and go and go and go and go and go and go and go! (That’s 9, you don’t need to count)

First off – it is Year 9.  Every year, the Somethings celebrate another year closer to the heat death of the universe with a celebration of all things Something. To start us off on our anniversary (which, if you look up is the pod-ery anniversary….. get it?) we have joined forces with a friend of the show of years upon years – Cthulu’s Prodigy (@cthulhusprodigy) from Blacker than Black Times Infinity (@bthanbti)

What are we going to talk about – video games!  What games though? What about games that you think deserve another lease on life? Another chance at stardom?  Games that you think the world wants to see again… or, maybe just you do – either way, we are tackling gaming remakes we want, even if you don’t.

Let the celebration begin!

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Hey Somethings, PCR here!

What a crazy train ride this has been!

9 Years

5 different studio locations

Numerous format changes

Over 340 episodes

Over 50,000 downloads

I’m gobsmacked.

If ANYone told Hatton and I 9 years ago that we’d still be going in 9 years, and we’d have gotten to talk to some of our favorite creators/tv personalities because of this show, we’d have thought they were crazy.  Hell, we still do.

This show has meant a lot to us both over these past nine years.  It’s been a creative outlet, a social outlet, an emotional outlet…  I know personally it’s gotten me through some rough and dark times, but we.. and it… are still here.

We’ve met so many amazing people through this show.. people we otherwise would have never gotten to interact with, and that is something I will always cherish and be thankful for.  It has gotten us opportunities that otherwise wouldn’t have been possible.  It has gotten us friends that we otherwise never would have met…  all because 2 guys wanted to hear themselves talk.

For all those who’ve been on our show, Thank You.

For all those who’ve had us on their show, Thank You.

For all those who’ve recently found us and said “Huh.. let’s see what this is all about”, Thank you.

For all those Twitch Streamers we connected with, Thank You.

And for those of you who were there when we started… whether you never missed an episode, took a break, or are catching up on the backlog, Thank you.

I know it sounds repetitive, but.. my head is still spinning that we’ve been talking for 9 years… and people have been listening.  YOU are the true legends, and we wouldn’t be here without you.

Do we have another 9 years in us?

Let’s find out….

OK HERE WE GO!

Boss! The Pod, The Pod!

If you think we are travelling to a beautiful holiday paradise, hanging with Tattoo, and making someone’s dreams come true… guess what, that ship sailed like three seasons ago, apparently. You see, walking into Fantasy Island, knowing very little about it – the Somethings learn quite a bit about what it means to have your dreams come true.

Also what its like to build a woman out of a dress mannequin. Also, a lesson about surrogacy from Charo.

What the hell is this show?!

Find out next on The End: Fantasy Island

Ok, here we deplane…

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Oh no – it’s the Steam Summer Sale again… please help me, no.

Amusingly enough, I recently came into a lot of different video games, so I’m really loathe to look through the endless deals that are going on in Steam. Playstation changed their whole monthly service, meaning instead of the two sub-par games they were providing you every month, you now have a library of games available to you for a couple bucks more.

I have faded a bit on playing console games, but when I saw some of what they offered, I paid upfront for the year and we’ll see what I think when it comes time for renewal.

Here’s the games I downloaded first.

GUARDIANS OF THE GALAXY – This was up front top of the list on their advertising, and for good reason. It’s a game that sold very well, so they probably aren’t losing a lot of money in giving it away. For a budget gamer like me that was waiting for the price on this to drop to below $30 to now get to play it for almost free? Easy.

Anyway, it’s an almost on-rails action game with a ton of character. They really went somewhat deep into the comic lore, blending it with the movie lore so it’s fun for everyone and they don’t have to pay Chris Pratt for likeness licensing.

GHOSTS OF TSUSHIMA – This is the game I installed first. I have head nothing but good things, and with already 8 or 9 hours in, I get it. It’s Dark Souls combat, but easier. It’s Grand Theft Auto with samurai. It’s gorgeous landscapes and mythology. The fact that the world isn’t as engaging as something like Red Dead doesn’t matter when I’ve stopped to watch flowers bloom as I ride my horse across the world.

CHOCOBO MYSTERY DUNGEON: EVERYBUDDY! – It’s a loot-grinding dungeon crawler with rogue’y elements. Originally for the WII, it features big fluffy Chocobo in outfits as you give them classic Final Fantasy job classes. My wife, looking the list with me, looked at me like I had two heads as she is downloading the zombie world Days Gone, and I’m squeeing like I just got let out of elementary school early because I get to play with Chocobos.

So do you do Playstation Plus? What are you downloading. Tell us in all the usual places. Till then – this has been Hatton.

Have you ever watched a cartoon or a show, heard a jingle, remembered a piece of trivia that you could swear up and down was exactly how you remembered it, only to find out that not only are you wrong, but you are wrong with a whole slew of other people who think they remember it your way too?

Yeah, welcome to the Shadow Realm… aka, the Mandela Effect.

So grab a book about a family of bears, get your clearing house check, and find out if we.. or just you… are going to need a bigger boat.

Ok, here we go!

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