Burrowowl

So I was knocking around some of the suggestions from the 4th edition Dungeon Master’s Guide regarding the distribution of treasure. When following the advice of the DMG, a DM basically ends up distributing one less magic item than there are player characters every level, each of increasing level-value (level +1 … L+4). For four characters, the book recommends dropping the level+2 item, yielding an item output of L+1, L+3, and L+4 by the time the party advances.

As an issue of basic fairness, you wouldn’t want the person who got the level +4 item (ostensibly the coolest material reward that level) to also get the most super-neato-von-awesome stuff during the following level. It seems to me that a round-robin approach makes a lot of sense. But which direction to spin the wheel? Does the character that got the L+4 item this time get the L+3 item next time? Then the L+1? This would allow whoever missed out to get the L+4 next time. It also means that starting at 1st level, some guy is going to end up with multiple same-level items repeatedly during his career. Odd.

Here’s how the downward-stepping round-robin breaks down:

And so forth. An upward-stepping round-robin goes like this:

In both cases, naturally, the same number of items show up, of the same power levels, at the same rate. When descending, an individual’s gear clusters up into tight little clusters of general potency. When ascending there’s a lot more scatter.

Descending, I observe that if you look at each character’s best gear (at the tail end of level 6), Player A gets at 10th and 6th level item, Player B gets two 7th level items, Player C gets two 8th level items, and player D gets two 9th level items. All else being equal, I’d expect Player B to feel a little put-out at that point.

Ascended, Player A gets and 8th and a 7th level item, Player B gets a 9th and a 7th level item, Player C gets a 10th and 8th level item, and Player D gets a 9th and a 7th. Player A is right behind the pack and player C is a little ahead. I suspect this is the approach that would be most likely to yield a defensible appearance of fairness at the game table.

There was a time when I used to post about Firefox in a kind, generous fashion. Then we had a falling out, but the alternatives just weren’t cutting it for me. I’d keep straying off to another browser for a while, lose interest, and end up back with the the most popular Google-funded communist web browser on the market. Google released Chrome. I’m not a big fan of Google as a company, but I gave it a spin. It was nice, but I don’t like the creepy multiple-year-duration cookies they dish out normally: I sure as heck wasn’t going to do my daily web browsing on something coded by those guys.

But it was pretty neato, so back in September when I found out about SRWare’s Iron browser, a stripped-down version of Chrome that doesn’t phone home, I went out and got it. Hadn’t written anything about it because I was waiting for that new-browser shine to wear off. It’s been a few months and a couple of updates, and I’m ready to render a verdict:

• Iron has Chrome’s tab behavior, which is excellent. You can tear a tab off to form a separate window, consolidate disparate windows into one unit, switch between tabs far more smoothly than in Firefox, Opera, or IE.
• Iron has Chrome’s light and responsive feel. By default it ties up a lot less screen real estate with control mechanisms.
• Iron has Chrome’s nice ctrl+f search function that actually highlights where on the scrollbar you’ll find additional instances of the phrase you’re looking for.
• Iron doesn’t rat you out to Mountain View every time you follow a link.

I recommend at least giving it a test drive. There is some IE-centric content on the ‘net that won’t render right, but that’s a problem I don’t find compelling enough to use IE as my go-to browser of choice. My only real complaint is that Iron doesn’t seem to be able to actually assert itself as the default browser in Windows Vista. This can be a little annoying when following links from other programs.

I never thought I’d see this, but as part of my job I field DMCA take-down requests. My employer is an Internet Service Provider, and from time to time our end-users may take it upon themselves to skirt around the release schedules and pricing schemes of various intellectual property industries. Traditionally the owners of those properties have been quite strident in their tone towards alleged pirates. This morning I noticed that J.K. Rowling’s folks have taken a more fan-friendly approach for an audio-book version of Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone:

Unauthorized file sharing is illegal.  However, we truly appreciate your
interest in Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (Audio).  We are making
every attempt to provide this wonderful content to you in a host of
legitimate ways, one of which is through the following
website:

http://www.apple.com/itunes

That’s a big change from the “You’re a criminal and we’ll see your ass in court” approach I’ve been seeing for years. A welcome change that I hope some of the other IP-enforcement types pick up on. Try to win back your customers. Barring that, stop twirling your mustaches and cackling evilly.

Full text of complaint follows
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