Did you sign up to be a part of gaming history?

[Hussar]

No. You can't copyright game rules. But you can sign a contract which says you won't copy them.

I'm thinking that that would be HUGELY unenforceable though. What are the odds that an entire group of players would download the rules, instead of just a couple? Would the agreement include a clause not to play with anyone who hasn't signed the agreement? I really don't think so.

This is an open playtest. It would be very odd to have anything like that in something like this.

 

[hbarsquared]

I'm guessing there won't be any kind of NDA or electronic signature or even a sign up required.

I am guessing it will be an open download, with a clause that says something to the effect of "This is an open beta playtest, and none of these rules may or may not ever see the light of day."

 

[delericho]

I signed up. I received a confirmation email. I don't expect anything more until next week, when I would expect some sort of notification.

...accept an NDA...

Oh. So much for that then. For me, the most interesting bit of the new-edition cycle is talking through all the possibilities for the new rules. If there's an NDA, I can't talk about it, so there goes my interest.

Hold on, I might have to accept an NDA for my entire group?

I don't think you can (though IANAL). If there is an NDA, it will be a legal matter with some pretty serious clauses. I don't think you can agree to it on behalf of others - they'll each need to agree to it themselves.

 

[Chris_Nightwing]

Rather than an NDA (which is the wrong term for something that anyone can sign I think) it will be more like an EULA, no?

You promise not to distribute the files online, you promise not to publish your own derivative rules, they can withdraw the files whenever they like so that you can't download them agian and so on..

I hope they won't object to us discussing them here (though I might understand if they restricted public discussion to a given section of their website).

 

[IronWolf]

Rather than an NDA (which is the wrong term for something that anyone can sign I think) it will be more like an EULA, no?

Yeah, I can't see an open play test being released under an NDA. I mean what's the point?

As far as copying the game or releasing a derivative I suspect it will simply be more akin to a EULA with the standard disclaimer included as in any game book I buy at the bookstore today.

 

[Morrus]

I'm thinking that that would be HUGELY unenforceable though. What are the odds that an entire group of players would download the rules, instead of just a couple? Would the agreement include a clause not to play with anyone who hasn't signed the agreement? I really don't think so.

This is an open playtest. It would be very odd to have anything like that in something like this.

I think you're misunderstanding me.

It's very enforceable. With a release date of, say, August 2013, it prevents someone from Paizo (to pick a large company at random - not that I think they'd do something like that) releasing the game in June 2013 under a different name after having used the pplaytest materials as design documents.

There are people in the world who would do that kind of thing. It would be crazy not to have an NDA which makes it a really bad idea for them.

 

[Morrus]

Rather than an NDA (which is the wrong term for something that anyone can sign I think) it will be more like an EULA, no?

You promise not to distribute the files online, you promise not to publish your own derivative rules, they can withdraw the files whenever they like so that you can't download them agian and so on..

That's probably a better term.

Not that I know anything; I'm just guessing here at the most likely scenario.

I hope they won't object to us discussing them here (though I might understand if they restricted public discussion to a given section of their website).

They won't. That'd be just silly. And unworkable.

 

[Hussar]

Ahh, yeah, I can see an EULA. That's completely understandable.

 

[eamon]

I think you're misunderstanding me.

It's very enforceable. With a release date of, say, August 2013, it prevents someone from Paizo (to pick a large company at random - not that I think they'd do something like that) releasing the game in June 2013 under a different name after having used the playtest materials as design documents.

There are people in the world who would do that kind of thing. It would be crazy not to have an NDA which makes it a really bad idea for them.

It's enforceable only with respect to the identifiable individuals in a friendly jurisdiction that directly agreed to those terms. If you ask your friends to describe the rules to you, they might be breaking the contract (but good luck finding out who, and even if you do, good luck actually getting damages in such a scenario), but the person using the information won't be.

Ergo: it's effectively unenforceable. If you want to circumvent it, you likely can; it'll only protect casual use (and casual users won't be making a clone product anyhow).

Not to mention that it's very unlikely that you'd even want to make an exact copy; the exact details likely don't matter anyhow. And then it would be very hard to distinguish the scenarios in which a user broke the NDA and gave a copy to the competitor vs. the competitor merely reading things like enworld avidly and just using the feedback to tune their own, independent product.

So, they'll have an EULA perhaps, but the sole effect will be minor annoyance to some fans (the "I wonder whether can I legally post this house rule on my blog" kind of annoyance).

 

[I'm A Banana]

Of course, even an EULA would be hard to enforce.

Just given the freely available public information, you can have stuff like this.

They might try, but if someone really was determined to use these playtest documents to publish their own 5e clone, they could probably jiu-jitsu their way into a legally defensible position. Not that it's worth the hassle.

At any rate, yeah, don't expect anything 'till next week.