(Intro music: “Minor Apprehension” by Jackie McLean)
Grace: Hello, and welcome to Starting Tools, a Dungeons & Dragons podcast for fools. I’m your co-host, Grace.
Tom: And I’m your other co-host, Tom. So…Grace…we’re screen sharing right now.
Grace: (Laughing) Yeah.
Tom: We’re sharing a screen. And it’s your screen. And you’re on the website “fandom dot wikia dot com…Family Guy Lois should divorce Peter.” Yeah.
Grace: So…
Tom: So…
Grace: I, um, I go on Wikipedia a lot to, you know, access the Dungeons & Dragons stuff.
Tom: Sure.
Grace: And I keep on getting this ad…I mean, for the past week or so, I would say. It just says, “Family Guy: Five Reasons Lois Should Divorce Peter,” and I thought we should delve into them a little bit. These five reasons.
Tom: Yes, absolutely. Could I start with the introduction paragraph? “Seth MacFarlane’s series Family Guy has been the king of animation targeting adults since its premiere in 1999.”
Grace: Oh—sorry, can I interrupt?
Tom: Yes.
Grace: Uh, “targetting” is spelled with two t’s.
Tom: (Overlapping) That’s not how you spell that.
Grace: It sure isn’t. Sorry, continue.
Tom: “Targetting.” “This show may be known for its outlandish, topical humor and infamous cutaway gags, but, at its core, it’s a show about family.”
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): “The heads of the family, Peter and Lois Griffin, obviously love each other. However, their relationship isn’t all rainbows and sunshine—and it’s all Peter’s fault.”
Grace: Oh, fuck.
Tom: “His antics not only cause Lois anxiety but also tend to place—to place in her physical danger.” That’s what it says.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): It’s a wonder that Lois has survived this long.”
Grace: (Overlapping) Jesus Christ.
Tom: “So, here are five reasons why Lois should divorce Peter Griffin.”
Grace: Wow. Um, number one is—
Tom: (Overlapping) The first reason—read it to me.
Grace: It’s “What are feelings?” Oh, man. He’s really calling her out. “He’s quick to anger, doesn’t think before he speaks, and lacks the patience and empathy necessary to properly deal with his wife’s feelings and insecurities.” “Unnecessary Chaos.”
Tom: Oh, yeah, that’s reason two.
Grace: He’s physically harmed her. Horrible parenting. He drains the family savings.
Tom: Um…let’s see. “Peter is the kind of person who acts on a whim and asks for the price tag later. It’s often played for laughs, and the show has even joked that FOX pays for his adventures. But in the grand scheme of things, it’s not right to spend money that could be going back into the household—”
Grace: (Overlapping) Oh, fuck.
Tom: “—on random overpriced items like the Peter-copter.”
(Laughter)
Grace: God, this is so wild.
Tom: Jesus.
Grace: “We expect parents to love and protect their children, but Peter Griffin clearly missed the memo. In fact, he basically fails at parenting most of the time.” Wow.
Tom: This is rough.
Grace: “One of Peter’s (as well as the entire family’s) cardinal sins is his poor treatment of Meg.”
Tom: “He puts her down, criticizes her looks…” This is wild, dude.
(Laughter)
Grace: Who made this callout post of Peter Griffin?
Tom: Dude, Quagmire.
Grace: Holy shit! “If Lois wants to see her grandkids, then she should leave now.”
Tom: Yeah. This is wild.
Grace: All right, well…
Tom: Okay.
Grace: This has been…sort of just—
(Laughter)
Tom: This is putting a weird tone for this episode, yeah.
Grace: Just sort of a quick Family Guy podcast.
Tom: We’re doing Cat in the Hat and Family Guy fancasts.
Grace: Yeah. I’m gonna un-bookmark this. I had this bookmarked, but I think I want to get it out now.
Tom: Nah, keep it. It’s good.
Grace: Now, let’s just close out of that tab and move on to our podcast.
Tom: So, what’s the podcast?
Grace: So, what we do in this podcast is we create characters in Dungeons & Dragons 5E that are all playable, and our goal is just to create some really bad ones.
Tom: Yeah. Like, technically speaking, they’re playable, but why would you want to?
Grace: Yeah. Um…can I pitch an idea for a character?
Tom: I’d love for you to pitch an idea for a character.
Grace: Okay. So, I think that one thing that a lot of our characters have had in common is that they’re really stupid.
Tom: Yes.
Grace: And part of the reason behind that is that, honestly, if you’re playing for character advancement, for leveling up, there’s not a whole lot of advantages to having your character be super smart. Like, it’s better to have them be really strong or really dextrous, or whatever, or even charismatic, for spellcasting.
Tom: Yes.
Grace: Um, but, I think we should make a really, really, really smart character.
Tom: Okay. I love it. I think that making a very smart character would be good. Uh, are they going to be insufferable?
Grace: Oh, of course! Why would you even suggest otherwise?
Tom: Okay, cool.
Grace: I cannot stand them.
Tom: Now, this person clearly has a very high IQ.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Am I correct in saying that?
Grace: Yes, definitely. Super smart.
Tom: So would you say that their favorite TV show might be Rick and Morty?
Grace: Yeah, that is true. I do know that smart people are, like—it’s just hard for people with lower IQs to understand the jokes, most of the time.
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, dude, I bet this character loves Elon Musk.
Grace: Oh, yeah, that’s so true! Because he understands him. Because, like they’re both very, very smart dudes. Sort of a twisted sense of the world, don’t really, you know.
Tom: You’re talking about twisted viewpoints. This dude listens to Joe Rogan’s podcast.
Grace: Yeah. Because he understands him.
Tom: He understands the nihilistic jokes, and he’s like, he understands how to take a joke.
Grace: Exactly, exactly. That’s the problem with so many people who aren’t as smart—they just don’t understand how to take these jokes.
Tom: These SJWs are so sensitive these days.
Grace: Exactly. This guy—
Tom: (Overlapping) This guy, he’s just too smart. He gets it.
Grace: It’s frustrating living in a world where you’re this smart. Um, and I just want to say—wizards’ spellcasting modifiers are Intelligence. So if we’re going to make a super-smart character, mayhaps a wizard who learned their spells through book-learning.
Tom: Oh, cool. Aren’t wizards also huge douchebags?
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah. They’re idiots. I love them.
Tom: Nice, nice, nice. All right, so, let’s open up our blank character sheet…
Grace: (Overlapping) Yes. Oh, yeah, we already know class is wizard.
Tom: (Overlapping) Let’s just pop in some of the basics.
Grace: This is our first wizard!
Tom: Is it?
Grace: Yeah, we haven’t made a wizard yet.
Tom: (Overlapping) Wasn’t—
Grace: (Overlapping) We made a warlock.
Tom: Oh, yeah, warlock, sorry.
Grace: Warlocks get their magic from a pact with a patron—
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, yeah—
Grace: —Wizards get their spells from books.
Tom: Dude, he was, um, he was with Sllab.
Grace: Yeah. Idiot.
Tom: Sorry, sorry, sorry. So, Grace…
Grace: Yeah?
Tom: What do we need to do here? What’s our next step in this process?
Grace: Um…hm.
Tom: (Overlapping) Grace, would you say—
Grace: (Overlapping) If we know our character is going to be smart, I think we should make some rules. Some ability scores. Some basic rolls.
Tom: Okay. So, uh—
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): For basic rolls, I make a piece of original music every week.
Grace: Yes.
Tom: This week—I woke up this morning, I’d say about two hours my time before we started recording, and I realized I did not make one.
(Laughter)
Grace: Okay, so.
Tom: I was gonna do some stuff from “Salisbury Hill,” by Peter Gabriel, like (Singing) Da, da-da-da, Now it’s time for basic rolls—
(Laughter)
Grace: I love that. That’s a song right there.
Tom: Yeah. That would have absolutely spanked. But I just kind of went for it. I opened up my good music-making app, and, uh…here we go. Dead silence, please.
Grace: Jesus Christ.
(Basic rolls song plays. Don’t know how to describe this one. Drumbeat. Chaotic. Ends in backwards speaking, like man in red room.)
Tom: All right. So. That’s the one.
Grace: Okay—
Tom: Grace just texted in the Discord chat, “I’m aving a panic attack.”
Grace: I couldn’t type the H key.
(Laughter)
Tom: (Cockney accent) I’m ’aving—
Grace: (Cockney, overlapping) I’m ’aving a panic attack! (Normal voice) Tom, that was what nightmares are made of.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: I feel like I’m going to throw up.
Tom: I really went for it on that one.
Grace: It was really the, um reverse voice at the end that got to me.
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): The icing on the cake. So, um, let’s do some basic rolls. Would you like to roll while I list some smart guy stuff?
Grace: Yeah, definitely. You kind of know a lot about smart guy stuff.
(Dice rolling over the next few minutes)
Tom: Yeah, I’m kind of—uh, back—you know when Gangnam Style was very popular?
Grace: Oh, yeah. I remember vividly.
Tom: This guy was smart enough to learn the entire dance, and correct people when they did it wrong.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, that’s so cool.
Tom: Right? This guy, um—yeah, this guy is, um, let’s see. He probably, like…thinks he knows more French than he does.
Grace: Oh, yes, definitely.
Tom: And you know for a fact that he’s got one of those posters that’s like, “Welcome to my man cave, here are my rules.”
Grace: What are the rules of his man cave?
Tom: Uh…hold on, I’m gonna pull up a man cave poster, and I’m going to read some rules.
Grace: Sounds great.
Tom: Because those could just be this guy’s, like, bonds and alignments.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, definitely, definitely.
Tom: All right. Man cave rules poster. Okay, one of the suggested searches is “man cave 8×12 plaque.”
Grace: Yes.
Tom: Yeah!
Grace: I’m gonna put that in his items and equipment.
Tom: Man cave rules poster?
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: All right, so. Um…man cave rules. I got a reliable source right here. On wayfair dot com. First rule is: My cave, my rules.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Man decorates the cave. Chick flicks are banned. Wine is not allowed. Beer is the beverage of choice. No talking about feelings. Man is always right. Man controls all remotes. No crying.
Grace: Holy fuck.
(Laughter in background as Tom continues)
Tom: Sports on TV 24/7. Dogs welcome. That’s the only one that’s like, kind of chill. No issues will ever be discussed. What happens in the man cave stays in the man cave. People wonder why American men are broken!
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): People wonder why there’s a fucking issue!
Grace: I am—what the fuck?
Tom: It’s horrific!
Grace: That sounds like a cult. Are you joking?
Tom: Yeah! There’s one, like, baby boomer that’s looking at this right now, going, like, “Yeah! My cave, my rules!”
(Laughter)
Grace: No feelings here! No talking, bullshit!
Tom: Epic bacon, you guys!
Grace: “Hey, Bryce, I’ve been having some issues with anxiety lately—“
Tom: (Shouting) My cave, my rules!
Grace: (Overlapping) Get out of the man cave! Get out!
Tom: No crying!
Grace: Dogs allowed!
Tom: Dogs allowed! Sports on TV 24/7!
Grace: Sports on TV 24/7! “But, but, but Bryce, there’s only water polo on—” “Then we’ll watch water polo!”
Tom: (Unearthly growl) Sports on.
(Recovering)
Grace: I have the ability scores if you’d like to start getting into this character.
Tom: I’d love to see the ability scores.
Grace: Absolutely fantastic. I’ll read them, uh, lowest to highest. We got a 9, a 10, a 12, a 13, a 14, and a 16.
Tom: Okay. So that 16’s going in Intelligence—
Grace: (Overlapping) Exactly.
Tom: —because this guy’s—he’s on a whole different level.
Grace: That’s a +3 to Intelligence right off the bat.
Tom: Exactly. Um, probably 14 is going to need to be in Constitution, because people yell at this guy a lot.
Grace: That’s true. And also, like…he’s built up a thick skin, I think, you know?
Tom: Yeah. No feelings!
Grace: (Overlapping) Not like these crybabies. No feelings!
Tom: (Overlapping) Feelings will not be tolerated! That thirteen—
Grace: (Overlapping) Um…I’m gonna say—
Tom: Yeah?
Grace: If you’re gonna be vulnerable to, like—like, let’s say a, uh, uh, uh, I don’t know, fucking mind flayer tries to get into your mind and make you feel something, he’s going to make you make a Wisdom saving throw. So I think we should get the 13 into Wisdom.
Tom: Okay. Because no feelings! No feelings.
Grace: No feelings.
Tom: I think the 12 should be in Dexterity because he’s gotta do, like, a lot of fedora tricks, probably, in his day-to-day life.
Grace: I think that’s absolutely true. Yes.
Tom: Okay, um…
Grace: I’m gonna say—10 in Strength, 9 in Charisma?
Tom: Yeah. Unlikable.
Grace: No, everybody hates him.
Tom: Also, not very strong, but like…you don’t need to be strong when you look this cool in your trenchcoat.
Grace: And wizards don’t have any spells that are reliant on Strength. They use it all with their enormous fucking minds.
Tom: Yes. Galaxy brain.
Grace: Galaxy brain, yeah.
Tom: Okay, so, um…what’s next, Grace?
Grace: Uh…do you have any idea of what race you’d like this guy to be? Like, what’s—
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, right, we haven’t picked a race.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: I think this guy should be, like, a really cool race. Like, this guy’s just cool.
Grace: (Overlapping) Just cool.
Tom: Is a dragonborn—I feel like that’s something that this guy would be.
Grace: Dragonborns are cool. There’s tabaxi, which are the cat people…
Tom: I’d love to be a tortle, but that’s fucking DLC.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Not DLC, whatever, pay to play.
Grace: Uh—yeah. What do you—there’s tieflings…
Tom: Oh, dude, he’s a tiefling! I could be your angle or your devil!
(Laughter)
Grace: I can be your angel or your devil, baby! Here we go, hot and cold, that’s how he plays ’em! That’s how we do it!
Tom: This guy’s got a leather duster.
Grace: Oh, definitely, dude. Definitely.
Tom: Let’s read some of these treats—traits, because that first one is pretty wild.
Grace: Yeah, it’s Infernal Bloodline.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: So tieflings are derived from human bloodlines, but they do have horns, is one thing about them.
Tom: Yeah, dude.
Grace: Their skin can be, like, any fucking color you want. They got sharp teeth, they got…I dunno, you can have any color hair…
Tom: Uh, this guy’s green. The same color as Pickle Rick.
Grace: I want to die.
(Laughter)
Tom: He’s extremely intelligent.
Grace: Okay. So right in “skin,” I can put green. Like Pickle Rick.
Tom: Green. And then in parentheses—yeah. Like Pickle Rick.
Grace: Cool. So we already know that. Green tieflings are cool. I’ve never seen, like, too many green tieflings. They’re fun.
Tom: They’re cool and tough. And smart.
Grace: I might have gotten, like, the, the, the…background of tieflings wrong, but I’m pretty sure someone a long time ago made a deal with a devil, and now their children are being punished years afterwards, so that’s kind of fun.
Tom: (Overlapping) I thought they were just clappin’.
(Pause, laughter)
Grace: Just fucking hot? Just real sexy?
Tom: Yeah. Pretty much. That’s what I thought! I don’t know.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Call me crazy…
Grace: I mean, they are clappin’.
Tom: Yeah
Grace: Uh, I do want to tell you a cool thing about tieflings, which is most—a lot of them have names that they choose. Like, the more modern tieflings will choose a name for themselves derived from a virtue.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: So, like, what they want to be. For example…uh, a famous tiefling. Jester from Critical Role chose the name Jester, because trickster. Um, or you could be like…Sadness, or Fight.
Tom: Uh, Epic?
Grace: Epic. Epic is good, actually.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): I’m going to put Epic in the character name for now.
Tom: He needs a last name. I’d like to suggest Bacon, but…
Grace: Epic Bacon.
Tom: “Bacis,” is what you just said.
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah, so I don’t know—I just confused the o-n keys for the i-s keys…
Tom: (Overlapping) Which I kind of love…it’s fine.
Grace: Epic Bacis.
Tom: It’s close.
Grace: Um…so, our Intelligence score increases by one! Good news, boys! And our Charisma increases by two. So we got up to eleven in Charisma.
Tom: Got that. All right. He’s a little more—he’s really good with his fedora.
Grace: Yeah. And Intelligence is 17, which is still a +3.
Tom: Oh, this guy’s a genius.
Grace: Yeah. When he levels up, you know he’s putting those point increases in Intelligence.
Tom: Oh, my God, every time, bro. He’s gotta expand his mind.
Grace: Yeah, every time, bro. He’s so smart.
Tom: He listened to This American Life, but then he didn’t get it, and listened to Joe Rogan instead.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): It was too much.
Grace: Um, age…yeah. Tieflings, um, mature about the same as humans. So, pretty much normal.
Tom: Let’s make this guy early twenties.
Grace: Yeah. Maybe just got out of college, kind of?
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Twenty-four? He, like, took a lot of economics classes…
Tom: (Overlapping) Yes.
Grace: …and kind of really gets economics, you know?
Tom: Oh, wait, Grace, put in his Features & Traits that he’s socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, absolutely. Well, I can put that in ideals.
Tom: (Overlapping) Socially liberal and fiscally conservative.
Grace: (Overlapping) Socially liberal…
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): Yeah. That’s perfect. This is perfect. Fuck, that’s awesome.
Tom: Okay, this is epic.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, this really is epic, bro.
Tom: Epic Bacis.
Grace: We have a speed of 30, our size is Medium, we have Darkvision. Good news.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: Speed of 30…we also have, um, Hellish Resistance, which is a resistance to fire damage. And we can speak, read, and write Common and Infernal.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Yeah. Pop out some Infernal in the middle of your Econ class.
Tom: Jesus.
Grace: Yeah. Tieflings are so cool. I’m sad that we’re making our first tieflings, like, a really huge douchebag, because tieflings are dope.
Tom: Grace, can you put in Flaws, he likes to play devil’s advocate?
Grace: Oh, he loves to play devil’s advocate.
Tom: He loves it so much! Oh, that’s also kind of cute, because he’s a tiefling, but whatever.
Grace: Oh, that is cute!
Tom: Oh!
Grace: Look at that! Fun! So, as a tiefling, we also know the Thaumaturgy cantrip.
Tom: (Overlapping) Oof.
Grace: We would also get extra spells, but we’re not at those levels get. But thaumaturgy is that thing where you can, uh, create a minor wonder, which is like, your voice can be loud, or you can make flames flicker, or—
Tom: Oppa Gangnam Style!
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can also alter the appearance of your eyes.
Tom: Oh, dude.
Grace: Not as exciting as Gangnam Style, but…
Tom: But still pretty exciting. Actually, you kind of nailed thaumaturgy, all things considered.
Grace: Yeah, thaumaturgy—good spelling.
Tom: It’s not bad. Not bad, not bad.
Grace: So, for background, what it kind of sounds like we’re doing—this dude, he’s a wizard, obviously he went to school, he got those spells that way.
Tom: Yeah. But he also took a lot of Econ.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Maybe that was his major, but, like…
Tom: Minored in spells.
Grace: Political science—
Tom: Oh, yes.
Grace: Oh, Tom, he majored in—as somebody who’s hanging out with a lot of PoliSci people at the moment, let me just say…
Tom: (Overlapping) Hey, I really hope they don’t listen to this!
Grace: Oh, they don’t, they don’t.
Tom: Because they will get mad at you!
Grace: I’m just talking about, like, in my classes. Oof.
Tom: Oh, yeah. That’s good shit. So, what’s this guy? What’s the best we can…?
Grace: (Overlapping) There’s definitely…acolyte?
Tom: (Overlapping) We made, like, a political leader last time. Acolyte’s just, like, a cult member, I think.
Grace: Yeah, acolyte is religious. Um—yes, okay. I think sage is something? Yeah. You spent years lorning the lure—whoa.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): Let’s restart that one.
Tom: Whoo!
Grace: You spent years learning the lore of the multiverse. You scoured manuscripts, studied scrolls, and listened to the greatest experts on the subjects that interest you. You’ve made yourself a master in your field of study.
Tom: Yes!
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: This is good.
Grace: So, he went—yeah. He learned the lore of the multiverse. You get proficiency in Arcana and History, and you get two more languages. So.
Tom: Oh my God. Fuck me.
Grace: Yeah. I can—I mean, the typical languages are, like, uh, Elvish, Dwarvish, um, you already have Common…
Tom: Give him Elvish and Gnomish.
Grace: Ooh, Elvish and Gnomish. Nice.
Tom: I’m gonna fuck around with some gnomes.
Grace: Sweet. God, you have four fucking languages, huh?
Tom: Yeah. Because he’s so fucking smart, Grace.
Grace: Yeah. I mean, I guess that’s true.
Tom: Christ.
Grace: You also get a bottle of ink, a quill, a small knife, a letter from a dead colleague posing a question you have not been able to answer, a set of common clothes, 10 gp, and I’m gonna fucking roll for a trinket.
Tom: Oh, (singing) let’s all roll for trinkets!
Grace: I’m just making this a rule. We’re going to roll for a trinket every single time.
Tom: Yeah. Until we get small goblin hand.
Grace: Exactly. I’m just going to type in, like, the black quill, ink, stuff.
Tom: Yeah. What’s the question? We should come up with the question right now.
Grace: Yes, good idea.
Tom: Um…
Grace: He’s a wizard, he’s studying the multiverse…oh, we can also roll for our specialty. That would help us discover what our specialty is, you know?
Tom: Yeah, sure. Let’s come back to the question. It’ll come to us.
Grace: Specialty, we got a five—a professor.
Tom: Ooh. Oh—
Grace: (Overlapping) We can also roll again.
Tom: No, this guy really loves to explain things.
Grace: Yes.
(Laughter)
Tom: Mostly to women.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they just don’t get it.
Tom: I wish there was a word for that.
(Laughter)
Grace: If only. Maybe that’s the question.
Tom: Darn.
Grace: What’s the word for it when you’re just trying to explain things to a lady, but she just doesn’t fucking get it?
Tom: Oh my God. Jesus Christ. Just put “sexist question.”
Grace: In parentheses, “sexist question.”
Tom: We’ll get into the specifics later.
Grace: We’ll figure it all out.
Tom: Sexist riddle.
Grace: (Overlapping) Trinkets, come on, zero one—
Tom: (Overlapping) Mummified goblin hand, zero one—
Grace: That’s a twenty-five. What is twenty-five? Ooh, a tiny silver icon of a raven.
Tom: Aw, this guy loves—this guy likes Edgar Allen Poe, but he doesn’t read Edgar Allen Poe.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Quoth the raven.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Yeah. Oh, Grace—this guy listens to Ricky Gervais.
Grace: He fucking loves Ricky Gervais, dude.
Tom: (British accent) “Have I offended—have I offended you?”
(Laughter)
Grace: That’s what he sounds like.
Tom: Is that the letter from the colleague?
(Laughter)
Grace: (Overlapping) The question is—
Tom: (Overlapping) “Are you offended? Have I offended you?”
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, that’s the question.
Tom: Why is everyone—have I offended you? (Really awful British accent) “Hi, my name is Ricky Gervais!”
Grace: Is it just a rule that every episode of this podcast has to have a really bad English accent?
Tom: (Incomprehensible) Ricky Gervais.
Grace: Ricky, are you having a stroke? What’s going on?
Tom: (Incomprehensible) Have I offended you?
Grace: I’m going to start rolling for suggested characteristics. I cannot listen to that.
Tom: Please. Do that. All right, suggested characteristics. Roll that d8.
Grace: We got a six—
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, I hope we get two. Can we do two?
Grace: Yes—
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, and six!
Grace: Two and six.
Tom: Holy shit! So two is “I’ve read every book in the world’s greatest libraries—or I like to boast that I have.” Which is…
Grace: Oh, yeah, books? Yeah, I’ve read ’em.
Tom: Very much so. Him.
Grace: I’ve heard of ’em.
Tom: And number six: “I…speak…slowly…when talking to idiots…which…almost everyone is…compared…to me.”
Grace: This is so good.
Tom: This is rough, dude. All right. So let’s do ideals—
Grace: (Overlapping) I hate him so much. Yeah, ideals. We’ve already got, um, socially liberal, fiscally conservative, but we should roll for another one.
Tom: Yeah. We don’t have an alignment for this guy yet.
Grace: No, we don’t!
Tom: He’s lawful evil.
Grace: I mean, we know he’s evil, but, like…you know how it is.
Tom: I feel like he’s lawful.
(Dice rolling)
Grace: Yes. Well, I actually did get three, which is “Emotions must not cloud our logical thinking.”
Tom: Just like my favorite TV character Rick says.
Grace: Yeah. Kind of like—okay, Tom, here’s the thing.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: He, like, loves Spock, but he doesn’t get that the whole idea of Spock is that he’s being tortured by repressing this shit. Like, the logic is destroying him. He loves Spock, but he, like—
Tom: I bet Spock had a man cave poster.
(Laughter)
Grace: (Overlapping) That’s kind of his—
Tom: (Overlapping) My cave, my rules!
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, bro, he loves Star Trek. But he hates Discovery, because, like, the SJWs are taking over.
Tom: Dude, he loves Star Trek, but he hates women.
Grace: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: Oh, uh-huh?
Grace: Uh-huh, uh-huh?
Tom: So, bond?
Grace: Bond. (Dice rolling) Three. “I work to preserve a library, university, scriptorium, or monastery.”
Tom: That’s too noble.
Grace: Yeah. Too noble. Um… (Dice rolling) “I’ve been searching my whole life for the answer to a certain question.
Tom: Have I offended you?
(Laughter)
Grace: So dumb.
Tom: He asks that to everyone he meets. Like, “Oh, sorry, are you offended by my humor?”
(Laughter)
Grace: I didn’t say anything.
Tom: Does my dark sense of humor offend you?
Grace: You’re just asking for a coffee. I’m here at the Tim Hortons. Sir—
(Laughter)
Tom: Have you been offended?
Grace: Um…and flaw. (Dice rolling) “I speak without thinking through my words, invariably insulting others.”
Tom: Have I offended you?
(Laughter)
Grace: Wow, the dice gods are really understanding…
Tom: (Overlapping) They’re getting it, for the most part. They do not work with us, usually.
Grace: No. We just kind of do our own thing.
Tom: Yeah. Usually you have to say fuck the dice, but like…
Grace: Yeah. Background: sage. Race: tiefling. Do you think he’s lawful evil? [A/N: Listen closer next time, dipshit.]
Tom: Yeah, lawful evil. Because he’s an Econ major.
(Laughter)
Grace: This is so mean.
Tom: Uh, Grace—it’s not mean!
Grace: Yeah, sure.
Tom: It’s a little mean, but, like—
Grace: I don’t feel bad about it.
Tom: This show does not support people who listen to Joe Rogan.
(Laughter)
Grace: Um, we actually are pretty much done with the class stuff—I mean, not class, uh, uh, background, and race. Want to go onto wizard stuff?
Tom: Let’s do wizard.
Grace: Our hit dice are six plus our Constitution modifier. So I believe that’s—yeah, that’s seven hit points.
Tom: Oh, yeah, baby.
Grace: Oh, no, that’s eight hit points. Because at first level, it’s six, plus—
Tom: (Overlapping) Plus—
Grace: Plus, um, our Constitution. Pretty sure that’s our lowest yet.
Tom: I feel like we got a seven last time.
Grace: Seven…we had a low Constitution.
Tom: Stupid Pigeon was pretty weak, I think.
Grace: Yeah. But, starting proficiencies, we get…no armor. We get no tools. We get daggers, darts, slings, quarterstaffs, and light crossbows as proficiencies. So this dude, he relies entirely on magic.
Tom: Yes, essentially. Magic, and his logic.
Grace: (Overlapping) Yes, his logic. His magic is driven by logic. Exactly.
Tom: Yes.
Grace: Um, we get to choose two skills from Arcana, History, Insight, Investigation, Medicine, and Religion. We already have Arcana and History, I believe.
Tom: Yep.
Grace: Maybe he…oh, maybe he has a proficiency in religion?
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Because, like, he’s an atheist, but he knows more about religion than you do, You know?
Tom: So he can use facts and logic to shut down your argument.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Oh yes.
(Laughter)
Grace: And then, uh, Insight, Investigation, or Medicine, you think?
Tom: I think Investigation.
Grace: Ooh, yeah.
Tom: This guy does not believe in medicine.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): He did one of those, like, “I only eat meat for a month” diets.
Grace: Oh, yeah. And he got scurvy, is the thing about it.
Tom: (Overlapping) Epic Bacon.
Grace: (Overlapping) He did get scurvy, on that one.
Tom: “Epic bacon,” he said, through a mouthful of blood.
(Laughter)
Grace: He lost most of his teeth.
Tom: My cave, my rules. Wait—put that in appearance, now—lost a lot of teeth.
Grace: Yeah.
(Laugher)
Tom: His body is in shambles.
(Laughter)
Grace: Missing, like, a few ribs. We don’t know where they went.
Tom: But I know why he did it! Am I right, Grace?
Grace: What—what did—what are you saying?
Tom: You know that thing where you can remove a couple of ribs and suck your own dick?
Grace: Oh, yeah!
(Laughter)
Tom: Epic.
Grace: Yeah, real epic.
Tom: Epic bacon. Uh…what’s next?
Grace: We can choose…for our weapons, which we won’t be using a whole lot—
Tom: No.
Grace: A quarterstaff, or a dagger.
Tom: A quarterstaff is just a straight staff, right? You can just…
Grace: It’s a quarterstaff. How much damage can a quarterstaff do? That’s 1d6 bludgeoning damage. Compared to a dagger, which I think does 1d4.
Tom: Can his quarterstaff be, like, a fun, ornate cane?
Grace: Yeah, he definitely decorates it a lot.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: A lot, a lot.
Tom: This dude knows how to accessorize.
Grace: I think that his quarterstaff could even be what he casts his spells out of.
Tom: Okay, cool.
Grace: You’re supposed to have one attachment or whatever that you, like, cast it out of. Like an arcane focus.
Tom: Grace, can you close your eyes and picture something with me?
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: You don’t need to close your eyes, you’re doing…
Grace: (Overlapping) No, I’ll close my eyes.
Tom: Okay, so. His staff. It’s a simple wood, but it’s gnarled, crooked. And at the top? There’s an ornate, long, green gemstone…
Grace: (Overlapping) Now, Tom…
Tom: …with two eyes—two eyes and a mouth…
Grace: (Overlapping) Now, Tom—Thomas—
Tom: …and Grace, you know what’s carved into the side? In Infernal?
Grace: Aw, yes, in Infernal!
Tom: I’m Pickle Rick.
Grace: Fuck, that’s good.
Tom: I hope Adult Swim shuts down our podcast.
Grace: We’re gonna get a text from, um…uh…uh…
Tom: Are you looking up who runs Adult Swim?
Grace: It won’t let me type in quarterstaff. This sucks.
Tom: Just do—yeah. Staff.
Grace: I’ll just do staff, yeah. And then it’s our Strength modifier. Which is a zero. Strength plus proficiency, because we are proficient in it.
Tom: 1d6 plus…
Grace: 1d6 plus Strength, which we have none of…
Tom: Bludgeoning.
Grace: Bludgeoning damage. Is that our only weapon that we get?
Tom: Oof.
Grace: Fuck. I hate spellcasters.
Tom: It’s so epic!
Grace: We can get a component pouch— (Clears throat) A component pouch or an arcane focus, which has—you know what that is. All the components of the spells that don’t have a specific cost.
Tom: Yeah, totally.
Grace: Well, we already have that.
Tom: Yeah. So…what, should we get an arcane focus?
Grace: Uh…well, I thought that our arcane focus was our quarterstaff.
Tom: Oh, shit, right.
Grace: Like, it’s a weapon, but he can also hold it out and be like, “Fuck you!”
Tom: Yeah. So, should we get, um…a bag—a component pouch instead? A bag?
Grace: A bag, yeah.
Tom: Just some fucking bag full of crap?
Grace: Fuck, we have so much equipment.
Tom: Have I offended you?
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: That’s such a good letter from his colleague.
Grace: It is. That’s the thing about it. Would you like a Scholar’s Pack, or an Explorer’s Pack?
Tom: Uh, I think this guy’s a scholar.
Grace: Yeah. Oh, we get a little bag of sand! Remember that?
Tom: A little bag of sand! It’s back, boys!
Grace: He comes back!
Tom: I’m gonna make theme music just for little bag of sand whenever it shows up.
Grace: Yeah, every time we get a little bag of sand—that’s perfect. Yeah. Scholar’s pack—hey, we get another small knife, so that’s fun.
Tom: Hey.
Grace: Got a lot of knives here.
Tom: He uses it to cut into his LootCrate.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, he does unboxing videos.
Tom: Aw, yeah. Dude, he uses it to open up his Funko Pops!
Grace: Oh, no!
Tom: Yeah!
Grace: So, at first level, for wizard, we get spellcasting and arcane recovery. So.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: You get—ooh, we get a spellbook!
Tom: Hey!
Grace: Yeah. At first level we get, um…oh, holy shit, this is cool.
Tom: Yeah?
Grace: I’ve never played a wizard before. At first level…
Tom: (Overlapping) Six?
Grace: …you get a book containing six first-level wizard spells of your choice. Now, we do only have—at first level we only have two spell slots, but we know six.
Tom: So we know them, when we do get more spell slots.
Grace: Exactly. Or you can do them at any point. Like, let’s say you need…fuck, I don’t know any spells. You need one spell today, but you might need another spell tomorrow, you just need to prepare them.
Tom: Oh, yeah, you change—
Grace: Yeah, you prepared them. So you might need Magic Missile one day, but you might need, uh, uh, uh, Disguise Self another time.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Okay. So we get…we know three cantrips at first level, and we know six first-level spells. I’m just going to write that into our spells so we don’t forget. (Typing) Cantrips…spell slots…cool. Do you want to get into spells?
Tom: Yeah, let’s do some spells!
Grace: Cool. I’ll just put the spellbook in his equipment, as well.
Tom: All right, sweet, yeah. Um—
Grace: I talk a lot of shit about wizards, but six spells is a lot of spells.
Tom: Yeah. That is not bad. They’re still—at least this one is insufferable.
Grace: Yeah, yeah. Intelligence is their spell casting ability, you can cast as a ritual without preparing it, if it’s in your spellbook, if it’s a ritual…
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Cool.
Tom: Sweet. Let’s look at some level ones.
Grace: Do you want to do cantrips first?
Tom: (Overlapping) Yes.
Grace: (Overlapping) Because we’ve already got our one cool cantrip just by being a tiefling. But we get three more.
Tom: Three more. Uh—probably, um, let’s see…I like the idea of doing Dancing Lights. What’s that?
Grace: Yeah. That’s, like, a flavor spell. That does no damage.
Tom: That’s just a little spice. Let’s do it.
Grace: Dancing Lights.
Tom: Nice.
Grace: Well, he does have darkvision, but if he ever wants to help anyone else out—
Tom: This guy does not help.
Grace: Why does he have Dancing Lights, then?
Tom: He uses them to decorate his dorm.
Grace: Oh, that’s cool. That’s actually really cool.
Tom: No, it’s dope. He’s got good taste, sometimes.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: (Overlapping) Let’s do—
Grace: (Overlapping) You could do Fireball, you could do Mage Hand—you get, like, a secret floating hand—you can do some stuff with it—
Tom: (Overlapping) Mage Hand! Let’s do Mage Hand.
Grace: Yeah, Mage Hand is really cool. You can, like, unlock things. Um, you know, pick up objects and throw them.
Tom: Theoretically, you could, um…do a Gangnam Style dance with it. Am I correct?
Grace: Yeah, you could do it. You could jerk yourself off with it. You can do lots of things.
Tom: Oh, yeah. Why didn’t I go to that? I’m the stupid one.
(Laughter)
Grace: (Overlapping) Well, he did remove some of his ribs, so—
Tom: (Overlapping) I’m the dumb one on this—yeah, he does not need his hands. Jesus.
(Laughter)
Grace: I’m pretty sure that’s a myth. I’m pretty sure you cannot suck your own dick by removing some of your ribs.
Tom: No, this guy’s pretty smart, so…
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): He figured it out.
Grace: That’s why he doesn’t even need proficiency in Medicine. He doesn’t need it, he’s that good at it.
Tom: He just stared at his meat and it was like, “All right.”
(Laughter)
Grace: God, I hate this.
Tom: Been a while since I said “meat” on this podcast.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Must be, like, two episodes. Um…so what do we got? Mmmmmmmmessage?
Grace: Message is fun. You can, like—it has to be somebody within 120 feet of you. Like, you couldn’t send a message to somebody, you know, from your hometown, that’s a higher-level spell—
Tom: (Overlapping) I could still go (Whispers) have I offended you?
Grace: You could, yeah! You can, like—if you’re in a big lecture hall, and somebody’s getting a little frustrated with you, and being, like—
Tom: (Overlapping) Playing the devil’s advocate.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah. They’re being, like, “You’re not playing the devil’s advocate, you’re repeating something that somebody already said five minutes ago, were you listening?” And you could just whisper in their ear, “Have I offended you?”
Tom: Are you offended? That would be a good one.
Grace: Message.
Tom: That would be good. I want to kill this guy with my bare goddamn hands.
Grace: Same, same, same.
Tom: Yeah. All right, so we’re done with cantrips.
Grace: We’re gonna give him six fucking spells, though. So, uh…
Tom: Let’s go, boys.
Grace: Holy shit, wizards get a lot of spells! Why do I talk so much shit about wizards? That’s so many spells!
Tom: I see one that’s called Sleep.
Grace: Sleep. Um, it spells—it sends creatures into a magical slumber…uh…creatures—yeah. Within 90 feet.
Tom: Let’s do that, sure. The way he invokes the spell is by talking about his online webseries.
(Laughter)
Grace: His unboxing series.
Tom: It’s just me and a couple of my friends, and we’re just hanging out.
Grace: Exactly. It’s kind of, like, a twist on traditional fairy tale tropes—
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): It’s in, like the modern day.
Tom: It’s like, Cinderella farted, or something, or something like that.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, it’s kind of twisted.
Tom: Like Rumplestiltskin, but he smokes weed, and it’s like…
Grace: Yeah. Snow White doesn’t wear, like, any clothes. And here’s the thing about Sleeping Beauty: her tits are out all the time. But it’s kind of an empowering way?
Tom: Just, like, a really horned-up show.
Grace: Yeah. Like, they choose it to be that way. So, like, it’s kind of feminist if you think about it that way. I’m going to make a request? Which is that we get Magic Missile.
Tom: All right.
Grace: Which is just a classic—I don’t know, kind of a classic wizard spell. It’s really fun.
Tom: All right, let’s go, sure. We need to give him one spell that does damage because the only thing he has is a club.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah. He has a staff.
Tom: I mean, he’s going to be using facts and logic a lot, but…that was rough, Grace.
Grace: Yeah. When it comes to an enemy, you just gotta—sometimes you do have to use an actual weapon.
Tom: Yeah. Sometimes the facts don’t do it.
Grace: (Overlapping) Man, I get a lot of damage spells.
Tom: I see one that’s called Hideous Laughter. That sounds like him.
Grace: Yeah, Hideous Laughter is really good.
Tom: Oh, wait, Grace, but the one you opened up is called Fog Cloud.
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah.
Tom: Does this guy vape?
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Does this guy have a gigantic rig?
(Laughter)
Grace: Okay, Tom. Okay. Okay.
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, my God.
Grace: (Overlapping) His arcane focus is—
Tom: (Overlapping) Read me what the spell does.
Grace: I’m gonna retcon this—his arcane focus is his vape.
Tom: Holy fuck.
Grace: “You create a twenty-foot radius sphere of fog centered on a point within range. This sphere spreads around corners. The area is heavily obscured. It lasts for the duration, or until a wind of moderate or greater speed disperses it.”
Tom: Damn, Epic Bacis is really ripping.
Grace: Yes. Okay, so his arcane focus is his vape rig…
Tom: Yeah. Jesus Christ.
Grace: This sucks.
Tom: Yeah. Um—Fog Cloud. Jesus.
Grace: Yeah, he does really cool vape tricks.
Tom: Hideous Laughter…
Grace: Yeah. Hideous Laughter is, like, you can incapacitate people…laugh. If they succeed against the spell DC—
Tom: Oh, by doing a cool, epic joke, they just, like, fall over.
Grace: Yeah. That would be—
Tom: (Overlapping) He says, like, “I’m Pickle Rick”—
Grace: (Overlapping) Quoting—yeah. He quotes, like, funny memes that he saw—yeah.
Tom: Like, “your GF versus my GF,” and then they just fall over and cackle until they cough up blood.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: All right. We got two more spells. Grease! Grease! I see one called Grease!
Grace: Um, “Slick grease covers the ground in a ten-foot square centered on a point within range, and turns it into difficult terrain for the duration.”
Tom: Can we change it to Axe hair gel?
Grace: Yeah. (Laughter) Yeah, we can. (Typing) Now, it accomplishes the same things…is Axe hair gel greasy?
Tom: No.
Grace: Like, does it just kind of cling to things?
Tom: It’s sticky.
Grace: Okay.
Tom: I mean, if it was on the ground, you could probably slip on it.
Grace: Yeah. That’s fair.
Tom: Uh, Expeditious Retreat is really good when your facts and logic don’t work.
Grace: That’s true. When you really gotta run away.
Tom: I see logic has made you angry.
Grace: Yeah. When they get too emotional and you have run away.
Tom: Oh my God.
Grace: Awesome.
Tom: (Overlapping) Not awesome. It’s not awesome.
Grace: It’s all very good. This is excellent. This is cool.
Tom: This is rough, Grace.
Grace: Goddamn. That’s all of our spells. We got six spells. One of them does damage. He’s really gonna rely on the other party members to kind of do this thing for him, huh?
Tom: Yeah. He’s gonna need a tight group of friends. But, Grace, do they have a nickname for, like, their group?
Grace: Ooh. I don’t know.
Tom: Is it perhaps, like, the Prowlin’ Boys?
Grace: Say again?
Tom: The Prowlin’ Boys?
Grace: Now, it could be. It sure could be. Allies & Organizations—yeah. How do I spell—Prowlin’ Boys, or Prowly Boys?
Tom: I kind of like both.
(Laughter)
Grace: They can’t decide.
Tom: Actually, can they be called, like—it needs to be, like, like, fucking Potato Squad.
(Laughter)
Grace: Fucking Potato Squad?
Tom: No, just Potato Squad.
Grace: I love that.
Tom: Potato Squad: No Cryin’ in the Potato Gang!
Grace: Potato Squad: No Cryin’!
Tom: They’ve kind of got a random, irreverent sense of humor.
Grace: Yeah. But they are very clear about No Cryin’.
Tom: No cry—
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Jesus. Grace has typed “Potato Squad, colon: No Cryin’!”
(Laughter)
Grace: I—it’s such an important part of their gang, they had to put it in the tagline, kind of.
Tom: Yeah. Let’s get eye color out of the way.
Grace: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. It can be anything. He’s a tiefling.
Tom: Red, because I smoke so much weed!
Grace: Ooh, yeah, red!
Tom: Red, because this guy smokes doinks!
Grace: He doesn’t inhale, though.
Tom: No, absolutely not. And he never buys weed. He just bums it off his friends.
Grace: Tom, okay—
Tom: Yeah?
Grace: Just—out of curiosity, um, did you see Elon Musk smoking weed?
Tom: Yeah, no, that’s part of the inspiration for this whole thing, Grace. Him smoking weed on Joe Rogan’s podcast—
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah.
Tom: —and then a month later getting fined twenty million dollars is the funniest thing that has ever happened.
Grace: This is, like, a fun time capsule that firmly cements us in late 2018.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Like, people are going to be reading this, fucking, in—reading this. I don’t know, maybe they’ll be reading the transcripts? I don’t know, maybe that’s what survived.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): But they’ll be, like, in their caves in 2060, like, eating beans out of a can, and they’ll be like, “Wow. Yup. This one was on—this one was in 2018. Things were really wack around then.”
Tom: I’d also like to mention: this podcast—not this episode, this whole podcast—would be imparsible [A/N: unparsable] ten years ago.
(Laughter)
Grace: That’s true.
Tom: And that’s kind of fun. Okay, wait, let’s do height. Height, um—I think he should be 6’2” and very proud of it.
Grace: Yeah, he’s a big boy.
Tom: That’s the first thing in his Tinder bio.
Grace: Definitely, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Sometimes he lies and says 6’3”.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: I don’t know, what’s a normal weight for 6’2”?
Tom: I dunno. Uh, like, 150, 160?
Grace: Okay.
Tom: Let’s do 170, actually. I don’t know.
Grace: 170…yeah.
Tom: I think he goes to the gym, but then, like, flexes super hard in front of his mirror.
Grace: Yes, definitely.
Tom: He’s not out of shape—
Grace: (Overlapping) He goes to the gym, but he doesn’t know too much about what he’s doing.
Tom: He’s not an out of shape guy. Like, he’s in great shape.
Grace: No, no, yeah.
Tom: He’s baffled as to why no one wants to have sex with him.
Grace: Exactly. He’s in shape! Like, what’s the issue?
Tom: It can’t be me!
Grace: I think the issue is that he has not showered in a while.
Tom: Oh, no. Has not showered in a minute. Uh, his hair—he’s got it kind of, like, teased up and spiked a little bit.
Grace: Yeah. Kind of, like, a sexy 2010s vibe.
Tom: Just like his favorite character on television, Rick Sanchez, from the show Rick and Morty. Wow.
Grace: Now—when I think of hot hair, I don’t think of Rick Sanchez.
Tom: Don’t google Rick Sanchez, please.
Grace: That’s just me, though. Yeah.
Tom: Hm. That looks pretty hot.
(Laughter)
Grace: All right.
Tom: He looks a little epic right now.
Grace: A little epic. I’ll put that in—
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, Grace is google searching Rick and Morty, and it’s so epic, you guys.
Grace: Yeah. Goddamn, why is google images such—why is google images so bad? Why am I scrolling down and already seeing, like—
Tom: Stop going down the fucking rabbit hole.
Grace: Why am I already seeing, like, fetish art? Like, what is—what’s the deal?
Tom: Oh, because it’s epic, dude.
Grace: This sucks.
Tom: It’s epic.
Grace: It is. Yeah, that’s kind of where he gets his name from. A little epic.
Tom: A little epic. Hair: a little epic. Um, anything else in appearance? He has a lot of, like, graphic tees.
Grace: Definitely.
Tom: (Overlapping) Like, make me a sandwich.
Grace: (Overlapping) You know that cool one that’s, like, a tuxedo?
Tom: Yeah! He’s got a tuxedo one, but he’s also got, like, “cool story, babe, now make me a sandwich.”
Grace: Yes! Lots of graphic tees from mall kiosks.
Tom: Yeah. Lots of vaguely misogynistic tees. Not vaguely.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah. Just often—often openly misogynistic.
Tom: Just misogynistic, sort of.
Grace: Yeah. Kind of cool. A lot of them do have sort of the rules of the man cave-slash-potato-squad-no-cryin’ on them.
Tom: This guy’s got an epic fail snapback.
Grace: That’s true.
Tom: He’s got a snapback that reads epic fail. This guy has, like, a holster for his vape rig.
Grace: Oof. Do vape holsters exist?
Tom: Like, listen, if you’re trying to kick a nicotine addiction, like, fine, vape, but this guy’s got a really—he’s got a vape that, like, looks like Pickle Rick, and it’s, like, really expensive.
Grace: Oh, yeah!
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: He is big into vape tricks.
Tom: Yeah. This is not—there’s nothing explicitly wrong with vaping, but this guy’s doing it for the tricks.
Grace: I mean, no, it’s a horrible industry, and—
Tom: Oh, no, for sure.
Grace: And nicotine is bullshit, and it’s—
Tom: But also, it’s a nice way to kick things. This isn’t a vape debate. But also, this guy does not give a shit about any of the reasons why vapes are, like, around. He’s just into the tricks.
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: He just wants to touch a girl.
Grace: What?
(Laughter)
Tom: So bad.
(Laughter)
Grace: He does. He wants to touch a girl so fucking bad.
Tom: Talk about desperately horny.
Grace: Longs for the touch of female flesh.
Tom: Females—oh my God, he calls women females, Grace.
Grace: Oh, yeah. I thought that that was implied.
Tom: He also thinks they’re being—like, any time a woman exhibits emotion, he calls her crazy.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: Jesus. Calls women…yeah, females be crazy.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: So, should we go into backstory real quick? Because we got a pretty good appearance.
Grace: We have a great appearance. I would—
Tom: For Epic Bacon here. Is Epic Bacon his name?
Grace: Maybe his name is just Epic, not Epic Bacon.
Tom: All right.
Grace: Because a lot of tieflings only have one-word names.
Tom: Okay, cool. Can it be Epic, but spelled E-P-I-C-C-E?
Grace: Oh…
Tom: So it’s kind of magic.
Grace: Yeah. (Pronouncing phonetically) Epicce. But it’s pronounced epic.
Tom: (Also pronouncing) E-piss.
Grace: E-piss.
Tom: E-piss.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): All right, so backstory is when Grace types everything I say verbatim into the character backstory.
Grace: Yeah. Break me off a piece of that backstory.
Tom: All right. Epicce was born upper-middle-class in Hartford, Connecticut. Um…he went to college completely on his parents’ dime. Uh, during that time, he had two girlfriends. Both of them broke up with him pretty quickly after they realized he sucked. Yeah. So just—yeah. Uh, after that, he was, um, pretty fed up and pretty sexually frustrated, so he joined the—what are they, the Bacon Boys?
Grace: Uh, the Potato Boys. Potato Squad.
Tom: Potato Squad. And they taught him to shut down his emotions and, uh, just chill, and eat bacon, and watch sports in the man cave. Uh, now his lifelong goal is to secure a GF. And, um, he’s still kind of figuring out, uh, how to make women like him.
(Laughter)
Grace: And that’s kind of his lifelong quest, yeah.
Tom: Yeah. He’s so out of touch.
Grace: He’s so out of touch.
Tom: He thinks of it as winning women.
Grace: Yes, definitely. He’s like—what’s that book, that, like, invented the concept of negging—
Tom: (Overlapping) Scott Pilgrim?
Grace: No!
Tom: The Game?
Grace: Yeah, The Game, The Game!
Tom: (Overlapping) But side note—
Grace: (Overlapping) That’s his, um, spellbook.
Tom: Holy shit. But I just rewatched Scott Pilgrim, the movie—didn’t super age well.
Grace: No, it’s not, like—super good. But, you know, it was 2005. Everything was different. [A/N: It was 2010.)
(Laughter)
Tom: Dating a 17-year-old is so epic, you guys.
Grace: It was a whole different world.
(Laughter)
Tom: Oof. Don’t justify Mr. Edgar Wright. Oh, also—this guy only watches Tarantino movies.
Grace: Oh, yes. He loves Tarantino movies. God, Tom—
Tom: And he calls him, like, a tortured artist.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Just a little snapshot into the university life—I’m taking a film class right now? We watched Pulp Fiction last Tuesday?
Tom: (Anticipatory gasp)
Grace: And you could feel, like, the ejaculate dripping from the chairs.
(Laughter)
Tom: Stop!
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): No!
Grace: They were so horny for that one.
Tom: Oh, Jesus. I’m tagging all my film friends in this episode.
(Laughter)
Grace: I mean, like, it’s a good movie. It’s a good movie—not gonna lie on that one.
Tom: No, but, like, they’re all like, “Tarantino is a genius, man.”
Grace: They thought it was so fucking good.
Tom: And he’s really just kind of a dude who gets a boner for, like, controlling people.
Grace: (Overlapping) And for feet.
Tom: He’s also good at making movies, but—
Grace: Yeah. You would not believe the amount of feet in that movie, my man.
Tom: Oh, no. That guy’s—fucking Menacin’ Maggie.
Grace: (Overlapping) Have you seen that movie?
Tom: (Overlapping) Quentin Tarantino is Menacin’ Maggie.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, God, no. Don’t disgrace her name like that.
(Laughter)
Tom: Um…let’s see. What else do we need to have here? Does he have like a creepy celebrity crush?
Grace: Ooh, yeah. I don’t know. Who do men like?
Tom: I don’t know.
(Pause, laughter)
Grace: Cool.
Tom: I don’t know. Fuck, I’m the worst source here.
Grace: Couple of idiots.
Tom: Wait, Grace, I have the one—
Grace: (Overlapping) I’m gonna google celebrity crushes real quick—
Tom: (Overlapping) No, Grace, I have the one.
Grace: Oh, you have it?
Tom: I have the one, and it’s bad.
Grace: Yeah?
Tom: He has a crush on Millie Bobby Brown, Grace.
Grace: No, Tom…
Tom: No, it’s bad!
Grace: I’m not going to type that on the character sheet. That’s so fucked up.
Tom: No, it is fucked up, I’m with you!
Grace: No, I know it’s a thing that people do—holy shit.
Tom: Oh, guys, let’s do a quick—let’s do our weekly PSA. Don’t sexualize the children from Stranger Things.
(Laughter)
Grace: Weekly PSA—yeah.
Tom: Hey, thanks guys.
Grace: I mean, they are fifteen, is the thing about it.
Tom: Hey, guys.
Grace: I’m going to sit on my chair backwards and just look y’all in the eye.
Tom: Hey. Stop it.
Grace: Yeah. Tom, I’ve been googling “celebrity crushes female” and I’m just like—yeah. I don’t know any of these.
Tom: (Overlapping) Wait, Grace, there are a hundred people here. Can we roll the d100?
Grace: (Gasp) Oh, fuck, yeah, that’s really awesome! Yes, yes!
Tom: We get mummified goblin hand.
(Laughter)
Grace: Somehow.
Tom: My favorite celebrity crush.
(Laughter, dice rolling)
Grace: I got 26…oh, God, I’m gonna need to scroll down so fucking far.
Tom: Oh, yeah, because you can’t search the numbers—oh, no!
Grace: Why is this page-by-page?!
Tom: All right, I’ll vamp, I’ll do filler while you’re doing this.
Grace: Yeah, I’ll put on the elevator music during this part. Or say something funny.
Tom: I’ll just say some of his favorite movies.
Grace: Yeah, yeah.
Tom: So, Pulp Fiction…uh, Animal House…
Grace: Hey, Animal House is a good fucking movie.
Tom: Grace, in Animal House, there’s literally a scene where a guy decides whether or not to have sex with a drunk, underage, passed-out girl.
Grace: Remember the scene where the guy pretends to be a zit, thought?
Tom: Yeah, but, like—
(Laughter)
Grace: I haven’t seen it since I was, like, ten. I don’t know.
Tom: It’s not (Borat) very nice.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): He’s also a fan of Borat.
Grace: I’m—
Tom: Grace, can you look at your adblocker right now?
Grace: (Panicked gasps)
(Laughter)
Tom: We are in quadruple digits! It’s literally going up, like, a hundred every second!
Grace: Ooh, this computer is screaming right now!
Tom: That is buck wild!
Grace: It’s currently blocking—20—2200—2400—
Tom: (Overlapping) We’re about to break 2500—
Grace: (Overlapping) I’m on number 46!
Tom: That’s wild!
Grace: Ask men dot com? What the fuck?
Tom: Jesus. Ask men. That’s fair.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): This—this is his homepage.
Grace: Yeah. Oh, man, we’re nearing 3000.
Tom: All right, so some of his favorite TV shows…
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Breaking Bad, but for the wrong reasons.
Grace: Yeah. He calls Skyler, like, a bitch.
Tom: He calls Walt an alpha.
Grace: Ooh, we’re almost there.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: Oh, Tom—
Tom: Grace, it’s the most fucking—like, on-the-nose, Epic Bacon thing of all time—
Grace: I know. We got the best celebrity. His crush is on Jennifer Lawrence. You know how it is. Holy shit.
Tom: The most woke—man.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: (Overlapping) He thought it was awesome when she played—yeah, when she played the girl in Ghost in the Shell.
Grace: (Overlapping) That’s, like the biggest—yeah.
Tom: That’s the only anime reference—
Grace: (Overlapping) I’m going to take a screenshot of my adblocker so we have proof of this thing rapidly going up.
Tom: (Overlapping) It’s still going up!
Grace: Up to 6000 ads.
Tom: It’s still fucking going up. Okay. That’s, uh…
Grace: It just stopped at 500—
Tom: (Overlapping) 5166.
Grace: (Overlapping) 5166 ads.
Tom: Oh my God. Try scrolling down a little bit more, because I guarantee that’s going to go up. Wait…oh, no, I think we’re good!
Grace: Oh, it’s going.
Tom: It’s going!
(Laughter)
Grace: I gotta get out of here. My laptop is losing its mind.
Tom: Yeah, no, I can hear your fan in the background.
Grace: Yeah, no.
Tom: All right, so—wait, let’s just add celebrity crush to the thing, and then I think we’re good.
Grace: Oh, yeah, I’ll add “celebrity crush: Jennifer Lawrence,” and then I think we’re good.
Tom: Well, we’re not good, because this guy is garbage. Oh, um, creator name—I think let’s put both names down for this one.
Grace: Yeah, Grace and Tom. It’s a team effort.
Tom: We’re both so good. All right, so this is Epicce. He’s our…
Grace: (Overlapping) This was a nightmare to make.
Tom: I literally need to take a shower.
Grace: Yeah, I feel sick after making this.
Tom: This guy is a fucking creep.
Grace: Wizards suck. This is a no wizards zone.
Tom: I mean, what was, like, the original—Grace, the original title of the podcast I proposed?
Grace: What was it?
Tom: It was “Roll for a Bastard.”
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: I feel like we’ve done it.
Grace: We’ve made him. The bastard.
Tom: We rolled for one motherfucker. I mean, like…he’s not good. Holy shit, like I’m actually nauseous.
Grace: All right, we gotta start moving. All right.
Tom: Yeah, what can we—what do we need to plug, Grace?
Grace: All right. So. Um—you can find us on Apple Podcasts, on RadioPublic! If you like this podcast, it is really important to leave a review on Apple Podcasts!
Tom: (Overlapping) Please!
Grace: It takes literally two minutes to do—
Tom: (Overlapping) We need your podcast juice.
Grace: Yeah, please!
Tom: I need to take a sip of your review juice. Of your five-star liquid.
Grace: Oh, yeah, taste some of that—
Tom: I’m so thirsty for reviews.
Grace: Please. My lips are cracked.
Tom: Please, Papa.
Grace: My throat is dry like sandpaper. If only I could have a review.
Tom: Jesus.
Grace: But, uh, it helps people discover the podcast! You know!
Tom: Not that we want people to listen to this, but, like…
Grace: Yeah. Also, tell your friends if you have any friends, um, who might like Dungeons & Dragons.
(Laughter)
Tom: If you have any friends!
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, God!
Tom: Grace, I’m looking at our podcast page right now on iTunes? And—
Grace: Yeah?
Tom: One of the recommended podcasts—no, the first recommended podcast—is the Joe Rogan Experience.
Grace: (Gasp) Are you joking? Oh my God.
Tom: (Overlapping) Which, I’d like to mention, has five stars out of 60k ratings. So, like—
Grace: (Overlapping) Yes!
Tom: If Joe Rogan can do it—
Grace: Yes!
Tom: We can do it too.
Grace: Oh, here’s the goal for our podcast. Here’s the ultimate goal.
Tom: All right.
Grace: We need to get more listeners than Joe Rogan has.
(Laughter)
Tom: Okay.
Grace: We need to beat him.
Tom: Oh, Grace, you know like, in Pokémon, you get a rival? Joe Rogan is our rival.
Grace: Joe Rogan is our rival, yes!
Tom: So, if you like us or hate Joe Rogan, please leave a five-star review.
Grace: Yes. The best way to fight the war against Joe Rogan is by joining the side of Starting Tools.
Tom: Can that be the subtitle of our podcast?
(Laughter)
Grace: Also, um, you can—our website is starting.tools, which is where we post character sheets and transcripts, so if you want to look at the character sheets we’ve made him, that’s where you would find it.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: If you have another podcast program you prefer, let us know, and we’ll try to get there. And you can contact us at our email, which is startingtools@gmail.com, or on our Twitter, which is @ToolsStarting.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Um, follow us, let your friends know…
Tom: (Overlapping) Feel free to livetweet the podcast with the hashtag #ToolsCast.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yes, please. Currently, we’re the only posts in there.
Tom: (Overlapping) We need the—we need the posts. Um, thank you again to anyone who’s followed, or done fanart, any stuff like that, that’s great.
Grace: (Overlapping) Yes, thank you.
Tom: One of your friends made a really good Eric Andre bit about—
(Laughter)
Grace: (Overlapping) It was really funny.
Tom: It was good stuff. So, thank you. Um…anything else to plug?
Grace: Oh, our theme music is Minor Apprehension by Jackie McLean, it’s a fun jazz tune.
Tom: Okay. It sure is!
Grace: Yeah! If you like jazz!
Tom: Um, I really hate, um, the guy we just made.
Grace: Yeah. I just want to close out of this. We need to go. Want to take us home?
Tom: Yes. Grace—
Grace: Yeah?
Tom: Why was your adblock up so high?
Grace: I’m going to be thinking about that for a good, long time.
Tom: Well, thank you for listening to Starting Tools. I’ve been Tom.
Grace: I’ve been Grace.
Tom: Thank you for listening.
Grace: Yeah, thank you!
(Outro music: Minor Apprehension by Jackie McLean)
Starting Tools 