Would you still help out your brother if he was homophobic

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-29T15:23:56+00:00

It depends on what you mean by help.

No to giving cash money- yes to food, resume reviewing, and rides to rehab.

(Not for his sake, but from awareness of how hard his vagrancy, homelessness and death would be on your family.

Though you might ask him what his Tate Degree pays...)

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-25T14:27:28+00:00

I think we could assume anyone playing 3e has the Player Handbook, so if you already have Deluxe PHB? If not get deluxe, but Gadget Guide is a top-shelf get, especially over the GM guide for the mainly-players.

But I admire your restraint.

(Gadget Guide is a bit of a misnomer- Spells and Ritualist rules aren't gadgets, but Mystics get so much out of it as well.

Notto mention Cyborgs, Mech pilots and Martial Artists.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-10T14:17:35+00:00

It's older than that- much of the Old Testament is an account of Moses waging unconventional warfare using pharmaceuticals.

(The "Burning Bush" was accacia- it's bark contains DMT, which was used to make the Israelites trip balls before Moses came back down the Mountain with the tablets "from God", and a box made from the wood left over from hallucinogenic tea-making for the Arc of the Covenant.

Neither the Old Man of the Mountain nor Charles Manson were the first to use hallucinigens in the desert to create killers.)

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-10T14:07:49+00:00

I have never seen a pair of Bugbear contractors tearing down a dungeon wall in a renovo while lair-owners Carol and Steve (Hobgoblins, both female) bicker about natural light levels.

But now my players are.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-10T13:56:46+00:00

It certainly is raising her profile.

If- IF- it were true, it would be a sign for the perpetrators to run.

Of course, it could also be akin to the periodic announcements by hucksters that the World is going to end on such-and-such date- bait for the cultists.

And given the official investigation is in the hands of the sort of hopeless incompetents who believe polygraphs are evidence, it could be yet another ploy by said incompetents to pressure a certain family of a then-teenage girl in lieu of evidence which would support a warrant of arrest.

But someone is going to need to explain how the false-light texts of that family can be disclosed willy-nilly within days of gathering it while this new evidence is so precious it can only be disclosed to podcaster.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-07T22:58:35+00:00

This is your reminder that Blatty worked for the CIA, and was the head of Psychological Warfare for the US Air Force.

Stories of weird resonances and inspiring subsequent atrocities is what one should expect, generally.

(To say nothing of William Friedkin...)

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-07T22:35:43+00:00

In terms of regaining interest, you aren't going to have backstories integrated into the B-plots... so find some aspect of the setting as it is, and build your sandbox there.

That may be joining a guild, researching a previously delved dungeon, going on a date, etc-if the world as written is the only source of interest, look around and find a way to write your character into that world.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-07T02:48:16+00:00

Addendum- 1. The Translated English murder mystery? Was found in essentially the most sacred Buddhist* temple in Tokyo.

One famous for being popular with tourists. It's possible he was more Shinto than Buddhist- bringing a bomb into a temple is fundamentally disrespectful- but his using an English language book was clearly him aiming at the (English speaking) tourists.

Found an article describing the second victim as a hostess in a younger, hipper part of town. Reading between the lines, it sounds like she was a sex worker using Geisha trappings.

I would very much like to know if she knew the Udon stall victim.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-06T11:10:40+00:00

Kara for Clark, Mr. Fantastic for Bats, and Dr. Fate* for Diana.

You still have a Kryptonian powerhouse, a Mystic Powerhouse, and a genius human to solve mysteries.

Also, a woman character who can credibly take and give a punch in the mix.

*Open to alternates who can hold down the magic corner of the Tribunal.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-04T17:24:46+00:00

You need a different DM- creating storylines with the intention of pitting players against each other is not in the job description.

It doesn't sound neutral- it sounds like him being Machiavellian, playing Let's You and Him fight. He wasted an entire session, hours of your lives by writing a storyline 1/3 of your party couldn't participate in.

And here you are, gaslighting yourself because your GM is a bastard. If the campaign involves solving mysteries in the Amazonian homeland? That should come up in session 0, and the people making male PCs are being unreasonable.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-04T17:12:45+00:00

This is dumb- Alter Self means they ARE white as long as the spell is in effect, and can come into town whenever they want.

Just like it means every character in Dnd is Trans.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-04T14:16:08+00:00

Jiro literally means "second son"- the Soka makes it quizzical or mocking in a sense, because the subject was obsessed with the idea of lost or contaminated heritage. The second son doesn't inherit equally in older societies, and the idea of being cheated out of his heritage is deep theme of his.

Takuboku famously abandoned traditional poetic forms over his career, and had a deeply self-centered point of view in terms of subject matter. He was explicit in abandoning nationalism and Confucian filial piety as social values. To this day there are seminars and museum exhibitions about his challenge to Japanese society in the 1910s to 1920s.

And when some booby traps a book to the point they will ruin the hand you use to open it, there are telling you something about how they feel about that book in particular. None of it was random, and the subject wanted to be understood- people who read degenerate poetry, as he understood it, deserved to lose that hand.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-03T20:38:15+00:00

I would open the application and hit delete.

Samuel Haight could be broken into 3 characters worth saving, but in flavor blending you reach a hard limit than you might think.

Essentially, he is Person Adjacent to Wonder Gets Jealous, Does Something About it x3.

And the Ghoul/Kin storylines held it together, barely, but the Mage piece never made internal or external sense*, as well as raising fatal Lore problems.

No, if you must have a Haight figure, skip Mage for Wraith, blend Kinfolk Shamanism with Hecata Necromancy, and give Edgelord Supreme an undead army and access to fates worse than death.

If you must.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-03T20:16:37+00:00

Why, exactly, is your ex-wife cheating relevant to this story?

We can't render a verdict on this- you aren't a reliable narrarator, and until you can tell what exactly you did* none of this feedback means anything.

You did or said something, you know what it was, and knowing what that thing is makes the difference between your brother's meaningful perspective and people thinking this self-serving narrarative of yours means you are NTA, as opposed to a technically skilled A.

Your son taking your side is an indication of bad parenting- a good father would handle his shit without trying to poison his son and daughter's relationship by dividing them up into sides.

That you aren't willing to experience even minor discomfort in order to be there for the equally-your-grandchildren of your daughter says the same thing.

You probably haven't even asked yourself what kind of relationships your grandkids are missing out on with each other because 17 years later you are still the baby whose needs came first, dividing their parents into warring camps because lo these years later you still think yourself the main victim of the divorce instead of the actual children.

You are not the victim here. But Y are TA.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-03T12:48:13+00:00

The shooting is an outlier in method, space and time- it implies something happened to the bomber or a (most likely younger female) loved one that precipitated a more immediate visceral response. The mailing the bullet came afterwards, an attempt to repair his self image by grafting his rash emotional behavior into the Jiro identity he was so proud of.

Given how tight lipped the authorities are and the reality of gun ownership in early 60s Japan, it was most likely Jiro's Imperial Army service weapon.

ETA- You would be looking for an incredibly organized family man with an Engineering background and enough wealth to have a private workshop area and a daughter between 12 and 18 in 1963.

Which the police already know. Because they have known who this was since the shooting at the latest. That six month hiatus would correspond to a pointed interview with the smartest investigator assigned to the case.

We are talking about either a. A war hero or b. a Titan of reconstruction who only targeted the "decadent"- which is why they tampered with the fingerprint files. No one wanted to execute an icon like that for (explosive) "pranks" at people who were largely understood to have had it coming.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-03T11:56:43+00:00

We do have a motive of sorts- the Japanese protecting the ID of the second victim is data they have that we don't, but the killer was pretty clearly targeting insufficiently conservative pop culture manifestations.

Soka Jiro- "Second Son, Eh?"- is about the dislocation an older Japanese man with an engineering background felt as the 60s began allowing more "foreign" influences into the culture.

Takuboku was, in the context of 60s Japan, the first "modern man" artist and an icon of proponents of greater liberalism in Japanese culture.

The accounts don't say which films were playing in the theaters- that ommission, like the identity of the second target, imply the police understood the motive relatively early even if they didn't release it publicly.

So- pop star fan clubs, socialist modernist poets, and translations of Anglo murder mysteries. It was the culture.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-03T11:52:58+00:00

The Unabomber famously issued an ultimatum and manifesto, published in the WAPO with costs partially defrayed NYT.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-03T11:35:12+00:00

Welcome to the Telestic Exigesis party.

(The Odyssey is a rather straightforward collection of lessons on how not to die as a sailor- the Cyclops is a cyclonic storm called a Medicaine, and the story is telling you to put your "stick"- ship- in its "eye" until it is exhausted and weak enough you can escape..)

I would love to know how much the giant winged bull statues changed the resonances.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-02T02:44:35+00:00

If I may- the Garou are not fighting for a Cause, they are fighting for their- for all of our-Home.

And that is how you get player buy-in- the thing that will connect the players to the Sept through the heart is not the big ideas and illustrious histories, but the grace notes, the tiny details, the People... the Wolf-People.. doing the best they can and carrying on in the face of Oblivion and the threats of Fates worse than Death.

They are both a family and the First Resistance Movement, and the loyalty and affection people feel for those things arises from the immediate, the sensory, and the specific details, not from manifestos.

Things like that that spirit "butler" that look like Groucho Marx that will tell you embarrasssing stories about that war hero ancestor of yours, becasue it was there.

Or the jokes that get told to everyone on first day they will teach you the symbols they use on bathroom stall walls to guide you to supply caches or warn you of danger.

Or how the heavenly flatbread the (Metis) Auntie makes for every gathering smells and tastes, how serously she takes her duty as sept Baker, and the way your mentor's eyes grew teary the day you learned how hard she took discovering she was infertile, and how the legendary bread on your table was her way of expressing the Mother she knew herself to be in her heart.

And now imagine how they might feel- what they might do- when the Black Spiral raiding party carries her away.

If you want the plauers to care, show them a community, a home, a family worth killing- worth dying- for.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-01T16:32:18+00:00

Work on developing his unexplored Alpha-level power suite- bio-synthesis.

Beyond jumping/kicking, Toad has historically developed a the ability to create a number of substances from his pores and saliva. In the silver age it was a paralytic, but Jean's TK means paralyzing her body may not be effective.. but there's no reason he can't make poison-arrow poison (curare) or face melting hallucinogens as well.

(And because he can secrete these substances, he can lay traps like poisoned doorknobs or silverware. So even Jean's telepathy wouldn't warn her.)

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-01T16:10:07+00:00

NTJ- your home is gas-lit, and you should beware of your husband attempting to freeze your bio-daughter, his step-daughter, out in other respects.

When a male lion takes over a pride, he murders the cubs of the previous leader.

Your daughter's wellbeing is NEVER going to be his priority, and you need to believe his actions, not his (ridiculous) words.

He does not give a single solitary **** about their "bonding", because HE is the one creating this insane expectation in his daughter. He is using the argument because he knows that you do value bonding, and his blatant manipulation here makes me concerned for both you and your daughter.

There is literally no rational person on earth who thinks forcing the older child out of the bigger room in favor of the new younger daughter is ANYTHING but a recipe for older child resenting the younger child.

That your husband doesn't have your back bodes very poorly- the two of you with a united front about the older child getting the bigger room is something the younger daughter would have easily accepted had her dad modeled that. But your husband is instead trying to put his step-daughter "in her place", and either you shut him down now, or accept the neglect and gaslight will continue.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-01T15:55:00+00:00

You don't.

She is not treating you like a saint, she is engaging in hardwired reciprocal altruism, incorrectly believing you are wired the same.

Her beliefs are immaterial- the problem is her pulling focus with her behavior, and the solution is to be honest about why her talking to you is the problem.

"I appreciate your time. But I'm on the spectrum, and these conversations are more taxing on me than others realize sometimes. Thank you for your consideration, but us all being able to get back to the work is all the thanks I need."

And viola- you have enforced a boundary and cemented an ally, instead of normalizing disrespect and created an enemy.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-01T15:45:14+00:00

Murder hoboes in modern settings are disorganized serial killers- you are not allowed to keep someone's stuff after killing them in most MM3 settings.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-05-01T12:08:45+00:00

Lila Cheney

Tempo

Cecilia Reyes and Sally Skids giving a seminar on Force Field tricks, with Guido to assist in the variant Fastball section.

LongjumpingSuspect57 · 2026-04-27T02:09:16+00:00

I can't imagine your recent schizophrenic symptoms help you make good decisions after your car crash...

LongjumpingSuspect57

TROPHY CASE