S1-Ep.0: The Show, The Game, The World

You're listening to a Lillie Pad production. This is the Team Up Play Show podcast. Hey, welcome to the Team Up Play Show podcast. My name is Johnny Wilson. Great. We're done. The eyebrow raise indicated he wanted us to do something. Somebody else say your name or do you want me to introduce you? I don't want to talk so much. I'm Stephanie Fackler. I'm Ethan Goldman, the original McTickler bed. The lost McDonald's character, the McTickler, he was cut for obviously. Yeah, deeply problematic. I don't get it. So the, what is this show? If you clicked on this, if you clicked on this, this episode, it means you're maybe wondering what this show is. And that's what this episode is about. It's about explaining this show, what it is and what we're going to do. We're going to talk about what the show is. We're going to talk about what game we're using. And we're going to talk about the world in which season one will happen. And then we'll give some tasty spoilers for future stuff. Oh, tasty. Oh, tasty spoilers. Yeah. I didn't know that. Well, I came full of food. It's sorry. First, what is the show? I think I want to hear what you guys want this show to be. But overall, this is a, this is an improvised cooperative storytelling long form podcast. That's a lot of qualifiers, but we're doing improv. So there won't be too much planned. I will do a lot of the planning. But I do just a lot of bullet notes for the planning. It is cooperative. We're all going to be telling the story together. It is long form. So it'll be a long time. And it's a podcast. So that's what that is about superheroes. Oh, yeah, we want to tell superhero stories in this medium. This is kind of a new medium. We're like using a game to talk rapidly, improperly tell a long form story. And we want to do that for super heroes. So that's the goal. I'm excited. Uh huh. The sound bite I've heard is that they're, uh, it's, it's the modern day mythos. That's what people say that's super as old time. Yes, super true. Oh, yeah, our current pantheon. Yeah, modern day mythology. That's for sure. We're going to add to that. We're going to have like one, one more little altar in the, in the square. Yes, we're going to blow out the, blow out the side wall of that pantheon, put on a little chapel. Yeah, exactly. You're thinking bigger, you're thinking of chapel. I just wanted like one little, one little fountain, maybe a little shrine. Yeah. Just a corner of existing structure. Yeah. So we, this, what is this show? That's the first question we're answering. We're all improvisers. We've been improvising for over a decade, each bus, right? Mm-hmm. It's not 20th year. Oh, wow. Congratulations. Happy anniversary. Thank you. What is the 20th anniversary, improv? I would assume it's like a chair. Yeah. You finally get a chair. You finally get a, that doesn't fold. Yeah, it's a real chair. 30 chair. A wooden chair painted black. Yeah, like the stage. Wow. Congrats, dude. Classy. Thanks. And it's crazy because I'm only 22 years old. You get off. I'm not talking to you. You're a baby. Yeah, I was a baby when I started doing it. So we're all improvisers. We all, in our own ways, love superheroes. Yeah. Yeah. Definitely. Quick, quick round of favorite superheroes. Sure. Pressure's on. Right. Like one of my oldest loves of superheroes was Starfire on Teen Titans, because that was yeah, like something I watched as a kid. Hell yeah. Yeah. I'm a Daredevil Stan forever. I just read a new Daredevil book last night, not new, but it knew to me that I had never read before. Ben, you ever read End of Days? Daredevil End of Days? I am not. Damn. It, maybe that's why I couldn't sleep last night and it kept me up. I couldn't stop reading it and it fucking knocked my ass off. It was amazing. Highly recommend. I slept through all of that. The ass falling off. I'm like, I'm getting knocked off. I slept through all of it. That's good. It wasn't pretty. Oh my gosh. And Raven. How can I not shut out Raven from Teen Titans? Yeah. Both of those ladies. Yeah. Yeah. Hard to agree. Yeah. So Teen Titans is an extension of them with Robin is the leader. Yeah. The best Robin. Wow. I don't, you know, Dick Grayson shout out Dick Grayson. I feel like. Yeah. I don't. I like my context for Batman was like Teen Titans. And then Batman begins, like that was my exposure. Fascinating, true. Well, Batman, the animated series is like one of the best superhero things that exists. I keep hearing that. It is. Maybe I should watch it. We can watch it. I'm not done. And then I can record my thoughts. Yeah. If I want Steph to watch Batman Beyond, if you want Steph to Batman Beyond, you get to earn Batman Beyond. Oh, you do though. That's the problem. Batman Beyond is very much like a spiritual sequel to Batman, the animated series. So that would be a fun trip for us. All right. The podcast has a new direction. Yeah. If you guys want us to listen to watch all of Batman, the animated series. To listen and review. Yeah. Just through Batman, the animated series, the new adventures of Batman and Robin, the Batman and Superman specials. Yeah. Just as league. And Batman Beyond. Just let us know because we'll we'll do it for $5 a month. I did watch under the red hood when our improv team in college, I'll watch it together in that dark classroom. That's great. Great. Follow up questions. Thanks to Ben and Johnny. It's a great movie that holds up. So what is this show, though? We've I think we've answered the question. My favorite Spider-Man. Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah. He's. Yeah. Is there more you want to say? No, no, I was really told between Batman and Spider-Man, but Ethan taking Batman really freed me up. So thank you. You're welcome. Spider-Man is great. Yes. Yeah. What? I just thought that was it. Spider-Man is great. Spider-Man is great. So this show, they'll never release a Spider-Man thing that we won't want to see. That's my take. Have you watched Marbius? No, that doesn't count. Have you watched Craven? Though those don't have you watched a Metamoe web. Spider-Man is not in those movies. He's implied. It's Spider-Man adjacent. Right. I get that. They're villains. I understand. They're bad. Anyway. What's this show about? I think we answered it. It's a long form, improv show about superheroes. We want to tell superhero stories. Yeah. Where you're playing team up is the main. That's the fun, new, exciting part. Yep. That's the next part of this episode is what gamer we're using. So in this world of play shows, I was taking a breath like we were all going to say it together. Yes. What gamer were we using? Team up. Team up. Yeah. That was cute. Thank you for doing that for me. In this world of we teamed up in this world of play shows with all of these different game systems you can use, we have decided to create our own called team up and smart. Yeah. The easiest thing to do is a lazy thing to do. It is a lazy thing to do. Even though it took me so long and so much hard work. It is lazy. It was so lazy of you to spend hours and days and years as you computer building a game. Yes. Very lazy. But hey, I did it. We're using team up to tell the story. Team up is built to tell stories. It is specifically built for this kind of format to get to tell stories together. What are some things about team up that make that easier for us to make that accessible to like get to tell stories in this way? I mean, the first thing that comes to mind is getting to pick my own superpowers. I'm not having to like chew horn a hero that I want to play into other things that are already created for me or trying to skin something. It's just this is like the kind of hero I want to be and I write it down and there she is. Yeah. It's cool. I'd also say the combat for this game. I mean, any TT RPG has combat, but the team up's combat is very reactionary. It's very inner woven. It like lends itself to collaboration and also each player's turn is super quick and simple. So there's not so much downtime in combat, it feels every, every player's turn feels like a comic book panel to me where it's like WAM BAMF like it just flows in a much faster way than I'm used to for other TT RPGs, which is exciting. WAM BAMF. Yeah. WAM BAMF. Snicked. BAMF. Snicked. Take that out, please. What did you say? I don't know how to say it again. Okay. All right. Let's just all say our favorite superhero on a monopoeia sounds that they make. The kind of three, one, two, three. Maria Bamford. Pal. Maybe pop actually. Pop. So yeah, we're using team up. We have episodes, they won't be in this feed, but if you want to go to our Patreon, you can see them for free. They are how to play team up episodes, which we really encourage you to go check out because if we start kind of moving into this story and you're really engaged in the story, but then we do a role and you're like, why would they do that role? What does that mean? It might not make much sense to you at first. So we really encourage you to go listen to those how-to episodes and download the game. And you can follow along that way and bring team up to your own tables. Anything else about team up, y'all want to say? I like it. Uh-huh. Yeah, it's good. It's good. It's good game. It's built for telling these kind of stories, you know, and there's a lot of systems that are made for telling different kind of stories, both in the role playing and the combat. I feel like I'm echoing what Stephanie even talked about, but I've tried to, you know, force superhero stories into some other systems, but I, yeah, I think building it from the ground up was the right move, uh, so that we can yet marry a game system with the kind of story as we want to tell. Hey, Johnny here, cutting in with something else that I want to say about the game. Uh, I'm going to go ahead and give you some team up game rules that will come up a lot in the play show. You can definitely go read the manual and listen to our how to episodes on our Patreon, but this is a quick little bootcamp of rules just for you to get by. First, there are a lot of checks you'll hear me asking for checks in the play show. Each character has 13 skills. They had to assign a specific die from the polyhedral set to each of those skills. So unlike D&D where you're rolling a D20 for everything and just adding a bonus, you put a specific die like your D6 or your D8 on a specific skill and you roll that. But then each character gets to create their own powers, uh, and then each of those powers gets a power die based on how much energy it has and you can add that to those skill check roles. That's called empowering a check. So you're going to hear them do that a lot. They're going to try to add their powers to a certain skill check, negotiate with me if they're allowed to do that. And what they are trying to beat is the game director's threshold. So every time I, as the game runner, ask for a check, I also have to roll a threshold die based on how difficult the check is, the harder the check, the bigger the die. This makes it fun because I can always roll low even if it's supposed to be a very hard check. It's really geared towards those big superhero-like fantastical moments, big swings. Please try because there's a chance, always chance, you could do it. They're going to be rolling a lot of checks. I'm going to be asking for skill checks. They're going to be trying to add their powers to those skill checks and what they're trying to do is beat my role. Another thing that will be helpful for you to know is that you'll notice when we get to combat, characters turns can go very, very quickly. That's because you only get to do one thing per turn in team up. It's kind of like splitting up your whole turn in D&D. You have your movement, you have your attack, you have your bonus action, you have free action, and you can do all of that in just your one turn. In team up, we kind of split all that up so you can only do your movement. You can only do your attack. You can only do a utility action. We find that this makes combat a lot quicker and more reactionary, which is great for a superhero story. Nothing ever against D&D. We just wanted to do something all different. We'll notice also that sometimes we go into a series of episodes that are down time. Down time in team up is there to force players to make some difficult decisions. This simulates that superhero stories that we love to do the same thing where heroes have to choose between saving people or investing in their life unmasked or resting or keeping tabs on the city or going on a date with their girlfriend, whatever it is. In team up, you have to give a number 0 to 4 to each of these categories. That means something is going to get that 0 and it's not going to get the attention that it needs. Something else that might be confusing as you listen is L's. L stands for length and it represents a cube of about 20 feet. This is the system that team up uses for distance. If a character is in the same L as an enemy, they are considered close up. If they are 3 or more L's away, you're considered at range. We use L's because superhero combat can be very vertical and span over a great distance. So keeping those L's in the single digit or very low double digit numbers, it keeps us from getting into the minutia of having to calculate hundreds of feet at one time. Also because being close up is within 20 feet, there is some movement on a non-movement turn that is allowed and imagined within that L. Now, a true cornerstone of team up is energy points. Or you'll probably hear us saying EPs. In team up, the players are given a set amount of these energy points at level 1 and are given more every time they level up. These EPs have two functions first. The max number of EPs of power has determines all the stats of the power. Like what die you roll for attacking or empowered checks, it's range, how far you can move with it if it's a movement power and how much support it gives as a buffing or a healing power. So that's the first thing. The second thing is that the number of EPs also acts as a kind of currency for getting to do special things with that power, so you'll hear me saying that costs an energy. For instance, if you want to team up with a team member to do a very powerful attack, you can, but it costs energy. If you want to attack twice in one round, you can, but it costs energy. And there are some other things that cost energy, but those are the main ideas that I think will help you listen to the team up play show podcast without feeling like you're lost. If you want a better grasp of all of team up's rules, then read chapter 2 of our manual. It goes over all the basic definitions and language for important rules like this. You can find the manual at teamupRPG.com or download it as a PDF on patreon.com/teamupRPG. Okay, let's get back to session zero and have fun learning about season one of our team up play show podcast The City of Bones. Cool, so that's what the show is, that's what the game is, and now we'll get into the beefy part of this episode is what what is the world, I already ate what are you doing? We have beefy lore dumps and beefy lore dumps and beefy lore dumps and beefy lore dumps. All right, so here's how this is going to go, Ben, you ever thought I was going to say beefy lore dumplings sound a bit, just a tag, just a tag. Here's how this is going to go, I'm going to give the very general stuff that someone in this city we're going to play in would know about history in this world. That's what I'm going to do. It's going to be pretty surface level, also if you don't want to hear this, you can skip this episode now and go to the actual play show, because you might just want to, you might want this stuff to be leaked out subtly through our storytelling. This will be just an exposition dump. If you just want your beefy lore dumps, juicily tantalizingly distributed. I'm just going to give the general stuff. If you guys have questions, please ask, I may or may not answer them, but please do ask. I am, Ben, I know you were interested in hearing kind of the timeline, so I am going to give you years here as in when things happened. Please tell me there is you also have a PowerPoint to show us, no PowerPoint, sorry. And then once we get done with that audio medium, yeah, sadly, once we get done with that, I am going to ask you guys to help me build parts of the city and I'm going to ask for those tasty teasers, if you guys have any, we can talk about what we want to reveal if anything. Oh my gosh. This is a potluck and he didn't tell me a potluck bring where we leak out beefy lore dumps. Cheesy potatoes. My cat a potluck. The basis of this world is built on that the great depression happened and then got way worse instead of getting better, both economically and ecologically. The world just was used up and was turning to dust all throughout and it kind of spread, not just kind of locally, but the whole world was suffering from this great depression. The world responded in two ways. There was a natural evolutionary response and then also kind of a man made how do we get out of this response. The evolutionary one is the birth of mutants or evos we're calling them. This was Ben's idea, the evos. Awesome. It's sick, Ben. I like it. So sick. Thanks. So the evos started to be born. They started to be born right after the Great Depression or I guess our year that the Great Depression ended, which was in the early 40s. That's when evos started being born into the world. That's the kind of Mother Nature's response to the dusty world, the dying world. Man's response or humanity's response I should say was let's get to space. This planet isn't going to keep all of us. Let's get out of here. And so the rest of the I don't know, almost the next century is like the world funneling all of its all of its smarts, all of its money, all of its resources into getting to space. There's kind of a retro futurist vibe in the city we're going to be in and it comes from that kind of hindering of everything else. So there wasn't as much focus quite on the sciences we care about, certainly study of the mind, study of the body, other things, entertainment is certainly not up to the level that we understand it because everything was funneled into like we need to get to space. That's kind of the idea. And it was a world, it was something I kind of like in a recent fantastic form movie when the whole world came together to like do something together. Spoilers. Sorry. It didn't work. No, it's super spoiler, Vanessa Kirby was a vision in blue, super spoiler, super spoiler. That's it. Yeah, triple spoiler. There's blue six movie plays and Vanessa Kirby was stunning. Don't ask about just boiling fantastic for how you can, I don't know, what was I saying about space travel. Yeah, port our resources into space. Yeah, the world. It was a global action, goal initiative, yeah, global thing the world came together to do it. You gave him initiative. And he went with things. Hey, there's this initiative. Is a thing. I couldn't think of the word I was trying to think of, but it's okay. Sometimes that happens to me, happens to all of us. Let's see here. What else do I want to say and not say? So with all this, a couple enormous things were created. Number one is the the bowl B O L. This is the bomb of life. In it was just the means to terraform planets. So we were looking directly into our solar system. So we started shooting these bombs of life at different planets in our solar system. While at the same time, we were building space barges. And that's the other thing that SB program, the space barge program. The really important thing about the space barge program to our show is that it happened in a city called New Babel. If you're familiar at all with the biblical story of Babel, the people of the world, of the known world at the time, this is the legend come together and say, we're going to build a tower so high that we're going to reach God. And then God came down and confused all their languages and split up that split them into tribes because they couldn't understand each other anymore. That's the legend. So this new Babel is this kind of secondary like God is dead. We have killed him. We're going to go up to space. We don't care about God's punishment anymore because we are we are modern people. I'm sure people at us about spoiling Fantastic Four and not about that. Yes, sorry. Phil. That's for spoiling Genesis 11, yeah, sorry for spoiling the Bible, but yeah, the idea of New Babel was we will reach God. We will build these space barges big enough and strong enough and with enough science to go up into space and reach God. So New Babel was created. America gave the world a big chunk of land in the Great Plains think we just pause and appreciate the bomb of life as like a superhero, MacGuffin thing that is that is just really fun. Yeah, I love that. Yeah. I mean, you guys could stumble on the bomb of life somewhere. What was I saying, big chunk of land, yeah, big chunk of land America gave the world this big chunk of land for New Babel. It's on the Nebraska, Kansas Colorado tri-point and it was a city for the world. It kind of acted as a city state. It wasn't an American city or it was just a city of the world. So New Babel started being built and created while these space barges were being built while these bombs of life were being created and shot up to space. There might be a couple names that you guys know involved with all this. A man named Brock Danton who is most famous for his work with the bombs of life. That's kind of the biggest name of that time. He would have been, he was, excuse me, he was an EVO, a British EVO that built these things and had a big influence on the science of the time. EVOs of the time were not just kind of super powered people like X-Men, they weren't just heroes. There were some that kind of took up a hero path, but for the most part, it was just, you know, if Storm gave all of her energy to helping grow crops and rebirth the world, it was kind of a humanitarian effort to let's do it, let's make this a better place to live. So there were economists and politicians and scientists of all kinds, the EVOs were just kind of smarter and just like better that next phase of evolution. And they, they, it worked. So what's the timeline looking like where we at years wise? New Babel, the city of New Babel was completed 30 years after the Great Depression. So 70s, early 70s, as when New Babel was finished. And that means both the station and the campus of New Babel to launch these big space barges was complete. So they launched these things right out of the middle of the city, very arrogant, very silly, very stupid, but these giant space barges were ported into the city and then launched out of the middle of it. It was like a big to-do and a big celebration. So we're looking at the early 70s. The bowls, the BOLs, bombs of life were started to be shot off right after that. And then a thing happened right after that that you probably wouldn't know the details of, but people started to be chosen for this mission. So the world was getting better, but humans were still like, we still need to get a bunch of people to space. And it was decided, again, you don't know how, but it was decided that two billion people needed to be sent off to space to keep our world healthy. And so that didn't start happening until the late 80s, early 90s. So we finished the bombs of life. It seems like the bomb that hit Venus worked very well. All the reports coming back from that were really good. Venus was the place to be settled and we started sending people up there in numbers of thousands. It took a couple of years to get two billion people off there, but there was a group of people that was chosen. Again, you don't exactly know how. That's probably a well-kept secret or sort of well-kept secret, but all of these people were sent up to space. As soon as the last space barge with people on it left, all communication from that group was cut off. That's also a great mystery. So they're known as the silent pilgrims. We don't know what happened to them. They might have gone to Venus and are doing good. They might have gone somewhere else. They might all be dead. You guys don't know. It's a secret. That completed in what, 95 complete silence from the Venus colonists. And then right after that was a really, really sad time. It's the EVO war. So there were still a lot of EVO's left and the world turned on them and said, "We don't need you anymore. Please get your weird stuff out of here," and they forced them all to new babble and sent them to space. It was a bloody time, a lot of battles, basically a bunch of people died on both sides. A lot of just like the world just put their numbers, you know, because one EVO could probably take 10 guys, but not 1,000 guys. But you kill a lot of those 1,000 guys before that EVO is forced to do something. So it was a very bloody time and a very horrible time for the world. These EVOs were forced to new babble because there was two space barges left and they were forced into one and then shot up into space. Are there comms with that ship? No. Okay. Yeah. That's more of a choice. Yes. That's more of a choice based on both parties. Yeah. So that means there's one space barge left? Correct. And it just hangs out in the middle of the city. And in fact, has been repurposed? Yeah. As living spaces. Well. People live in there. All right. So with the Exodus or the, what's that's not the best word, what's the better word when you deportation of the EVO's expulsion, expulsion, getting them off. Also came with that kind of a wanting to isolate and forget about new babble as a city. It was like used to be the shining beacon. It almost had 35, 40 years of being like an incredible pinnacle of science and movement in the world and then because its job was done, it was kind of left to rot. The world no longer wanted to fund the city. And so it became this kind of random city state in the middle of America that was not attached to America, but just was. And that's the city that we are going to play in the city of new babble about. So about the year 2000 is the beginning of the evilest world and an emptier world. Having sent two billion people away, our story doesn't begin until 60 years after that. So we're in the year of 2060. Okay. Again, it's going to be very retrofutury vibe. It is significantly our, you know, in our future. And the world outside of new babble is probably further along than new babble. But there are things because we focused on space programming that there were parts of technology that did come to fruition through the space program. So all of that is a new babble. So kind of a weird town, but very, very fun. What any questions or thoughts? We said town and yeah, for my understanding, it's like the size of a state. It's probably not that it's not that big. No. No. What's like the population? Yeah. Like do we, we don't stretch to the mountains? No, no, no, no, no. Plains. Yeah. So it's the city is, I have the papers somewhere. Ben, how long did I tell you the shoot was 12 miles? Yeah. You said the shoot was about 12 miles long and about a quarter mile wide. Yes. So the, the shoot takes up runs half of the city's length. So it's 24 miles and 10, which is like double the size of like Chicago. It's like a big old city, but it's not, it's not a state. Gotcha. Mm-hmm. When you say retrofuture, do you mean kind of like, like aware, like from the aesthetic perspective and the kind of stuff we should expect floating around the city, what would you say is like a good reference for us? Is it, you know, kind of 50 z stuff that's we're looking at, but it's obviously more modernized? Or what do you? Yeah, probably 50s to 60s, kind of era technology, everything, all the screens are still tubes. The, the clothing of that era is very invoked. But there are some things that we, that have come up in your origin stories. There are hover bikes and hover cars. There are floating lanterns. There are floating platforms. There's some other things and some stuff that was one of the things I want you all to help me come up with for the city. But yes, there is a very basic version of the internet that makes it to new babble. It's mostly encyclopedic for common use. But it's one of those things where it's like, sure, the internet was around when we were kids in the '90s, but we didn't really know about it, like we didn't really have it, you know. It's kind of that vibe, and it's a very, it was boring. Right. Yeah. You know, it might be a fun alternative that might just be just slightly faster than internet in new babble. It would be pneumatic tubes. Yeah. Perfect. That's the kind of thing. That's fun. I just love the food. Yeah. Oh. Yeah. I love the sound. It changed it from pop. It's food. Food. Food. I was going to let each of you come up with a thing in new babble that would be- Oh, right. I heard my thing on pneumatic tubes. That's a great thing. Yeah. Now I want to go back and re-record my origins so I could be using more pneumatic tubes. Alright. Yeah. There's pneumatic tubes now, which is awesome. That is awesome. Stuff like that. Yeah. Other questions or thoughts about the world? We hope to get to do this for a long time. And so this is one of the tasty teasers I'm going to give. So buckle up, unbutton your buttons and your belts. My pants are off. My dream is that season one takes place in new babble. My other dream, and this is a big spoiler from the lore that I just said, and I made a point to say like, oh, we don't know what happened, but my next dream is that season two happens on the planet Venus. Space. Space. Space. We take a pneumatic tube to space. So season two is supposed to be in Venus, and then that's cool. I love that. I'll keep going, but because more of this will make less and less sense. But my hope is that there's a tiny season, a little quick banger in between season two and three that happens on the moon, just a mini moon season. Mini moon season. A moon shot. A moon shot. That'll probably end up being like 25 episodes because I'm a disaster. It'd be beautiful. It's 28 because of the moon phases. Oh, damn. We'll try. We'll try to do a lunar month. And then that's all I'll say. I have more seasons planned in my in my dream house that is in my brain. Johnny dream. My Johnny dream house, but I hope season two can be in Venus. I hope season 2.5 will be on the moon. I love that. So I love that too. Then yeah, I would like to, oh, I also want to talk about like, well, let's do this first. Let's do tasty teasers from you guys. We can decide what we want to give here, but I kind of want to give the people something about your characters. You guys don't know each other's characters yet, recorded origins for all of you. We still have some to do for Ben and Steph, but you all know what your characters will be for this first season. And I want you guys to tease something, but we can choose what we want to tease in what we don't. We could do like your human name, which is very nothing. We could do one power you have, which is a lot. We could do anything in between where you live, blah, blah, blah, what do you think? Any thoughts about what we want to say, what we don't? I love being surprised and meeting other characters. I think you all do. Yeah. We all do. Yeah. So that meant, not me. I want to know everything. But that's fine. We could do your heroes superhero name, well, we I guess we can't because I think Ben doesn't hasn't decided yet, which maybe that's a spoiler in and of itself. I'm going in real improvie into these origins sessions, guys. That's great. Going to note, I'm going to blind. That's fun. Oh, now I do want to know more. Would you do one little tiny tease for the people, for the listeners? Sure. All right. I can start. I'll start with the small. So I'll say it's names Jason Turner, which is a pun based on that's a clue. His name is a clue. Okay. And he for hero stuff, yeah, and he lives in the like the like apartment atrium above the library of New Babel, oh, cool city library, living. Yeah. I also chose my, not suit my, my birth name intentionally, and her name is Veronica Mars now. My name is Veronica Cantor, she's not a horse girl. She's not a horse girl, a horse girl horse, that was good, that was, that was too good. That was definitely planned. I'll say, yeah, I'll say my character splits his time. He lives partly still with his parents, and partly in a communal living situation, to he's the richest man in the city. Quite the opposite. He's a boy horse, he's a boy horse, my character is not wealthy. He's a big spoiler as well, man, guys are really, we're really, we're really, we're really leaking out these, these lower dumps, it took off the shroud, took off the saddle, yes. We're, oh my god, are we all horse themed guys? Did we all oops? Oops. Did we horse's power? Oops, we're all horses, which makes so much sense for the city. Oh man, I do want to talk a little bit about the state of new babble, so like what state you guys find it in, so please ask questions about this. There are four quadrants, there's the Colorado North quadrant, which is called Kono, Colorado South quadrant, which is called Koso, there's the Nebraska quadrant, which is called Ask, the Kansas quadrant called Sass, I'm just gonna give, like every city, every kind of part of a city has kind of a vibe about it while also being the people within it are so variable and like you could never say what the whole, whole part of the city is about, but I'm just gonna give the very blanket idea for each quadrant, Kono is the fancy part of town, the nicest part of town, Colorado North, Colorado South is where most of the workers lived during the time of building of new babble and then the space program of new babble, and so there was a lot of like project housing there for people to come there and work. It is the most, it is the kind of poorest part of town as well as the most like variety part of town, a lot of variety and diversity, diversity, yes. I don't know, this is like adding to the, it's not adding to the world, but I maybe think of like when we used to live in the Cleveland, Akron area and there's like the old like fire stone neighborhoods, I can't like the tire factory neighborhoods and all the houses like looked identical and they all had like the same tree, I think in the front, yes, that's what I'm imagining. Yeah, definitely, Nebraska, the ask part of town is is where the new babble technological university was and BTU, and so if you want to think about kind of academia, education in that side of town, you can, that's where your library is, the Penn Dragon Library. I like to think of all the people that live in ask, as ask holes, ask holes. Is that like they like wear it proudly, like yeah, I'm going to ask. I think so, if I'd imagine if there were separate license plates, that's what a lot of the bandholes and sass holes, I don't think there would be like license plates. Okay. Unfortunately. Yeah, but that's like, that's what they call people in ask, I guess, ask holes. Yeah, we're academic, you know, we're snooty, ask holes, you help you up. Kansas, the sass part of town is, it would be described as artsy in the broadest sense. It is where the zoo is music, theaters, food, culture, sex, museums, art, all that stuff. Obviously, there's other stuff like that in the rest of the city, but that is kind of the most concentrated place where you, if you're going to get the best burger, you've got to go down to, you know, sass, sasses and sass. I'm like, are you saying like sasses and sass in, is that what you're trying to say? No, no, it's, the restaurant is called sasses, like possessive sasses and it's in sass. But I'm really glad we took the time for this. I can nail you again, almost following. The last part of town is kind of the downtown area, the station and the chute. So that is all one part of town. The station is where they launch these big space barges from. There's still a space barge there. People have moved into there when they were displaced from the old city shutting down, but they have also moved into the chute, which is a concrete tube that basically the fire belching from these launches was forced out into the Colorado desert. Incredible style. Big exhaust channel basically a huge exhaust channel, which is 12 miles long and a quarter mile wide. So it's huge. And people have started to build housing units in there. And that's where Ben's character, are there like entrances, oh, boiler. Are there entrances like a long, along the chute? Yes. So you have to go in at the middle or the end. But it's certainly now 60 years later, it would have been nice and tight when they were doing the actual space barge launches keep that exhaust tight. But now there's they've, they've, they've, but now the, you know, it has, they put plumbing in there. They've cut into the, the chute for entryways, like you're saying. There's a road that runs through it. There's one of the electric rails ride, there's a station for an electrical rail there. So like it has certainly been broken up now. Cool. The interesting thing about the station and the chute is that the police and the powers that be in the city are not allowed in there. It is protected very vaguely. Yeah. There's not much more to that, but the police and the, the, again, the powers of be of the city are like, we can't go into the chute. That's a common knowledge, common knowledge, but that's a lawless place. Uh, yes. Or I, I should say, lawd or ruled by the gang called the core, CEO of the core gang. What is the political structure, the governing structure? Great question. Of New Babel. There's a mayor. His name is Adrian Stephenson. Oh, my son. Oh, because your name's Steph? Yeah. Wow. Uh, my sweet baby boy, Adrian. Here's what you know about Adrian Stephenson. He, uh, used to be a new Babel oil tycoon in the South part of the city. He made a lot of jobs and his family kept oil in new Babel when it was cut off from the world. Um, and then he became mayor, uh, four years ago from when we began, the city council moved to extend the term of the current mayor under the banner. If it ain't broke, don't fix it, um, well, something came up in, in our origins that you mentioned is there's a preterm election to see if we get an election. Yes. That came up in my, oh, yes, I'm not political to not go up in my, and not yet. Uh, yeah, there's, so there's a few things that after, so he, he won the election. As an oil tycoon and was a pretty good mayor for first four years. And then he won again under the, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. And the law that was passed was twofold. It was, um, there had to be a vote to even hold an election, which is what you're referencing. And the city council has to like confirm and affirm the vote. Uh, so this is the political structure. The mayor is king here, basically, uh, and controls a lot of things, controls, uh, now oil, which wasn't always the case, but now does control the oil and town because new babbles cut off from the rest of the world. So they're not getting imports really. Uh, so if they're going to have oil, it's going to be from him. Um, also, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, did, I'm getting villain vibes. Man. That's a good guy. He could, he could, he could, he could be a great guy. Yeah. I'm getting villain vibes. He could be a great guy. I can't say villain vibes. Uh, the other thing he controls is the mint, uh, the mint, which is a big deal. New babble has its own money. Um, it does not use American dollars, and the mint is controlled by the mayoral office. So, and it's money in our day and age is very, uh, it's like ethereal, right? It's just like out there in, in, in, in the, in the cloud, in the computer, in new babble, the amount of bills and coins you have is the amount of money that you have. Oh, okay. And I mean, of course, yeah, and of course, like equity in, in homes and, and things that you might own. But nope. Just money. Just cash. Baby. Uh, so controlling the mint is a big deal because the more, uh, you, you know, the longer you live, money disappears, it, it gets stuff into people's banks. It, you know, gets thrown away. It, it, what it, it breaks. Uh, so controlling that mint can certainly keep your people poor when inflation in new babble wouldn't matter as much because it's separated from the rest of the world. So, yep, yep, yep, yep. That's the, oh, the police, uh, we could talk about a little, and let's say too much, um, the police quadrants basically have been, the mayor's office, like, doesn't want to deal with it. So it's like the police, uh, chiefs of each quadrant have like a ton of power within their own, uh, precinct and within their own quadrant. So like some, some places, when you call the police, they'll show up and some places, you call the police and they don't show up and, and vice versa and all that. The Catholic church is here and proud. Oh, shit. There's Christianity. There's Christianity, but the funny thing about the Catholic church being here is that when, when new babble was cut off from the rest of the world, the Catholic church was kind of stuck from communicating with the Catholic church. So there's a guy called, um, Mitchell Nichols, who is the silent pope, uh, in new babble. Oh, uh, uh, yeah, yep, yep. What else do I want to tell you? Oh, economically, um, it's really interesting in new babble. So there is a, uh, a dry port in ask where the world is kind of, quote unquote, like forced, or America mostly is like forced to provide the people of new babble with essentials. So there's some food that comes in, canned goods, products that people need, et cetera. But recently there has been a ton of, there's been a huge movement in the small business, uh, community of like growing our own things and, and like making our own things and having factories that aren't enormous, but like, what if I can make a little shop that sells underwear out of my house, like, stuff like that, like small mom and pop shops, kind of everywhere, um, Mac Weldon, what's that? I said Mac Weldon doesn't underwear joke, uh, that's an underwear brand. I'm so sorry. That's okay. I'm sorry that I don't know that Mac Weldon is an underwear brand. So yeah, there's been quite a movement towards that. It's happening a lot more. And I think that's most of the, any questions, any thoughts you guys think you want to know? You mentioned that there's like screens that are like, cathode, ray, tube screens. So is what's the media situation like, is there like news and like, does new babble have its own kind of situation for media and communication that way? Yes, certainly. The major, uh, there is certainly TV again, it would be kind of a thing where it's like, all my rich friend has a TV, but not everybody has one, uh, there is a TV news, uh, company NBTU, new babble TV, something. What is it called? Stand by. Oh, uh, NBN is new babble news and it's the TV news source. It's also kind of the broadcasting news source for, uh, other TV programs. There is a level of entertainment and media, uh, done in new babble also sometimes through that, uh, dry port with essentials like some old movies will come through and like some old VHS days and like some old books and stuff come through. So there is some stuff where you guys are can, can kind of keep up with the rest of the world, but, but probably 10 to 20 years behind, because these are just old things you're getting. And then there is a, uh, NBT, which is new babble tower and it controls, uh, the newspaper, which is very, uh, potent or very prevalent in new babble as well as the radio. Other questions? Nothing. I, I, I was saying I didn't have a question, but I had a little idea if we can add something to the lore. Yes. That's the next phase of this is no, don't be. I have some specific questions, but I'm also happy to hear anything. One idea I had was maybe some kind of, uh, anarchist American gang that like want to join America and you could either make them like vague American faith, you know, kind of idealizing this like time that they and even their grandparents don't remember of like an admit when this was part of Kansas, uh, and call it kind of idealizing like I bow to Topeka, the mayor's, uh, I don't know. I think that you know, that's great. Some like, people who kind of idealize like we wouldn't have all these problems if America could, I think that could be a fun group. Yeah. I love that idea. We can totally have an anarchist gang, uh, there wants to be part of America. I love it. Um, oh, also there's robots, uh, there's a race of robotic people called the day, D-A-E, and they are, uh, they showed up very soon after the evos left, they just showed up in new battle. It felt very random, uh, but then it does seem like they are people. They, they, it seems like they have soul, which is the, the, there was a lot of, you know, conspiracy theories. There are, um, uh, there's a couple churches built around it, um, uh, based on the coming of these people, it is a very weird thing, but they're kind of part of society now. Uh, okay, my specific questions are, I want you guys to think about laws, like strange laws that might have gotten grandfathered in that was like, it made, maybe made sense for this to be a law when there was a space program. But now that nothing's happening, it's just still a law. So it could be like a commodity that's illegal that like shouldn't be he or, I don't know, weird laws like that. I feel like there would be some kind of like alarm system or like when they were launching the barges because obviously it's going to be loud. They have the shoots, but I assume there would be like some safety concerns with a city size spaceship blasting off into space with people around, um, so it makes sense that there would be some kind of like alarm system or like a shelter in place kind of thing. Just speakers are like, you know, emergency broadcast, yeah, and network that's still there and then still used, that's cool, um, I don't know if it makes any any sense with what we've already got recorded, but the I think I always love the idea of any kind of prohibition. I don't know if a full stop prohibition makes sense for new babble, but maybe like there's a curfew on booze. And so like at a certain point, some places turn into speakeasies, I don't know. Yeah. I love that. Yeah. That's great. Who's curfew? It would be like stupid early like it's like seven. Yeah. Yeah. So lots of people are sort of doing it, but like it's technically against the law and so kind of gives you a little bit of that 20s thing. Yeah. I think maybe the cut off is seven and then it's like something stupid like no weekends. Yeah. Seven on the weekdays and because that someone did a research of like, when are people the most drunk and make the most stupid decisions after seven and on the weekends, that's when booze is outlawed. Yeah. I like it. Warriors alone. Yes. Cool. Any other ideas for laws that are still in place. If you think of them later, you can, I'll just give you the next prompt. Yeah. Sure. Would there be maybe still on the books some crazy evil laws where it's like, evos are just like can't vote, not real citizens, they're easy evil laws that like aren't relevant since evos are gone, but would still be technically part of the law as like a weird oddity of this past time. So it's at an interesting thought, I think certainly, but also new Babel was the one place that evos found some level of sanctuary during the evil war because another important name in history is William Blainer, who so the two big evos were rocked in and William Blainer and Blainer was like, hey, everybody show up to new Babel, they'll keep us safe and then we'll all go to space together. He was like, let's just leave. Let's just get out of here, whereas Brock Dan was very much like, no, we're fighting this shit. We're not leaving here without a fight. Just do. Anyways, that being said, new Babel, even I think for a time was like, yes, evos are welcome here while this transitions happening, but there could still be some weird rules in place about evos for sure. I like. Yeah, it kind of sounds like then Blainer, like some people would have viewed him as like a like turncoat. Absolutely. Like giving up. So maybe like some of those laws did exist and he's like, yeah, I'll just submit myself to this for my own safety and then get out of here so that I can be free. No doubt. Yeah. All right. You can keep thinking my next prompt is sports, so I have not, I have not come up with any sports that are in new Babel. It wouldn't be a traveling thing, right? We can't like go out and play, you know, Colorado or Utah, like what sports are active in new Babel? Is it a quadrant thing like to the quadrants each have, you know, a fucking rugby like some weirds? Like is it a rugby team like cricket or like, I don't know, what what horse horse racing? Yeah. Obviously. Yeah. There's what are we doing? It's very important to my backstory that there's horse racing. There could be some weird rocket based sport. Yeah. I'm saying like, yeah, if there's, if there's hover cars and stuff, like you could have like a hover ball or kind of imagining a big, you know, Final Fantasy X style dome where people can like three dimensionally play soccer with like a hover ball, some crazy, awesome. Awesome. Let's iron that out. Okay. So everyone, everyone rides a horse, obviously, but yeah, I would say like probably two hover polo. Yeah. I think it's just quite itch. I think hover ball. Maybe. Maybe you're right. Damn. Well, no, so what are we hovering on? So there are hover bikes, there's a little hover cars. Maybe they just have like hover platforms on their shoes that they can kind of skate with, like force the gravity below them, hover skates, and I weren't roller derby to still be a big thing. Oh, yeah. That'd be cool. Yeah. Just made it hover roller derby. Well, but I'm also thinking real roller derby, but like people bring like Billy clubs. Yeah. They have mods to their skate so they can like cool. You could do, you could do roller derby in the shoot like shoot ball, like you go like all the way. You do like looped loops. Yes. Yes. Shoot ball. Shoot ball. I'm open to a few things like it doesn't have to just be one thing, but I think like I think normal sports, I like, I don't I don't think people are playing basketball, you know. I might still be sure, but yeah. But uniquely new babbles like shoot ball, hover ball with hover skates, roller derby with weapons. I don't know anything about this kind of the part of this country that we're that we're set in. But in my mind, my Midwestern stereotypes of the planes involve a lot of hacky sack. So I like to imagine like, when I will broken, evolved into some like maybe like art form more than sport. Like, there's another gang on the street. Yeah. There's just someone's playing violin and there's a woman hackie next to the violinist and they're just like, yeah, that's like street art. That's what people do. I love that. You play hacky sack. But then you also put a hat out for people to throw coins into, yeah, that's beautiful. It's beautiful. That's awesome. Cool. My last prompt is about a retro futurist tech that's here. You guys already know that there's hover stuff, there's like floating lights, there's what else? We got pneumatic tubes. Yeah. Yeah. Where are we at? I mean, like the day have appeared, where are we at with like AI or like robotic assistance? Like is that because the day are there, that's like taboo because good question. Like the robotic people have personhood or are they like, oh no, that's like, that's different. If there were to be like a little little robot, buddy. It was a big part of the space program that there was like AI concierge built for the travel. So there could certainly have been some of that left behind, maybe just like a home, like bot for the wealthy, but probably not a physical thing that walks around, but like in the house. Smarthouse. Smarthouse, but not in the way we see it. Smarthouse. But I don't think there's like robot servants walking around. Yeah. I want the thing in back to the future where the food is growing in the ceiling and it comes down out of the kitchen ceiling and there's just grapes instead of growing on it. Great. Sealing gardens. Yeah. Sealing grapes. Yeah. Specifically the grapes. Yes. Sealing grapes. This is aesthetically pleasing just to have some grape finds draping out of your ceiling. Anything else that comes to mind like day to day retrofuturist tech that is kind of common place. We've got pneumatic tubes. We got ceiling grapes. Like since the like the bombs, the bombs of life. Yeah. Was there any technology left like that used on earth or did it have to be in giant bomb form. So are there places where that are like even though we're in the middle of this dense city, there's like this beautiful green space because of terraforming tech. The great question, Steph, we'll just have to wait and see on that one, I think. Um, if, if so, if new apples kind of cut off from the rest of the US in the world, is there, is there a physical wall around the city or is there some sort of like a force field or like, does it mind field like what's the reason people don't just kind of freely? What's the border look like, I guess? Yes. There is, there is a wall and between the city and the wall itself is known as kind of no man's land, it's kind of a dead space. The biggest thing. People don't like people coming in that a new babble, both the city folk and the states surrounding it. The world wants to forget about it. But there's also kind of a economic problem with the money. So the rest of the money in the world kept on growing in value. And the exchange rate for new babble dollars went to nothing. So like, if money is only based on the dollars and stuff you have, the bills, then trying to go outside of new babble is, you have zero, like you would have zero money. So I think people leave, um, but it's, I would say it's very rare. Okay. But there's a physical wall then too. Yeah, but there is a wall and there are like, there is border patrol, um, and a level of like, we don't really want you to go, but there's also like legally, not much that like prevents people like legally, you could say, or is there a lot preventing people? It might be a state choice there, which is interesting. I think the world might have given the states the choice like, if you want to accept new babble people, you can Colorado, Kansas and Nebraska, but you don't have to. So maybe Kansas and Nebraska are like no, and Colorado being is like, I guess, okay. Maybe that's how I'll say it. And there's no, but there's no new babble while preventing its citizens from leaving. Correct. Um, and you mentioned oil as a thing, is that the, like what's the energy situation in new babble like? Is it all fossil fuels like oil or is there like a steam punk thing happening is a nuclear retrofuturism like where are we getting our energy? Yeah. So there's two major sources, one being, um, Stephenson oil, who is your mayor now? And the other being, uh, Ellington electric, uh, Manny Ellington is a very famous man in the city and he's supposed to be like the billionaire of the people, um, he owns in that nomads land, these huge turbine things that create electricity that he gives to the city. And when the mayor's, when the mayor's second term began and all the oil prices shot through to hell, uh, to heaven, whatever way they shot, it was bad, uh, Ellington kept the electric rail very cheap. He lowered his prices because he, he saw that was coming and he kept the electric rail very cheap. So, uh, people can travel and get around the city still. So those are the two main sources of energy. Cool. Can there be cool water features? I know, I know that like, yeah, I've like tried to start with like other cool gardens. Mm-hmm. But I just imagine lots of like jumping fountains. What's a jumping found where the water sprays out of one spot and goes into another. Yeah, totally. But in like separate ponds, I don't imagine lots of arcs of water. Just like it's the people, like the statues of people doing hanky sack of water, swimming out of one foot, and then there's real people doing hanky sack underneath the things. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Perfect. Great. Uh, that was great. So that, that is, uh, the world we're going to be playing in. It's new babble. It's a retro futurist, uh, weird dystopian city that is disconnected from the rest of America. Uh, and one day we want to go to space. Woo. Yeah, we do. Yeah. So what can you expect from the show moving forward? That's a good question. Oh, you want a thing? Answer it. No, I can answer it. Uh. You've listened to this first, uh, session zero. What is coming? So first, and this is very exciting, we're going to be releasing the origins stories for each of our characters slowly of the next three months or so. So look for those in 2026 when we hit January, those will only be available through our Patreon and a subscription there, and that's when we will begin the sessions proper. So that's when we'll all be getting together and doing our story together. And then if you want the origins, you can go back to, you can go to our Patreon and listen to them there. But we'll be doing the main show. So we'll have, so you have the main show and then along with those origin stories, if you go to our Patreon and become a member there, there will also be a post show chats called the chat cave where we will talk about the episode in, uh, in real time, uh, and we'll have a chat in the chat cave about the episodes. So there'll be a bunch of stuff over there for you to enjoy on the Patreon. It's, uh, patreon.com/teamupRPG. And what else do we want to say goodbye? Is there what we don't have an outro? No, but I would love to encourage people to team up in your real life community to make your world a better place. I'd like to advocate for vigilante justice. I mean, that's, that's one way to team up. Yeah. Team up with your friends. You can get vigilante. Everybody learn karate, learn Kung Fu, you know, learn judo. That's all you need to do to be a vigilante. Some martial art, I think that's important, but I don't know what staff said. What's that? Yeah. Not what I said. But also, I mean, you also could take some judo classes, but then maybe also volunteer to such a judo. See if you can get special spiders to bite you because once you get powers, then all vigilante is okay. Yeah. And let us know what that happens to you and how you did it. I think is the moral, we're telling people to get into street fights and to look for spiders and roll around on them. Yeah. Yeah. Get into spiders. Hey, we love you. And thanks for listening. And we will see you as a group in January. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Thanks for listening to session zero of our first season of the team up. Play show podcast, the City of Bones. Come back next week for the origin stories of our season one characters. If you enjoy this, please share it with your friends and family, anyone else who might like it. If you're interested in learning more about the game we're playing team up, you can download the beta for free on our Patreon and get involved in our discord community there. That's patreon.com/teamupRPG. We'll see you over there, heroes.