https://www.herogames.com/discover/HERO Games - All ActivityenMy currently included Detect Objects, if I ultimately go this way: Detect A Class Of Things 16- (Touch Group), Increased Arc Of Perception (360 Degrees), Range, Rapid: x10, Targeting, Telescopic: +6 It's 31 points right now, and it's defined as a Passive. The base would be Class of Things (5), Range (5), and Targeting (10)...20 points. Same as base Radar or Sonar with 5 points of Concealed (which should mean more than it does), especially considering that detecting radar or sonar is not common to begin with. The 360, Rapid, and Telescopic would have to be paid for with the other closely equivalent senses anyway, so they're not a part of the comparison, just aspects that make sense for this power.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:27:48 +0000On the contrary: look at all the rules one has to memorize (and, occasionally, exercise) when it comes to literacy. Books are whetstones for the mind.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:24:01 +0000Mmm...wouldn't have to go all the way back. Just back before movable type would be fine. But I'd rather blame memes, not books. Memes are a crime against intelligence.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:07:24 +0000If I have to buy it as a Detect, then I can define it as a Passive sense...it's no longer detectable. I shouldn't have to spend another 5 to make my Range undetectable. And Passive actually doesn't cost points. This might be a system oversight, letting Passive be free; it smacks of getting something for nothing. Detect Objects, as a member of the Touch group, starts at 10 points IMO, because it has to detect a Large Class of objects...unless you want to say that intangible objects are sufficiently broad to drop it to the 5 point Limited Class. Radar and Active Sonar both use Limited Class, for example. I have a hard enough time justifying the 5 point reduction for them, because what they can't detect is, to me, very narrow. Oh, and BTW: in 6E, there's Spatial Awareness. Defined as a member of the Sight group, it's 20 points. (As an Unusual Sense, you gain that it requires a highly targeted Flash.) It gives basically the same information and counters the same conditions. And it's undetectable. Hmm. Parsing through Spatial, and Radar/Sonar...it's looking like comparable senses end up being pretty similar in cost, if it has to be built as a Detect of a Limited Class. Active may not be an explicit cost reducer...but it may well be incorporated. I'm also thinking many of these costs were assigned, somewhat ad hoc...or, if you prefer, reflect that design simplicity is more important than price accuracy.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 02:02:22 +0000Several men are in the locker room of a golf club. A cellular phone on a bench rings and a man engages the hands-free speaker function and begins to talk. Everyone else in the room stops to listen. MAN: “Hello” WOMAN: “Hi Honey, it’s me. Are you at the club?” MAN: “Yes.” WOMAN: “I’m at the shops now and found this beautiful leather coat. It’s only $2,000; is it OK if I buy it?” MAN: “Sure, go ahead if you like it that much.” WOMAN: “I also stopped by the Lexus dealership and saw the new models. I saw one I really liked.” MAN: “How much?” WOMAN: “$90,000.” ; MAN: “OK, but for that price I want it with all the options.” WOMAN: “Great! Oh, and one more thing… I was just talking to Janie and found out that the house I wanted last year is back on the market. They’re asking $980,000 for it.” MAN: “Well, then go ahead and make an offer of $900,000. They’ll probably take it. If not, we can go the extra eighty-thousand if it’s what you really want.” WOMAN: “OK. I’ll see you later! I love you so much!” MAN: “Bye! I love you, too.” The man hangs up. The other men in the locker room are staring at him in astonishment, mouths wide open. He turns and asks, “Anyone knows whose phone this is.....”Tue, 07 Apr 2026 01:30:23 +0000You could argue that books made people have worse memory. Maybe we need to go back to pre-book to sharpen everyone up a bit?Tue, 07 Apr 2026 01:28:27 +0000This made it past the editors somehowTue, 07 Apr 2026 01:13:34 +0000Amazing Rowling.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:40:46 +0000Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:32:38 +0000The reason you can tell if someone has touched you is because in order to touch someone you need to make physical contact with you. To me this is due to the fact touch is the only sense group that does not give the ranged modifier. The way I would do it is that if you purchase the ranged modifier for touch it is no longer detectable. For that reason, I would not allow a character to purchase ranged on normal touch but would allow them to buy it on the touch group. Doing so would make ranged touch its own sense instead of being normal touch. The book specifies that the 360 modifier for touch is only for normal touch and other senses in the group do not automatically gain the modifier. This means that if ranged touch is it’s a separate sense it would not gain the 360 degree modifier. Again, this is for balance reasons. Purchasing a 5 point or even a 10 point modifier for a sense and gaining the ability to sense everything around you is abusive and should not be permitted. That may not be strictly by the rules, but that is the way I would handle it in a campaign I am running. When you buy ranged touch like I am suggesting you gain the ability to use it at range, but it is no longer automatically detectable. 10 points seems like a reasonable cost for that.Tue, 07 Apr 2026 00:22:34 +0000Unix/Linux was never intended to be user-friendly. It was never built for users; it was built for coders, so the baseline expected competency/literacy is 2 or 3 notches above "user level." One of the most user-hostile aspects of Windows is, I think, derived from the fact that a decent portion of Windows users are barely computer-literate. A consequence? Compelled OS updating. I get the security angle; I even get that Microsoft has an interest in keeping Windows up to date to block as much malware as possible. Combine that with the justifiably low competence of that portion of the user base...and compelling OS updates is understandable. Yes, they botched it completely; they do it silently. Unlike Apple; iOS tells me in advance it's going to update later. Windows? Just checks and does it. And forces through a reboot, too, damn the consequences to me. Linux? Tells me. QUITE regularly, these days. Holy cow, Chrome's been getting updates 2-3 times per week...because apparently, malware creators have been extremely active. (THIS is something that may well be due to AI...because those AI parts of the browser create a path, open to the outside world, to run code.) AI isn't the reason, per se, for Windows to be such a pain. It's been moving that way for decades. Some of it is to enforce its de facto monopoly in the business sphere, by cross-connecting the OS and Office. The net result is you can hardly clone either, without cloning both. It also means a developer's more likely to be tied to MS's versions of tools like C++. They tried to do the same with browsers...but failed. IE's engine was generally behind Chrome's...and they eventually gave up.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 23:58:23 +0000Found that Finnegan Fox died last year around Thanksgiving. Five months after the founder of Save a Fox. But it was only announced in January of this year. Found out about him during lockdown in 2020 and his joyous laughter was one of the things that helped get me through isolation. There are videos on Youtube celebrating his life and Mikayla Raines who sadly committed suicide in June of last yearMon, 06 Apr 2026 22:56:44 +0000I'm perfectly willing to toss your hubby out with the bath water....Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:44:43 +0000The basis here is, for some power concepts, applying Range, probably Targeting, and perhaps Telescopic to Normal Touch is sensible; someone with TK is an example. (Yes, you could do all this with a Detect Objects, but it'll cost more, for no good reason. If you insist on buying the Detect Objects through the Touch Group, then...what's the point of the sense modifiers?) The issue is, for this sense...is it inherently detectable or not? It's not visible, per se, but if this sense locates (let's say) an invisible person by touch, does said invisible person simply know they've been touched or not...and thus, their invisibility is less useful than normal. On the Yes side: while it's not stated, if I touch you, you know it. Sure, there's exceptions like you being distracted, or me being a master pickpocket and thus capable of subtle contact. Also, Normal Touch is cheap because it gives a great deal for a "single sense." It's typically equivalent to the Touch Group, but also kicks in 360 degree perception for free, while giving you the "single sense" costs for things like Enhanced PER, Range, and Telescopic. On the No side, no other standard sense has this notion. If you hear or see something, that doesn't give them a trigger to potentially know they've been sensed.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:42:43 +0000Honestly, a well-narrated audio book keeps the hubby sane on long drives, so let's not throw them all out in the bathwater here.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:36:39 +0000See, that's why audio books are such a bad idea.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 22:04:28 +0000Mon, 06 Apr 2026 21:53:36 +0000I admit I look back on the mid-1980s (the end of grad school) and BSD 4.3 UNIX fondly. The bar for "user-friendly" was a lot lower then. Now, the last time I had a Unix system to play with was a SPARC back in 2005. I have tried building a couple of Linux machines since then and met abject failure (and been cursed as a n00b in a couple of fora from which I tried getting help), which I attribute to Linux people being exclusively interested in masturbating with their OS and despise anyone who wants to perform anything useful with it. If I can get what I want, I am happy with a text command line rather than a GUI. GUI constructors often have remarkably deficient limited views on what a user might actually want.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 20:32:19 +0000Technology rises and yet literacy rates (in The States, if nowhere else) decline. What is the line? "Smart phones for dumb people."?Mon, 06 Apr 2026 19:56:15 +0000.................and that's what the AI would do and say to mislead us..........................Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:53:39 +0000Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:40:24 +0000Half the time when I get punctuation right it is blind luck; I swear I'm human.Mon, 06 Apr 2026 18:28:39 +0000Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:18:01 +0000You too?Mon, 06 Apr 2026 17:16:23 +0000One of my friends advises, "Never iron when you're naked." Based on life experience. Dean ShomshakMon, 06 Apr 2026 16:31:47 +0000