Transcript
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I really wanted to utilize monsters and lore and things like that that don't get touched on often.
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Like, no hate, okay, but I've seen the Wood Elf Ranger a couple times already.
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I really like the idea of characters that have a misunderstanding built into them.
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I feel like turtles don't really bang.
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Well, how would there be more turtles then?
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I think that's why they're on the edge of Extinction.
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.
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Star: Hello friends.
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Welcome to Characters Without Stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet taken as this is the inaugural episode.
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Thanks for listening.
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Let me tell you a little bit more about the podcast.
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If you play tabletop role playing games, you probably have some back pocket characters, some characters who are just waiting for the right story.
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Every episode, I'll bring in a friend to tell me about their character and their approach to creating characters.
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This episode, I am joined by my friend, Andrew Rahman.
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Hi.
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Hi, Andrew.
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Andrew and I have been playing D& D together for, what, about three years now?
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Yeah, yeah, that's about right.
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I'm currently playing in two campaigns that you're running, and you are playing in my first campaign as a DM.
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Andrew is, uh, does ProGM over on StartPlaying.games, and you're streaming on YouTube.
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I'll give you a chance to plug your projects at the end, but if there's anything you want to tell the listeners about yourself?
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I guess, yeah.
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I've been playing D& D 5th edition since 2012, and I've ran games in convention halls and local game stores and my house and now digitally online.
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So I've been playing D& D all over the place, um, for, for the last 10 years.
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And I run a afterschool program.
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Well, I used to run an afterschool program for my middle schoolers, uh, Dungeons and Dragons in the middle school.
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So yeah, just breathe, sleep, D& D.
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Um, so tell me, who are you bringing to the table today?
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Oh man.
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I have had the opportunity to make so many player characters, but I want to talk about Bart.
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Bart gets no love.
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Why doesn't Bart get any love?
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Let's just say that, uh, in the grand scheme of Rangers, Bart doesn't really fit the mold.
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So, uh, the, the classic trope of ranger is a bow and arrow, a long range character lives on the outskirts of society and is very self sufficient and probably intentionally, I don't think there's any subconsciousness about it.
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I made Bart very reliant on society, not range at all.
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Um, and lives, lives in the middle.
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He lives in the middle of a city.
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Well, so what do you mean that he's he's reliant on society?
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So, the, the origin story of Bart is a Bartholomew Bigglesburg.
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And I named him Bigglesburg.
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Uh, did you watch the, uh, EXU Calamity with Brendan and, and, uh, Matt and Aabria?
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I haven't had the chance yet.
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Okay, well there's a joke in there.
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And my character kind of stemmed from that.
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When you get a chance.
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But, Bigglesburg, uh, is the last name and is a part of the joke.
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Bartholomew or Bart.
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He lives with other tortles.
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He doesn't live on the outside.
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When you look around at, uh, the Forgotten Realms, through all the lore, tortles only live in one place.
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So, it's not like you have all these options to choose from.
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The little tortles all come from the south of Chult.
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By the lack of lore, it forces the lore to them all live in the same place.
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This is a fort in the south of Chult called Ahoyhoy.
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Which is like, I'm not going to get away from that.
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That's awesome.
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Oh, boy, boy, come on.
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So funny.
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So yeah, they all live together.
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There's no way you could be away from it.
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And Bart is a long distance marathon runner, which, which is not really a turtle, a quarterly kind of thing to do.
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Yeah, it definitely goes against the stereotypes.
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Yeah, so my combat sequence for Bart is he will first use a bonus action to cast Bashardlon's Stride, which gives him the extra 20 feet of movement, so his base movement is 40.
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And then, every round after that, he's using his bonus action to turn invisible, and then reappear, and then melee creatures.
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So he runs up with, on fire, he runs at people on fire, and then he turns invisible, and then reappears and starts punching them.
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Because tortles have, um, tortles, uh, fists instead of dealing bludgeoning damage do slashing damage, uh, and they get their strength modifier added to that.
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So it's basically dual wielding short swords.
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Okay.
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Yeah.
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Wait, where does the, where does the, uh, uh, invisibility thing come in?
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Is that a tortle ability?
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That's the part of the ranger class.
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Oh, okay.
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So you got to tell me, so, so they are a ranger and we're talking here about D and D 5e, by the way, they are a ranger.
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What's the subclass?
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So drake warden ranger.
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So he's a tortle that worships.
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Dragon turtles, which I feel people will dismiss right away as a dragon because they don't do the normal They don't fly basically, but uh ancient dragon turtles challenge rating 22 pretty hardcore creature Instead of breathing fire they breathe steam which deals fire damage or whatever, but it's crazy.
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Um, so I really wanted to Utilize monsters and and lore and things like that that don't get touched on often like no hate Okay, but i've seen the wood elf ranger a couple times already
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Yeah, what the hell, man?
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That was my first character.
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Hey, that's, that's not weird.
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It's not weird at all.
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That's, you know, in the player's handbook.
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But there's, there's a, there's a character in the novels, uh, Forgotten Realm novels, Drizzt Do'Urden, who's also a ranger.
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And they're completely melee.
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It's a complete melee ranger.
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So, there's a lot of, um, looking to bring that back and make that exist in 5e.
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It's not great, but it's close.
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I mean, that, that character that I'm talking about, uh, Mirima, by the way, I mean, she was, uh, dual, dual short sword melee by the end of it.
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So, I do like that, um, that style.
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Yeah, but yeah, you look at, you look at the options for fighting styles and you get, is it two weapon fighting, dueling.
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There's no, there's no great weapon master.
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That's unfortunate.
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Or, or great weapon dual, uh, wielding, which is unfortunate.
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And, and, uh, there's also a lack of really like melee based bonuses or spells or anything like that, that leads towards the ranger.
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You'd have to do stuff like pick up, I don't know, booming blade or something.
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Eh, when fighters can just use maneuvers, right?
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Battle master.
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That's awesome.
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So would you say that this is Typical of your approach of how we, how you decided to play this character is, is kind of going against or exploring maybe an area of lore that is unexplored.
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Um, I would say that when I design a character, I really like the idea of characters that have a misunderstanding built into them.
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Could you expand on that a little?
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So, for Bart, Bart was raised.
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With the fable of the tortle and the harengon, which is, you know, the analogy, uh, analogous of the tortoise and the hare and what, what is the, what is like the lesson learned from that?
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Cause like, what would you say is the lesson learned from that story?
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Slow and steady wins the race.
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Right.
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So Bart finds that offensive.
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Bet anyone would say a turtle is slow, like, yeah, okay.
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The, the tortle did win the race, but also you have to say, and you're slow.
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Right.
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Um, so with that in mind, raised to become a division one athlete and needed to be Olympic level running to spit in the face of.
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You know that value which I I I would say like slow and steady wins the race Is the kind of advice that you give somebody when they're feeling frustrated And they feel like other people are doing better than they are So you kind of go listen, man I know you're feeling like you're not catching up with everybody else, but in the end If you are focusing and you're doing a really great job, chances are your end product is going to be fantastic.
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That's not necessarily the case, is it?
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No, because I can be fast and I can be incredibly efficient and I can, I can create something that's.
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Amazing and entertaining and valuable and I don't need to be slow about it Maybe you need to be slow about it because you're a turtle but the rest of us out here are going full speed, buddy Um, so it's not a great lesson Bart hears that and Bart is you know tortles live, uh at the before and 250 years old So Bart's been In it, contemplated it, chewed it up, spit it out, rethought the whole thing, lived through that scenario, brought it back, and in the end at 200 years old, his wisdom said, this is mean, this is mean advice.
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So he, how long has he been training then?
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Did he like just decide to start training or has he been doing it for years?
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Oh no, as soon as he hit adulthood, which is like 18.
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I have him participating in some, some non existent marathons.
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Um, so like the sword coast sprint, he's done some trophies from there.
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He's attended the Faerun finals.
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Um, and, and all sorts.
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Our sorts of like the Chult Challenge and, uh, the Ten Towns Tournament, like all of these competitions, he has collected trophies and keeps the trophies in his shell.
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That, I cannot tell you how much I love that, that you came up with names for all of these races.
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My boy deserves respect.
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And he has the trophies and he has the placards and he keeps them on inside his shell because, you know, tortles, that's their home.
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And I, I love the idea that they basically don't wear any armor.
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Yeah.
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So everything that he needs is innate.
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No steroids.
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Didn't need to be sponsored by Nike.
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I don't need no Gatorade.
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It's just, you know, all natural.
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Would you say he's a successful, uh, racer?
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Yeah.
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I'd say he's, he's closer to retirement than, than the beginning of his career.
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Okay.
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So, so what level are you building him at then?
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17
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Oh, okay.
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This is a seasoned character.
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This is a character who has, uh, met the best and been on the same level, or close to, for a while.
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So that's 14 levels of Ranger, Drake Warden Ranger.
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And 3 levels of Cleric, to emphasize The religious aspect of following in the, in the Hindu religion, there is a story of the world being supported or being lifted up by an elephant and then the world and the elephant also being lifted up by a turtle.
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It's a world turtle or a cosmic turtle, and so that's where Bart puts his religious focus in.
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Oh, interesting.
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So what would you say was the spark that led to you creating this character?
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I wanted to play a Drake Warden, and I didn't want to play a Drake Warden that had a relationship with a red dragon or a blue dragon or any of the classic dragons.
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So really the origin was the sea turtle and from that was the, the obvious pitfall of do not make him a ninja turtle, right?
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Because I, I think ninja turtles kind of occupy more real estate in our minds when it comes to fantasy turtles.
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So I was just racking my brain trying to figure out, you know, what other turtles can occupy that space.
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And I was thinking, okay, well, there was that preschool show, Franklin.
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And I don't know if you're familiar.
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I am not familiar.
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It's dumb.
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It's silly.
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It's just one of those, oh, I'm a turtle and I have a bunch of animal friends.
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It's like a Winnie the Pooh, really.
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Okay.
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Yeah, it's like a Winnie the Pooh, but it's like late 90s Winnie the Pooh.
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And I was looking at finding Nemo, uh, at that turtle.
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Who's like just a bro.
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I'm, I'm a little over that stereotype.
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So yeah, I landed on an Aesop's Fable and came out really cool.
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I like Bart a lot.
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So it seems like you kind of started with the class.
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You started with Drake Warden and went from there.
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Yeah.
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Is that something you usually do when you're building a character?
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If I have to make a character quick, and this is pretty standard for DMs, look at the party composition and try to fill in a blank.
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Well, in this case, you didn't have a blank to fill.
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Oh, in this case, I was instructed.
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I was told, make a Drake Warden Ranger.
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Oh, who told you?
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The DM for the story.
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Oh, okay.
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Did you ever get to play Bart?
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I played one round.
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One round?
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One single round of Bart.
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And I was like, oh, okay.
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So what happened to Bart?
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What happened to Bart?
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Um, nothing happened to Bart.
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It was just too much time had passed.
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I could only be in that session for three hours.
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And we were at the, like, maybe two or three minutes before three hours were done, and I was like, yeah, I, I actually can't play.
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I gotta go.
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And that was the end of Bart.
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Oh, that's terrible.
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Yeah.
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Can you give me some more details?
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Like, how old is he?
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Or, I mean, even if it's, he's a he, I don't know if we've established that.
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Bart's a guy.
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Bart's a he.
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Bart's 200 years old.
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Bart's three feet tall.
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Little, he's a little guy.
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I feel like, I feel like in the, in the fable for the tortoise and the hare, they are actually a tortoise and actually a hare.
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They're not giant anthropomorphic people animals.
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Right.
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So I tried to push them down as small as I could and they, they only let me go to three feet.
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So, 3 feet is still the largest tortoise I've ever heard of, but
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Have you ever seen a Galapagos tortoise?
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Cause they're huge.
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Oh, okay.
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Um, yeah, I have.
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Not in real life.
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Oh, they have them at the zoo.
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I've seen them at the zoo.
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How big are those guys?
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If they were to stand on their hind legs.
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Which is like impossible, right?
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Right, which is impossible for them.
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Um, I would say they'd be about four feet tall.
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Nice!
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They are even standing on the ground because their shells are so tall there's something like two and a half feet I would guess maybe three feet.
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They have a very tall shell
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I just googled it the Galapagos giant tortoise can grow to be five feet tall.
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Yeah, they are amazing very cool looking
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Horrifying bigger than a lot of children
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Yeah, yeah, they live a very long time.
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That's dope, yeah.
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So, do you want to tell me a little bit more about Bart's appearance?
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Uh, Bart's just a green turtle.
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It's pretty standard fare.
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Um, just a green turtle.
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With green eyes and green shell, but in terms of Bart's equipment, when Bart is in adventurer mode, he does keep a bow with him, but I make it a point never to fire the bow, because I want the bow to stay pristine.
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The only reason he has a bow is to signal to other rangers that he's a ranger.
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It's, it's the point of the bow.
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And his weapon is a dragon lance.
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What?
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Okay, tell me what a dragon lance is.
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Ooh! A dragon lance is so cool.
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Um, so, first of all, the name is a little deceiving.
