As speculation ramped up around Parliament Hill over his potential floor crossing, a source close to Jeneroux tells CTV News that Conservative Party officials made it known to him that there would be consequences if he did floor cross. That led to a statement from his office that insisted he would not be leaving the party.

Yeah, there were definitely threats made.

Sharan Kaur, who contributes to CTV, is also saying this pretty directly. Apparently multiple sources all confirming the same thing.

That ninth inning was painful to watch. Dodgers had the luck of the gods on their side. If that last outfield fly had only gone a couple of feet further…

Dear Americans, you might be thinking that it’s fine for your government to murder people on nothing but an accusation, without any proof, without any opportunity for the accused to defend themselves. After all, they’re only doing it to “bad people”.

But the question is, what happens when the government decides that you and the people you care about are “bad people”?

You can claim that you’re not, but it won’t matter, because due process has been thrown out the window. Your claims are irrelevant.

Due process exists for a reason, and it has to exist for the people you don’t like, or else it doesn’t exist for anyone. Selective due process isn’t due process.

Also, consider this: If these boats really were full of drugs, they could just board them and sieze the drugs. Seems like that would be the ideal outcome for the government, right? All the proof they need right there that their anti-immigrant agenda really is stopping crime.

The fact that they’re not willing to do that is already ample evidence that they’re lying about who they’re killing and why.

No, the Firefox snap genuinely is awful. It takes forever to load and runs like ass.

Respect to the PSF for doing this. It was both the smart choice and the right choice.

TY. Follow up question; this is Canada… How does one acquire this mythical “doc” of which you speak?

How does one get immunity checked?

The line “Mario is a war criminal” is seared into my brain forever.

Look, Isreal deserves all the hate they get and more. They’re a pack of genocidal monsters. But I’m really not sure what you’re even trying to reach for here. They’re anti-tank missiles. You fire them at tanks. There’s really nothing to read into here.

I also have to note my personal disgust at the suggestion that any member of the CAF would be involved in a training exercise involving live targets. I get that everyone likes to hate on anyone who wears a uniform, but you really don’t know shit about the culture of the CAF if you think that’s even worth implying as a joke. I know members of the CAF who openly proclaim themselves as communists and anarchists. I’ve had a MCpl and his husband over for dinner. I’ve met veterans who talk with a burning hatred for the Conservatives. I’ve heard stories of training exercises where entire platoons unanimously declared that their enemy was “The KKK, because fuck those racist assholes.” I personally know at least four separate officers in the CAF - two of them snipers - who’ve openly declared that they will beat the shit out of anyone they catch being transphobic. If you’re under the impression that the CAF are a bunch of mouth-breathing right-wing fascist assholes, you’ve never actually met them. While those members do exist, and they’re unfortunately more common in the reserve force, they are not representative of the culture of the CAF as a whole.

The weapons were purchased before any ICJ rulings or UN decisions had been made against Isreal. I’m a huge proponent of divesting entirely and I strongly believe that going forward the world needs to isolate Isreal the way we did apartheid South Africa, but I’m not sure how the CAF was supposed to respect rulings of international courts that hadn’t yet been made or even considered when these purchasing decisions were made. The case hadn’t even been brought before the ICJ when we inked the deal.

So, for those who need context, what’s happening here is that some of our people (29 instructors) went to Isreal to get trained in the operation of the new Spike LR2 missile system that we purchased from Rafael, an Isreali company. Those instructors will then train other forces members in how to use the weapon system.

This is the end result of a years long process (IIRC evaluations started back around 2016) to replace our existing, highly outdated, guided anti-tank capabilities. Canada needs a modern ATGM solution. With recent Russian belligerence, that’s a non-negotiable. We spent a LOT of time evaluating the options and selected the Spike as the best one available.

I don’t like that we’re buying weapons from Isreal. That sucks. But I’m also not about to advocate for derailing a years long process when we desperately need the updated capability this weapon system will provide. Given our recent defence cooperation agreements with Europe, going forward its likely that we’ll see more of our defence purchasing going in their direction, but defence contracts are big ships and turn slowly. My read is that this one was already way too far down the track to stop at the last minute.

I think GMs in general need to get more comfortable with picking different campaign or story lengths. Some things are a movie, some things are a 6 episode prestige TV series, and some things are an old school 24 episode multi-season order. The benefit of the latter is that it gives you a lot more room for character development and world-building, but it can also drag and end up with a lot of filler. Some stories really benefit from a shorter, more focused runtime. Some stories are best told in just a handful of sessions. Some should just be a one shot; if you’ve never run a horror one shot I urge you to give it a go; there is an incredible power in being able to kill off the entire cast by the end of the session. I once opened a Shadowrun campaign by running a one shot with pre-made high level characters who went on a mission that turned very very bad, and resulted in them all being killed by the campaign big-bad. Then I had the players create their characters for the main game. They were all hooked, and wanted to find out what the fuck happened to the first team, who the big bad was, and what was going on on the spooky island research lab where they all died.

Yes, this is superb advice. Give yourself room to play around with things and try stuff that might not work.

Unfortunately my secret goblin ninja attack team got rounded up and deported, so I was forced to actually give a real answer instead of having them murdered. Curses.

For those who don’t know, there was an event in Morrowind where you found a corpse carrying three scrolls of “Icarian Flight” (if you were in the right place at the right time you’d actually see him hit the ground). The way the scrolls worked was they buffed your Acrobatics skill by 1000 (in a 1-100 system) allowing you to soar across the entire map in one bound… but the duration on the buff was shorter than the time it took to land, and your ability to absorb fall damage was also controlled by your Acrobatics skill. So unsuspecting players would try one of the scrolls and suffer exactly the same fate.

The genius was that these items weren’t actually useless; there were two ways to use them effectively. The first was to simply cast a second scroll right before you landed. The second was to have a spell, scroll or item that granted levitation; by casting it right before landing you could simply negate the fall damage and drift to earth safely. A famous speedrun used both methods, along with another trap item, The Boots of Blinding Speed; they made you incredibly fast. And blind.

Sure. I’ll try not to waffle too much, but here are six general pieces of advice I have for running serious games:

You Have to Set the Tone

This sounds really obvious, but it’s the step that so many GMs miss. You can’t assume your players are on the same page as you. If there’s a tone you want from your game, you need to actually say that right from the start. Tell people what you want from them. Otherwise how can they deliver it? A great way to do this is to give points of reference. I often describe my games as “Serious, but more Firefly than Heat”; the characters make jokes as a way of dealing with their situation, but the situation is also very real and very serious. Joking about the bullet won’t stop it from killing you. There’s banter and fun and found family, but in the face of deadly threats. Try to find similar points of reference for your games. Are you looking for Michael Mann, or Guy Ritchie? Do you want deadly serious, or do you want “One of those surprisingly dark Saturday morning cartoons,”? There’s a lot of different flavours of storytelling out there, so it helps to give your players the right idea going in. That way, if it’s not for them, they can tell you right from the start instead of ending up at odds with the game because it’s not what they wanted.

Session Zero is Essential

If you’re not familiar with session zero, it’s basically a thing you do before the game starts. It doesn’t technically have to be separate session, but the point is that you should avoid the urge to just have everyone turn up with characters and start playing. Make character creation a collaborative event; you want your players to be having a conversation with you and each other about the kinds of characters they want to play, and the kinds of stories they want to tell. This is your opportunity to catch game breaking problems early. One player wants to be a vampire, another wants to be a vampire hunter? Have them talk it out. Figure out how this is going to become the kind of story that everyone will enjoy, or what alternatives can be explored if there isn’t a good way to make that story work. This is also your opportunity to lay out the tone and feel of the game and have your players make characters that fit that tone. If you’re running a serious game and one of your players wants to be Bimbo The Fart Gnome, this is your opportunity to simply say “No.”

“Yes, and…” is For Comedy. Learn the Power of “No, but…”

The worst piece of advice ever given to new GMs is “Yes, and…” which is a technique from improv comedy. If you want improv comedy it’s a great technique. If you want serious stories, it’s a terrible technique. Instead, learn to say “No, but…” That means you can refuse things that will break your story, but you must always do so in a way that encourages and values the player’s participation. In practice this means you need to offer them an alternative that carries the spirit of their idea into something workable. This doesn’t even have to be obvious; sometimes it can just be a matter of reinterpreting the player’s intent in a way that works. If your player says “I want to use my Intimidate skill to stare down the Mafia Don and make him do what I say,” you can tell them to roll for it, and if they succeed, respond with “The Don laughs and slaps his thigh. ‘Damn, you’ve got moxie kid. Tell you what…’” They don’t give the character exactly what they want, because they’re not intimidated, not even slightly, but they respect the spine they showed and warm up to them as a result. The player might have been entirely wrong about the amount of power they had in that situation, but they weren’t made to look foolish. Their success mattered.

Consequences are Everything

The single most important part of running a serious game is that consequences have to matter. This is, I have to admit, part of why I don’t try to run serious games in D&D, a system that is largely allergic to consequences, but that’s beside the point. What matters is the choices your players make, good and bad, have to result in real, meaningful outcomes. This is why a lot of GMs fail at running serious games; they go in with a story in their head, and they try to railroad the players into that story, but by doing so they remove any meaningful consequence to the player’s choices. The outcome will always be the same; the story will go in the direction the GM wants it to. Most players will respond to this by saying “Fuck it, might as well be silly, it doesn’t matter anyway.” If you want your players to care about the story, you have to make their choices important and meaningful, even when those choices fuck with your plans. One of the best endings I ever had to a game happened because my players wildly misinterpreted a situation; rather than try to disabuse them of that notion, I decided to simply accept their interpretation as correct and run with it. The result was an ending that had players in tears. Big dramatic character deaths, defiant last stands, moments of sacrifice that resolved campaign long personal arcs. All of that would have been for nothing if I’d stuck to my guns and told them that the threat they’d been trying to stop was actually a potential ally, as had been my original plan.

Use What the Players Give You

Listen to your players when they talk about their characters. When they bring up backstory, make suggestions, create connections with the world. Weave in those elements into your stories. If you take the things your players connect with and give them value, your players will be more connected to the story. This also comes back to your session zero; when you create characters, encourage your players to think about their connections to the world. Murder hobos are boring. Ask - demand even - that they come up with characters, places, ideals and things that their characters are passionate about. Things that matter to them. Then throw those same things in harms way and watch what happens. I guarantee you’ll get a good story out of it.

Ground Your Players in The Story

The hardest part about running a serious game is that you have to respect that it’s hard on the players too. Humour is easy. Tragedy requires us to be vulnerable. It’s really challenging to put your heart on display in front of a group of people. So your players natural inclination will be to pull back, either by making jokes, or by making their characters too cool, too tough, too unaffected for it all to matter.

There is an incredible power in the words “How do they feel about that?” Ask it often. Start out a session by recapping what happened and then say “How are your characters feeling right now?” Ground your players in their character’s thoughts and feelings, help them and encourage them to engage with the moment. If you feel like a character is reacting in a way that doesn’t make sense or that feels like they’re metagaming instead of flowing with the story, don’t fight them on it, but try instead to explore it with them. If a player says “My character is too hardened and tough to care that those people died,” let them run with that, but encourage them to explore it; What must it feel like to be so dead to the world that watching an entire village get massacred does nothing to them? How harrowing and haunting must it be to carry so many ghosts that a dozen more don’t even move the needle? Respect their choices, but explore those choices. Help them to build out those roleplaying decisions into a fully fleshed out character.

If you’re a GM who loves this about D&D, good for you, have fun.

If you’re a GM who quietly despairs because you want your games to feel serious and meaningful, but your players always turn them into jokes, I want to assure you that there are ways to solve this, but it’s gonna involve making some changes to how you GM.

I’ve run games that have literally made players cry. If you take the time to herd the cats properly, you can get there (If people want specifics I’ll elaborate, but I don’t want to turn this into a soapbox unprompted).

Important note: The attribution on the site is correct, ignore what the graphic in the video says. The War of 1812 is by Three Dead Trolls in a Baggie, not The Arrogant Worms. People get this wrong all the time, and I can’t imagine how infuriating it is for a band to have their most popular song constantly attributed to someone else.

Yo, quick question… Why the fuck are they allowed to have those?

My brain went to exactly the same place.