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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Harry" data-source="post: 1115124" data-attributes="member: 5468">I agree that in a legal sense this position undermines any attempt at plausible deniability (and adds some level of risk to WotC), but that legal plausible denaibility would have been largely unimportant in the court of public relations in any event.Consider the release of a product that with a treatment of a sensitive subject matter in such a way as to offend many people, and raise the topic to a wider audience than just gamers.  Under the last STL, WotC could only say "Sorry. The mark only denotes compatibility."  True, but not helpful from a PR sense.  After the STL, WotC can now say, "Why yes, that is offensive.  Here, see how responsible we are being by taking action ourselves." and forcing the product to ditch the d20.The new STL does not (I think) indicate that WotC will be "going after" other companies in the general or the specific, but that if another game company publishes a product that draws a reaction, you're on your own...It is understandable why the first assumptions linked this directly with the BoEF, and it turns out that it is true - just in the opposite sense.  It was not WotC trying to switch their policy to slap down Valar, it is Valar slapping at WotC by racing to finish a product (as d20) that uses the letter of the STL to flog the general working understanding of the STL, and intentionally racing to finish a product that AV has *known* would violate the new STL.Yeah, I've been playing D&D since the early 80's, I was here for all of that mess, and it helped a lot when defending the game that the incindiary charges against it were untrue.</blockquote>

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