(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.
Grace: Solid.
Tom: Something different is in the air tonight, Grace.
Grace: Yes.
(Laughter)
Tom: Operative word being “tonight.” This is our first nighttime record.
Grace: That’s true. It’s 9:14 my time. The difference in the air, though—is it the coming of all? The beautiful fall weather that we’ve got here?
Tom: It’s less that and more, like, a pork syringe problem I’ve been having.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, could you tell me about this pork problem that you’ve got going on?
Tom: So, I’d say that—mm, ten minutes before record time, uh, I texted Grace, “Cool!” And then directly following that—hold on, I have the evidence on hand—
Grace: Oh, don’t worry, I’ve got it. It’s: “Okay!!” Two exclamation points. “I injected molasses into pork today.”
Tom: Okay, so—
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): (Overlapping) So, my line of work—
Grace: (Overlapping) So, just explain that one, please.
Tom: My line of work takes me to some interesting places. One of them was using a meat syringe from a brand called “Dick”—
(Stifled laughter)
Tom (cont’d): —to make—yeah, is that fucking funny?
Grace: Yeah, it’s pretty good.
Tom: Nice. Um, I used a syringe to inject molasses, uh, water, salt, and sugar into a nice, good cut of pork.
Grace: Ooh, yeah. So that’s kind of the situation.
Tom: It took an emotional wear and tear on me that I wasn’t prepared for.
(Laughter)
Grace: I’m just confused about how, like—was it multiple injections to get it, like, infused into the pork?
Tom: (Overlapping) You need to do—
Grace: (Overlapping) Or was it one, that kind of spread?
Tom: Well, you need to do two injections per muscle group. I’m glad you asked.
Grace: Holy shit. That’s a lot of muscles.
Tom: And I did about five cuts of meat, so…
Grace: How do you determine the muscle groups? Like, what muscles groups does pork have?
Tom: Uh, it’s pretty visible—it’s just which cuts are tied together by fat.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): This is not good audio.
(Laughter)
Grace: It’s really, like—we’re kind of pandering to our butcher population right now.
Tom: I’m also eating sushi right now, so there’s a weird energy in the air.
Grace: Well, I don’t really know where to move on from there.
Tom: Hold on, I’m eating a lot of sushi. Um, in my time—in my trials—
Grace: Oh, God, you’re eating right now?
Tom: Yeah, I’m fucking hungry! Um—this is not gonna sound good.
Grace: Just chew, and I’ll edit it out.
Tom: No. I want you to keep it. Make it louder.
Grace: Great.
Tom: Okay, so—my idea was—I’ve been feeling very stressed recently, Grace. I got a lot of…
Grace: (Overlapping) Oh, yeah, it’s a stressful time.
Tom: Yeah. Trying to have it all. Balancing my kids, my—my wife— (Borat voice) My wife—
Grace: A job—
(Laughter)
Tom: Um, so I thought we could just kind of do a laid-back dude. A laid-back gal who’s down for whatever.
Grace: Ohh. Wearing a Hawaiian shirt.
Tom: Definitely. I want them to be very Bermuda. Like—yeah.
(Laughter)
Grace: I love that. Just really chilled out.
Tom: (Overlapping) Just, like—
Grace: (Overlapping) That’s a really good idea.
Tom: Right? I feel like that would be a nice one. This’ll be a calm one.
Grace: A real chill episode.
Tom: So what’s a chill race that we can make this person?
Grace: God, I wish to God I had the tortle package.
Tom: (Overlapping) Every time, it’s the tortle—I want him so bad.
Grace: (Overlapping) That’s about as chill as it gets. You know, we haven’t made a human yet.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): Can this just be a chill dude in a Hawaiian shirt?
Tom: Can this be a chill party dude?
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah, can it just be kind of a cool human?
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Kind of a cool human hanging out and having a good time?
Tom: I’m Nate!
Grace: Yeah! Hey, guys, it’s me, Elaine!
(Laughter)
Tom: I think whatever this character’s name ends up being, we have to add “Bermuda” to the front.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Bermuda Jane, Bermuda Travis…let’s see.
Tom: (Mouth full) I’m eating sushi.
(Laughter)
Grace: Could you not have waited ten minute to eat the sushi, then start the episode?
Tom: It’s an hour—no, I was…listen, Grace…
Grace: (Overlapping) Really raring to go. Getting ready to go.
Tom: I work hard and I play hard. So what class should this person be? What’s a nice, Bermuda party class?
Grace: I don’t know? Let’s see…I think that rogue is out. Rogue is very intense. Oh, Tom…
Tom: Yeah?
Grace: Druid spends a lot of time in nature.
Tom: Hey!
Grace: Druid is someone who gets their magic from nature, as do rangers. Rangers are a little more intense, though, because they’re really going ham. You could have a cleric—
Tom: (Overlapping) Grace, can this guy—can this guy be a druid that gets his magic from the coastline?
Grace: Oh, yes!
Tom: From beautiful Sandals, Jamaica?
Grace: Definitely, definitely, definitely, definitely.
Tom: Yeah!
Grace: Absolutely.
Tom: A beautiful…
Grace: Fuck yeah.
Tom: A beautiful ocean.
Grace: We found him! We found the beach boy! Right away!
Tom: There he is.
Grace: Here he is.
Tom: This guy’s the fifth Beach Boy. I had to check that there were five Beach Boys until I did that joke—or, four Beach Boys.
Grace: How many—could you name a single Beach Boy?
Tom: Brian Wilson.
Grace: Name another.
Tom: Uh…Someone Love.
Grace: Wow. Two for two. That’s more than I fucking know.
Tom: (Overlapping) I think there’s a dude named, like, Kevin Love who plays basketball? And then one of the Beach Boys is his uncle.
Grace: That’s a possibility. (Typing)
Tom: So, like—
Grace: Mike Love! Mike Love is one of them.
Tom: How many fucking Beach Boys…? Mike Love! Got it.
Grace: And then there’s a solid nine other Beach Boys.
Tom: (Overlapping) And then the other ones are Dennis and Carl. Yeah, baby.
Grace: And then there’s Dennis and Brian and Carl—were they all brothers?
Tom: Yeah. Brian was the frontman that they made the good movie about.
Grace: We’re kind of like the Beach Boys, pioneering our own podcast right now, when you think about it.
Tom: You really gotta go back to D&D real quick.
Grace: (Laughing) When you think about it.
Tom: Wow. Makes you think.
Grace: All right. So. Really does make you think. I wish there was a Chill stat. We’ll figure it all out, we’ll figure it out.
Tom: Oh, wait! I do know something you can do, though?
Grace: What?
Tom: Scroll down to the second page, where we do, like, appearance and stuff—
Grace: Yeah?
Tom: And, wait, scroll—is there a spot for sex? Like, male or female?
Grace: Uh…no, we can do it, though.
Tom: Because you could definitely put “yes, please” in that.
(Laughter)
Grace: I am going to make a specific box for sex that says “yes, please.”
Tom: Yeah. And I think that’s the only…yeah, that’s the only mention we make of this character’s sex.
(Laughter)
Grace: Of gender, yeah. I love that.
Tom: This character’s sex or gender—this person just loves having sex.
Grace: (Slams hand down) No gender. Only beach.
Tom: Bermuda sex-haver.
Grace: Um—yeah, do you want me to roll for ability scores?
Tom: I’d love you to, uh, do that. And…now, Grace, what time is it?
Grace: Uh, where I am, it’s 9:21. Where you are, it’s 8:21.
Tom: It’s time for basic rolls!
Grace: Oh, it’s ti—
(Laughter)
Tom: And tonight, I have a live performance for you.
Grace: Oh, fuck, dude! I’m so excited! All right, take it away.
Tom: Now, I don’t know if this guitar is tuned. (Strum) Fine.
Grace: All right, good enough. Sounds good to me.
Tom: (Strumming) Shush! Absolute silence!
Grace: Oh I’m—I’m silent.
Tom: (Still strumming) I need to hone my craft.
Grace: Oh, hold on, I’m gonna dump all my dice out. (Dice falling) Now I’m totally silent.
(Chill, acoustic, crunchy, live cover of Basic Rolls)
(Things get a little funky at the end, as Tom gets experimental with chords)
(Laughter)
Grace: Getting a little crunchy at the end there.
(Final chords)
Grace: (Clapping) Yeah!
Tom: That’s right, clap for me. I was very good.
Grace: Fuck yeah! Getting acoustic, kind of. Bringing it back to the roots.
Tom: Sort of a vacation time, you know? This guy’s playing at an open mic.
Grace: Definitely. This dude just pulled out his guitar at the beach, and he’s ready to chill. But, like, everyone’s happy about it, that he pulled out the guitar.
Tom: Everyone’s fine with it. Because he’s a beach boy.
Grace: Exactly, yeah. Are we making Brian Wilson?
Tom: I feel like it’s in poor taste, because he’s still very much alive, and theoretically could listen to our podcast.
(Dice rolling)
Grace: All right. I’m gonna…
Tom: (Mouth full) While you’re doing your rolls, I’m going to shotgun the last three pieces of my sushi.
Grace: Oh, great. That’s good audio.
Tom: Let’s go. I’m gonna do it an inch away. [A/N: I edited out the chewing sounds. You’re welcome.]
(Extended dice rolling)
Grace: Holy shit, I’m rolling so well right now.
Tom: (Mouth full) Beach boy, baby!
(Dice rolling continues)
Tom: (Recovering) Oh my God. I feel like I’m dying.
(Laughter)
Grace: Yeah. That was a long time of chew—are you eating some California rolls over there, or something?
Tom: No, I’m having a crunchy salmon roll.
Grace: Oh, great, great. Good.
Tom: Well, I was having a crunchy salmon roll. It is gone.
Grace: Yeah, it’s…it’s long gone.
Tom: Now there’s just a big chunk of pickled ginger.
(Laughter)
Grace: I was rolling great for the first two rolls, and then things did kind of go off, the rails, so…
Tom: (Overlapping) How’d we do, Grace, how’d we do?
Grace: Uh…so…we got a 16. We got a 15. Then we got a 12, then we got an 11, and then we got two 9s to finish the whole thing off.
Tom: That’s not awesome.
Grace: So it’s not great. Oh, but Tom, I tell you what—humans get a +1 to every single ability score.
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, that’s stupid!
Grace: (Overlapping) So turn it into a 17, a—no, it’s fucking cool, because humans are the best.
Tom: Humans are nerds, bro.
Grace: (Overlapping) Everyone’s like, “Oh, humans are boring—”
Tom: Yeah, they’re boring!
Grace: They’re versatile!
Tom: Not this guy, bro. This person just wants to crack open a nice cold Corona…
Grace: Exactly.
Tom: And chill with their buds at the beach.
Grace: Um—
Tom: Okay, so, druid. This person is a druid beach dweller.
Grace: Yeah, he’s a beach boy! He’s a beach friend.
Tom: Have we figured out their…background yet?
Grace: No, no, no, no. Do you want to do ability scores first, and then—
Tom: Yeah, yeah. I feel like we might homebrew a background for this one.
Grace: Yeah, just something real chill. Because a lot of the backgrounds, I think, are very intense.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Like, street urchin, or whatever, but this guy—he’s cool.
Tom: I think this guy was, like the front-person of a ska band.
(Laughter)
Grace: Okay. Now, okay.
Tom: A Mighty Mighty Bosstones cover band. Maybe. All right, so—
Grace: (Overlapping) Now, if he is—
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah?
Grace: If he is going to be pulling out his guitar at the beach, and people are going to like it, rather than being grossed out by it, his Charisma is going to need to be pretty high. Do you want to pop the 17 into Charisma?
Tom: Yes. This character is not going to be a fighter, like, by any means.
Grace: No, no, no, no.
Tom: Oh, but he’s a lover.
(Laughter)
Grace: Um, also, one thing about druids is that their Wisdom has to be pretty high, because that’s their spellcasting modifier.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: I think we should put the 16 in there. And also, he can dispense some pretty good wisdom. Like, if you’re just chilling with this dude on the beach—yeah.
Tom: No, he’ll be like, “Sometimes the biggest wave you gotta ride…is your relationship with your father.”
Grace: Ohh.
Tom: And then, like, his friend will be like, “Dude! You’re right!”
Grace: And then he goes and fixes his relationship with his father.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Because he’s just so good at it.
Tom: Because he’s just a genius. All right, Dexterity—
Grace: (Overlapping) You think this dude surfs?
Tom: (Overlapping) You gotta crack open some Coronas, Grace!
(Laughter)
Grace: That’s a 13.
Tom: (Overlapping) Pop that 13 in there. Yeah, baby.
Grace: That’s a plus…is that a +1?
Tom: That’s a +1. He’s not that good at it.
Grace: No.
Tom: Um, I feel like Intelligence is going to be a 10.
Grace: (Overlapping) I think this guy might get—yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Definitely.
Tom: Pretty average intelligence.
Grace: I was thinking, if this dude’s, like a beach guy, he might not be super into surfing, but I think he’s definitely surfed at least once, so I think that Constitution has to be relatively…
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Higher than Strength, at least.
Tom: Also, you go out there, the sun’s beating down on you, you know, like—
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly!
Tom: This is good thinking. So Strength is a 10. He’s—he doesn’t need to be strong, he’s a lover.
Grace: Yeah. It’s a 10 Strength, 10 Intelligence…it’s all fine. Yeah. You don’t want to be too strong when you’re loving.
Tom: Oof. Hey.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): All right.
Grace: All right. Moving right along.
Tom: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah!
Grace: What is the goddamn human page…oh, do you want to finish up, uh, human stuff first, before we do druid?
Tom: Yeah, let’s go!
Grace: Okay, cool. Um…how old is this guy, do you think?
Tom: Um…I think this guy is in his late forties.
Grace: Oh, wow. Yes!
Tom: He’s going through…some…something.
Grace: Yeah. He’s been coming to these beaches—let’s say, how about, forty…
Tom: 47?
Grace: 48?
Tom: 48.
Grace: 47. I’ll split you right in the middle—47 and a half.
Tom: Yeah. “It’s my half-birthday!”
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: All right.
Grace: And they can be any alignment—what do you think his build is like? Well, we can get to that later, in appearance.
Tom: I think this guy should be, um, Neutral Good. Because he’s just all about the waves.
Grace: Oh, yeah, exactly!
Tom: He goes with the flow. I’m gonna eat some of this pickled ginger, because I’m curious.
Grace: Oh, fuck, there’s more to come.
Tom: Party, baby!
Grace: Yeah, I like it, because he’s not super—oh, I just typed Neutral Chaotic, I was gonna say chaotic. But he’s not, like, super chaotic, because he’s going with the flow, but he’s also not lawful, because he’s not bound by any rules in particular.
Tom: Yeah. Like, ain’t no laws on the beach, baby!
Grace: (Overlapping) Exactly. Well. There’s some laws.
Tom: (Overlapping) Except public urination laws. Which he has been called on.
Grace: Now, there’s certainly some laws. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. But they got him fair and square on that one. He’ll go for questioning. Why not.
Tom: Checkmate. I’ll put the pants back on.
(Laughter)
Grace: You got me, dude!
Tom: Damn, fine by me, dude.
Grace: Yeah. That’s a great thing about him, is that he’s real chill about this all.
Tom: He goes with the flow. Like, all right!
Grace: Um, we speak Common and one other language. Which language…?
Tom: What’s, like—oh, he should speak Triton, because he’s always by the beach!
Grace: Ooh, you might have just made up a language there, my friend.
Tom: Wait, what do tritons speak? Like, the bubbly bubble language?
Grace: Are Tritons even…oh, tritons are a thing.
Tom: Yeah, they’re the mermen. Wasn’t Menacin’ Maggie raised by tritons?
Grace: Um, she was raised by merrow—
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh.
Grace: —which is different than tritons.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: Do you want him to speak, like—they spoke something. Fuck, I really don’t know enough about D&D to be doing this podcast.
Tom: Grace, look at the ad that Adblock is not blocking on the side of this wiki?
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Take a screenshot of that for—
Grace: “Nobody believed his girlfriend was real, until…”
Tom: Dot dot dot.
Grace: “Read more.”
Tom: I will read more.
Grace: I can’t click on this. I’m curious for, like, comedy’s sake, but I cannot click on that.
Tom: We already fucking killed your Adblock, like, last week.
Grace: Yeah. It’s still having a tough time—
Tom: We need to go back to, like, guyzone.fuck or whatever that website was.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, Tom—I’m Googling frantically—you know what he speaks? Aquan.
Tom: Aquan! Yeah.
Grace: Yeah. It’s the language of the elemental plane of water.
Tom: Oh, cool! Yeah, he’s all about that.
Grace: Yeah. (Typing) Oh, yeah, we’re good to go.
Tom: All right.
Grace: I love this normal guy that we’re making. This normal, fun dude.
Tom: He just loves to have a good time and party.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: He loves to party and he loves to rock. There’s not much else to say.
Grace: Sure. He likes a couple of cold brews. Why not?
Tom: Maybe he’ll have too many and yell at a police officer.
Grace: Things get a little out of control on some Saturdays, but, hey…
Tom: It’s the weekend, baby!
Grace: (Overlapping) It’s five o’clock somewhere.
Tom: It’s five o’clock here.
Grace: It’s the freakin’ weekend, baby!
Tom: He says while being put in custody.
(Laughter)
Grace: Um, do you have any ideas of—oh, you said ska band, right?
Tom: Yeah. He’s in a Mighty Mighty Bosstones cover band.
Grace: That—now, that sounds like an Entertainer, so I think we can pull details from there.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: But we’ll know—we’ll write, um…I don’t know. What’s the phrase for someone who plays ska?
Tom: An artist. A true artist. The same as you and me, Grace.
Grace: I’ll write “ska”—is “ska” an abbreviation?
Tom: I don’t know.
Grace: Super Kool…Artists.
Tom: Ska Shredder.
Grace: Ska…Shredder. Artist.
Tom: With an E. Artiste.
Grace: Artiste.
Tom: Um…so what should this ska band be called?
Grace: I literally do not know enough about ska to make any jokes about it.
Tom: I think it should be his name and the blanks.
Grace: Oh, that’s true. Like, uh, uh…Jeremy and the Octopuses. [A/N: I know it’s octopi. Sorry.] Jeremy and the Squids. Jeremy and the Squids?
Tom: There is a real life—
Grace: (Overlapping) David and the Squids.
Tom: There is a real life band called Shannon and the Clams.
Grace: You’re joking.
Tom: No, dude, they’re really good, actually. Shoutout to Shannon and the Clams. I love you guys.
Grace: Great. I’m sure they listen. Thanks for listening, Shannon.
Tom: And the clams.
Grace: And the clams.
(Laughter)
Tom: This guy is definitely just, like, a really chill guy…
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: So I feel like he should just have a pretty normal game, but then, like…Party, Fiesta in front of it.
Grace: Oh. (Typing) So, like…
Tom: Top 100 Male Names.
Grace: Yeah, I’m Googling Top 100 Male Names. Um…over the last 100 years, I guess? Oh, jeez.
Tom: You’re on SSA dot gov.
Grace: Yeah. Whoa, why does the social security site…hold on, I gotta plug in my laptop.
Tom: Yo, actually—oh, wait, I’m going to need to, um…
Grace: This is like—did you ever play that game Concentration?
Tom: Yeah?
Grace: And you have to clap, and say “This is Concentration—”
Tom: (Overlapping) Oh, yeah, so we’re doing, like—
Grace: (Overlapping) And the topic would be male names? Yeah, this is, like, a super bad—I was always super bad at that game, because I couldn’t think of them.
Tom: Hey, check number nine! Check number nine, though!
Grace: Hey, Thomas! You’re right there!
Tom: Heyyy, lotta Thomas…es….
Grace: Surprisingly, James is above John.
Tom: Surprisingly, Mike is below Robert.
Grace: What about Tony?
Tom: Tony’s fourteen.
Grace: How about Paul? Kenneth? How about Kenneth for our guy?
Tom: I think Kenneth is too long. This guy…
Grace: I also—I’d also love it if it started with an F.
Tom: Oh, Gary!
Grace: So that it could be Fiesta F, you know?
Tom: Oh, Fiesta…I mean, Fiesta Frank, Fiesta…
Grace: Oh. Fiesta Fabio—
Tom: Fiesta Fabio!
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): I do like Fiesta Fabrizio.
Grace: Ding ding ding!
Tom: Yeah, Fiesta Fabio, baby.
Grace: Oh, yeah, dude.
Tom: (Overlapping) This is just a guy—
Grace: (Overlapping) His name is Fiesta Fabio.
Tom: Oh, he loves that his name begins with an F, because he’s got so much…he’s got so much leeway with it.
Grace: Yeah, like Funky Fabio.
Tom: Funky Fabio…okay, so his name is Funky Fabio and the Beach—and the Sandy Toes.
Grace: Oh, fuck.
(Laughter)
Tom: It’s good.
Grace: I love this.
Tom: It’s very good. It’s a good name.
Grace: Funky Fabio and the Sandy Toes. Love that so much.
Tom: It’s really good.
Grace: Is Jimmy Buffett ska?
Tom: Jimmy Buffett is not ska!
(Laughter)
Grace: Maybe—
Tom: Grace, ska is—it’s like reggae but, like, it’s a fast tempo.
Grace: Kind of sounds like Jimmy Buffett to me.
Tom: I think our grandpa might be a little bit into ska.
Grace: Oh, cool, okay. Maybe—
(Laughter)
Tom: No.
Grace: Maybe—God, I really need to look up what ska is after this, because I really don’t know anything about it.
Tom: I mean, it’s not awesome. Like…
Grace: They get kind of funky, right? They might bring a saxophone into it?
Tom: Yeah, like—
Grace: A trumpet, perhaps?
Tom: Yeah, they use some horns.
Grace: Okay, they use brass. I might—maybe it’s a Jimmy Buffett cover band, but…ska vibes.
Tom: Oh my God, they turn Jimmy Buffett songs into ska songs!
Grace: Yes.
Tom: Like, I don’t even—I guess Jimmy Buffett is qualified as easy listening? I don’t know. Prove me—
Grace: I guess country? (Typing)
Tom: He’s not country. What is Jimmy Buffett?
Grace: (Laughing) One of these is “What is Jimmy Buffett worth?”
(Laughter)
Tom: To you.
Grace: He’s worth a whole lot.
Tom: What is Jimmy Buffett worth? Like, at the end of his life? Damn, Jimmy Buffett looks good.
Grace: It says country, country pop, gulf and western…he’s best known for his music, which portrays an “island escapism” lifestyle. Yeah, it does.
Tom: Can’t argue with that, Jimmy.
(Laughter)
Grace: God, this is—
Tom: His name is James William Buffett, but he shortens it to Jimmy Wimmy Buffett.
Grace: Are you joking?
Tom: (Overlapping) No—
Grace: (Overlapping) Is this a fact that you’re seeing somewhere?
Tom: No, no, no, no, I’m just being stupid.
Grace: Okay—
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): I was fully ready to believe that. That just seems like something good. A good fun time.
Tom: Jimmy Wimmy Buffett.
Grace: A great time.
Tom: One of his albums is called “Changes in Attitudes, Changes in Latitudes!”
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): God bless him.
Grace: Oh, that’s so fun. God bless him.
Tom: By the way, Grace, is this the episode that we fully overlap with all the McElroy IPs? Like, D&D, siblings, and Jimmy Buffett.
Grace: Ah, fuck.
Tom: Grace, we’re gonna get—
Grace: Ah, fuck, dude.
Tom: Now we just have to talk about, like, horses a lot, and we’re gonna get—
Grace: We done—we done went and stole a whole lot of shows, didn’t we?
Tom: Hey, please do not sue us.
Grace: This is a fun—this is a fun podcast inspired by our own Dungeons & Dragons adventures.
Tom: And just our own.
Grace: And just our own. Just our own. What were we even doing?
Tom: What is this show?!
Grace: Background.
Tom: Oh, my God. Is that what we were doing? Yeah, yeah.
Grace: That’s what we were doing, and then we went on a Jimmy Buffett tangent—
(Laughter)
Tom: We went on a bender. We took a quick tip to Margaritaville.
Grace: Yeah. I never want to come back.
Tom: Oh.
Grace: He wrote “Hotel California,” didn’t he?
Tom: That is The Eagles. That is The Eagles.
Grace: Fuck.
Tom: That is so very much The Eagles.
Grace: Kind of sounds like, him, though.
Tom: (Pained noise)
Grace: When you think about it.
Tom: It really doesn’t!
Grace: Kind of makes you think, though.
Tom: Although, if Jimmy Buffett listens to our show—which I know you do, Jimmy—
Grace: Oh, he’s out there.
Tom: Please cover Hotel California, just for me.
Grace: That would be so good. That’s the one exception that, um, that—what’s our guy’s name—that Fiesta Fabio makes. He will cover “Hotel California.”
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Yeah. It’s 99.99% Jimmy Buffett, but they’ll make excuses for, like, yeah, “Hotel California.” Some other Eagles song.
Tom: So he gets a disguise kit and one type of musical instrument.
Grace: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: I think he should play a nice, easygoing beach guitar, baby.
Grace: Love that. Is that different from a regular guitar?
Tom: No, I just added “beach” to it.
Grace: Yeah. This is the fantasy world, though, so maybe they have a special distinction. Maybe it’s been blessed, or something.
Tom: It’s made of sand.
Grace: Blessed by the ocean goddess herself.
Tom: Damn.
Grace: Ooh. I do like that it’s made of sand. I will jot that down.
Tom: Made of sand. Sounds bad. Feels bad.
Grace: Made of sand—oh, the magical thing that the sea goddess cursed—blessed it with, is that it just sounds really bad. It has a -5 to all performance checks.
Tom: Oh, no!
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): It’s just a super—
Grace: (Overlapping) But the thing is—
Tom: It’s a really bad guitar.
Grace: So, because, he’s proficient in it, he would get a +5 to it. But then he gets a -5 to it again, because it just sounds so bad.
Tom: Oh! That’s mean.
(Laughter)
Grace: So he’s dead center.
Tom: All right. Entertainer—he’s obviously a singer.
Grace: Yeah. Oh—we also get a costume and 15 gold pieces, and we get to roll for a trinket.
Tom: His costume—oh, wait, roll for a trinket!
(Dice rolling)
Grace: Tom. I’m going to send you a photo of my dice right now.
Tom: Oh, please tell me. Please tell me, Grace.
Grace: One of them bounced up and hit my laptop, one of them is—
Tom: Please. Please tell me—
Grace: Okay. I’m just going to send this to you. It’s blurry, because my hands are shaking right now.
Tom: I am salivating waiting for this text.
(Laughter)
Grace: Actually, I don’t know if you can even see—oh, yeah, you can make it out.
Tom: Wait…did you send it to me on the—where’d you send it?
Grace: Oh, it’s a-coming. It’s coming to your, uh, phone.
Tom: I am on wet waiting for this. Oh—it just sent. (Pause) Is that an 001, Grace?
Grace: That’s an 001. (Clapping) That’s an 001.
Tom: (Overlapping) Mummified goblin hand!
Grace: (Overlapping) We got mummified goblin hand.
Tom: (Overlapping) Grace!
Grace: (Overlapping) On our sixth—no, our seventh episode.
Tom: Yes!
Grace: I’m going to lose my mind.
Tom: I feel—I’m so happy.
Grace: I cannot believe this, dude. I’m so happy. I’m so happy right now. We got our goblin hand, dude.
Tom: Grace, does he have it on a necklace?
Grace: Oh, yes! Mummified goblin hand necklace!
Tom: Your hands were really shaking, huh?
Grace: I could not handle it. I don’t—I’m still looking at the dice, because I don’t want to move them.
Tom: (Singing) I don’t want to close my eyes…
Grace: I don’t want to live in a world where I don’t have a mummified goblin hand.
Tom: It’s a puka shell mummified goblin hand necklace.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Oh my God.
Grace: Oh my God. I mean, we gotta move on, but I don’t want to. We also get a costume.
Tom: Fuck yeah. Um…should it be, um, like, a fun Hawaiian shirt?
Grace: Yeah, definitely.
Tom: It’s an additional Hawaiian shirt.
Grace: Oh, good, good. Because he already has the classic—he’s got his common clothes and everything.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: He looks so good.
Tom: He really does.
Grace: Feels good. I am on top of the world right now.
Tom: (Overlapping) No, I am really…I am riding high from the goblin hand.
Grace: I can’t—that was such crazy lucky, dude.
Tom: That was, like, the fourth time, yeah.
Grace: This is our seventh episode. We got—I mean, think of all the other choices there are for us to get now.
Tom: The next one I want is 69, regardless of what the trinket is.
Grace: Oh, good, good, we’ll start hoping for 69 now.
Tom: Should we start doing the characteristics?
Grace: Yeah, definitely.
Tom: All right, so…
Grace: So I’m going to roll 2d8 for personality traits—yeah. (Dice rolling) We got a 6…and we got a 1.
Tom: Okay, so, 6 is “I get bitter if I’m not the center of attention.” And 1 is—
Grace: (Overlapping) That seems like a good trait.
Tom: Really? Because I like number 1, which is “I know a story relevant for almost every situation.” I think this guy loves telling, like, surf stories.
Grace: We get two, which is the great part.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: Which is—he’s kind of that older guy, who, like, he has a lot of great stories, but he needs to be the center of attention—
Tom: He’s not sure how to relate it to other people.
Grace: Yeah, yeah. Okay. Um…ideal.
Tom: But this guy’s just, like, seen so many animals. So many beasts. Ideal, yeah!
Grace: Oh, that’s a 1! Beauty.
Tom: “When I perform, I make the world better than what it was.”
(Laughter)
Grace: Absolutely. Absolutely true.
Tom: I think this guy takes a lot of pride in his bad-sounding guitar.
(Laughter)
Grace: It’s made of sand. It’s really hard for him. It’s really tough out there.
Tom: It’s not a good…it’s not a good guitar.
Grace: No, it sounds pretty bad.
Tom: Bad. Absolutely not good. What’s next, Bond?
Grace: Wow, we’re fucking crushing it with these. Number 6.
Tom: Yes! “I would do anything for my—”
Grace: (Overlapping) “I would do anything—”
Tom: Oh, sorry.
Grace: “I would do anything for the members of my old troupe.”
Tom: Oh, that’s good stuff.
Grace: Yeah. The other members of the—the Sandy Toes part of the band.
Tom: The Sandy Toes. And much like toes, there are ten of them.
Grace: I was just going to say that, dude.
Tom: Yeah! We’re so synced—we should start recording when we’re both very tired.
Grace: Exactly! We’re both synced up. The dice gods are really in our favor…they’re really working out.
Tom: Oh, please give me 2.
Grace: Was that our third 6? We definitely got a lot of sixes this round. But it’s, um, “Despite my best efforts, I am unreliable to my friends.”
Tom: Sorry, dude, I was on margarita time!
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): But that contradicts.
Grace: Uh—he does love—(Laughing) Maybe he would do anything for them, but he gets distracted really, really easily.
(Laughter)
Tom: Yeah. I’m sorry, dude, it was five o’ clock somewhere! I couldn’t be here!
Grace: Yeah. Despite his best efforts, things really do get off the rails pretty quickly.
Tom: God.
Grace: I love it. That really works well.
Tom: He’s really…
Grace: He’s doing his best, but it’s really not good enough.
Tom: He loves his friends, for sure. But, like…
Grace: He loves the Sandy Toes so much. He loves all ten of his friends so much.
Tom: Stop. He’s so drunk all the time, though.
(Laughter)
Grace: I love that. One of the great things about being a druid is that you get an “herbalism kit,” and I’m doing pretty heavy air quotes for “herbalism kit.”
Tom: (Overlapping) Yes. Yes!
Grace: Because I think we all know what that means.
Tom: Stop. He was actually caught selling parts of his herbalism kit to local high schoolers.
Grace: Yeah. I mean, he got out of it pretty quickly, but, like, it was a pretty rough patch for him there.
Tom: It was a dark time. He needed money.
Grace: With his Charisma of 17, he can really…he can really turn the tables on those cops.
Tom: Yeah. That guy was moving product.
(Laughter)
Grace: Um—okay. So, as a druid we get 8 plus our Constitution modifier for our first level, which is 9…
Tom: Okay.
Grace: And here are our proficiencies. We get light armor, medium armor, and shields, but we—druids—this is a fun fact, I’ve never placed a druid before.
Tom: (Laughing) Whoa!
Grace: Druids will not wear armor or use shields made of metal.
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah, baby!
Grace: So—kind of a weird thing. Kind of a weird…
Tom: Well, that stuff’s all heavy, and this guy’s using the bare minimums, because he just wants to chill on the beach!
Grace: That’s true. You really can’t bring a leather—I mean, metal armor on the beach.
Tom: Yeah, that’s gonna get hot, dude!
Grace: It’s really…it’s not good, yeah. And for weapons, you get clubs, daggers, darts, javelins, maces, quarterstaffs, sickles, slings, spears.
Tom: I think this guy’s got a dart. Because he loves playing darts at the local bar.
Grace: Definitely. We’ll totally get to that. Yes.
Tom: I know I’ve given people darts before, and you’ve gotten very angry, but I hope you understand.
Grace: (Sigh) I—I will understand more for this guy, because he’s not a fighter.
(Laughter)
Tom: Oh, man, I remembered why you got mad!
Grace: Yeah!
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): I got mad because you wanted to give all our goddamn barbarians and fighters, like, 1d4 weapons, as opposed to the 1d12! I’m—I’m not gonna get mad, though. I’m not gonna get mad. I’m not gonna get mad.
Tom: Hey, Grace?
Grace: We get an herbalism kit—
Tom: (Close to mic) Dart.
(Laughter)
Grace: We’re gonna fucking get to that! I’m going to beg of you to choose carefully.
Tom: All right. Are we doing—
Grace: You’re gonna get two skills.
Tom: Ooh.
Grace: You’re gonna get two skills—
Tom: Ooh!
Grace: And they’re gonna be—
Tom: (Overlapping) You know how many fish are in the ocean, Grace?
Grace: (Overlapping) Arcana—Arcana—
Tom: Arcana for sure—
Grace: Animal Handling, Insight, Nature, Perception, Survival. Choose carefully.
Tom: Uh—now, I’m a magic guy, right?
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: I should probably do some Arcana, right?
Grace: That seems like a pretty wise choice to me. And it can be helpful.
Tom: And you know what else I’m picking? Animal Handling, baby!
Grace: (Overlapping) Now, you’re a healer, so maybe—
(Laughter)
Tom: Animal Handling! Grace, you know how—
Grace: Tom, I’m really going to shoot—
Tom: Grace, you know how many fish there are in the ocean? Do you know how many animals you need to be handling?
Grace: (Barely concealed rage) You can’t—motherfucker. Motherfucker.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): Motherfucker. Fuck this fucking podcast. I hate it. God. Shit.
Tom: The last episode of the podcast is going to be next episode, when Grace just hangs up.
Grace: Yeah. The thing is, we gotta choose a character who can’t get animal handling. We gotta choose—I dunno, do rogues get animal handling, or something? I gotta choose a character that results in me being unable to choose animal handling.
Tom: I’m gonna handle them!
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): I’m gonna handle those animals!
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: So—here are the things! You can increase your AC by getting a wooden shield—
Tom: (Overlapping) Okay.
Grace: —or you can get a simple weapon. Or a scimitar. Or you can get any melee weapon. So let’s just go to the weapons list—do you want a shield?
Tom: Yeah, I’d like a shield. I like that wood shield.
Grace: Awesome, that’s a +2 to your AC.
Tom: Can I swap it out for more animal handling?
Grace: No! I won’t let you do that.
Tom: Are you sure?
Grace: I won’t let you!
Tom: No! Absolutely not.
Grace: Does this give you any armor? Oh, yeah, you get leather armor. Which is 10 plus your…plus your, plus your…Dexterity, which is a…so that’s 13 total. Not bad for first level. [A/N: I know it’s 11. I made a mistake. Please don’t hurt me] I’m just going to add this stuff to your inventory. Um…I’m very confused as to why druids don’t use metal, but okay.
Tom: Because…because baby, that’s gonna rust by the beach!
(Laughter)
Grace: That is true, that is true.
Tom: I know why this druid doesn’t use metal.
Grace: And really, I think that all druids should be beach druids.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Forest druids? Kind of overdone!
Tom: Dorks.
Grace: It’s just a—yeah. So you can get any, um…choose any simple melee weapon.
Tom: Okay. Um…
Grace: Oh, Tom, I’m noticing a problem already.
Tom: No dart?
Grace: There’s, there’s no dart for you here, bud.
Tom: (Frustrated sound) (Immediate recovery) Oh, light hammer!
Grace: Oh, good news, good news, good news. Hold on, I gotta close out of some fucking tabs, because my computer fan is going wild.
Tom: Yeah, I can hear it! It’s really—you have so many musical tabs open.
Grace: Yeah. I really got into, um—I was watching a lot of deconstruction of movie musicals and why they fail. Um. Because it’s kind of something that concerns us all, when you think about it.
Tom: (Overlapping) I don’t know what you’re talking about. They all do so well.
(Laughter)
Grace: Well, it was really talking about the dark age for it. You know. Moulin Rogue was coming out, and we were all really…you know.
Tom: Yikes. All right. Light hammer!
Grace: It was a tough time for our nation. God, that’s not a lot of damage.
Tom: Grace, I notice it does a d4 of damage.
Grace: That’s 1d4 damage. It does have a range of 20/60 feet, which is cool.
Tom: Holy shit.
Grace: Throw that 60 feet.
Tom: I think he can also use the back end of the hammer to crack open a nice, cold beer, Grace.
Grace: That’s true. That is true.
Tom: He uses it to crack open a brewski.
Grace: I like that. That’s good character building. (Typing) There is no way—
(Laughter)
Tom: Light Ham! Light Ham!
Grace: I was just saying, there’s no way it’s going to let me type in light hammer. It stops at light ham. Which, you know what? I like it. I like it. It’s um…we are proficient, so it’s a +2…and then our strength, which is nothing. 1d4 bludgeoning…
Tom: Dude, Light Ham sounds like the code name if Jimmy Buffett ever went into witness protection.
(Laughter)
Grace: That’s the worst name—that’s the worst low-key name on the planet!
Tom: (Singing) Light Ham!
Grace: Couldn’t at least make it Hamish or something, huh?
Tom: No.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, just so you know, you also get an explorer’s pack.
Tom: Hey.
Grace: Along with your herbalism…
Tom: Hey!
Grace: Which isn’t too exciting. You don’t go on a lot of—
Tom: Rope, yeah! Ten days of rations, so I can chill on the beach, baby!
Grace: Oh, yeah.
Tom: Hope you got some burgers and, and dogs in there, baby!
(Laughter)
Grace: Are you talking about hot dogs?
Tom: I’m so tired.
Grace: Okay, you also get a druidic focus.
Tom: Yes.
Grace: What is a druidic focus?
Tom: Oh, wait, is Druidic another language I know?
Grace: Hold on, I gotta get to that in a sec…I’m assuming a druidic focus is something you cast your spells out of? Like an arcane focus?
Tom: Um…
Grace: I literally have no idea. Yeah, okay. “A druidic focus might be a sprig of mistletoe or holly, a wand or scepter made of yew or another special wood…”
Tom: Can it be an ice cold beer, Grace?
Grace: That’s exactly what I was going to say. Not joking. (Typing) Ice cold…ice cold beer, baby.
Tom: Ice cold beer, baby!
Grace: Hell yeah! Hell yeah, brother?
Tom: Oh my God. Come crack open a brewski with your man!
Grace: I have a question about this. Does he crack it open, and then the magic comes out? Does he need to get a new one every time? Because that’s not very good for the environment.
Tom: Um, I think this guy…he cracks open plenty of brewskis, but he always finds a place to put them.
Grace: Yeah, he’s very into the recycling program.
Tom: I think he has one brewski that he, like, put a special marking on the bottle cap, and when he opens that one, it unleashes magic.
(Laughter)
Grace: I love that. It’s an enchanted brewski that he enchanted himself, so that it never really runs out when he cracks it open. That’s when the magic happens.
Tom: Oh, yes! The Corona never runs dry, Grace.
Grace: Ooh, yeah.
Tom: Oh, yeah.
Grace: Fuck yeah, dude. Now, I do want to explore Druidic—oh, dude, you know Druidic, which is the secret language. It’s kind of like Thieves’ Cant?
Tom: Oh, nice.
Grace: You can use it to leave hidden messages? So you and others who know this language will automatically spot such a message. Others can spot it with a 15 DC Wisdom…Perception check. Can’t decipher without magic…
Tom: Because I only want the wisest people coming to…coming to taste my herbs.
Grace: That’s true. You can leave, like, uh, uh, a note. But it’s only people who really get it.
Tom: I leave a note that’s, like, “I heard a guy had weed down the beach.”
(Laughter)
Grace: And then you leave it, and then there you are. Shirt on, pants off, legs spread…howdy, brother.
Tom: Giving birth?
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Crowning…um, Jesus.
Grace: Man, I gotta play a druid. This is awesome. Oh, we get spellcasting!
Tom: Spellcasting!
Grace: So, you know two cantrips, and at first level, you get two spells.
Tom: Okay.
Grace: Wait, I just want to make sure I’m getting this right…yeah, you only get two spells.
Tom: That’s lame.
Grace: (Mumbling) You can cast as a ritual if…just a disclaimer, I have never fucking played a druid in my life, so I have no idea what I’m doing.
Tom: Okay. That’s good to hear.
Grace: I just want to make sure, because this seems like a crazy low amount for a spellcaster that is, like, supposed to have a ton of spells. I guess as you level up. It is level one.
Tom: Hm. Seems like bullshit.
Grace: Kind of seems like bullshit, is what I’m thinking about this.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): I will go to the spells, though. Let’s go to the spells.
Tom: Yeah, let’s, let’s see what two spells I get.
Grace: Well, we get two cantrips, and then two spells.
Tom: Oh, okay, cool.
Grace: What the fuck is Druidcraft?
Tom: Now, I see something called Druidcraft, which sounds a lot like Minecraft, so I’m very on board with that.
Grace: Nice, okay.
Tom: Nice, wow.
Grace: I think it’s kind of like…it’s kind of like a druid version of Prestidigitation?
Tom: Okay.
Grace: Like, you can—yeah, you can make a tiny effect. Like, you can make a leaf bloom, or you can make a harmless sensory effect, like falling leaves.
Tom: Ooh. Okay. I’m down for that.
Grace: Yeah, you a big fan?
Tom: This guy likes beauty.
Grace: Yeah! And it really works well for his stories, too. He can be telling a story about the time he really got really hard down in his luck, and things were not going well for him, but then he opens up his hand, and there’s a flower there, and he says, “Like this flower, we always bloom.”
Tom: Why is he Forrest Gump now?
(Laughter)
Grace: Was that Forrest Gump?
Tom: A little. It wasn’t not Forrest Gump.
Grace: Yeah, that’s true.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: I don’t know. Forrest Gump was kind of a druid.
Tom: Kind of.
Grace: Sometimes I just say shit and see if it’s okay.
(Laughter)
Tom: I also feel like it’s accented by the part that it’s about 10 PM.
Grace: Yeah, that’s true. Which isn’t that late, I will say. But…
Tom: Yeah, but, like…
Grace: But a bitch gets sleepy. I don’t know what to tell you.
Tom: Yeah. This fella needs to snooze.
Grace: Yeah. You just went pretty ham on some salmon.
Tom: Yeah. There’s, there’s…I don’t feel good.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): You think it’s because I just ate raw fish?
Grace: That will do it, sometimes, yeah.
Tom: What is this show?! We need to pick another cantrip.
(Laughter)
Grace: I’m counting on you to do this! You do this stuff, sometimes! We get one that I don’t know how to pronounce, so I’m not going to say it, and…you could do Resistance?
Tom: Yeah. Because if the sun’s beating down, if this guy’s doing a keg stand, he’s got to be resistant.
Grace: I don’t know if you know what resistant means. In terms of D&D.
Tom: Resist puking!
Grace: That could actually work for this one.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Because you can touch a creature—like, you could touch a friend, you could touch one of the Sandy Toes, Brody, at a keg stand—
Tom: (Overlapping) Yes.
Grace: And when he’s making his Constitution saving throw, they can add a d4 rolled to one saving throw of his choice.
Tom: Grace, before we forget, I’d like to name all ten of the Toes.
Grace: Yes. Yes. Yes.
Tom: Put that in Allies.
Grace: Hold on, I just gotta write down Resistance real quick.
Tom: And then just a real quick roll call.
Grace: Oh, yeah. I thought you were going to suggest that I roll for them. Do you want to make a list of names? A list of boy names?
Tom: Yeah. Um…Cryler.
Grace: Cryler. I’m typing—I’m writing all of these down on a sticky note.
Tom: Uh, Little Bag of Sand.
(Laughter)
Grace: Um, Brody.
Tom: Brody. Uh…
Grace: And then Grody, which is, like, a fun nickname that they call Greg.
Tom: Yeah. He doesn’t like it.
Grace: And then Scrotey, which is what they call their friend Scott, because he did lose a scrotum.
Tom: Yeah. It was epic, though.
Grace: It really was. It was pretty cool. It was kind of fun.
Tom: Um, there’s one guy that they just call Brewski.
Grace: Brewski, I love that.
Tom: It’s so cool.
Grace: Shaun.
Tom: Shaun. But spelled, like, S-H-A-W-U-E-N.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): (Attempt at pronouncing this)
Grace: Shaw-win.
Tom: Schwin.
Grace: Schwin.
Tom: Because he can’t stop Schwinning.
(Laughter)
Grace: They fucking love Shawuen, yeah.
Tom: They love that joke so bad.
Grace: How about, uh…maybe Party Pete?
Tom: Party Pete.
Grace: Kind of the counterpart to Fiesta Fabio. Two more, two more.
Tom: Um…
Grace: Cactus—Cactus…
Tom: Cactus Cactus! Cactus Cactus Cactus.
(Laughter)
Grace: Bring me home with number 10.
Tom: Dickknees.
(Laughter)
Grace: Perfect. All right, I gotta type these all up. I was handwriting them, for some reason.
Tom: Yeah, no, that was stupid.
Grace: Brody, Grody, Scrotey…Brewski…
(Laughter)
Tom: Shawuen, Party Pete, Cactus Cactus Cactus…
Grace: (Overlapping) Cactus. And was it…was it Dickknees?
Tom: Dickknees!
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Jesus.
Grace: They call him that because he’s got—his knees, they look like dicks.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: It’s kind of weird.
Tom: Wow. High fantasy.
(Laughter)
Grace: Man, I want to learn all about these ten dudes.
Tom: Should we do character appearance first?
Grace: Oh, first we gotta get those two spells in. Do you want to do those?
Tom: Oh, God. Yes. I feel like we’ve been—I feel like we’ve been doing this episode for a year. Wait—is Animal Friendship a cantrip? Or, no, is that spell?
Grace: Uh…that’s a spell…
Tom: (Singing) Animal Friendship!
Grace: Now, I’m directing you towards one in particular.
Tom: All right, Healing Word.
Grace: (Overlapping) Just kind of look at that one.
Tom: Healing Word. I’ll do Healing Word.
Grace: Yes!
Tom: You bozo. You hate fun, dude.
(Laughter)
Grace: No, no, no, as a show of peace, because we’re doing such a calm character, I’m also going to do Animal Friendship.
Tom: Yeah. It’s what he would want.
Grace: It is what he would want. And that’s kind of, like, that’s kind of a classic druid spell. They’re big into nature.
Tom: Yeah. This guy loves the salt, the sand…
Grace: The fish, the rabid dogs that walk up the beach and bite him sometimes…
Tom: Yeah, I was gonna say, he’ll go up to a raccoon in broad daylight.
Grace: (Overlapping) Definitely.
Tom: And be like, “No, it’s fine, I’m going to befriend him.”
Grace: One of those classic beach raccoons.
Tom: Okay, you know what? It’s the weekend for them, too.
Grace: Hell yeah, brother.
Tom: All right, so let’s do…
Grace: (Overlapping) Pop a brew.
Tom: Stop. Let’s do height.
Grace: I just want this guy to look like the most normal-looking forty-seven-and-a-half-year-old man on the planet.
Tom: What, like, five-ten? That’s a pretty normal height.
Grace: Yeah. Five-ten…I’m gonna go five-nine because I think he’s a little bit shorter than average.
Tom: Yeah, sure. Doesn’t bother him.
Grace: I think he’s kind of a chubby fellow.
Tom: I think he’s around, um, 210?
Grace: Yeah, I was gonna—210.
Tom: You know, he’s comfortable, though. He’s comfortable with his weight.
Grace: I think he’s got pale blue eyes.
Tom: Really?
Grace: Yeah, I’m seeing kind of pale blue eyes that are kind of, like, stained by the sun after years of looking skyward.
Tom: I was thinking sea green.
Grace: Ooh, I do like that. Um, I will write aquamarine.
Tom: Ooh, yeah. Oh, he’s kind of hot now.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Whoops.
Grace: Kind of a hot dad. Kind of a Pierce Brosnan motherfucker.
Tom: Skin: tan. Tan and wrinkled.
Grace: What?
Tom: His skin.
Grace: Oh, yeah, after years of being in that sunlight…and he’s got this salt-and-pepper hair that kind of—it’s not his shoulders, but a little past his chin, maybe.
Tom: Yeah. Maybe it’s kind of in a loose pompadour.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Yeah. That’s pretty good.
Grace: Yeah, perfect.
Tom: Um, so, other appearance…baby, he keeps that Hawaiian shirt on him.
(Laughter)
Grace: (Typing) Baby, he keeps that…he keeps that thang on him, in parentheses, Hawaiian shirt.
Tom: Um, he has a coconut bra on, ironically.
Grace: Oh, yeah, yeah. Kind of a fun party dude.
Tom: Yeah. Um—
Grace: No shoes. No shoes, no shirt, no problem.
Tom: He—stop. I bet he also—oh, wait, tell your no shoes, no shirt, no problem joke. Or, story.
(Laughter)
Grace: Oh, I fucking forgot about that!
Tom: While we’re here…
Grace: I work at a summer camp during the summer, and I chaperone a lot of eight-year-olds. A lot of eight-year-olds, nine-year-olds. And I was really trying to explain to this one kid why he had to put his shoes on in order to walk down the hallway—he was having a hard time with it. And one kid is listening to the conversation, and he goes, “No shirt, no shoes, no service.” And I’m like, “Yeah, okay, thank you.” And then this one kid, Jack, just pops in and says, “My mom’s favorite song is ‘No shirt, no, shoes, no problem.’” And it’s like—we are so off-topic right now, but thank you.
(Laughter)
Tom: Yeah. And that’s full circle to our Jimmy Buffet. Uh—
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: I bet he—oh, he’s probably—what’s, like—we need a mythical land that’s kind of like a Sandals Resort. What should we name it?
Grace: Sen…
Tom: Sendalls.
Grace: Sendelles.
Tom: Yeah, but—
Grace: (Overlapping) Sendells Cove.
Tom: He has a shirt that says, “I Came to Sendells Cove for the Beaches.”
(Laughter)
Grace: Like, um…like, kind of a fun pun.
Tom: Yeah. That’s pretty wild, right?
Grace: Yeah. That’s pretty good. Is that where he lives? Do you think he lives in a vacation town, kind of? Oh, nice, yeah.
Tom: Because he’s always on vacation.
Grace: I’m a big fan of that.
Tom: I think he operates a surf shop when he’s not playing with his band.
Grace: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Now, I’m not sure if he owns the surf shop. That’s a lot of responsibility for a guy who has a hard time…
Tom: Yeah. Let’s go into our backstory.
Grace: Oh, definitely, yeah! So this is when Tom just goes—kind of goes wild and says what he thinks the backstory is, and I just type that backstory up.
Tom: Yeah. Grace enables me by typing it up.
Grace: Yeah. Word for word! Because we’re going to record this somehow!
Tom: Yeah, baby. Um, so…
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah, baby.
Tom: I keep on forgetting this guy’s name. Fiesta Fabio.
Grace: It’s because it’s so good.
Tom: It’s really good. So: Fiesta Fabio grew up with two strict parents that were always telling him that he couldn’t surf. And he couldn’t jam. And he couldn’t sell weed out of their house. So when he turned eighteen, he said, “I’m outta here, Mom and Dad,” and he packed his bags for Sendalls Cove. Uh…when he was there he befriended a local surf shop owned named, um…Seashell—
Grace: (Overlapping) Parakeet.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): Was that “Seashell?”
Tom: Seashell.
Grace: I said Parakeet at the same time, so I’m typing “Seashell Parakeet.”
Tom: Seashell Parakeet, very good. And he convinced parakeet to let him work in his surf shop. Fiesta Fabio works three hours a week. And when he isn’t working, he’s either cracking open a nice cold brewski on the beach or practicing Jimmy Buffett songs with his band, Fiesta Fabio and the Sandy Toes. Comma—actually, parentheses—
Grace: Parentheses.
Tom: Whom he met at a surfing competition-slash-bar fight.
(Laughter)
Grace: It was kind of five and five. Fifty-fifty split.
Tom: Yeah. You know. Um, his band is constantly playing gigs in order to be recognized. But because Fiesta Fabio’s very bad guitar is so unlistenable, they have not had much success yet. Um, Fiesta Fabio’s goal is to break the curse that tethers him to his guitar. And, because he was drunk when he got cursed, figure out why he got cursed.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Because he has no clue.
Grace: (Overlapping) I love this.
Tom: He has no idea. Oh, Jesus Christ.
Grace: This is so excellent. I love a good amnesia backstory, because that really leaves it open to the DM to really go ham.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: It’s very fun.
Tom: As if the DM’s not gonna go ham creating an eleven-person party with someone named Dickknees.
(Laughter)
Grace: That’s true. Dickknees, I imagine, will become a very important character, perhaps an arc villain.
Tom: Oh, Jesus. We need to set up a Patreon and create, like, ten bonus character sheets that people will only get if they pay us fifty dollars.
(Laughter)
Grace: Fifty dollars a week.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): And if you don’t donate, they go into the void forever. They disappear.
Tom: Fifty dollars a week, and you get to keep them.
Grace: Yeah.
(Laughter)
Tom: Um…so what else do we need to have here? Treasure? Just…a nice cold beer and some good time with friends, I think.
Grace: Oh, yeah, a good time with friends.
Tom: Um, additional features and traits…um, he can, uh, open a twist-off beer with his stomach.
Grace: With his stomach?
Tom: Yeah. It’s just kind of a cool trick he learned.
Grace: Have you ever seen that?
Tom: No. I’d love to, though.
Grace: That’s crazy. Can anyone do that? Is that a thing people can do?
Tom: #ToolsCast.
Grace: Yeah. Actually, yeah, I would love to see that.
Tom: If anyone can figure it out…
Grace: I’m going to fucking try that. I don’t even like beer. I’m gonna do that.
Tom: Hey, hey, don’t call the cops, it’s legal.
Grace: It’s legal. I’m in New Brunswick.
Tom: She’s in New Brunswick. She’s nineteen. Bazinga.
Grace: Yeah. Oh, God, I—I—I just Googled “open twist with stomach” and now there’s “warning, graphic content.”
Tom: Why would you say “open twist with stomach?!” You could have said “beer open with stomach!”
Grace: (Typing) Round two, baby.
Tom: Can we just give this guy some inspiration?
Grace: Oh, definitely. I am giving…I am giving myself inspiration by looking at these things right now.
Tom: If you attempt this, I’m literally gonna kick your ass.
Grace: Well, that’s fair.
(Laughter)
Tom: Inspiration—you just gave him a nice smiley face. Actually, can you give him the one where it’s, like—
Grace: (Overlapping) Yeah, I gave him a cool smiley face.
Tom: Can you give him the one where it’s, like, a B? For the eyes?
Grace: (Overlapping) Oh, because he’s wearing sunglasses?
Tom: (Overlapping) Sunglasses.
Grace: Definitely, definitely. Do you want an 8 or a B?
Tom: B.
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: It is going to have the nose, though. It’s very important to me that he has the nose.
Tom: Yes. Absolutely.
Grace: All right.
Tom: All right. So, this guy—
Grace: I think we just made a very cool, human grandpa man who is just having a good time on the beach.
Tom: For player name, I think we should put both of us. We’re both at fault here.
Grace: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Tom: Um, we never put his race, class, or level in. This one really went off the rails, Grace.
Grace: You planned on making—I wish that we could do a thing—I will do a thing, at some point, where we discuss the first conceit for a character versus the final character at the very end.
Tom: Because I feel like with some, we hit it right on the—like, Burgoo Realhorse, we had a vision.
Grace: We said, “Let’s make a horse.”
Tom: “Let’s make a liar.”
Grace: But with this guy, you said, “Let’s make a real chill dude,” and now we’ve kind of made…a legend? Kind of a pervert.
Tom: Kind of a god. A nasty rock god.
Grace: Kind of a nasty rock god with a guitar that’s made of sand that sounds bad.
Tom: Yeah. It’s a bad-sounding guitar.
Grace: I love that aspect.
Tom: But one thing has not changed: he loves ice cold beer.
Grace: He does. And he does have that mummified goblin hand.
Tom: Oh, sweet Jesus. This episode has been so long I forgot about that.
Grace: I’m riding that high.
(Laughter)
Tom: Oh, Jesus Christ.
Grace: All right, are you feeling ready to close this bad boy out?
Tom: Yes. I’m gonna go to sleep immediately.
(Laughter)
Grace: It is nine o’ clock, sir.
Tom: I am extremely tired, mon frère.
Grace: I mean, you did inject a pig with some…
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah.
Grace: …condiments.
(Laughter)
Tom: Jesus Christ!
Grace: Yeah, Tom?
Tom: What’s our theme music?
Grace: Our theme music is Minor Apprehension by Jackie McLean. You can find it wherever you find music, it’s a fun jazz tune. You can listen to us on Apple Podcasts, and on RadioPublic, and on our website, which is starting.tools. And on starting.tools is also where you, uh, you can find character sheets and transcripts and…I don’t know.
Tom: Lots of fun stuff.
Grace: Yeah. We also post other fun stuff on our Twitter, which is @ToolsStarting. And if you want to tweet about the podcast, you can use the hashtag #ToolsCast.
Tom: Oh! Talk about, like, podcast getting posted—if you have another program that you want us to get on, like Stitcher, let us know and we’ll try to get on.
Grace: Yeah. I’m trying to figure—I’m trying to navigate the choppy waters of the computer world.
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah, like, Grace is doing so good.
Grace: (Overlapping) I don’t know how it works.
(Laughter)
Tom: Also, the release date for our transcripts is usually, what, Mondays?
Grace: Latest it will ever be is Mondays. [A/N: Yikes] I’m trying for Sundays. Often it will be posted the same day? It really depends on how much homework I have to do—
Tom: (Overlapping) Also, give her a break.
Grace: —and how I manage my time.
Tom: Because we are recording this episode late, and, um…
Grace: Oh, true, true. It’s fine. This week shouldn’t be too bad. (Beginning to grow unintelligible) I got a three-day weekend. It’s…
Tom: It’s fine.
Grace: Oh! You know how you can really help us out?
Tom: Yes.
Grace: Is by leaving a review, um, on iTunes or Apple Podcasts or whatever it’s called. Um, that is, like, the most important thing you can do.
Tom: Yes.
Grace: Even, like, if you forgot how to read and stuff, and you’re just feeling real tired, just, like…hit that five-star button…
Tom: Are you okay?
Grace: It helps us.
(Laughter)
Grace (cont’d): This is why we record in the mornings!
Tom: (Overlapping) Yeah, I know.
Grace: I’m really on my A-game in the mornings.
Tom: Later afternoon is, like, when I start getting sleepy, so we always record on the cusp. So, like…
Grace: Yeah.
Tom: It’s dangerous.
Grace: But, yeah. I’m not sure if I was clear enough about that, but just to be very clear: Reviews are really, really helpful. Please give us a review. I don’t know, if you say something funny, we might read it out loud? If you have a funny joke to make, we’ll read it out loud, and then you’ll get, like, validated.
Tom: Yeah. And if you have complaints or anything, you can also leave those.
Grace: No, fuck those. Fuck those! Email those to startingtools@gmail.com.
Tom: No, but Grace, I want—we’re still gonna get the five stars, but, like…
Grace: Yeah. Just say, “Fuck this podcast, and fuck the Eagles,” but also five stars.
Tom: And if you’ll remember, our goal from last week is to become a bigger podcast than the Joe Rogan Experience, so…
Grace: Yeah. We’re not doing great on that one right now.
Tom: Not great yet, but, um…we’ll get there.
Grace: I would not venture to say we have as many listeners as Joe Rogan at the moment.
Tom: I think we do need to kill Joe Rogan.
Grace: Okay. Now that’s a bold idea.
(Laughter)
Tom: Or just unplug his wifi.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Hey, Joe Rogan here. I can’t do the podcast anymore because these two tricksters unplugged my wifi.
(Laughter)
Grace: They just came in so fast, and I saw them, but they were just gone so quickly!
Tom: They chewed through my cables.
(Laughter)
Tom (cont’d): Jesus. All right.
Grace: All right, yeah, I think that is it for us.
Tom: Christ. All right, Fiesta Fabio, thank you very much.
Grace: Yeah. Thank you Fiesta Fabio, um, thank you for listening. I’ve been Grace.
Tom: I’ve been Tom. Is that how we end this?
Grace: No, we say, um, thanks for listening to Starting Tools, we’ve been the tools.
Tom: Right. Thank you.
Grace: All right! Good ending!
Tom: Good ending. Finishing strong.
(Laughter)
(Outro music: Minor Apprehension by Jackie McLean)
Grace: You ready, my brother?
Tom: Oh, I’m ready, my brother. Screensharing is on, dick is out.
(Laughter)
Grace: Hello, and welcome to S—
(Laughter)
Tom: Yeah.
Grace: Yeah, gotta restart that one. Okay.
Starting Tools 