Bart Biggityburg, Tortle Marathon Runner - Playing Against Type with Mxlpxl (D&D 5e)

Andrew: 0:00

I really wanted to utilize monsters 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. I really like the idea of characters that have a misunderstanding built into them. I feel like turtles don't really bang.

Star: 0:26

Well, how would there be more turtles then?

Andrew: 0:33

I think that's why they're on the edge of Extinction.. Star: Hello friends. Welcome to Characters Without Stories, a TTRPG podcast about the roads not yet taken as this is the inaugural episode. Thanks for listening. Let me tell you a little bit more about the podcast. If you play tabletop role playing games, you probably have some back pocket characters, some characters who are just waiting for the right story. Every episode, I'll bring in a friend to tell me about their character and their approach to creating characters. This episode, I am joined by my friend, Andrew Rahman. Hi.

Star: 1:08

Hi, Andrew. Andrew and I have been playing D& D together for, what, about three years now?

Andrew: 1:14

Yeah, yeah, that's about right.

Star: 1:16

I'm currently playing in two campaigns that you're running, and you are playing in my first campaign as a DM. Andrew is, uh, does ProGM over on StartPlaying.games, and you're streaming on YouTube. 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?

Andrew: 1:34

I guess, yeah. 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. So I've been playing D& D all over the place, um, for, for the last 10 years. And I run a afterschool program. Well, I used to run an afterschool program for my middle schoolers, uh, Dungeons and Dragons in the middle school. So yeah, just breathe, sleep, D& D.

Star: 2:07

Um, so tell me, who are you bringing to the table today?

Andrew: 2:11

Oh man. I have had the opportunity to make so many player characters, but I want to talk about Bart. Bart gets no love.

Star: 2:23

Why doesn't Bart get any love?

Andrew: 2:25

Let's just say that, uh, in the grand scheme of Rangers, Bart doesn't really fit the mold. 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. I made Bart very reliant on society, not range at all. Um, and lives, lives in the middle. He lives in the middle of a city.

Star: 3:04

Well, so what do you mean that he's he's reliant on society?

Andrew: 3:08

So, the, the origin story of Bart is a Bartholomew Bigglesburg. And I named him Bigglesburg. Uh, did you watch the, uh, EXU Calamity with Brendan and, and, uh, Matt and Aabria?

Star: 3:20

I haven't had the chance yet.

Andrew: 3:22

Okay, well there's a joke in there. And my character kind of stemmed from that. When you get a chance. But, Bigglesburg, uh, is the last name and is a part of the joke. Bartholomew or Bart. He lives with other tortles. He doesn't live on the outside. When you look around at, uh, the Forgotten Realms, through all the lore, tortles only live in one place. So, it's not like you have all these options to choose from. The little tortles all come from the south of Chult. By the lack of lore, it forces the lore to them all live in the same place. This is a fort in the south of Chult called Ahoyhoy. Which is like, I'm not going to get away from that. That's awesome. Oh, boy, boy, come on. So funny. So yeah, they all live together. There's no way you could be away from it. And Bart is a long distance marathon runner, which, which is not really a turtle, a quarterly kind of thing to do.

Star: 4:20

Yeah, it definitely goes against the stereotypes.

Andrew: 4:23

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. And then, every round after that, he's using his bonus action to turn invisible, and then reappear, and then melee creatures. 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. 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. So it's basically dual wielding short swords.

Star: 5:13

Okay.

Andrew: 5:14

Yeah.

Star: 5:14

Wait, where does the, where does the, uh, uh, invisibility thing come in? Is that a tortle ability?

Andrew: 5:21

That's the part of the ranger class.

Star: 5:24

Oh, okay. 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. What's the subclass?

Andrew: 5:33

So drake warden ranger. So he's a tortle that worships. 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. 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

Star: 6:14

Yeah, what the hell, man? That was my first character.

Andrew: 6:19

Hey, that's, that's not weird. It's not weird at all. That's, you know, in the player's handbook. 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. And they're completely melee. It's a complete melee ranger. So, there's a lot of, um, looking to bring that back and make that exist in 5e. It's not great, but it's close.

Star: 6:45

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. So, I do like that, um, that style.

Andrew: 6:59

Yeah, but yeah, you look at, you look at the options for fighting styles and you get, is it two weapon fighting, dueling. There's no, there's no great weapon master. That's unfortunate. Or, or great weapon dual, uh, wielding, which is unfortunate. 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. You'd have to do stuff like pick up, I don't know, booming blade or something. Eh, when fighters can just use maneuvers, right? Battle master. That's awesome.

Star: 7:34

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.

Andrew: 7:45

Um, I would say that when I design a character, I really like the idea of characters that have a misunderstanding built into them.

Star: 7:59

Could you expand on that a little?

Andrew: 8:01

So, for Bart, Bart was raised. 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? Cause like, what would you say is the lesson learned from that story?

Star: 8:27

Slow and steady wins the race.

Andrew: 8:29

Right. So Bart finds that offensive. Bet anyone would say a turtle is slow, like, yeah, okay. The, the tortle did win the race, but also you have to say, and you're slow. Right. 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. 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. That's not necessarily the case, is it? No, because I can be fast and I can be incredibly efficient and I can, I can create something that's. 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.

Star: 10:26

So he, how long has he been training then? Did he like just decide to start training or has he been doing it for years?

Andrew: 10:33

Oh no, as soon as he hit adulthood, which is like 18. I have him participating in some, some non existent marathons. Um, so like the sword coast sprint, he's done some trophies from there. He's attended the Faerun finals. Um, and, and all sorts. 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.

Star: 11:11

That, I cannot tell you how much I love that, that you came up with names for all of these races.

Andrew: 11:18

My boy deserves respect. 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. And I, I love the idea that they basically don't wear any armor. Yeah. So everything that he needs is innate. No steroids. Didn't need to be sponsored by Nike. I don't need no Gatorade. It's just, you know, all natural.

Star: 11:52

Would you say he's a successful, uh, racer?

Andrew: 11:55

Yeah. I'd say he's, he's closer to retirement than, than the beginning of his career.

Star: 12:02

Okay. So, so what level are you building him at then?

Andrew: 12:05

17

Star: 12:05

Oh, okay. This is a seasoned character.

Andrew: 12:08

This is a character who has, uh, met the best and been on the same level, or close to, for a while. So that's 14 levels of Ranger, Drake Warden Ranger. 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. It's a world turtle or a cosmic turtle, and so that's where Bart puts his religious focus in.

Star: 12:52

Oh, interesting. So what would you say was the spark that led to you creating this character?

Andrew: 12:59

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. 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? Because I, I think ninja turtles kind of occupy more real estate in our minds when it comes to fantasy turtles. So I was just racking my brain trying to figure out, you know, what other turtles can occupy that space. And I was thinking, okay, well, there was that preschool show, Franklin. And I don't know if you're familiar.

Star: 13:49

I am not familiar.

Andrew: 13:51

It's dumb. It's silly. It's just one of those, oh, I'm a turtle and I have a bunch of animal friends. It's like a Winnie the Pooh, really. Okay. Yeah, it's like a Winnie the Pooh, but it's like late 90s Winnie the Pooh. And I was looking at finding Nemo, uh, at that turtle. Who's like just a bro. I'm, I'm a little over that stereotype. So yeah, I landed on an Aesop's Fable and came out really cool. I like Bart a lot.

Star: 14:22

So it seems like you kind of started with the class. You started with Drake Warden and went from there.

Andrew: 14:27

Yeah.

Star: 14:28

Is that something you usually do when you're building a character?

Andrew: 14:32

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.

Star: 14:41

Well, in this case, you didn't have a blank to fill.

Andrew: 14:44

Oh, in this case, I was instructed. I was told, make a Drake Warden Ranger.

Star: 14:49

Oh, who told you?

Andrew: 14:51

The DM for the story.

Star: 14:53

Oh, okay. Did you ever get to play Bart?

Andrew: 14:57

I played one round.

Star: 14:59

One round?

Andrew: 15:00

One single round of Bart. And I was like, oh, okay.

Star: 15:06

So what happened to Bart?

Andrew: 15:08

What happened to Bart? Um, nothing happened to Bart. It was just too much time had passed. I could only be in that session for three hours. 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. I gotta go. And that was the end of Bart.

Star: 15:29

Oh, that's terrible.

Andrew: 15:31

Yeah.

Star: 15:32

Can you give me some more details? Like, how old is he? Or, I mean, even if it's, he's a he, I don't know if we've established that.

Andrew: 15:40

Bart's a guy. Bart's a he. Bart's 200 years old. Bart's three feet tall. Little, he's a little guy. 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. They're not giant anthropomorphic people animals. Right. So I tried to push them down as small as I could and they, they only let me go to three feet. So, 3 feet is still the largest tortoise I've ever heard of, but

Star: 16:14

Have you ever seen a Galapagos tortoise? Cause they're huge.

Andrew: 16:19

Oh, okay. Um, yeah, I have. Not in real life.

Star: 16:25

Oh, they have them at the zoo. I've seen them at the zoo.

Andrew: 16:28

How big are those guys?

Star: 16:29

If they were to stand on their hind legs.

Andrew: 16:33

Which is like impossible, right?

Star: 16:34

Right, which is impossible for them. Um, I would say they'd be about four feet tall.

Andrew: 16:41

Nice!

Star: 16:42

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. They have a very tall shell

Andrew: 16:51

I just googled it the Galapagos giant tortoise can grow to be five feet tall.

Star: 16:56

Yeah, they are amazing very cool looking

Andrew: 17:01

Horrifying bigger than a lot of children

Star: 17:07

Yeah, yeah, they live a very long time.

Andrew: 17:12

That's dope, yeah.

Star: 17:13

So, do you want to tell me a little bit more about Bart's appearance?

Andrew: 17:18

Uh, Bart's just a green turtle. It's pretty standard fare. Um, just a green turtle. 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. The only reason he has a bow is to signal to other rangers that he's a ranger. It's, it's the point of the bow. And his weapon is a dragon lance.

Star: 17:53

What? Okay, tell me what a dragon lance is.

Andrew: 17:55

Ooh! A dragon lance is so cool. Um, so, first of all, the name is a little deceiving. It can be a lance, but alternatively, the weapon can be made to be a pike. So so both of those are possible.

Star: 18:09

I think you're assuming that I know the difference between a lance and a pike

Andrew: 18:14

Oh, uh, okie dokie Right, um, so uh A pike is just a 10 foot long weapon And it deals 10 foot long weapon damage like a d10 or whatever um a lance is You get disadvantage if you attack with a creature that's like five feet in front of you But a lance is pretty standard when you are mounted.

Star: 18:43

Hmm, okay. Like, so it's like what knights would do in like the jousting, that's a lance?

Andrew: 18:48

Exactly.

Star: 18:49

Okay.

Andrew: 18:50

And so, like, the reason why it's a dragon lance is because typically a knight, like you're saying a knight, would be a dragon knight, would be mounted on the back of a dragon.

Star: 19:00

Oh, okay.

Andrew: 19:01

Yeah. So that's why it's a dragon lance, because it's for those kind of knights.

Star: 19:05

For a drake warden.

Andrew: 19:07

Yeah. But, but it can also be a pike. I prefer it to be a pike. So it's got that kind of narrative. Aspect of it where you are on the back of your dragon and you're charging into battle when it attacks with the dragon lance you deal in excess damage in force damage, which is You know, there's only like eight creatures in the game that have any kind of resistance to force damage, so pretty much it's always going to be great, but the second aspect of it is if you hit something with the dragon lance, you can choose a dragon around you to use its reaction to melee attack your target.

Star: 19:53

A dragon around you like the Drake that you would be a Drake warden of?

Andrew: 19:57

Yeah, if it's your dragon, then obviously, it would be on your side and it would attack, but also if it's an ally of yours, which is to say, someone else's Drake that's in your company, that's in your, your, um, you know, your, your military outfit, they will fight too.

Star: 20:17

Oh, cool.

Andrew: 20:18

Yeah, so it'll in a wonderful way. It's like 12 dragon riders going in supporting each other. If there's a miss, they can have the other dragons like coming in to help out to land a blow. That's so cool. So that that's really the entirety of Bart's outerwear is a bow and the dragon Lance. That's everything.

Star: 20:41

Right, because he doesn't need armor.

Andrew: 20:43

Yeah, 17 AC at level one. What is that? Crazy.

Star: 20:48

Does, does Bart have a voice? I know you like to do voices.

Andrew: 20:52

Bart did have a voice in that session, and I spent, I want to say, 3 days designing Bart's voice. When I do voices, I go through YouTube, and I look at the different kind of skills, I would like to acquire in order to perform the voice. I don't know if this comes off Well, but I have a very high pitched voice growing up. Everyone said oh you sound like mickey mouse. I'm like, yeah Like I guess I do. Um, so the first thing I had to do was I had to research How to make my voice resonate from my belly Uh and from my chest because for the most part my voice resonates in my nose So I did a lot of work on dropping my octaves And then, from that deep voice, I wanted to have, um, a different nuance to a different piece of it, which was Sounding like I was 200 years old So, so it's not just Incredibly exuberant minor like an old crazy minor who just found their first nugget of gold, but I wanted to sound Um old and I wanted to sound slow and like a deep voice, which is just a little hard for me But let me see I need to sit up um, so some of the things were like Deep breaths. Don't take any breath while you're speaking, and try to get to resonate in the chest, and then just talk slow. So, it was supposed to kinda resonate down here a little bit? And seem maybe like Bart's chewing on molasses. And I can feel it too. I can feel like my chest vibrating when I speak. So I know that I'm hitting it. But yeah, that's, that's Bart.

Star: 22:45

Yeah. Can I ask a question for Bart, you respond in character?

Andrew: 22:51

Sure.

Star: 22:52

What's the first thing you notice about a person when you meet them?

Andrew: 22:57

How thick their thighs are. I really want to make sure that If it ever came down to it, probably you'd have to race someone.

Star: 23:06

That's not where I thought that was going at first.

Andrew: 23:10

Hey, listen, Bart could get it if Bart wanted to get it. Bart doesn't need to get it anymore.

Star: 23:17

If they live to be 250, I mean, that's 50 years without getting it? I don't know. That sounds sad.

Andrew: 23:26

I feel like turtles don't really bang too much.

Star: 23:33

Well, how would there be more turtles, then?

Andrew: 23:36

I think that's why they're on the edge of extinction.

Star: 23:42

Well, turtles lay eggs. Tortles, however, are a completely different story.

Andrew: 23:47

Tortles, uh, do not live in enough of Faerun.

Star: 23:53

Um, anything else you want to share about Bart, or do you think we covered it?

Andrew: 23:58

It's weird because sometimes when you concoct adventurers, the idea is that they are designed to make money through adventuring, uh, and, and you gain clout through adventuring and you gain renown through adventuring, you become a hero of the realm, et cetera, et cetera, and that's their focus. That's their main job. They have to send all their attention that way. Bart is so weird because I made it where his adventuring is his second job. That's not the point of Bart. The point of Bart is to kind of Stop people from telling that fable and to contradict it by racing and showing that tortles can be fast, too

Star: 24:41

I was gonna say I don't think I've ever made a character that is specifically motivated by gold or renown. Andrew: Does your character Yeah. I mean, not, I think once the campaign starts, it becomes a different story, but I'd say, yeah, definitely.

Andrew: 25:03

I feel like there's a big part of adventuring classically where your character has to be unhinged. There, there needs to be a little, a little bit of like risking your safety in order to make a buck.

Star: 25:19

Mm-Hmm.

Andrew: 25:20

I would say that Bart would choose more often than not, not to adventure, like if, if given, if given, if presented the ideas of like, would you rather run or do you want to save the realm? Bart would go, I'll run. Star: So why does he adventure then? Because. To get from one place to another in the realm. He must survive and to survive In the different places that he's gone to like you can't take a plane, right? Or you can't afford a train even if even if there were trains You can't afford a train unless you're making a lot of money. And so what would give him the physical stress? to Work out and exercise like adventuring does that but what puts food on the table adventuring does that so inherently? Traveling from one end of the continent to another end of the continent is very expensive Um, so he has to and if he spent all his time in accounting where would he have the time to become big and muscular and be Faster than what a tortle is supposed to be You know what I mean?

Star: 26:37

Yeah, so would you say his income from from running from prize purses isn't great?

Andrew: 26:44

I would say it's inconsistent.

Star: 26:46

Yeah, that makes sense.

Andrew: 26:48

Yeah, because it's like that one town isn't going to have a race every month. Um, so you got to leave, you got to find the next one, right? And when you do like the big things like the Olympics, what is that every few years? Horrible, absolutely horrible, right? Or if you wanted to attend an Olympic event that was off season, like not the winter Olympics, you want to do a different one. Well, you'd have to travel to a different part of the world where that season is in season. Okay. Yeah. So there's a bit of, you gotta be a little unhinged to be an adventurer, and so Bart is a little broken in that, where it's like, my whole life is dedicated to running, but I can't run over there until I can pay the ticket.

Star: 27:37

Okay, yeah, I get that.

Andrew: 27:39

Yeah.

Star: 27:40

Well, thank you so much for sharing Bart with us. Uh, do you have any things you'd like to plug? How can people find you?

Andrew: 27:50

I'm on Twitter at not underscore Andrew because that's an easy way to be found. Um, I'm on TikTok. Name is MxlPxl. It's M X L P X L. Uh, if you are in the D& D circles, who knows? Maybe I'll show up and you don't have to search me. I'm doing okay. Picking up, picking up Steam on TikTok. YouTube is also youtube. com slash DMmxlpxl. And I'm on Start Playing Games. It's my full name, Andrew Rahman.

Star: 28:21

Again, thanks for coming. Uh, and thank you for listening to my very first episode. Uh, you can find me on TikTok at S T A R M A M A C That's Star Mama C. Um, and if you would like to send your character, uh, to be on the show, you can email me at characterswithoutstories at gmail. com Thanks so much.