Welcome! Come on in! This is a handshake, a how-do-you-do, a kiss on the cheek in the French way. Bienvenue, my friend. Consider yourself GREETED. This episode is like an instruction manual for the show, so If you've got no idea what's going on, or if you just wanna hang out with the cast for a few minutes, this is for you. We try to keep it short and to the point. We do...okay!
Welcome! Come on in! This is a handshake, a how-do-you-do, a kiss on the cheek in the French way. Bienvenue, my friend. Consider yourself GREETED. This episode is like an instruction manual for the show, so If you've got no idea what's going on, or if you just wanna hang out with the cast for a few minutes, this is for you. We try to keep it short and to the point. We do...okay!
tl;dr We use games to help us improvise stories, then we make a big "thing" about it, and you can listen to that "thing." This show is that "thing." If you're digging it, if the vibes are righteous, you can get even more of us and the things we make on our Patreon. It's an incredible deal. Everyone says so.
We are
Produced, designed, and scored by Taylor Moore at Fortunate Horse
Album art by the great Corey Brickley
Transcript of this episode available here.
Worlds Beyond Number
Welcome to Worlds Beyond Number
Erika Ishii
This is the sound of Worlds Beyond Number.
Aabria Iyengar
Welcome to Worlds Beyond Number, a podcast where we use games to tell stories.
Lou Wilson Woooo!
Aabria Iyengar
I'm Aabria Iyengar.
Erika Ishii
I'm Erika Ishii.
Lou Wilson
I'm Lou Wilson.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
And I'm Brennan Lee Mulligan.
Erika Ishii
And we are four best friends who want to tell stories together. Our backgrounds are in voice acting, improv, sketch comedy, actual play, and just general nerdy media of all kinds.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Hell yeah. Worlds Beyond Number represents a chance for all of us to tell many different kinds of stories together. Long form, epic, spanning over years, short form adventures that last for just a single episode, perhaps. Comedies, tragedies, dramas and mysteries, and everything in between. And we're planning on telling those stories using the medium of games.
Erika Ishii
Brennan, why games?
Aabria Iyengar Ooh!
Brennan Lee Mulligan
It's a great question, and thank you for asking it for me, because it is in the script. But we didn't assign it to anybody.
Erika Ishii Oh, okay.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
But it's great. But you did exactly what you—
Lou Wilson
Wait, it's not just the question we ask and then, I thought it was the overall, like, header for the next section.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Well, it is the header, but Erika correctly spotted that someone needed to actually say it out loud.
Erika Ishii
Yeah. Why? And I'll tell you why. [Cast laughs] Because, We're going to be using—
Aabria Iyengar
It was a rhetorical question we were all inflicted with. Thank you.
Erika Ishii
We're going to be using a specific kind of game known as tabletop role playing games, which, generally speaking, is—how do you say, using chance in order to guide where our stories go.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Yeah, it's the kind of thing where people might know some famous examples of tabletop role playing games, or games like Dungeons and Dragons, Vampire: the Masquerade, Blades in the Dark. There's a bunch of games like that where you're playing characters going on an adventure, but then the game has rules for how those characters deal with action and combat and intrigue and drama and all that stuff.
Erika Ishii
Yes. And we want to use TTRPGs to tell stories for two reasons. One, and most importantly, they are very, very fun. And we are fun people who like fun.
Lou Wilson
We are fun people.
Brennan Lee Mulligan We love fun.
Erika Ishii
And two, by rolling dice and using rules, we get to be on the same side of these stories as you, our audience. Meaning that we just, we don't know what's going to happen. Characters that we have been
playing for years and have invested so much love and time and effort and energy into their lives could hang by a thread and be determined by the roll of a dice. So that's exciting for all of us.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Yeah! We are spending a lot of time telling stories about people that could die because we roll a low number on a die.
Aabria Iyengar
When you say it like that, this becomes less fun and more stressful.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
[In a low, growly voice] I think it becomes more fun. Muhuhahaha!
Aabria Iyengar
Well, our first campaign—
Lou Wilson
Aabria. Why can't I say one thing?
Brennan Lee Mulligan
You! Have to! No, Because—
Lou Wilson
I don't have anywhere in the script to talk. It goes Aabria, then Brennan's going to talk. And then oh, I get half of the end, okay.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
This is full espionage. What's happening?
Lou Wilson
What are you talking about?
Aabria Iyengar This is a mutiny.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Lou took advantage of the fact that when we were assigning parts, we were not rolling the microphones, and we specifically kept offering—
Lou Wilson
Do not believe the lies.
Erika Ishii
Lou, want to take number five. "No, Erika, you should do it."
Lou Wilson No.
Aabria Iyengar
You're taking my number
Lou Wilson
Exactly. That's what happened before. Okay. Aabria. Go ahead. Take number five.
Aabria Iyengar No, you do it.
Lou Wilson No.
Aabria Iyengar You do it.
Lou Wilson
I don't want to fight. I don't want to fight on the mic, all right.
Aabria Iyengar
Not in front of our friends. Our first campaign, the Wizard, the Witch, and the Wild One, is going to be using Dungeons and Dragons, fifth edition.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
And we got tons of other games that we're going to play and use after that for—
Aabria Iyengar Oh hell yeah.
Brennan Lee Mulligan —many years to come.
Erika Ishii
I'm really excited. I've never publicly run a real big-girl game in there.
Aabria Iyengar
That is actually how they're known. Big Girl Game.
Lou Wilson
Big Girl Games.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Yeah, we all love a Big Girl Game. Look, but you also just ran your first campaign, like, a month ago, right?
Erika Ishii
Yeah. Well, it was a one shot where you play a criminal bear and you have two stats. It is criminal and bear. And I read it for my girlfriend in her household, and everybody showed up all dressed up because they knew I was nervous.
Aabria Iyengar
Honey, heist is an absolute banger of a game. So good.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Can we play a multi year, honey heist?
Erika Ishii
Oh, my god. We are just always looking for the next big score.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
I want one of us to be the Danny Ocean of bears.
Aabria Iyengar
Erica will play a tardigrade. Water bear.
Erika Ishii
Oh. My. Goodness.
Aabria Iyengar
Tell me I'm wrong. Look me in my eyes and tell me I'm wrong.
Erika Ishii
We are legion. We are immortal.
Lou Wilson
They're only cute because they're small. I feel like if you make one big, then it gets really scary.
Aabria Iyengar A nightmare.
Erika Ishii
Be like a giant wet bean bag.
Brennan Lee Mulligan Yeah.
Aabria Iyengar Eww!
Lou Wilson
Well, we've ruined this. Cancel it, I don't wanna do it anymore.
Aabria Iyengar Shut it down!
Lou Wilson
No Danny Ocean bear.
Erika Ishii
Honey Heist! Get in the comments!
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Get in the comments. Well, hey, tardigrades notwithstanding, and feel free to look them up, by the way, they are adorable, but only, again, if they're very, very little. If you like what we do and I encourage you to go check out—it's possible that you're listening to this when it's the only thing on our public podcast like RSS feed. But probably you're listening to this some amount of time after that when there's already a lot of episodes available and tons of adventures already for you to go and listen to and we're so excited and thankful that you would come and check them out. And if you have checked out our work and you like what we do and want to know more, I would just say consider joining us over on our Patreon. We have so much more bonus content, which the cool kids call Bone Cone.
Erika Ishii Oh, no.
Aabria Iyengar
We put it on episode zero! They know our secret words for this.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
They know our secret words
Erika Ishii
I am the King of Bone Cone!
Brennan Lee Mulligan
Cones of bone as far as the eye can see. But if you like what we do here on the podcast, you can check out so much more extra behind the scenes stuff available over on our Patreon. For our first campaign, the Wizard, the Witch and the Wild One, which is our initial adventure, a surging epic saga in a land of magic and wonder. You can check out on the Patreon already, we'll have the children's adventure, which we're going to have coming out. Either it's probably already out or it's coming out. As you're listening to this.
Aabria Iyengar Already out.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
You will be hearing the children's adventure, which is the story of our three main characters of our first campaign: Ame, Suvi and Eursulon, their entire adventure as children and the magical summer they spent together at the cottage of Grandmother Wren, the kindly Witch, Q&A's and aftershows for our episodes will be coming out of the Patreon, exclusive miniseries, Oneshots. Early access to tickets and merch, character creation, art, stat blocks, et cetera. All that and more will be waiting for you by the Fireside. So please come and join us and hang out if you want all that cool behind the scenes stuff.
Lou Wilson
So we've now gotten to the part where I get to talk, but Brennan fully said my line in number six. He just fully stole it, so I guess I'll just repeat it again.
Brennan Lee Mulligan
First of all, your line, you only claim half a line.
Lou Wilson
I want everyone to know I am creased. As you begin your saga with us following episode zero. I am creased.
Brennan Lee Mulligan True gremlin behavior.
[A fiddle lightly plucks fades in a sweet jaunty tune]
Lou Wilson
We are SO excited—
Erika Ishii
[Quickly, cutting in] to share this adventure with all of you!
Brennan Lee Mulligan Yay!
Lou Wilson Yay.
Brennan Lee Mulligan What a bit.
[Plucked fiddle fades out]