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I know the world doesn't work this way, but it would be nice if I won something on my birthday. Too bad I'm outisde the US and don't qualify for any print products. :(

The issue I have with short PDFs is reviewing them. For example, Crothian sent me a 16-page PDF to review that contains a single prestige class. In a larger product I could find both positive and megative points worth mentioning; in a very small product I'm either going to love or hate it...

Under Linux, there is a PDF printer driver. You pick PDF as your printer and away you go. Choose your poison in this case (TeX and variants a quite popular among the academic press with very sophisticated typography available). OpenOffice.org has a "Export as PDF" button. Works at least as well...

OK, I'm sure many of you have seen the latest eruption of the piracy/IP permathread. One of the things I've noted the last few times is the lack of hard data for various positions, at least with regard to the RPG industry. I want to change that - better data should at least make for better...

Well, I do have delusions that I'll actually publish someday. However, as a GM I can't legally reproduce closed content on my campaign wiki - a far more pressing matter. Even if I only included rules by reference, any house rules would likely be considered derived content in some jurisdictions...

What content is designated as OGC in the book? I've found Malhavoc books tend be a lot more closed than, say, Green Ronin (99.44%+ open content, frequently), and don't want to buy any more books where it's "look but don't touch". The magic system? (the AU system and Mindscapes system were...

Not according to the laws of most of the countries I am familiar with (assuming you mean copyright infringement). And, as I've pointed out, copyright infringement is not a criminal offense in certain jurisdictions. There are in fact grey areas, both within the law and ethically. If the only...

Never attribute to malice what can be explained by incompentence. I'm sure someone simply mistyped an URL (or, more likely, cut and paste a secure URL when they meant an insecure URL). If you're using Firefox with the AdBlock extension, you can turn that off for good (or at least until they...

Hmmm....let's make some distinctions to be perfectly clear. IANAL. Under current New Zealand law, there are four types of intellectual property. 1) Trade secrets. Basically, the way this works is you keep everything to yourself, and don't share the secret information with anybody ever. You can...

Sorry, my post was meant to be informative, not overtly political. Apologies if I offended anyone.

Historically China has had very lax IP laws by Western standards. Sharing is pretty integral to Chinese culture; the new laws are rarely enforced and I'm not aware of the sentence actually being carried out. But, yes, as a precondition of WTO membership the US insisted most firmly that...

Oriental Adventures 3E has a lot of classes and prestige classes inspired by Chinese and Japanese mythology. I'm pretty sure the Eunuch Warlock has the harshest prequisite I've ever seen. :) Rokugan and Magic of Rokugan draws more heavily on Japanese mythos but would help immensely in...

IANAL, just a student of it. Obviously it depends on your jurisdiction. In China, copyright infringement is a capital crime prosecuted by the state. The rather onerous punishment was required by the US during WTO negotiations. Unless the publication is banned or involves cultural legends. In...

DRM is inherently insecure; you're giving the attacker the key, the cipher, and the ciphertext. The limitations you impose actually motivate attackers to break the protection (as often as not for fair use; ask any non-Windows user about protected formats). Watermarking is much better - since it...

I'll try my hand at an OGL or d20 review; no restrictions on length or size if you send it to jbowtie AT amathaine DOT com

Age, disease, death, and pain. Or more traditionally: An old crippled man (old age) A diseased man (illness) A decaying corpse (death) An ascetic (A person who seeks the end to suffering)

I ran a campaign some time ago; have plans for a new one once my current campaign ends. It plays really well, especially if the GM is familiar with the show. Since there's a big political component to the game, I find that Dynasties and Demagogues is an absolute must when running my games. If...

In Media Res is a stellar one-shot from Malhavoc Press. The way it's done, it really can only be run once for a given group.

Another point worth making is that you can throw out all pretense of balance out the window. Miracle saves, divine intervention, and uber-powers work just find when you don't have to worry about stealing the limelight from others. In addition, only having to worry about the viewpoint/saves of a...

Also note that in the USA, there is no penalty for falsely claiming copyright over public domain material; that is why, for example, royalties were still being collected in 2005 on "The Land is Your Land" even though the copyright expired more than 30 years ago. That's also why AOL Time Warner...