#wbn: wwwo

[multifandomexpialidocious]

WBN Spoilers! Ep036

🚨 SORCERER ALERT 🚨

This was such a great ep! I, too, would have cast Shatter like Suvi. That, Mage Armor, and Shield are some of my favorite early-level spells. What a boost from Ame and Eursulon. But that ending!!! Whadup first NPC sorcerer of the campaign!

Hoping to know more about this new character. Hope he/she/they has great character design. (And why are they, a sorcerer from one of the high houses of Gaothmai, here, in the frontlines?) Hoping to know more about Gaothmai’s sorcerous oligarchy. Hoping to know more about how sorcerers view magic and spirits from the way wizards and witches do. Hoping we get a new sorcerer subclass. But most of all, hoping for a mage battle with this new sorcerer!!! MAGE BATTLE! MAGE BATTLE! If he/she/they can cast Banishment (which I think he/she/they did), they should be at least Level 7, which outclasses all our party members. Yikes. CAN’T WAIT FOR THE NEXT EP!

[easays]

This Shawl, This Chair: Materiality and Worlds Beyond Number

Hi! Below is an actual play mini-essay. These are written as part of a personal writing practice of thinking critically about actual play. I hope you find this reading engaging and know that all I write reflects my own interpretations rather than as an official representation/canonization of these shows. Keep reading for thoughts on Worlds Beyond Number, an audio-only actual play show, and how it crafts a visceral, material experience.

For an audio of this mini-essay, please click this link. I'm new to audio recording, so please excuse the quality!

CONTENT WARNING: Discussions of parental death, discussion of grief (general) Minor spoilers for episode two and seventeen

Ahead of @worldsbeyondpod Arc 3, I've been thinking about what sets this show apart from so many. Charlie Hall at Polygon recently showcased that WBN leans into Dungeons and Dragons, giving them free rein in playing the show without focus on combat because once they arrive at that combat, the system is already there. I think Hall's astute observations help articulate why WBN has retained (and grown) its Patreon (and wider audience), even though it's an audio-only, every other week podcast that takes month long breaks between arcs. None of these factors are bad, but the questions of audio versus visual, pacing, content production, and audience engagement are part of every actual play's design. It takes what we think Dungeons and Dragons can be, breaks down those assumptions, and builds something better. To me, this is best seen in how its narrative crafts masterclass materiality without using visuals or minis of any kind.

WBN taps into materiality often. Materiality is a fancy term for the physical properties of an item being considered as essential or important to the significance of the item. It's something I'm constantly aware of. The show builds its world through the hyper-individual experience of these three characters, tapping into how human experience is being woven into and through each other. The world of Umora, from its earliest moments in the show, come to us through the sensory experience of a small girl, held under cloth. The listening experience can be overwhelming at times, jetting back and forth between the interiority of the characters, the setting of Umora, and the endless material pieces mediating the interior and exterior. The cast and the sound design (thanks to Taylor Moore with additional design from Michael Gelfi studios) work in tandem to stoke the audience’s minds eye towards the embodied experience of being in a world that is simultaneously only your experience and impossibly infinite. Unsurprisingly, then, is the show's ability to tap into material in new, innovative ways, even as an entirely audio medium.

Aabria Iyengar was the first person I heard use the phrase "paint me a word-picture." Whether she originated (or not) the phrase, the kenning-ness of it sticks out to me as capturing the thrill of "theatre of the mind" actual play done at the level WBN has achieved. A word-picture gestures to both the process of creation and the creation as completed, simultaneously. Word, in this instance, is the ephemeral improvisation of the performance; picture is the scene completed. Alternately, word is the inscription of that picture, already completed in the player's minds-eye, waiting to be described. The way the phrase collapses created, waiting to be created, and being created captures perfectly how materality becomes weighted and real through the lack of visuals and minis and battlesets.

My personal affinity for materiality stems from what I've always called "Southern mausoleum decorating." Like Ame, I grew up in a home filled with dressers, beds, mattresses, couches, photos, clothes, books, and other physical items connected deeply to people and sentiment. Specifically, the winding thread between myself and various dead relatives across both sides of my family often strung itself through these objects.

I hail from Missouri and Arkansas (paternally) and the Carolinas (maternally). Growing up believing this kind of home decorating was normal fit right alongside knowing it's the humidity that gets you, not the heat. Right now, the oldest thing in my home is a 90 year-old horse hair wingback chair that belonged to my great-grandmother, then my mom, and now, me (though it's been reupholstered a half dozen times). When Suvi scavenges her favorite, slightly-threadbare shawl from Grandmother Wren's cottage in episode two, I was a bit struck because Aabria Iyengar (who plays Suvi) showed perfectly how an item, carried from home-to-home, accrues meaning rather than changing. Her word-picture in that moment contained her childhood, her present grief, her home in the Citadel, as a site incongruent to said shawl, all simultaneously. Transporting that item with her to the Citadel creates a rip in time Suvi might (or might not) access later and goes beyond the momentary solace of holding a piece of her fictive kin.

Thinking of her summer at the cottage or even to the night her parents were lost, those precious last moments of being held under a different cloth, Suvi exists in multiplicity to the audience as well as to her fellow player characters. This character depth through materiality speaks, in my view, to how WBN shakes up the expectations of a Dungeons and Dragons-based show. Combat is not trotted out to make the world or more real, and there's no mini for anything, from the shawl to the Citadel. Suvi's reality and her Citadel justification machine (a self-described mechanism on Iyengar's part) is not given to us primarily through movement speed or action economy. Rather, it reveals its self methodically: a shawl, from a cottage run by a witch, carried to Port Talon and beyond, stretched across Suvi's bed*, nestled in the heart of a Wizard of the Citadel's tower, a thread jutting through space-time, signifying to us and Suvi how many ways to be "out of place" in the Citadel. Over time, I've accumulated new furniture and items that are just mine, like Suvi does in her tower, but I constantly orbit around and to that chair. Some days, I can't sit in it for too long because the black hole of grief from losing my Mom comes hurtling up through the wood, the springs, the fabric. Others, I sit in for hours, cocooned. I wonder often what other objects in Suvi's world mock or tease or beckon or enamor her.

I poke and ponder about Suvi likely because, of all the characters, I identify with her most directly. In future, I hope to write more on Erika Ishii's striking portrayal of spirituality as communal responsibility, or Lou Wilson's tender, grief-filled approach to found family, or Brennan Lee Mulligan's portrayal of the Fox as a narrative tool. But for today, three days after what would have been my Mom's 64th birthday, I sit in my chair, writing about that shawl, forging what feels like connections to a world beyond this.

*Covering the current Witch of the World's Heart, but that's another GlassHeart post for another time.

Image description: a wingback chair, with pink fabric that has gold filigree, is centered in frame, against a tall, terracotta colored wall and abstract painting

[heartub]

ERIKA ISHII IS A CRANE WIVES DND GAY THEY'RE JUST LIKE ME FR THIS CEMENTS MY STATUS AS AME IS LITERALLY ME IM LITERALLY HER ME AND AME WE'RE SO CURSES BY THE CRANE WIVES CODED

[easays]

quest fever coded

[ribbittrobbit]

The adventures of the Wizard Sorrow & Boshi (working title): a WBN Umora OC comics collab with @yeehawpim!!!!!

Pim did the story + layout and then let me run wild (and pop in at odd hours with questions about Boshi's design) See Pim's mad composition genius + OC lore over here Sorrow lore here & here

👀 more to come perhaps 👀

[chillinglikeashilling]

I do think the funniest part of the Coven of Heart subclass in the WBN Witch class is that they can replace spell components with things like the laughter or tears of a loved one because I know the wizards fucking hate that shit.

I had to do the equivalent of a magical thesis defense, and memorize a million spells, and keep track of a trillion different spell components; and yet those fucking Witches with their TWEE BULLSHIT get to make their friend laugh instead of growing mushrooms under the exact right conditions in a process that can take months at a time and is incredibly easy to fuck up?

At that point me and the entire metaphorical concept of magic itself have to scrap.

[rebe-draws]

Dear Worlds Beyond Number, ask and ye shall receive. CHALLENGE ACCEPTED!! 5’2 baddie in a corduroy hat comin’ up!

Fan-art of Morning Wrensong, Witch of the World’s Heart 💖✨

please enjoy the following details: ❤️sleeves buttoned up with heart charm, ‘wears heart on the sleeve’ motif

❤️teacup holster because of course

❤️taro rooster feathers in hat!

❤️red thread interwoven in outfit and hair, as a sort of ‘the thread that connects us all’ note

[heartub]

worlds beyond number level up is a little birthday present for me yipeeeee the sound design is a little pre birthday treat man Taylor is so cool I'm thinking about getting into sound design in addition to music industry bc of wbn & taylor

We know you're all waiting in anticipation for WWW Arc 2, but to fill that void in your heart, we've got a hefty slate of content coming out in September and October!

Sept. 12th: “A County Affair” Ep. 1 (public feed)

Sept. 14th: “Cram Daniel” Ep. 1 (Patreon exclusive)

Sept. 19th: “A County Affair” Ep. 1 Fireside (Patreon exclusive)

Sept. 26th: “A County Affair” Ep. 2 (public feed)

Sept. 28th: “Cram Daniel” Ep. 2 (Patreon exclusive)

Oct. 3rd: “A County Affair” Ep. 2 Fireside (Patreon exclusive)

Oct 10th: WWW Arc 1 Recap + Questions Fireside (public feed)

Oct. 11th: Wavebreaker and Telemet Art and Stat Blocks (Patreon Exclusive)

Early October: Witch Class Release (Patreon Exclusive)

Oct 17th: Sound Design Scoring Talkback (Patreon Exclusive)

Oct 19th: Level Up!!!

Oct 24th: WWW Arc 2 Premiere

If you haven't already, consider signing up for our Patreon at $5 a month to get access to all this sweet bone cone.

We're super excited for the next few months, and we hope you are too!

[yeehawpim]

WWWO Fireside Chat: ep31 "The Souvenir"

[cowgirls-blues]

"I am the Wizard Sky." What power then, that that great firmament might rain down. […] Whose weightless weight we bear each day upon our shoulders. […] Wisdom in the watchfulness of a constant partner, ever above, defined by its distance. […] A partner, in a dance, to sustain the world forever. […] The sky holds all things. Let it be known that vastness is yours. Those who have destiny curse it, but what burden, to be able to chose any path under the Sun.

@quiddie please tell her I love her!!!

Making my way through @worldsbeyondpod and it very quickly took its place in the pantheon of my very favorite stories, ever. PS I am still at the beginning of arc 2, please don't put spoilers in the tags when you reblog, thank you!!

[heckblade]

diversity win! the shapeshifter who betrayed your best friend’s parents is asian! and hot!

[scims-stuff]

Just realised i never posted this- did this for a queer art showcase a few weeks back

(I'm lowkey financially cooked rn, so literally any donation towards my ko-fi is very much appreciated)

[easays]

okay hear me out

new acofaf season but with the WBN cast

I desperately need Suvi and Ame in a tangle of Bridgerton-level angst while Eursulon does his best to honor himself and honor "honor" as a concept

and the fits?! the fits would be immaculate

[heartub]

somebody needs to tell me what the silly announcement is for wbn I have to pay attention to this silly little bard class

[morningtou]

clever wizard

[ribbittrobbit]

Indri, the Witch of Wind and Stars and Mirara, the Witch of the Waning Moon

so ready for @worldsbeyondpod to give me psychic damage next week