Lee

Star Wars (1977). The Force Awakens doesn't count. 

What I would do with a hypothetical Seventh Edition is avoid it like the plague.
 
By this point the rules have been combed through, deconstructed, revised, game-balanced, clarified, optionized, and hair-split to within an inch of their lives. There are no more pressing problems in the system that need to be addressed. Any further modifications would simply reflect the personal opinions and preferences of whoever was given responsibility for creating a new edition; and we all already modify the RAW to suit our preferences anyway. For alternative ways of doing things, we have earlier editions to draw from.
 
I see no need and feel no desire to invest time and money learning yet another iteration of Hero.

Kilroy was here. (Or Chad, for you Brits.)

So you're saying the writers could have vastly benefited from a more vast vocabulary?

Propaganda 101: If you tell people a flat-out lie which matches how they already think, they're probably going to believe you and not accept contrary evidence.

Oh, and of course, there's the opposite problem:
 
The guys are really off their game tonight.  This group of baddies I put together is going to absolutely _kill_ them!  Hmm...   better take the baddies down a notch or two....  So the next combat round comes around, and "he doubles over your fist, wrapping around it like a meat glove and he chokes sputum in a trail behind you.  As your blow completes its arc, he spins half a circle on one heel and crumples over, whacking his head on the stone floor below.  He's not moving, there a small bit of blood matting the back of his hair, but it doesn't look serious, and though his breathing is shallow, it's regular unlabored....     All right, Zandar!  His overconfidence was his undoing, and he wasn't keeping his mental defenses up as he should have been!  Looks like your Mind Control got him at Level Three; anything he might consider doing anyway.  You guys _may_ have just turned the tide on this battle....."
 
 
It goes both ways, but it's still that thing you hate.

Let's assume the GM is here to tell a story _with_ you.  
 
Though mini-monologue here (not exactly a rant, because I've had a really bad day, culminating in a house fire (small one), so I just don't have the energy.
 
Moving on:
 
Everyone has a story of some nightmare GM who took the idea of a game as him versus the players.  Well I can't help it you had an idiot GM.  At some point, I think we all did.  Personally, I have never even understood the temptation: the GM has all the monsters, all the universe, all the powers, all the character points-- pretty much _everything_ on his side.  It's stupid to even let the adventure go any further than "as soon as you are all on the same continent, you can see the asteroid plummeting toward, just enough under light speed that it's visible, and you know the game is over, and I win."
 
 
So let's look at why the GM you trust _might_ do this:
 
1) the players are rolling great, and having a really good time with this particular combat.  Two opponents manage to have two STUN more than they should have and go another round.  Hurray!  We had fun, and realistically, we didn't even notice, but I really liked the way we worked together on that last maneuver!
 
2) The players are stymied, this last round of asses they are kicking are closer to the big bad than they seem to realize.  Since this entire adventure the players have decided "let's beat them unconscious, arrest them, and keep hunting for clues" will actually deprive them of the very clues they are looking for, why doesn't this one guy manage to stay awake long enough to make a comment or two that will put them on the right track?
 
3) There is something brewing behind the scenes on a timer, something they should have figured out two sessions ago, but they're being unusually thick since they decided to follow this track.  By now, the Doomsday Plan is scheduled to go start countdown, and they haven't even figured out it _exists_, let alone the whos and whats are behind it.  One of these guys needs to run away so he can be followed somewhere that will get them on the right path.  I can assume that this premature butt whoopin' has perhaps upset the plans, and the Doomsday Plot needs to pause countdown until some X I now have to fit into the plot so the whole city doesn't go blooey while these guys pat themselves on the back for reverting to stress-relieving thugs the last five sessions.  So he needs a couple of points of Stun left, and he needs to run away and be followed.
 
4)   I've opted not to continue the list, because there are just as many ways that players screw themselves and _need_ some tiny bit of help in the form of a bad guy who didn't go down when you think he should have.  I have instead opted to give an example from the conclusion of my youth group game (it wrapped up last week-- went four sessions into school season, which I was really trying to avoid, but it happened.  Fortunately, no one minded.  In fact, they all seemed more upset that it wrapped up at all than they did about it cutting into their homework.   ).
 
At any rate:  
 
the final boss is going to make good on his threats of killing every living thing in the city since his plot has been foiled.  ignoring two month's worth of clues (or roughly ten gaming sessions) that his geo-destabilizer _is_ ready and _does_ work and _will_ tear a rift through the city (and beyond) that will release a small ocean of magma and a cloud of absolute death that will travel across a couple of states before dispersing, the players have decided to instead wade through wave after wave of villains and thugs and go stomp  a new mud hole into Big Bad's anus.
 
It was, I am afraid, terribly, _terribly_ important that as Big Bad retreated to a hasty retreat a villain who, by the dice, was at -1 BODY and -13 Stun (he was the least unconscious super in this showdown) rouse himself awake behind the heroes (as they were paying close attention to all the active villains) and fire a shot over the heroes and directly at the Big Bad, missing him (but "accidentally" destroying the control panel nearest to him).  When two of the heroes turned to beat on him some more, he dropped to his knees and cried "You guys are too tough.  I thought we'd take you.  Stop him.  I have two kids.  Don't let him kill my kids...."
 
Then-- and _only_ then-- did it even _OCCUR_ to the players that "Holy cats!  He really _can_ take out the entire city!"  and buckle down to figure out the threat  (for what it's worth, the Big Bad then shot Mr. Second Thoughts straight through with his lava blast (Big Bad was a geomancer who had figured out how to build a super-gizmo to amplify his powers, but only briefly, so--- dead city, right?)
 
 
So folks can bitch and fuss all they want: sometimes you have to cheat to give the players a great game because they won't always let you do it straight by the dice.
 
 
Good night, all.
 
 
Duke
 

A:  "involve" is really broad language - any criminal act committed using a gun would appear to link up with any organization which addresses firearms.  But wouldn't that also include an organization whose goals are to enhance gun control in the interests of reducing gun violence?  Unlike the NRA, they are directly addressing issues which "involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State" - a candlelight vigil for victims of a shooting could be said to "involve" that shooting.
 
B:  "The term “coercion” means— (A) threats of serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; (B) any scheme, plan, or pattern intended to cause a person to believe that failure to perform an act would result in serious harm to or physical restraint against any person; or (C) the abuse or threatened abuse of law or the legal process."
 
So, "support our desired legislation and oppose the legislation we dislike, or we will lobby our members to vote against you in the next election" - is that a threatened abuse of legal process?  Is activity designed to send the message that failure to vote against Candidate X (who favours gun control) will lead to greater physical restraint against those poor folks  after "the gummint" takes away their guns?  Does "any person" include an armed robber?  Similarly, is there coercion involved in advertising in the election to influence the manner in which the civilian population votes?
 
Again, the language seems very broad.
 
C is obvious for any organization whose activities are confined to, or at least focus on, the US.
 
Ignoring the application of this broad terminology to any specific organization, one would hope the Courts would interpret this language more narrowly than its most broad interpretation possible.

I used to respect Colin Cowherd, but a few years ago he went full shock jock and I can't take him seriously anymore.

The set of all prime numbers and the set of all integers are both countable infinities and are therefore both with cardinality of aleph-zero (the same "size"). You are correct that both sets are smaller than the set of all real numbers, which can be shown to be uncountable (and is represented as having cardinality aleph-one).
 
And now, I'm going to go take something for my headache.

Is on of these called Hoteh ?

I can't give credibility to the idea of requiring a detect because you might use a power to determine something about someone, at least not until every bit of STR and every HTH (normal) attack is mandatory bought with "Detect : Glass Jaw" and swords are required to take "detect: thickness of flesh" because it's quite possible to use these attacks to determine these things. 
 
I do not say that the arguments are not reasoned and well-thought; some folks have put some thought into their opinions, but at the end of the day, all powers will ultimately allow a character to "detect" who is or is not affected. 
 
"I zap him with my lightning bolt." 
 
He drops. 
 
I detected that he is  one of those people who can be hurt by lightning. "
 
 

I couldn't agree more.  This is excessive crunch and complexity being added to a system that already loses players to excessive crunch and complexity.
 
If I build a death ray that only works against Kryptonians I shouldn't have to build a detect Kryptonian device.  I just fire the stupid thing and see if it works or not.
 
It would be like having a lethal ultrasound device that liquifies brains: 1d6 RKA - NND - Does Body - Only against organics with brains  (NND is blocked by a full helmet or force field).
 
Do I now need Detect Organic creatures with brains?  Detect Helmets?  Detect forcefields?
 
Come on!

The power doesn't have to detect it, I don't think.  The power itself has something in it's nature that makes it only effective against a particular target or target group.  In the images v colorblind example mentioned above-- the images may include lots of random obscuring activity in the image itself that, owing to the color makeup, simple is not perceived by people who are colorblind, meaning that they see the image as normal without all the conflicting chatter.
 
Or, to use a real-world example:  camouflage is useless against colorblind people.  Seriously.  Way back before there was a legit Air Force-- when there was only an Army Air Corps, color-blind pilots were sought out simply because camo trickery did not work on them, making hidden military targets much easier to spot.
 
And if my cellular disruptor ray is completely negated by the Y chromosome, well all I have to do is pull the trigger: it's only going to work against females.
 
 
At the risk the freely-given down votes, I think a lot of this is brought out by the most "no-filled" edition of the game to date, and built upon with examples and even conversational exchanges that encourage the idea that if an additional expense _can_ be applied, then it _must_ be applied: mechanics over SFX.  Looked at another way, what is the point of taking a minor Limitation -- doesn't work against sweaty opponents-- if I then have to build a complex sensory detection system that's going to cost more than any potential savings?  

On the way to work last night, there was a woman standing in the middle of my lane on a busy street waving a blue plastic cooler around. I'd take her over Trump.

"Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle merite [Every country has the government it deserves]."
---Josephe de Maistre, Lettres et Opuscules Inedites (1851) vol.1, letter 53 (15 August 1811)

"Toute nation a le gouvernement qu'elle merite [Every country has the government it deserves]."
---Josephe de Maistre, Lettres et Opuscules Inedites (1851) vol.1, letter 53 (15 August 1811)

And an AP article a couple days ago says Evangelical leaders are entirely satisfied with Trump's performance and predict Evangelicals will vote for him in even higher percentages in 2020.
 
Comparing himself to God and Jesus? Pfft. What's a little blasphemy, so long as he appoints anti-abortion, anti-LGBT+ judges?
 
Dean Shomshak

I guess something rotten isn't going to Denmark.

I guess her guest spot on 30 Rock was a long time ago.
 
Sometimes I feel like Fry from Futurama.  He was watching the debate between the Candidates for President of the World and said "Wait a minute.  We live in the United States.  What do we care who the President of the World is."  "Fry, the United States is part of the World,"  Leela explains.  "Wow, I have been gone a long time,"  Fry responded.

I believe that everyone we truly touch in our lives, everyone we make a difference to, carries a part of us in them, affecting how they think and feel, and how they live. That in turn affects how they touch everyone in their own lives, and in turn how those people live. So our influence spreads outward, like ripples in a pond, becoming part of the whole of humanity, enduring for as long as humanity endures.
 
That's enough immortality for me.

I am sticking with "it depends".  The team can lose, with the game still being fun.  This is especially so in most Supers games, where "we lost the battle" tends not to mean "we lost the war" or "the characters are dead - make new ones".  If losing is never fun, then the Talisman games we used to play, 8-10 of us, back in the day, must have been 80% to 90% no fun, as there could only be one winner.  Yet everyone (even the guys who just never won a game) wanted to play again next time.
 
In RPG's, it can be pretty tough to define "losing", as the game goes on regardless.
 
 
First, I will note that this did not happen in a storytelling game.  It happened in a "zap, you're dead" variety of a typical Gaming-focused RPG.  "Oops, you did not make perfect tactical decisions so you are dead.  Make a new character and try to play smarter next time."  Worse is the "random chance RPG", a great example being those early-edition D&D artifacts where you roll randomly and either gain great power or have your character crippled or killed.
 
In a storytelling game, the term "fail forward" comes up a lot.  Yes, you failed (lost), but that should advance, not end, the story.  In a storytelling game, I would not expect a character to be vaporized out of the gate.
 
 
One could also assert that your approach was weaseling out of the effect of the Mind Control.  You were told to dance, and you were affected by the mechanic of Mental Paralysis, which prevents attacking.  Yet you argued your way into not actually being affected by the Mental Paralysis mechanic.  Hard-core tactical gamers would scream bloody murder if such an interpretation were used against them when, really, by the rules, they had earned their victory.
 
 
Again, I am coming back to "it depends".  My understanding (I play tactical, not storytelling games - I am too lazy to make up creative narratives after every die roll, so I often rely on the mechanics to adjudicate the degree of success and failure) is that storytelling games are broadly flexible.  So, in a storytelling game, I could certainly see a chain of events as follows:
 
Thumper:  Dragon Master attacks Toe Tapper with the intent of defeating him to turn him over to the authorities.
GM:  Ok - roll to Have a Fight
Thumper:  Ugh!  a complete failure.
GM:  OK, as your character closes in, Toe Tapper flashes out with his cane, and DragonMaster is consumed with an all-encompassing urge to dance, to the exclusion of all else.  Toe Tapper chuckles at your dance moves.
Thumper:  Wait, Dragon Master is a master of all martial arts - including Capoeira, a Brazillian martial art developed by slaves who had to hide their practice as dance moves.  He will try to "dance fight" and whup Toe Tapper's butt while shaking his own.
 
Hey, what a great storytelling moment.  Either DragonMaster should get an appropriate roll to pull that off, or it should just succeed automatically since it both flows with the direction in which the story is being told and is just plain cool.
 
Kind of like a Hero game where my character rolls a successful Investigation skill roll.  Does it mean the whole mystery is laid out and explained for us, or does it move us one step closer, advancing the story?
 
MOVING OFF-TOPIC - We've talked in the past about different game focuses, and how Hero could be modified to accommodate them.  Hero RAW focuses on combat as the main problem resolution mechanic.  As a result, it has a super-detailed, crunchy, granular set of combat rules.  But what if we wanted to play a game of court intrigue, where most problems will be resolved through social, not physical, combat?  Well, we really need a similarly granular set of rules for social interaction/conflict to  build the same level of drama and interest.  At the same time, we don't want 2 hour combats, so we could relegate physical combat to the Skills System (make opposed Dueling/Brawling skill rolls; make an Assassination skill roll at -6 due to the Duke's castle defenses).  Storytelling games, to me, really reduce all task resolution to simple, non-granular systems. 
 
Not nearly as much room for tactics, and very little granularity.  But also no grindy, endless combats - the story keeps moving.
 
Can we envision bad storytelling games/GMs/players?  Hell, yeah.  Can we honestly say we have never seen a bad Hero game/GM/player?  I certainly can't. 
 
Are there some people who just can't stand the storytelling approach and want those more detailed mechanics?  Absolutely.  Will some other people hate the lengthy, granular Hero combat system no matter how well it is used?  Sure.  Hell, we have  a thread going on right now where someone just suggested 4e was the perfect level of rules, and subsequent editions have too many rules, so the optimal level of "crunch", even within a game system which, at its core, has not changed a lot through the editions, is not the same for every gamer, by any stretch.
 
Seems like I am back to "diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks".

Only 'til the end of the night.

Another issue you could add to the list would be ricochets. The firearm may not be able to penetrate the hull or bulkheads of the vessel you're on, it might "rattle around a bit". It might not be as bad as Han Solo's blaster bolt when he was in the garbage masher on the Death Star, but it still might not be very fun.

Precisely my point. The drive fields alter things such that energy weapons, gunpowder weapons, or any other weapons you might like as a GM won't function aboard a ship. Thus, the need for swords and other such things shipboard.
 
Another idea would be to posit the idea of it's the artificial gravity field generators that cause the issue. In either case, there's an added complication when the fields get shut off (i.e. damage, someone hits "the big red switch", etc.). Suddenly, those weapons now work, but in an environment where their recoil (for the gunpowder weapons at least) makes the situation more interesting.
 
Lee