Fireside Chat for Flight of the Icaron - Episode 2 & 3
The brave Mr. Lou Wilson joins us by the fireside for a deep dive into the first three episodes of the campaign, answering your excellent questions.
A LOT of you asked about sci-fi inspiration. Favorite books, films, and how we think about world building for these campaigns. Jokes on you, we knew you’d want that. Which is why, after Episode 4, we’re dropping something special called AT THE WELL, a fireside entirely devoted to everyone’s favorite science fiction everything.
Oh, and as promised, we have some extra lore goodies for you today.
First up, the gorgeous ship map, designed and illustrated by the incredible Britt Anderson, who absolutely crushed it.
And finally, in full Icaron prep mode, Lou wrote an epic historical account of the world, beautifully designed by Ruby Lavin. (see in attachments, below).
Enjoy, and tell us in the comments what kind of modification you would want. 🚀
Comments (96)
I’d go for auto changing hair 💇🏻♀️ and nails 💅🏼 to fit my mood or outfit lol
I got a kidney stone today, and in waiting for pain meds yall helped me get through it. Thanks yall for all the care and energy you bring into ur art!
Please please just play a slide ball game as a one-shot
ENAMEL PINS FOR ICHARON!!!!!
Also? DM Diary is the best and I want it all the time.
Okay, but ARE we getting O merch?!
As funny as it is that lou's child friend identified his mother as his "father's wife", I think it does demonstrate at a pretty young age a degree of interesting emotional intelligence and investment in the understanding of others. Cause he surely doesn't call his mom that, but he's giving an explanation to someone else who presumably knows his father better and so is giving the info that the kid thinks Lou can beat relate to. In direct contrast to the kids and adults who will only identify people by the speaker's own relation to them.
We simply MUST exist in Grey Space. We got the vibes of Earth, we know Mars' deal (a little too well, really), but y'all made the Belt seem so deliciously weird that it's, all I can think about.
Erika, as someone who loves your work and is making their own way through Ghost of Yotei you’re awesome, Ghost of Yotei rocks, and fuck the haters. Sometimes they just gotta hate and we get to say fuck them.
Ok, but I need the sound bit of Lou cursing everyone for their compliments.
Yes this
Omg "Andre Dalka wore crocs as a little kid" really got me 😂
My favorite part of the pacing in 2&3 is the bit in the middle of the "breaking out of the party" bit where Lou kept Brennan in initiative order even though he wasn't actually in combat. Masterful.
47:00 Spoilers! R.I.P Sloane
Lou’s DM diaries keep making me teared up Y-Y
I too have run headlong into a full glass door and cartoon animation smacked face, did not smash through but landed full starfish on the ground. Bonk!
Lou with the ruthless reveals at the end. Captain Sloan? Oh yeah, he’s dead. And I’m not SAYING you killed Dr Cortez with your cheese chatter, I am implying it heavily ☠️ wow can we get more Lou DMing please?
Will Aabria need to pass the "Consequences DM" crown to Lou?
Vestigial arms had me almost sick with laughter
And with that I'm caught up. I've listened to all the episodes, all the Fireside Chats, and all the bone cone. What do I even do now? 🤣
I need a YouTube short for that Sloane clip
Oh geeze, I mean most of us knew the situation with Kimmel and Lou, but Erika dealing with Ghosts of Yotei harassment is unfortunate that it became such a big negative moment… I was hopeful from what I saw that soooo many people were coming to Erika’s defence during all that, that I really hope that overpowered the negative attention from awful people… and for both those situations to be happening at the same time I never realized… much love and support to you all in the pod from my partner and I!
what's the situation with kimmel and lou? do you mean the harassment that kimmel gets from the right wing? or is it something else entirely?
Jacob can't get enough of being a paladin in real life so he's gotta do it in home games too?
No vowels?? No that was NOT established... Unless I missed something
That reminder from Lou to himself should be printed in large font on all GM screens everywhere
LET ME PUT THAT O ON EVERYTHING. My denim jacket, my hat, in my hair, on a slutty little Hot Topic choker 💖😆
Four-armed Erika is sobering.
I won't lie Lou killing Cortes in the first 3 minutes perfectly set the tone. I was fully expecting the space pirates to be Porco Rosso adjacent cronies
Heads up, on the podcatchers this episode is listed as being a fireside for episodes 1 and 2!
I need a pin that’s just a swatch of toupe 2 in the merch store
Yes😂😂
Make the arms work.
At The Well…merch please❤️❤️❤️
In world merch!? 🤩
I absolutely LOVE this world and when I thought nothing could touch WWW, my heart has opened and created space to love this world just as much, let’s please come back here! Love you guys, thank you for being lights in this time. 🩷
Stopped listening to look at corneal tattooing. Madness. Thanks for sharing, Aabria
The Icaron (Ship) reminds me of Babylon 5 just a very long tube of a ship.
The Brennan slander at the end when the man is on paternity leave is WILD and proves that they are all best friends 🤣
I need a pin of the icharon/O asap!!
I'm now picturing Erika, Aabria, and Brennan all sitting in a circle discussing cheese while Lou is looming over with a huge mallet labeled "PLOT".
My name is Greg and I feel scene
Listening to the conversation about cybernetic body modification and Erica's vestigial arms made me think of the movie American Mary. Has anyone else seen that movie? I usually can't handle body horror but for some reason that movie just delights me.
The Icaron schematic 🤌🤌🤌✨ 😍
OMG SO MUCH LORE AND A MAP?! This is awesomeeee!!
Getting surgery for arms that wave around? And make your life difficult?? Delicious ice cream? Slapped to the ground 🍦 Playing video games? Fuck your controller 🎮 CAN YOU IMAGINE AIRPLANE TRAVEL?! ✈️ stuck in the middle, slapping people on both sides of you…nightmares! DREAM BIGGER, ERIKA!! YOU DESERVE EXTRA ARMS THAT WORK!!! we believe in you!
The fireside is the fucking best 🔥 absolutely cackling from these quotes: “Erika, your free will is too free!” The long silence after “What's everyone's favorite PC in this campaign?” “They're all color-coded and they're all for coke.” “Wait for it to get out of beta, I beg!” “Sloan is his name…and he is dead.” The entire conversation about little old babies! 😂😂😂
Accidentally opened the comments and read the line about favourite PCs before listening. And instantly panicked because I also submitted a question asking who their favourite NPCs are and though maybe I left off the N 😅😅😅😅
The eye color surgery results are SO upsetting!! They always look like they’re possessed by a demonic Siberian husky
On the subject of kids who pick up their grandparent's old timey vernacular, l myself stepped on that particular rake a few times growing up. My gramma didn't call condominiums 'condos', she called them 'condoms', which led to no small amount of confusion and miscommunication in my coming of age. The best though, was when our middle school Spanish teacher had the class split into groups to work on that day's assignment. When she asked my two friends and I if we would be working together, l chirped up in front of the whole class "For sure, we're a threesome!" Suffice to say, once order was restored, l wound up working alone that day
The ""Fun Fact"" reveal that BOTH Lou & Erika were going through their own Dark Night of the Soul during Episode 3 is wild 😨!! Getting caught in the crosshairs of a culture war before leaving for D&D camp? Absolutely harrowing 💀~ Thank you so much to everyone at Worlds Beyond Number for braving this cruel time with care, comedy, and comradery☆
Fight With Spirit slideball bonus episode incoming?
Not sure if anyone has said this yet, but the title of this says its about episodes 1 and 2, and the transcript says episodes 2 and 3
My bad, changed it
As for my mod: subdermal cybernetic tattoos- turn 'em off or on, save a map on your arm, flash the words "Fuck ICE" across your throat, be scary or sexy or informational, be your own little reading light after mom says it's bedtime... the possibilities are endless.
I was thinking an extra thumb on each hand. Next to the pinky. I saw a pic of a robotic one at some point, and the user said with a bit of practice it became pretty intuitive.
I was about to pause the episode to run an errand when I heard my name! I truly did not realize how the phrase "Kiki's pinky" would sound out loud when I wrote the question but I'm so delighted by it.
Funny to hear about the creation of the Mars protectorate. Similarly that's how JPL came into existence. Researchers were told they couldn't blow up rockets on campus at Caltech. So they went to a nearby open space and JPL was born.
GORGEOUS ship.
Thank you so much for the DM advice!!! WBN4EVAA
I need a oneshot in the court of Pharo Gregory asap.
at around 33:00 for the discussion about kids being out of pocket: when i was somewhere btwn 5 and 8, i was playing house with my friend and said she would be the teenager. my friend asked me what a teenager was, and according to my mother i said, "they're kids who think they're adults." and i stand by that
Someone I follow calls the eye color surgery "That surgery that gives you spooky husky eyes" and they're so right
YES!!!! Every damn time!!! Plus, there’s something to be said of the fucking white supremacy of it all that more often than not I’ve seen that surgery for people to get blue eyes
Just saying merch idea - slide ball jearsy lol
Oh my Gosh YES!! One for the Servals and the other for the Hyraxes!!!
Anyone else catch “Commissioned by General: L Wilson” on the Icaron schematic? 👀
Yep! I just couldn't resist adding in a couple names of folks who helped make this series possible 😉
Pin! If you like it then you shoulda put an O on it!
A map!! A timeline!!! Promises of merch!!!! Announcements of NPC deaths!!!!! This Fireside has EVERYTHING
There's a version of this campaign with Jacob Wysocki as a space paladin and we'll never hear it!!?
Add to the memorable Aabria quotes from WBN firesides: “You can put that ‘O’ on so many things.”
Scanning through the historical record has me wondering if and how mechsuit technology could enter into this world. Right now I'm leaning Mars would have it first and have them piloted by bio-engineered child soldiers. 🤔
That blueprint would look lovely framed on my wall.
Who knows what the future of WBN holds - and lord knows I need more W^3 in my life - but if over time all 4 of them get to GM a massive campaign, I won't be mad at all... Lou was saying this was his first time publicly GMing as an entertainment product, and the history, the world, his choices, have made me ALL IN for whatever he would cook up for a full campaign The only thing I don't like about FotI is that it's only 6 episodes
Have to second this. Getting to see your favorite players also DM lets you see their talent so much more in so many different ways, and I hope I don’t have to go back to a world where Lou Wilson only plays one character in a game forever.
“You do this because it is fun. So have fun.” LOU HOW DARE you made me get a little teary eyed with that! 💜
Sloane was just hanging back in the ship? Does the Icaron not have a gathering space for transient staff?
The cybernetic prosthetic convo just had me realize: If you had asked me 20 years ago to imagine prosthetics in sci-fi, I would think “cool gadgety arm, you gotta tinker it yourself, or you know someone on a ship somewhere who can fix it” If you asked me today the same thing I’d imagine a villain who runs a subscription service for you to have your arm, you can’t ever give it up, the price increases each cycle, oh now you HAVE to upgrade in order to access features.
Not to mention it has to update every day when you’re right in the middle of doing something important or delicate with it, whether you want to or not, and half the time the update introduces bugs rather than fixes them.
No I'm with Erika I wan extra arms too
prehensile tail is better
"Sloane is dead" is such a CRAZY and hilarious unnecessary rug pull
The tradition for the GM to kill off a beloved NPC lives on 😂
Oooh, Aabria's Brennan impression is eerie....
At the Well sounds cooool.
"God willing I'll see 3." Has me in real tears 😂
Oh yay my question was discussed!
The idea of a third industrial revolution taking place in the near future is hilarious to me because the manufacturing industry insists we're in the middle of the fourth industrial revolution (the horrible buzzword is Industry 4.0) and it's really fun to remember normal people don't constantly regurgitate that shit
What was the third one?
I hve to give this anotfer listen i think teh histarical timelines will help me understand s. lou is teh bests and if i cood just see this beffer in my mind i could def see brennan touching funny style lololo;lolol they are all so fun and talented even the girls too and teh giy who is rly nice with teh sound but he is in teh nast most eoisods in teh back playing and ive learnedA lot!
Oh my god, it JUST dawned on me that the Icaron schematic mirrors the worlds beyond number logo/O
Whaaaa?! Going to look for that now Ah got it / that’s dope - nice eye!
Let’s go! This is the kind of stuff I became a patr(e)on for!
Oooooooh it’s so pretty!!😍
Mapple mapple!