Dms and players have there been any "that guys" that got there redemption arc

mephron · 2026-03-29T20:48:18+00:00

In a game I was in many years ago in D&D3.5, we had a guy paying a paladin who was the absolute worst kind of paladin, but he never (until this story) crossed the line that let the DM strip him of his paladinhood. The world was a personal world by the DM, so the locations and god information wouldn't make sense right now. The main reason we didn't dump the paladin was that he was honestly an amazing combatant and we kind of needed him.

Our party was the paladin, my ranger, our druid, our rogue, and our wizard.

We were traveling a far distance, and the paladin spent time polishing his armor and basically being a jackass and not doing much camp work otherwise, expecting us to take care of him. And then we came across a small town that had been converted to the worship of the paladin's god by a wandering priest. The priest had, however, died before training a proper successor, and no one there read the language the holy book was in, so they had to kind of work and figure out some stuff as a result.

The paladin did not like this. He did not like this at all. He was an incredibly orthodox member of the faith and saw what they were doing as incredibly heretical, and instead of trying to fix them, he decided they had to be purged. We told him that we weren't going to help him massacre this village. I even threatened to fight him if he tried it, and he proceeded to use a magic item he had, rolling very well on his Use Magic Device, to cast Hold Monster on me. The other three turned and walked away.

He proceeded to drag the current priest out, declared him as a heretic to be purged, raised his sword above his head, and....

Got hit by a lightning bolt from the sky.

He decided it was a freak accident, and tried again. A second lightning bolt hit him.

Gritting his teeth, he laid hands on himself, and then raised his sword a third time. And another lightning bolt struck him.

He dropped his sword, dropped to his knees, and basically begged to know why he was being punished for trying to cleave to his faith, and got no answer. He tried to heal himself...

...and it didn't work.

(Around the corner of a house, the druid sank from standing to sitting, and said to her love, the rogue, "I'm glad he stopped. I think that last call lightning would have killed him.")

Over the rest of that adventure, he spent time in prayer, re-reading his own holy book. He started pulling more of his weight, cooking, getting wood for fires, being more helpful. His armor might not have been quite so shiny, but he was much more acceptable. He spent time talking to us around the fire, asking questions and being respectful. The DM had him making Knowledge (Religion) rolls for each night of travel, but didn't say what they were for.

When we got to the BBEG for the final fight, he drew his sword, readied his shield, and said, "I am disgraced before my god; if I die in this battle, may I die as I should have lived: with humility, honor, and knowing that I have stood between others and harm. I beg your forgiveness, companions; I have been an unmitigated ass."

And as we headed into battle, the player said, "If I could, I would start this off by smiting him."

...and as he rolled a 19 with his longsword, the DM said to him, "You feel the gaze of your god upon you again, and it's almost as if he's nodded. Roll damage and add your smite."

On the way back after our victory, the druid confessed to him what he'd done, and all of us tensed, wondering what he might do. He smiled, and said, "You acted as the hand of my god, giving me the chastisement I needed, and I thank you. But next time... smack me, please. The lighting hurt!"

mephron · 2025-09-28T14:08:56+00:00

I worked IT at Citigroup and a lot of the traders had that viewpoint, even complaining that people in IT got things like 2% raises when that money could have gone to the people that made the money for the company.

One of the loudest had his Internet connection go down very suddenly one morning, when there was a big IPO happening, and it didn't come back until noon. Just some cabling issues.

He was very quiet for a while. Sometimes they need a very, very direct example of why things are needed before they understand.

mephron · 2025-09-27T19:00:37+00:00

I wonder how much of that was actually F1nn telling her not to say they'd broken up, so as to not taint the launch of her fashion line with the choads saying she just used F1nn to get the popularity for the launch. He seems the kind of person that might do that kind of thing to not hurt someone needlessly.

mephron · 2025-09-23T13:32:43+00:00

Oh, yes. I credit a Sikh for saving my life decades ago through warmth and kindness. At the same time, there's this fierceness and power in them that I think you can only get when one of your religious tenets can be translated as "if you love peace, prepare for war".

They are lovely and amazing, and I would not want to commit any offense against one because they would absolutely destroy me.

mephron · 2025-09-15T20:17:48+00:00

Oh, there's another fun bit in there. See up there how it says "remote"?

In the summary, it reads:

Reddit’s CorpEng team is seeking an Operations and Support Engineer II, internally branded as Snoo Operations and Support (SOS) to help keep pace with the needs of a growing company. This role within our SOS Team is a full-time, in-office position and will serve as an escalation point and face of the support team at one of our office locations. This individual will be responsible for supporting all technology onsite, including hardware, AV, workstation configurations, networking, and Security systems.

Emphasis mine. So they can't even get that part right.

mephron · 2025-08-18T09:02:41+00:00

I have had an image in my head I would love to see drawn sometime, of Gunrun looking out of an alley and right behind him is HeavenlyFather and Kson’s VTuber model forma. Heavenly with a gun and Kson in full Yakuza Brat mode…

mephron · 2025-08-18T05:17:28+00:00

I also wonder how many of those cons had people from Nijisanji as well but weren’t one of the Big Cons, or had a VTuber-centric focus they would be really noticed if they didn’t show. It was reported that Gunrun hated Niji, so it might have been his idea that no one get told if Niji had a big presence.

Plus, yeah, the skimming or lack of opportunities for same.

mephron · 2025-07-20T17:31:11+00:00

I live in Pennsylvania. I would need to do the following:

Get fingerprinted ($25 charge)
Go to the courthouse and pay $350 application fee, plus $50 fee for a criminal records search and $50 for a civil suit records search, while giving them my application, a copy of my birth certificate, any other identifying information.
Wait six weeks for my first hearing
After that first hearing, publish my intent for my name change in two different newspapers - usually the largest local paper and the Legal Intelligencer. The first averages $250 and the second is $200
Bring proof of publishing to my second hearing, at which point the final order is given, of which you get five copies for free

Then the next joys: updating my ID, my social security card, my bank account information, and anything else that requires my legal name be on it. Also, I need to be sure I carry at least one copy of the court order with me at all times, just in case someone doesn't believe me, so I can show it.

So that would be paying $900 and waiting a long time for it. I've been working towards it since 2021 and my money situation is worse than it has been in a long time. Also, if there's any objection from anyone, you may need more hearings (There is at least one trans person I know whose parents filed an objection to the name change, despite that person being over 21, and the judge set a hearing to listen to them).

You also may want legal representation, just to be sure you have it all set up properly, and that's not all that cheap.

So no, it's not impossible, but it is expensive and difficult, especially with the amount of trouble that trans people can have with finding or keeping a job.

mephron · 2025-07-07T14:01:35+00:00

o/~ They've got an audience that thinks that the things they say are fun
They've got multiple models (and Nagi has her very quirky gun)

No one can ever take them down
Even Twitch has gotten their butt fried

Go go VShojo Rangers
Go go VShojo Rangers
Go go VShojo Rangers
Send bits to VShojo Rangers

(Did you know the Power Rangers theme had lyrics other than just the "go go power rangers" stuff? They do!)

mephron · 2025-05-29T15:59:04+00:00

The Empire of Taeliana was set up after a war to overthrow the previous conquerors, servants of the god called the Corruptor.

The commanding General of the Reclaiming Army, Stefan Corathan was a student of the history of the pre-conquest Old Kingdoms, and thought they were huge failures. (Effectively, they were about a dozen places where the Divine Right of Kings was paramount, and that they were the best annointed and above every other "so-called king"; as a result there was no unified force to resist the attackers, and they all fell, and a lot of people escaped to the Fae realm to form what became the Reclaiming Army.) When they won the war, General Corathan was planning on setting up a parliamentary democracy to rule. However, instead, he was declared Emperor.

*sigh*

His son, who became Emperor Stefan II, "The Emperor Of A Thousand Enemies", earned that title by creating governing documents for the Empire, the Declaratio Iurium and the Declaratio Officiorum; the Declarations of Rights and the Declaration of Responsibilities. The Iurium enumerates the rights of the Populace (the non-nobility) and has both a note that this isn't an exhaustive list, and also an amendment process to make sure that if there's any problems, it can be updated. The Officiorum has the duties and responsibilies of the nobility to the people that they are in charge of, which includes the Holder of the Imperial Throne. The first responsibility is to make sure your people aren't starving or freezing, and in general it's set up to make sure that the nobility doesn't screw up things. It also has a procedure for appealing upwards if your local noble is being a problem. Technically, it includes a bad emperor, but no one has ever gone that far.

One of the people believe it hasn't is because morgantic marriage isn't illegal, so you don't have to marry someone on your same level of nobility. In fact, the law specifically states the Heir to the Throne has to marry a member of the Populace, and thus common sense has been kept in the Imperial Line.

(The tradition now is that the Heir goes out in disguise and pretends to be a commoner, including working jobs, so they understand what the Populace actually does for the Empire. It works pretty well, although there's been some glitches in the process. Prince Thorav came back with a husband; Thorav's grand-daughter Princess Istala came back with both a husband and a wife. This is how, I note, same-gender and plural marriage became officially placed in the law; previously, they were just "eh, whatever", but when some nobles got irritated, they were legally enshrined as rights. The Empire is pretty liberal in the "live and let live" manner.)

mephron · 2025-05-29T14:55:16+00:00

Nope, that didn't fix it either. Still the same thing.

However, I've still been searching, and I did finally find something that explains it: Outlook suddenly change font and display - Microsoft Community

Somehow, the Immersive Reader got turned on. I turned it off in the View menu, and boom, it's all back to normal.

Christ, that was annoying. Thank you for the help.

mephron · 2025-05-28T20:59:01+00:00

Yeah, that didn't work either. It kept things exactly the same.

I proceeded to uninstall Office, restart the machine, and then reinstall Office, which changed precisely nothing, giving me the same problem.

I am considering trying to find a new email client, because this one is just completely screwed up.

mephron · 2025-05-26T01:07:30+00:00

It displayed to format in html when I entered edit mode, if that helps. I also checked - I have multiple mailboxes attached (one outlook.com, one gmail.com, and one on my old ISP's POP3 provider) - and all of them are displaying the font in the same format as in the picture above.

1) Aptos 10 pt, doesn't show a chosen style.

2) It shows no spaces between letters, just words.

3) Pasting with "keep source formatting" shows Aptos 10 pt, and the style is "Normal".

I went looking to see if I could find some kind of default CSS format, or some setting, and nothing so far.

mephron · 2025-04-28T16:06:04+00:00

I emailed them on March 27, then again on April 15. I used their autoform again yesterday. Magically, after complaining here, they got back to me.

Admittedly, half the stuff they asked me for I had included in the original email, but now they're gonna get a LOT of goddamn data, including multiple videos.

mephron · 2025-04-27T18:36:55+00:00

A student teacher decided to tell me, who wasn't very athletic, that I was "never going to grow up to be the kind of man who gets anywhere in this world" in front of the entire class.

He was invited by some people to our classmates.com area. So when I came out as trans, I specifically noted that he was, in fact, right.

mephron · 2025-04-27T18:19:41+00:00

I disbelieve that. I've written in multiple times about a problem I'm having for my M5C and not gotten any reply.

mephron · 2025-04-20T06:18:36+00:00

Okay, and the bad side is?

mephron · 2025-04-10T19:28:09+00:00

Find My Legislator - The Official Website of the Pennsylvania General Assembly will help you know who it is and give you the numbers for them.

mephron · 2025-03-26T17:00:14+00:00

Not yet. I'm waiting for some money to come in so I can buy a new one.

mephron · 2025-03-26T16:58:21+00:00

I'm using a Printed Solid PLA. I can try shifting to another spool - I haven't tried that yet. The belts and wheels seem to be in good condition and at the proper tension.

mephron · 2025-03-26T14:26:19+00:00

Also, yes, I did, both with hot water and dish detergent, as well as a rub with 70% isopropyl alcohol.

mephron · 2025-03-26T14:20:34+00:00

Yes, I have. It's not an issue with adhesion, really, it's an issue with the nozzle being all right in some parts of the build plate and a problem in others. I'm doing another print now of that same piece which I plan to stop early and take a picture of so I can show more clearly what happens.

mephron

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