(Intro music: “Minor Apprehension” by Jackie McLean)
Grace: Hello, and welcome to Starting Tools, a Dungeons and Dragons podcast for fools. I’m your co-host, Grace.
Tom: And I’m your other co-host, Tom. So…the reviews are in, Grace.
Grace: Are they? Are the reviews in?
Tom: Yes. “Starting Tools”…this is from Vox.com.
Grace: Oh, cool, you got Vox.
Tom: They say, “Starting Tools is…” Let me see. “It’s abhorrent and a horrible product of our existence.”
Grace: Oh, that’s weird. That’s so cool. Oh, my God, Tom, I just got an email right here?
Tom: Oh, yeah?
Grace: It’s from…uh…Wizards of the Coast. The wizards themselves.
Tom: The wizards!
Grace: And they say…yeah, the wizards themselves! And they say: “I hate it and it should be dead.”
Tom: Oh, um, weird. I’m getting a personal phone call from Jeff Bezos. Let me put him on the line.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, that’s so weird. Hi—hey, Jeff, are you there?
Tom: (Jeff Bezos accent, I GUESS???) Ooh, Jeff here.
(Laughter)
Grace: Hi, Jeff, it’s so good to talk to you!
Tom: Mmm, yes, the feeling is mutual.
Grace: Oh, yes. Wow.
Tom: (Overlapping) Ohhhhggghh.
Grace: So—I heard that you listened to our podcast?
Tom: Yes, I was listening to it while I rubbed myself in money.
Grace: Oh, wow. Um—you’re probably our wealthiest listener, I think that’s fair to say.
Tom: Yes.
Grace: But, um, I was wondering: did you get a chance to—Tom, is that you? Or is that Jeff? It’s hard to tell.
Tom: Oh, Tom is—Tom is handcuffed in the background.
Grace: Oh, cool, cool, cool. Will you, like, un-handcuff him as soon as we’re done talking? Because I do want to talk to you.
Tom: Mmmm, no promises?
Grace: Okay, cool, cool. I was just wondering if we could get, like, just a quick, you know—how did you feel about this? Our podcast, Starting Tools?
Tom: Well, I love your good jokes, of course. But…
Grace: Aw.
Tom: I am going to have to ask you to remove all of the Amazon products you mentioned in your last episode.
(Laughter)
Grace: Uh, what do you mean, remove them?
Tom: You know what.
Grace: Okay. Um, may I ask why?
Tom: (Overlapping, normal voice) Hey, Tom’s back! Jeff just sort of sunk straight through the floor. Whoops.
Grace: Oh, weird! Wow.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: We never even got to hear what he, like, thought about it.
Tom: Oh, no.
Grace: I guess he just, um, didn’t…
Tom: I guess he liked our jokes?
Grace: Yeah!
Tom: Inexplicably, because that was the worst bit we’ve ever done.
(Laughter)
Grace: I think it was funny! I was having a good time!
Tom: It was fine. But, like, while I was doing the Jeff voice, my voice—my eyes started to water, like, a lot.
(Laughter)
Grace: I think it was just, like, the amount of wealth that you had.
Tom: Yeah, no. (Brief Jeff impersonation) I was so wealthy. I got a coin in my eye.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): (Normal voice) Um…all right. We have to stop doing this.
Grace: Would you like to start…?
Tom: Yeah. So…what do we do on this podcast?
Grace: What we do is we use D&D 5E character creation system to make real motherfuckers. Um—and I think that you—you told me that you had an idea before we started recording.
Tom: Yes. Now, what is the common thread that has followed all our characters so far?
Grace: Um, they’re bad.
Tom: Yeah, they’re shitty. But, like, more than that, Grace.
Grace: Uh…they’ve all been dudes, they’ve all…
Tom: (Overlapping) They’ve all been dudes. That’s correct.
Grace: They’ve all been dudes!
Tom: I would like to make a powerful mistress of D&D.
Grace: Oh, thank God. I was hoping you’d say that.
Tom: Grace, this is your expertise.
Grace: Yeah. It sure is.
Tom: What is the most powerful woman we can make?
Grace: I want to make an orc. I want—there, I said it. I want to make an orc.
Tom: Yes. Yes. This one—player name, Grace.
Grace: Yeah. D&D Beyond, I’m getting that loaded up right now—
Tom: (Overlapping) D&D Beyond, our sponsor—
Grace: —but I’m going to put player name: Grace. This is what—hell yes.
Tom: Yes.
Grace: God, I’m so excited.
Tom: Orcs.
Grace: So, orc is a monster?
Tom: They’re the big motherfuckers, yeah?
Grace: (Sigh) See, now, when you told me you wanted to make a powerful lady, and I went to orc, I got real excited, because I love orcs. But now they’ve kind of unlocked my fury, because orcs are under monsters. And that just—
Tom: Well, that’s bullshit.
Grace: That just makes me angry. Yeah.
Tom: Well, now we gotta change that.
Grace: We could always play…we could do a half-orc.
Tom: They’re still gonna be pretty big, yeah?
Grace: Yes. Half-orcs are really good. I’ve played a half-orc before. They’re super-buff. I love them with my whole heart.
Tom: Nice. Oh, and the picture they use is a female half-orc, so.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Holy shit! She’s so strong. She has a huge hammer.
Grace: Yeah. Could we get a close-up of the arms, there?
Tom: (Overlapping) Wow.
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah, there they are.
Tom: Zoom on those arms.
Grace: Ooh, look at that hammer. That’s the size of me.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: This is awesome.
Tom: Okay. You gotta cool down. Um…so. Half-orc. What class would be very powerful?
Grace: I think you already know what class.
Tom: I don’t.
Grace: It’s a barbarian.
Tom: Barbarian!
Grace: We’re doing a barbarian.
Tom: (Singsong) Barbarian!!
Grace: We’re gonna play a barbarian. We’re gonna play a barbarian.
Tom: Now, Grace, barbarians—they’re kind of like outlanding, and they’re just doing their own thing, right?
Grace: Um…they can kind of be whatever? They get, like, I don’t know…you could make any barbarian.
Tom: Grace, I have an idea for, um, what kind of barbarian she is.
Grace: What? Sorry, you cut out.
Tom: Uh—I have an idea. Aren’t pirates kind of barbarians?
Grace: Oh, yes! Yes! Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!
Tom: All right, so I’d like to make a pirate.
Grace: Cool. You know what—
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, that’s actually a background!
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Wait, Grace, why are you opening “Sailor?” There’s literally a pirate background right above that.
Grace: Is there? Whoa!
Tom: Yeah, there literally is.
Grace: Oh, see, here’s the thing—the pirate is part of the sailor, it’s just a variant background of the sailor.
Tom: (Overlapping) All right.
Grace: See, like—well, the variant features are different. Um, for example, we get a feature called Bad Reputation and stuff.
Tom: Yeah. Hell yeah. Bad Reputation!
Grace: Okay, so. We are making—
Tom: (Overlapping) A half-orc.
Grace: A half-orc barbarian. Background: pirate. Hell yes.
Tom: This is such a good jumping off place.
Grace: (Overlapping) So do you want to do background first, or orc stuff first?
Tom: Let’s go orc, because that’ll be when we do our rolls, right?
Grace: Yes. Yes.
Tom: All right. Grace, I do have a surprise for you.
Grace: Oh my God. Yeah. I’m really nervous about this. Tom texted me last night around midnight saying that he had a surprise for recording tomorrow.
Tom: (Overlapping) All right.
Grace: So I’m a little nervous about that. Do you want…is this a surprise you could do now?
Tom: Yes. I need dead silence on your end.
Grace: Okay. Uh.
Tom: You ready?
Grace: I’m ready.
Tom: (Singing with instruments in the background) Now it’s time for basic rolls / We’ll roll for elves and orcs and trolls / What will we do? / We’ll roll the dice.
[A/N: Genuinely the biggest banger ever composed]
Grace: (Slow, steady, building to frenetic applause)
Tom: Thank you, thank you.
Grace: Tom!!!!!
Tom: I will, um…I will text you that file so we can edit it in and it doesn’t sound like a sack of shit.
Grace: Yeah, send that my way!
Tom: Yeah, you got it, dude.
Grace: Tom, this is literally the most excited I’ve ever been about anything.
Tom: (Overlapping) It’s pretty good.
Grace: (Overlapping) Whoa, I don’t know how we move on past that.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): So cool.
Tom: All right, let’s start these rolls, I guess.
Grace: Yeah. I’ll, um, roll these up, and you can…wow.
Tom: This is the most proud of felt of a body of work in a while.
Grace: Yeah, that was awesome! Whoa! Okay, uh…
Tom: And my thinking is…
Grace: (Overlapping) Let me get my, uh…
Tom: …each episode…
Grace: Yeah?
Tom: I roll out a slightly different version of that song.
Grace: Every week?
Tom: Perhaps a genre bend. Maybe I do a disco version?
Grace: Sure, yeah, why the fuck not? Sure, why not?
Tom: I do some klezmer, some…some, uh, some polka?
Grace: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: I’d love to pop some accordion in there.
Grace: Okay. I’m just gonna start this rolling—
Tom: Yeah, no, you’re still in shock, huh?
Grace: I’m still in shock. First roll was a six, though, so that’s good.
(Dice rolling for the next few minutes)
Tom: All right. So while we’re doing this, I’m just gonna read some half-orc names, because these are pretty wild.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: So, I will start with the female orc names, I guess? Uh, Baggi, Emen, Engong, Kansif, Myev? Unpronounceable.
Grace: Myev? M-Y-E-V?
Tom: What are some good ones from the male? Thokk. Hell yeah, brother. Shump. Ront.
Grace: Wait, did you just say Chump?
Tom: Shump.
Grace: Oh, no, Shump. Okay.
Tom: Uh…Dench. These are pretty good. I think the main thing I’m picking up is most of the males are one syllable, and the females are sticking with the two syllables?
Grace: Oh, interesting.
Tom: So we should try and get something two-syllable, maybe.
Grace: Yeah. That sounds good.
Tom: But also pirate-y.
Grace: Make sure it just sounds like a real shit, too.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I’m sure that we could, like—
Tom: Yeah?
Grace: Think of some good pirate names.
Tom: Yeah. Uh, what kind of pirate is she? Is she a cool pirate, or is she a ruthless, brutal pirate?
Grace: Ooh. Maybe she used to be ruthless and brutal, but now she’s coming over to the good side?
Tom: Or we could do the opposite.
Grace: Oh! Or she used to be a good pirate, and now she’s bad?
Tom: No, she used to be, like, a sailor for the cops. She used to be a narc.
Grace: Oh, she used to be on the—on the boat cops, yeah?
Tom: Yeah. Like, part of the Coast Guard, or whatever the D&D equivalent is.
Grace: Yeah! Coast Guard, yeah. [A/N: Sorry we called the Coast Guard narcs.]
Tom: And then she assembled her own crew.
(Laughter)
Grace: (Overlapping) Um, yes, I love that.
Tom: (Overlapping) And now she’s on the lookout for adventure. She’s kind of a Jack Sparrow. She’s not, like—
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah, yeah!
Tom: —looting and burning villages. She’s just, like, a tough lady who’s going to sail and not take any shit.
Grace: We’re making a pirate of the Caribbean over here. I love that!
Tom: I love it.
Grace: Cool. Um, I do have the rolls, if you want to know those?
Tom: Yes, lay them on me. Uh, can you type them in the thing, so I can see? We’re using the video sending app, Discord.
Grace: It’s not—I don’t know what you’re talking about when you say that.
Tom: Now, Grace is texting me her screen right now.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Yeah. So just type those in.
Grace: They’re not very good. I got two elevens, one sixteen—
Tom: (Overlapping) Holy shit.
Grace: —one twelve, one six, and one eight.
Tom: All right. Well.
Grace: So, pretty bad.
Tom: (Overlapping) So, I’m just thinking—
Grace: (Overlapping) As a half-orc—
Tom: Oh. Yes.
Grace: As a half-orc, we get a +2 to Strength and a +1 to Constitution.
Tom: All right, so let’s—I would love her to be very strong, so we can pop that 16 in there.
Grace: So that’s an 18 total. Yes. Yes. Which is a +4.
Tom: That’s a +4, Jesus Christ.
Grace: Yes. Yeah.
Tom: Dexterity—
Grace: The highest it can go is 20.
Tom: Dexterity should be high, right? Because she’s gotta tie knots and stuff. So maybe a 12?
Grace: Yeah! Dexterity, 12…um, that’s a +1.
Tom: Yeah. So let’s take the Constitution…give her an 11, because I don’t want that to be negative.
Grace: Yeah. And that becomes a 12 as well, with the +1.
Tom: It can be hard on them high seas.
Grace: Yeah, it sure can!
Tom: Like, I’m not trying to insult her Intelligence, but she is a pirate—pretty classically dumb. Give her that 6.
Grace: That’s, if I remember—yeah, that’s a -2. Oof.
Tom: Yeah. Uh-oh.
Grace: Oof.
Tom: Wisdom—she’s got the wisdom of the sea, so maybe, uh, put that other 11 in there?
Grace: Yeah. +0. 11.
Tom: And then Charisma, 8.
Grace: (Overlapping) And then Charisma will have to be 8. She’s not—
Tom: I mean, she’s a pirate. She doesn’t come in looking very likable.
Grace: Yeah. This—this lady cannot read.
Tom: This lady cannot read. This lady knows the stars, though. Right?
Grace: Oh, beautiful. Yeah, she’s an astronomer.
Tom: All right, so let’s get to—let’s get all this half-orc stuff out of the way. Um…alignment.
Grace: Yeah. So, half-orcs…just so you know, half-orcs reach maturity around fourteen, so anything older than 14 is, like, adult.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: And they, like, die around seventy, seventy-five.
Tom: All right. She should be, like, twenty, then, right.
Grace: Yeah. So kind of mid-thirties, early thirties for an adult. Yeah.
Tom: She’s a weathered pirate. She’s, you know, been through it.
Grace: Age twenty.
Tom: Um, I do have a thing, which is…I see that her alignment is Chaotic…I think she should be Chaotic Neutral. That’s the pirate thing, right?
Grace: Yeah, definitely. I mean, she’s just stealing shit.
Tom: Yeah, she’s like, if I want that, I’ll take it, but I’m not going to go out of my way to fuck with you.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: And also, she has a boat, which immediately makes her chaotic.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Um, Grace?
Grace: Our size is…yeah?
Tom: Uh, I’d just like you to add something to Traits, I guess?
Grace: Sure! We haven’t gotten to that, but yeah, but sure!
Tom: Sorry, I just…she, uh, she kills TERFs.
(Laughter)
Grace: I love that.
Tom: Um…for our listeners who don’t know—I imagine it’s all of you—but Trans-Exclusionary Radical Feminism. It’s just being transphobic.
Grace: Yeah. When you think you’re radical, but you’re just transphobic.
Tom: Oops.
Grace: Whoops!
(Laughter)
Tom: Yeah, so, our unnamed character here kills TERFs on sight.
Grace: Yeah. She kills a lot of people that she doesn’t like on sight, I imagine.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Cool. Love this, love this, love her. Um…size is Medium, they range from five to well over six feet tall.
Tom: Let’s do six…six-seven. This lady’s tall.
Grace: Whoa! I love that.
Tom: Yeah, right?
Grace: Um…and she…
Tom: She’s, like—she’s not as long as Longman “Urkgub” Good, but, like…
Grace: No. Nobody’s as long as Longman “Urkgub” Good.
Tom: Yeah. He’s horrible.
Grace: You, um, you also, uh, you have Darkvision—
Tom: Nice.
Grace: Yeah. You have a trait called “Menacing,” which means you gain proficiency in Intimidation—
Tom: Hell yeah! She’s so menacing!
Grace: Yeah. She’s so menacing. Which is good, because she has a -1 to that, so…
Tom: I feel like her name could be, like, “Menacing Something.”
Grace: Yeah. Menacing…
Tom: Menacing Maggie?
(Laughter)
Grace: Menacing Maggie! I’ll put that in there for now.
Tom: Maggie the Menace.
(Laughter)
Grace: We can’t make Dennis the Menace, but a barbarian, but also half-orc.
Tom: And yet you’re writing it! And yet you are writing “Maggie the Menace” in there!
Grace: Yeah, I’m going to write “Maggie the Menace.”
Tom: Sweet. So…oh, Relentless Endurance!
Grace: (Overlapping) You get Relentless…
Tom: Hello!
Grace: Yeah. Relentless Endurance is when, like, you get knocked out to zero hit points, you can drop to one hit point. You can do that once, like, every long rest.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: Ooh, you also get Savage Attacks. Which is when you score a critical hit with a melee weapon attack, you can roll one attack dice one extra time and add it to the damage of the critical hit. That’s awesome.
Tom: Yeah, no, she’s pretty savage.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Grace, could you go back to the definition—after you write this—could you go back to the definition, or the description, of orc language? Because it kind of might just sound like they’re bashing German.
(Laughter)
Grace: Um, “You can speak, read, and write Common and Orc. Orc is a harsh, grating language with harsh consonants.”
Tom: Well…
Grace: “It has no script of its own, but is written in the Dwarvish script.”
Tom: Okay.
Grace: Yeah, I think Orcish might be, um…might be German.
Tom: Oops.
Grace: Whoops! Whoops!
Tom: Uh-oh.
Grace: But you do get two languages right off the bat, so that’s good.
Tom: That’s cool. I mean, when you’re traveling the high seas, you gotta barter with, like, the fish market guy.
Grace: Exactly. Who is…an Orc, apparently.
Tom: Or a human.
Grace: Or a human! Wow.
Tom: Wow.
Grace: Could be anything.
Tom: So what else do we get?
Grace: Uh…that’s everything for orc. I’ll leave this open in case we…yeah. In case we need to…oh, yeah, just for Appearance and stuff.
Tom: I have a good idea in my head, but, like…
Grace: Would you like to get into her pirate nature?
Tom: I would love to get into her pirate nature.
Grace: Cool.
Tom: So…“You sailed on a seagoing vessel for years. In that time, you faced down mighty storms, monsters of the deep, and those who wanted to sink your craft to the bottomless depths.” Hell yeah, lady.
Grace: Yeah. Was she the captain?
Tom: Yes, of course!
Grace: (Overlapping) Or was, she, you know, some lowly…
Tom: (Overlapping) She’s not the fucking first mate! No, no, she is the captain!
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): She fought for her fucking position!
Grace: I love where you’re going with this. Excellent. Okay. I’ll just write down, “She is the captain,” just so we remember.
Tom: It’s not like pirates are the most progressive thinkers, they’re gonna want to make a man a captain. But she killed every single man on that ship and was like, “Who’s gonna be the captain?”
(Laughter)
Grace: I love her.
Tom: Right? This is the first one where, like…
Grace: (Overlapping) You know, Tom, as a lesbian, it’s very hard to see people like myself in the media. But, like, we’ve really made a character who is representing everything I want to see.
Tom: Now, like, none of—some of our listeners know what you look like—but I’d like you to write in Appearance, “Like Grace.”
(Laughter)
Grace: This is so mean, Tom!
Tom: Not like—I’m not saying you look like an orc! But, like, this person looks like if you were an orc.
Grace: That’s awesome.
Tom: Yeah, see, it’s flattering, isn’t it?
Grace: It is flattering. I would like to be an orc. They’re super strong.
Tom: Ah, shit. Um…what we got?
Grace: So she’s proficient in Athletics and Perception.
Tom: Yeah. You gotta perceive…
Grace: (Overlapping) Strength all the way?
Tom: (Overlapping) …that boat stuff.
Grace: Yeah. It’ll do it.
Tom: Yeah. Gotta.
Grace: You are proficient in Navigator’s Tools and Vehicles. Water Vehicles.
Tom: Yeah. (Singing) I want to have such a big boat!
Grace: Yeah, just, in your equipment: “A fucking boat.”
Tom: Boat! Boat! Goddamn boat! Boat! I’m proficient in boat!
Grace: We’ll get to that later. I’m not sure if I can give you a boat at level one.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): (Overlapping) I will write “proficient in boat, though.
Tom: (Overlapping) Wait, Grace, Grace, can she please carry her boat? When she gets—she doesn’t dock it, she carries it with her.
Grace: (Gasp) I mean…depends on how big the boat is, but yes. Yes, yes, I love that.
Tom: It’s a pretty big boat. But her Strength is 18.
(Laughter)
Grace: It’s not—Tom, you can’t carry a boat—
Tom: What if it shrinks? Grace?
Grace: Wow. This is a cool magical item, actually. Like, I’m genuinely writing down “shrinking boat” as a cool magical item. Not on her equipment, yet.
Tom: Wait. I’m realizing just now that this idea is also in Pirates of the Caribbean.
(Laughter)
Grace: Is it?
Tom: Yeah, the Black Pearl—
Grace: (Overlapping) I haven’t seen those movies.
Tom: (Overlapping) The Black Pearl gets caught in the ship in a bottle. Oops.
Grace: Aw, fuck yeah.
Tom: I’m plagiarizing.
Grace: That’s so cool. Maybe your ship name can be Ship In A Bottle.
Tom: Oh, dude. Oh my God.
Grace: Dude, this is such a cool character. Um…
Tom: Uh, yeah, no, this is the first one where, like—okay, I have a lot of love for, um, Burgoo Realhorse. Like, a lot—
Grace: But he was a man in a horse mask.
Tom: He was still a dirty, dirty pervert.
Grace: Definitely. Yeah. This is like when J.K. Rowling comes out twenty years later and goes, like, says, like, “Seamus Finnigan was…uh…bisexual!” But, like, we’re coming out a week later to say that Burgoo Realhorse was a pervert.
Tom: Burgoo Realhorse liked that he had a cock arm.
(Laughter)
Grace: Um—so for our equipment—
Tom: (Overlapping) He was fine with it.
Grace: He was fine with it. He loved it. Um, our equipment is—we get a club, 50 feet of silken rope, um, a lucky charm—ooh, we can roll for a trinket!—a set of common clothes, and a belt pouch containing 10 gp.
Tom: Ooh. Kind of poor—not a lot of money.
Grace: Yeah, I think the highest it ever goes is 15, but the lowest it goes is, like, 5 or something. She’s, uh, in the middle.
Tom: Yeah. Well, that can change.
Grace: Honestly, it’s kind of shitty that she’s a pirate and has 10 gold pieces. Like, what has she been doing? Is she just the world’s worst pirate?
Tom: Maybe she’s just, like—when she’s on shore, she’s just trying to hit on people. Like, desperately.
Grace: A pirate of love! I like it.
Tom: She’s desperately trying to find a boat GF who will, like, go on the boat with her.
Grace: I love that! Yes. Ideals: I want a boat GF.
Tom: I want a boat GF so bad. Uh, Flaws: Dangerously Horny.
(Laughter)
Grace: Excellent.
Tom: (Overlapping) That’s not an ideal. That is not an ideal.
Grace: It is an ideal! Tom, literally, I’m going to scroll down—oh, no, that’s definitely not an Ideal. But, um…
Tom: Let’s roll for her Traits and Bonds, Flaws, all that junk.
Grace: Oh, well, do you want me to roll for a trinket first? Because we get a trinket.
Tom: Yeah, sure.
Grace: (Overlapping) D100.
Tom: (Overlapping) I really want that d1: a mummified goblin hand.
Grace: I know. Today we got a 45. Um—I feel like we have to earn our, um, goblin hand.
Tom: All right.
Grace: “A tiny chest carved to look like it has numerous feet on the bottom.” Cool.
Tom: Okay, that could be where she keeps her treasure!
Grace: Oh, great, great! And by her treasure, you mean, like, numbers? Like, phone numbers?
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Cool.
Tom: It’s a different kind of booty. Grace! Grace! (Close to mic) It’s a different kind of booty!
Grace: Okay.
Tom: Grace!
Grace: Yeah, all right.
Tom: (Shouting) Grace!
Grace: Kind of makes you think. Kind of a thinker.
Tom: (Shouting) Grace it’s a—Grace—
Grace: Tom just fucking died.
Tom: Oh, God. My heart stopped real quick.
Grace: I’m just typing in our equipment real quick.
Tom: Now, I’m seeing the word “feet” come up a lot. 50 feet of silken rope…
Grace: Oh, and then the…
Tom: Toy chest that has numerous feet on the bottom. Is it possible that one of this character’s flaws is that—
Grace: Tom, tread very carefully.
Tom: Don’t make me say it.
(Laughter)
Grace: I mean, I’m open. What are you gonna say, Thomas? What’s your…?
Tom: I think she’s got a thing for feet.
(Long silence)
Grace: Okay.
Tom: Nothing wrong with that, but it’s gonna slow down your pirating work.
(Laughter)
Grace: It sure will.
Tom: Oh, you just said “foot fetish.”
Grace: It’s a plot—if she’s ever—oh, Tom, if she’s ever in a situation where people have bare feet, she has to roll disadvantage on perception checks.
(Hysterical laughter)
Tom: Oh my God. Oh my God. We are really—
Grace: (Overlapping) I’m going to type this in.
Tom: —we are home brewing this one so right. So good.
Grace: Um….disadvantage on all Perception checks?
Tom: Yeah. Because she is—
Grace: (Overlapping) Perception and Wisdom.
Tom: (Overlapping) —distracted. She’s got bigger fish to fry.
Grace: Okay, so she has disadvantage on all Wisdom skills and saving throws.
Tom: She’s just dumb now.
Grace: Yeah. Well, like we said, she’s dangerously horny.
Tom: Yeah, like, really—very much so.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Now let’s do…what else do we have?
Grace: As a feature, as a pirate, you get Bad Reputation, which means that people are afraid of you due to your reputation. Which means, like, if you dock in a town, you can get away with minor criminal offenses like refusing to pay for food or breaking down doors.
Tom: Oh, so I can be like, “Yo, drinks on me, baby, it’s on the house.”
Grace: Exactly!
Tom: I don’t know what I’m saying “I.”
Grace: (Overlapping) She doesn’t need—
Tom: I am not a lesbian half-orc.
Grace: Well, in D&D you can be anything.
Tom: I know.
Grace: So…what’s it called again? Um…Bad Reputation.
Tom: (Overlapping, singing) I don’t give a damn ’bout my bad reputation.
Grace: (Overlapping) So, like, she doesn’t need more than 10 gp.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Because she can just get drinks for free.
Tom: Exactly.
Grace: Would you like to roll for Suggested Characteristics, even though we’ve already got some awesome ones?
Tom: Oh, shit! Hold on.
(Podcast stops while Tom deals with his computer issues. Elevator music plays for a couple of seconds.)
Tom: All right. Hey, we’re back! Sorry about that. Uh, computer…
Grace: Computers be like that sometimes.
Tom: Computers be like, “I’m made out of metal.”
(Silence, laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Ugh, God. The energy. The energy is gone!
Grace: Yeah, you ruined all the energy. You sucked all the energy out of the room with that damn GarageBand.
Tom: Shoutout to GarageBand for dookieing on my fun comedy podcast.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Okay, so. We’re back in it.
Grace: It’s back! We back!
Tom: We back!
Grace: So, would you like to roll for Suggested Characteristics and Traits and stuff? Like, I think we should do that just to explore the character more.
Tom: Yeah. So…
Grace: So I’m gonna roll 2d8 for a personality trait. (Dice rolling)
Tom: Nice.
Grace: That’s a 2 and a 4.
Tom: So, 2: “I work hard so that I can play hard when the work is done.” Yeah!
Grace: Love her
Tom: YEAH! That is very good.
Grace: And “I stretch the truth for the sake of a good story.”
Tom: Okay, yeah, that’s good! Oh, so she’s kind of bragging…
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Bragging to the ladies.
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah. Yeah. This is good.
Tom: Going, “I saw a fish.”
(Laughter)
Grace: “How many fish did I see? Oh, I don’t know…a hundred?”
Tom: “Fucking niiiiine?”
(Laughter)
Grace: She can’t count any more than nine.
Tom: She’s incredibly stupid. Her Intelligence is…
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah, she has a six.
Tom: (Overlapping) Six.
Grace: “I don’t know, I saw a whale yesterday. How big? Car.”
Tom: Why does she know what cars is?
Grace: She’s really dumb.
Tom: All right, so, d6. Ideal.
Grace: Ooh. 3. “The sea is freedom—the freedom to go anywhere and do anything.”
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Kind of love that, yeah.
Tom: It’s Chaotic, which adds up.
Grace: Um, and I’m going to put “I want a boat GF so bad/Dangerously Horny” into Bonds. But we can also do something with Bonds.
Tom: I feel like “Dangerously Horny” is a flaw.
Grace: Oh, that’s—that’s true. That’s already a part of her foot fetish. I’ll delete “Dangerously Horny.”
Tom: It’s just unnecessary. Uh, let’s do another bond.
Grace: Yeah, another bond. Um…2. “The ship is most important—crewmates and captains come and go.” Wow, we’re nailing it with this one.
Tom: Ooh, so she likes her boat, yeah.
Grace: She loves her boat. What are we calling it again?
Tom: (Overlapping) What’s her boat called?
Grace: (Overlapping) Ship in a Bottle?
Tom: Ship in a bottle. I feel like that’s bland.
Grace: We’ll come up with something better.
Tom: I feel like she’s kind of, kind of…she’s really into naming it.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: She’s got a lot of that, like, energy, where’s she’s calling it, where she’s giving it pronouns. Like, calling it “this old gal.”
Grace: Yeah. “This old thot.”
Tom: I think she talks like an old diner waitress going like, “Are you ready?”
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I love that.
Tom: “Yarrrr.”
Grace: Are you ready for what?
Tom: “Are you ready?”
(Laughter)
Grace: Um—
Tom: That’s his—that’s her pick-up line.
Grace: So we can get into Barbarian, now, if you want.
Tom: Yes. Let’s do it.
Grace: Yes.
Tom: And our flaw is just going to be the foot fetish handicap that we made up?
Grace: Yeah. People can’t see it right now, but I am just wiggling my shoulders like crazy right now, because I am so fucking excited for Barbarians. I! Love! Barbarians!
Tom: I think you’re also jazzed because there’s a very high amount of lesbian content in this episode, and you’re super down for it.
Grace: Yeah, I’m super jazzed.
Tom: Finally, representation—we’ve done only—
Grace: (Overlapping) Finally, representation for me!
Tom: We’ve done only presumably straight men.
Grace: Tom, none of those men were—none of those men even knew what sex was.
Tom: Okay, well, cock arm did.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): He’d love to have it someday.
Grace: Yes, in the most abstract sense.
Tom: He’d love to know what it looks like someday.
Grace: Okay, well, the reason I started jamming out alone in my room is because I remembered the hit dice, which is (Singing) 1d12 plus Constitution modifier!
Tom: Fuck me. That’s nuts, dude.
Grace: Yeah. That’s 12, plus our Constitution, which I think is…?
Tom: It’s just a one.
Grace: Yeah. Thirteen.
Tom: All right. That is good.
Grace: That’s still the highest hit points anyone’s ever had, out of our characters.
Tom: Really?
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Oh, right, well, Li’l Sandy was weak as shit.
Grace: Our speed is 30 feet.
Tom: Okay, cool.
Grace: So, average.
Tom: Just normal. The boat is the real speed.
Grace: And we’re proficient in absolutely everything. Our armor: Light Armor, Medium Armor, Shields! Our weapons: Simple Weapons, Martial Weapons! Tools: None!
Tom: Aw.
Grace: Don’t need tools when you’re this buff.
Tom: All right, so are we just putting all those in, like, Items?
Grace: Those go into Proficiencies and Languages, because we don’t just get all of them.
Tom: All right. So…
Grace: And then…Weapons, we get Simple Weapons and Martial Weapons…
Tom: (Overlapping) Who the fuck is Marshall Weapons, Grace?
Grace: Ohhh…!
Tom: Wait, Grace, can Marshall Weapons be the name of her first mate?
Grace: Marshall Weapons? Aw, yeah, I love that.
Tom: Wait, actually—she killed all the men, so Marsha. Marsha Weapons.
Grace: Marsha Weapons? I like that. Not sure where to put that one…
Tom: (Overlapping) With a Z.
Grace: (Overlapping) Allies and Organizations…
Tom: Marsha Weaponz with a Z, please.
Grace: Marsha Weaponz with a—can she be a dragonborn?
Tom: Yes.
Grace: Dragonborn first mate—
Tom: (Overlapping) Slash wingman.
Grace: —less horny…yeah. First mate/wingman, um, less horny, very intelligent.
Tom: Yes. She’s kind of a nice foil.
Grace: Hates boats, though. Terrified of the ocean.
Tom: Seasick. This is a whole new character!
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, we make two weapons—I mean, we make two characters today. Both of them are lesbians, both real flawed. Real dumb.
Tom: No, she’s intelligent. But I think they’re both—
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah, really intelligent. But you have to wonder how smart she can be if she’s chosen a life on the sea.
Tom: Yeah, Marsha’s just in the wrong line of work, it seems like.
Grace: Yeah. Listen, we all make mistakes.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Our saving throws are gonna be Strength and Constitution, and then we can pick our skills.
Tom: Your Dropbox is full, Grace.
Grace: What?
Tom: Your Dropbox is full.
Grace: Oh, I’ll clear it out, don’t worry. What are you trying to Dropbox to me?
Tom: Oh, nothing. It just pulled up. Oh, wait was that my Dropbox?
Grace: Yeah, I—I don’t know why you’d be able to see my Dropbox, Thomas.
Tom: It was a notification for Dropbox.
Grace: Okay.
Tom: This is not good audio. All right.
(Laughter)
Grace: No, it’s not. Stop talking about Dropbox.
Tom: Shush.
Grace: Um…our skills. You can choose two from Animal Handling, Athletics, Intimidation, Nature, Perception, and Survival.
Tom: Um…I think…she already has Perception. She already has Athletics.
Grace: That’s right. And Intimidation.
Tom: I’d like her to do Animal Handling.
Grace: Goddamnit.
Tom: So she can—well, Grace—
Grace: What else do you want?
Tom: I want her to also do Nature, because I just want her to be so connected to the aquatic beasts.
Grace: I do like that, yeah. Maybe she can have a jellyfish as a pet.
Tom: Oh my God. Or, like, flying fish, because it’s kind of like a parrot.
Grace: What’s, uh…what fish did you just say?
Tom: Flying fish?
Grace: Oh, flying fish, okay. Cool.
Tom: Are you googling flying fish? [A/N: Yes]
Grace: Now, these fish can’t actually fly.
Tom: No, they just sort of glide.
Grace: Cool.
Tom: They just jump—
Grace: (Overlapping) Oh, I’m looking at pictures of these guys right now. I love them.
Tom: They don’t even stay up long, they just jump up.
Grace: Yeah. I mean, so do I, and you don’t hear me bragging about it.
Tom: Fucking fish.
Grace: Fucking flying fish.
Tom: We don’t call her flying Grace.
Grace: Um…equipment. Yes. I love this. Weapons.
Tom: A greataxe!!
Grace: Yeah, you can get a greataxe or any martial melee weapon. Whatever you want. We can look at—
Tom: I’d like a Greataxe. Greataxe, please.
Grace: Yeah. I mean, we don’t even have to look any further. Greataxe. It’s right there in the name. That’s, um, 1d12 slashing damage, so.
Tom: Can she write “This machine kills TERFs” on the side?
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah. Attack bonus…initiative plus proficiency…I dunno, I’ll figure this out later.
Tom: All right.
Grace: And that’s 1d12 slashing damage. Plus our Strength, which is a +4, so…
Tom: So…nice.
Grace: Um, our next weapons…we can either get two handaxes or any simple weapon.
Tom: I’d like her to have more axes, please!
Grace: Okay, two handaxes! All right! Why the fuck not?
Tom: And she has—she’s double-wielding these?
Grace: Um, she can, I think.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: I mean, she’s probably only able to hit with one at a time, but, you know. Double wielding.
Tom: Yes. That’s just to show off.
Grace: Okay. So handaxe is 1d6 slashing damage…she can also throw those.
Tom: Oh my God!
Grace: Yeah. It’s only for 20 to 60 feet, but it’s still, like—it’s still a thrown weapon.
Tom: All right.
Grace: Um, x2…handaxe 2…1d6+4…is that slashing damage also? Yes.
Tom: Your screen sharing just got funky.
Grace: And you also get four javelins.
Tom: Oh my God, I got four?
Grace: And an explorer’s pack.
Tom: Just for me?! Grace…
Grace: Yeah?
Tom: I love that.
Grace: What do you love?
Tom: That I get four javelins! That I get four javelins, Grace.
Grace: I know. And you can throw those up to 120 feet.
Tom: Yes!
Grace: So, you know how it is.
Tom: She’s so strong.
Grace: That’s 1d6 piercing.
Tom: I want to, like, go to her house after a bad breakup and just do a movie night with her.
Grace: Just have her punch you in the face?
Tom: Yeah. Just have her kill me with four javelins.
Grace: Yeah. “It’s okay. Love is temporary.” And then she just slaughters you.
Tom: It doesn’t even need to be a breakup. I’m just going to go over to her house and have her kill me.
(Laughter)
Grace: “Love is temporary, but so is live! I’ll live to be seventy, if I’m lucky.” Pyew! [A/N: That’s a javelin sound]
Tom: Bazinga!
Grace: Bazinga!
Tom: Um, do you think she has scurvy? Sorry, this is…
Grace: Yeah! Yeah, definitely.
Tom: Do you think that’s inhibiting her ability to get with ladies?
Grace: No.
Tom: All right.
(Laughter)
Grace: I’ll put it, um, in Features and Traits, though.
Tom: Inconsequential scurvy.
Grace: Yeah. Inconsequential scurvy.
Tom: Damn, bro, you got that spelling on the first try! That’s awesome for you!
Grace: Tom, I’m a good speller!
Tom: No, dude, it’s just all the powerful energy coming out of this episode.
Grace: Exactly. She’s healed me. So, we get, um, really exciting bonus features. One of them is Unarmed Defense, which is: while we’re not wearing any armor, our armor class equals 10—
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh my God!
Grace: —plus Dexterity Modifier, plus Constitution modifier.
Tom: What the fuck!
Grace: So we don’t even need any armor.
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah, no! We are good!
Grace: (Overlapping) Because she is so strong, and her muscles will deflect any hits.
Tom: I think she should have a cool, like, billowy pirate shirt. No armor. She’s the armor.
Grace: Oh, yeah. Instead of “Common Clothes,” I’ll write “Billowy Pirate Shirt.”
Tom: Billowy pirate shirt.
Grace: Now, because I rolled—
Tom: (Overlapping) And, like, the red belt and the pants. You know, it’s like Dread Pirate Roberts
Grace: Yeah!
Tom: Yes!
Grace: Um…just so you know, our armor class is only 12, because I rolled so shit.
Tom: Oh, no, that’s not bad.
Grace: You know how it is. Listen, we do have an 18 in Strength. She doesn’t need any armor class.
Tom: Yeah. They will not have time to make their move.
Grace: Yeah. Tom, we also get the coolest thing.
Tom: All right.
Grace: Which is Rage.
Tom: Oh my God.
Grace: So, as a bonus action, you can say, like, “I want to rage,” and you get advantage on Strength checks, and Strength saving throws. You gain a +2 bonus to damage rolls with melee weapons. You have resistance to bludgeoning, piercing, and slashing damage. Um, your rage lasts for one minute.
Tom: Oh my God. That is pretty good.
Grace: So you become unstoppable. Like, unless—
Tom: Yeah, I noticed—“In battle, you fight with primal ferocity.” Fuck, yes.
Grace: She sure does. She is so angry. I love her so much.
Tom: Good God. No, she’s just horny.
(Laughter)
Grace: You fight with—yeah, that is primal.
Tom: A horny, primal anger.
Grace: Definitely, definitely.
Tom: She’s the most—okay, we’re crossing a landmark here. We’re making our first, uh, our first female character, we’re making our first character that’s a member of the LGBTQ community, and we’re making the first, like, dangerously horned-up character.
Grace: Yeah. No, this is definitely…I mean, she’s just going wild. I love her.
Tom: She’s in fucking heat. Like, this is nuts.
Grace: Yeah. And this is at level 1. Tom, she’s gonna get that Strength up to 20, she’s probably going to get those negatives out of the way…
Tom: Is she going to get more horny or less horny?
Grace: More horny, obviously, Tom. Idiot.
Tom: Okay, I’m sorry. Sorry, ma’am.
Grace: Who do you think she is?
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): What do you think—actually, we have done pretty much everything we need to, because barbarians don’t get spelled.
Tom: Okay. Why do we even bother having the spells page? We’ve used it once.
(Laughter)
Grace: Spellcasters are, um…
Tom: (Overlapping) It was for Shitty Dex.
Grace: …boring sometimes. Yeah. I’m sorry, that’s not true. I like spellcasters, I just like—don’t like them. Like, playing them.
Tom: So, what we don’t have is a name right now.
Grace: Um…have you forgotten about Marsha the Menace? Oh, no, her name’s not Marsha the Menace, her name’s Maggie the Menace.
Tom: Maggie the Menace…um…yes, yes, yes, it’s good. How about “Menacin’ Maggie the TERF Killer?”
(Laughter)
Grace: “Menacin…’” And then I assume it has the little—
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah.
Grace: —um, apostrophe at the end—
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah, that’s right.
Grace: I’m just gonna type in “Menacin’ Maggie, because I don’t think it’ll let me type it all in, but we’ll know what it means.
Tom: It’s implied.
Grace: Cool. Yeah.
Tom: It’s implied—
Grace: It’s implied just by her cool name.
Tom: And she’s usually seen killing a TERF, so, like…
Grace: Yeah, that is how it is. Although I don’t even like the implication that, like, transphobia exists in D&D world.
Tom: Look, it’s a magical world, it’s not a perfect world, Grace.
Grace: Yeah…I’d like it to be a perfect world, with just, like, shitty gnolls.
Tom: I don’t know what that—
Grace: Gnolls! They’re like, uh…fucking, uh…weird dogs.
Tom: Oh.
Grace: It’s a humanoid hyena thing. They’re, like, good to kill.
Tom: Are they playable?
Grace: What?
Tom: They playable?
Grace: Oh, I thought you asked me if it was edible for a second. Uh, no, not playable. I mean, actually…we could make it playable.
Tom: All right, well, we got—save it for next episode.
Grace: My wheels are really spinning.
Tom: Grace, Grace, get off the—Grace—
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: This is dangerous.
Grace: Um, what I was going to say is, do you want to get into appearance and backstory and stuff?
Tom: Yes. So we have Menacin’ Maggie…
Grace: Um…she’s 6’7”…how hefty is she? What’s her weight?
Tom: I think she’s, like, really strong. Like, really big, really strong. I’d say, like, 300 pounds?
Grace: Yeah. Love that. Eyes.
Tom: Eyes. I think she has…uh, missing.
Grace: Tom—
Tom: Both missing.
Grace: Oh, both eyes missing?
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Now—
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): Now, hold on.
Tom: How about one? We can do one. Then she has the eyepatch. Eyes: one.
Grace: Okay. Yeah, I was going to say—
Tom: (Overlapping) No, just say one!
Grace: —we were going to have to adjust Perception and stuff if she had zero eyes.
Tom: Oh, yeah. Skin.
Grace: Skin. Um, most half-orc skin is kind of grayish, kind of greenish, um, yeah.
Tom: Uh, skin. Dry. She’s on the high seas. She doesn’t have time to moisturize.
Grace: Oh, yeah. Skin: dry. Yeah, definitely does not moisturize.
Tom: Itchy.
Grace: Dry, itchy, flaky.
Tom: Yeah!
Grace: Um, hair? What kind of, like…you think she’s got, like, that buzzcut?
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Like, hair is only going to get in the way on the high seas.
Grace: Of course, yeah. In Character Appearance, I forgot that I just wrote “like Grace.”
Tom: Like Grace. I think she should also have, like—
Grace: (Overlapping) I love this, because it just looks nothing like me. Because I don’t have a buzzcut, I have both eyes, and my skin is highly moisturized.
Tom: Like Grace. Uh, I think she should have a lot of gold teeth.
Grace: Oh, yes.
Tom: And an eyepatch.
Grace: What’s on her eyepatch? Can she have a cool design, like an eye painted over it, or something?
Tom: Uh…yes. But it’s like…um…let’s see. What’s a good joke? Grace, what’s comedy?
Grace: What’s comedy?
Tom: What’s some comedy we could do?
Grace: She could have…why am I blanking on this. Just something funny. I don’t know, a hot dog painted over it.
Tom: What if it says “eye-yi-yi?”
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Grace?
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Eye-yi-yi.
Grace: Okay. Eyepatch with eye-yi-yi painted over it.
Tom: Pretty good. That was a custom job.
Grace: (Overlapping) Cool, good.
Tom: She asked Marsha to help her with the spelling.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Um…aw, Marsha helped.
Grace: Yeah, Marsha always helps. I love Marsha.
Tom: Marsha’s kind of like her…
Grace: Marsha’s Lawful Good.
Tom: All right, so, what else we got? Character Appearance—
Grace: (Overlapping) I dunno, what do people look like? What else should we add?
Tom: I think she’s got, like—oh, Grace! She’s such a hopeless romantic, every night she’s in the town, she gets a tattoo of the woman she meets. Because, like, “We’re going to be together forever.” So she’s just covered in people’s names.
(Laughter)
Grace: And next to it, shoe size.
(Hysterical laughter)
Tom: Grace! No! Jesus fucking…
Grace: Well, it’s in the character sheet, so I don’t know what you want me to do.
Tom: That joke just snuck up behind me and shot me in the back of the neck. Oh my God.
(Laughter)
Grace: That’s what this podcast is for.
Tom: That joke assassinated me from 100 yards away.
(Laughter)
Grace: Um, I think that’s all we need to know about Menacin’ Maggie, other than that she’s really hot.
Tom: Yeah. Okay—so—have we inadvertently made your type?
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah. Well, hold on.
Tom: Uh-oh.
Grace: I don’t want to say anything that’ll, like, come up and shoot me in the back when I’m fifty years old. My type of woman does not have a foot fetish.
Tom: I heard Grace’s type has a foot fetish!
Grace: I’ll kill you.
Tom: Do it, coward. Or do you lack the nerve?
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): God. All right. So what’s her backstory? I’d like to talk mostly about—the backstory, for our new listeners, is when I ramble and Grace types it verbatim.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: So. I notice that you just did a save of the sheet, which is a good call.
Grace: Yeah. Just save the sheet.
Tom: (Overlapping) We cannot risk losing Menacin’ Maggie.
Grace: We cannot risk losing Menacin’ Maggie.
Tom: (Overlapping) The dread pirate Menacin’ Maggie.
Grace: (Overlapping) The best character we’ve ever made.
Tom: All right, so…
Grace: Okay. Like, is she—was she an orphan? Does she have, like, parents? Does she have family, or is she just tied to the sea?
Tom: Maggie was born of the ocean.
Grace: Huh.
Tom: Meaning: her dad, like, slipped and dropped that—dropped her in. Um, when she was, like, one. And then she was raised by—what are the merpeople called in D&D?
Grace: Merrow.
Tom: She was raised by merrow.
Grace: Oh, I love that. That’s really—that’s actually a really dope backstory.
Tom: Right?
Grace: She can’t breathe underwater, but…
Tom: Uh, can they do some magic?
Grace: Yeah. Um—I think merrow could cast something.
Tom: Fucking fine, right? I mean, it’s not like we’re adhering to anything else.
Grace: No, no, no, no.
Tom: Um…she returned to the surface at age 29.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh.
Tom: And…um…saw that a pirate ship was docked, filled with the coolest fucking people she had ever seen. Like, she loved everything about the pirate life. All the stripes, all the scurvy…
Grace: What?
Tom: Like, you know how—
Grace: Tom, what? What are you talking about?
Tom: You know how pirates wear stripes?
Grace: Tom, no! You’re talking—I think you’re talking about, like—about sailor suits that two-year-olds wear.
Tom: Okay, fuck you. Um, maybe she loved—she loved the stripes and scurvy. No, that’s exactly what I just said, delete that! God. You’re just keeping everything, huh. Okay. Jesus.
Grace: I mean, so how did she get—I think that—
Tom: (Overlapping) So, she went up to—
Grace: (Overlapping) I think that she was so excited about seeing all these people that she killed them.
Tom: What I was thinking—can I, can I monologue?
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: She walked up to the captain, whose name was Captain.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Todd Rodd.
Grace: Cool. Rodd with two D’s?
Tom: Yeah, fine. And she said, “I’d like a position as a…uh…deckhand on your ship!” And he said, “Fine, but don’t you get any ideas about being captain, because I’ve got these nine bundles of dude that are gonna be captain before you!”
Grace: Sorry, repeat—“bundles of dude?”
Tom: Bundles of dude.
Grace: Is that, like, how you say, uh…a flock? Or a pack?
Tom: No, just me and my nine friends! They’re bundles. Bundles of guy.
Grace: Yeah, big bundles of friend.
Tom: “…Before you.” We’re running out of space, but I don’t give a fucking shit. Go into Treasure if you need to.
Grace: No, no, don’t worry, I’ll type all this up.
Tom: All right. She then proceeded to draw her three axes—
Grace: (Overlapping) She had—oh, shit, she does have three.
Tom: —and massacre all—every single man on the ship.
Grace: That’s valid.
Tom: It was then that she heard a voice in the back. It was Marsha Weaponz. And she said, “A new captain has been chosen.”
Grace: Tom, this is a dope backstory. And you know what? She was right.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: She did the right thing.
Tom: Yeah, no, she was totally justified in doing that, because…
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Yeah. Now, Maggie roams the high seas, looking for adventure with her awesome group of friends. And also love. Or feet. Or toes.
(Laughter)
Grace: I love her.
Tom: All right.
Grace: I hate Todd Rodd, I love her…what I’m gonna do is I’m going to erase “Orc” from her language and write “Merrow” in there.
Tom: Yeah, because that wouldn’t make sense!
Grace: Because—yeah. Her parents just never looked for her, uh.
Tom: Well, his—her dad was like, “Yo, is that a penny on the ground?” And then he—he did this big comical slip.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Down went baby. Down went baby into that deep water.
Grace: Yeah. Into the deep, dark water—whoa!
Tom: What?
Grace: Whoa, Tom!
Tom: Yeah?
Grace: Sorry to yell, but, uh, I was looking out the window, and there were these two squirrels that were climbing a tree, and one of them was running down, and one of them was running up, and they just ran headfirst into each other and one of them fell.
Tom: YES!
Grace: I’m losing my mind. It was awesome.
Tom: That’s fucking wild. Um…yeah, Grace and I were talking before—a stupid squirrel knocked out my entire block’s power this morning. For, like, three hours. And broke our fridge. So that’s the karmic payback.
Grace: Yeah, that’s how it be sometimes.
Tom: Anyway, back to Menacin’ Maggie, who I love absolutely.
Grace: Yes.
Tom: For Treasure—Treasure, I feel like, should be full, because she’s a pirate, but she’s not awesome at it.
Grace: Well, she’s only had one year. Be nice to her. She’s level one.
Tom: Let’s just, like—Grace, can we just rattle off five or six things that a pirate would get in treasure?
Grace: Yes.
Tom: All right, you go first.
Grace: Rings. Coins.
Tom: Coins. Genie lamp.
Grace: I just heard you say jeans.
Tom: Jeans.
Grace: Um…
Tom: Uh…
Grace: Dice.
Tom: Three, three additional lesbians to add to the crew.
Grace: Love that.
Tom: Hungry for adventure!
Grace: Hungry for adventure! That’s not—that’s not a thing you get—
Tom: (Overlapping) It’s not treasure. That was a characteristic of the new crew members.
Grace: Oh, great, great, great.
Tom: Um…
Grace: Fingers.
Tom: And most importantly, toes.
(Laughter)
Grace: This sucks.
Tom: Yeah. But also—
Grace: This sucks, dude.
Tom: Okay, we can’t make characters that people really want to play, so we have to give her a foot fetish to just make it, like, “All right, we’re all having fun here, but nobody’s playing the foot fetishist.”
Grace: Yeah. Listen, we did make a cool backstory and everything, but she does…
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah, no, I love Menacin’ Maggie…
Grace: (Overlapping) She does have a foot fetish.
Tom: (Overlapping) …a whole lot.
Grace: Can I just get into the backstory for just a second? I just want to pitch an idea to you.
Tom: Yeah, no, totally, do some punch-up. What we got?
Grace: I think the reason that she’s attracted to feet is because—I mean, merrow, mermaids, have tails. She is the only person—
Tom: (Overlapping, shouting) Oh my GOD! YES!
Grace: So suddenly, there are these sudden, foreign items, and she just cannot stop herself.
Tom: From sucking on them.
(Laughter)
Grace: I think we’re done here.
Tom: I’m lying completely sideways because you murdered me.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Jesus Christ. Yeah, add that to the backstory while you’re at it and then…
Grace: Yeah. I’ll just like, um…
Tom: Other than that, that is probably the last bit we have to add to her. Other than giving her some initiative. What should we put in the initiative box? Or, not initiative—
Grace: (Overlapping) Do you mean Inspiration?
Tom: Inspiration. Yeah. Uh, we should probably put toes in the box, right?
Grace: We’ve said toes too many times.
Tom: Can we say little tootsies? Little tootsie rolls? For the foot?
Grace: I’ll hang up on you right now. I’ll hang up on you and end this podcast.
Tom: Little meat and bone knobs?
Grace: I’ll put meat in the Inspiration.
Tom: Yeah. Menacin’ Maggie—meat.
Grace: Menacin’ Maggie’s Inspiration: Meat.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: All right, well…this…
Tom: We’ve got some…this is good. I enjoy Menacin’ Maggie a whole goddamn lot.
Grace: Same. Same! If you—I’ve just got a few things to say?
Tom: Yeah, totally.
Grace: Um, you can find—so, we’ve got a website, which is starting.tools, which is where we post character sheets and transcripts.
Tom: Yes. Is the—sorry, is the transcript for episode 03 up by the time we’re recording?
Grace: Oh, definitely, definitely. I’m trying to post transcripts on Sundays. We’ll see, you know, how much I can stick to that schedule, but Sundays and Mondays-ish. Um, you can also find us on…you can find our audio on that website. You can also find us on Apple Podcasts, on RadioPublic—
Tom: Whoa, I didn’t even know about that! Cool!
Grace: Yeah, RadioPublic! It’s—I don’t know, I think you can listen to it on Android and stuff.
Tom: It’s a computer website.
Grace: But if you’ve got another…yeah. If you’ve got another, um, like, podcast tool of choice you like to listen to, just hit us up, and we’ll try to get there. Um, if you’d like to tweet about the podcast, you can use the hashtag #ToolsCast, and you can also follow us on Twitter @ToolsStarting. You can find some posts on there that are awesome—
Tom: While we’re on the subject of Twitter, shoutout to Justin, my fucking awesome friend, who made some awesome—
Grace: (Overlapping) He’s incredible. Unbelievable.
Tom: —made our first fanart. You can check his photography out at itwasjustin.com.
Grace: Yeah. Like, genuinely a really good photographer, and also just made some horrific art.
Tom: Yeah, like, the art is aesthetically, like, like eating straight cinnamon and vinegar.
Grace: (Overlapping) Shocking.
Tom: But his photography is amazing.
Grace: Um, our theme music is Minor Apprehension by Jackie McLean, listen wherever you can find music.
Tom: Uh, what else?
Grace: I dunno, that’s all I’ve got to say.
Tom: Thank you to everyone. We’ve gotten, like, five new listeners this week, and it’s so awesome. Thank you all.
Grace: So crazy awesome, yeah.
Tom: And, uh, if you are listening on Apple Podcasts, a review goes, like, a super long way.
Grace: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah! Give us a five-star review, and…add an actual review to that, yeah! Just say what your thoughts are!
Tom: (Overlapping) Thoughts, concerns, complaints. Complaints, really.
Grace: Yes, complaints. That’s a really good place for complaints to go. But, like, reviews are how we actually get new listeners, so…please do that!
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: And, uh…that’s it, I think!
Tom: Um, I love Menacin’ Maggie, Grace!
Grace: Oh, same. Big same.
Tom: Okay, but you’re trying to date Menacin’ Maggie, I just want to chill and probably have Menacin’ Maggie as a wingman.
Grace: I mean, that sounds good, but she’s definitely going to kill you.
Tom: Oh, no, for sure. That’s what I’m looking for in a wingman.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): All right, well…
Grace: Okay, cool.
Tom: Thank you for listening to Starting Tools.
Grace: Yeah!
Tom: We’ve been the tools.
Grace: I’m Grace.
Tom: I’m Tom. Thank you!
Grace: All right, cool!
Tom: Yeah. Bye. I forgot how we end this show, Grace!
(Outro music: Minor Apprehension by Jackie McLean)
Starting Tools 