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Message: <blockquote data-quote="I'm A Banana" data-source="post: 5926155" data-attributes="member: 2067">My purpose here is twofold.First, people should know what they're signing up for, and what the expectation of them actually is, legally speaking. A lot of people just click-through these things, and don't know exactly what they're agreeing to. I think people deserve to know what the actual agreement says, in plain language. Similarly, I think people deserve to know what WotC expects of them, in plain language. Second, and perhaps a little more philosophically, I think that it is a little...skeevy...for anyone to ask you to sign an agreement that they fully expect you to violate and have no real intention of enforcing in any legitimate way. Someone who tells you that there is a law against eating apples, and then holds one out in front of you, nodding and smiling, telling you that apples sure are delicious and that everyone should try them at least once, and it's not like there's any cops watching, is not to be trusted, generally speaking. I know it sets off all sorts of morality bells for this bible-student. There is an easy way out of this, and that is for WotC not to make that rule to begin with. If they're going to do an open public playtest they should make it open and public. On a practical level, no, it probably doesn't matter, because WotC is not a big evil empire who will prosecute you for making a 6th character sheet and playing on Skype with your buddies, and, in fact, probably fully expects you to do just that. But on a higher level, it is then, I think, kind of...wrong...of them to ask us to agree not to do that, especially in a way that is at least a little legally intimidating. And it can be a little concerning going forward, knowing that the designers and the legal team aren't really on the same page about this. It throws some questions on how 5e might or might not do a GSL/d20/OGL style licence. Regardless of how much the designers might want to, a dogmatic -- or even just careless -- legal department could hamstring such an effort. My usual mantra is to not assume malice where there is evidence of foolishness, and I think this is certainly more about the latter. I don't think people should get angry about this, I think they should get loud about it (specifically to WotC), and certainly be aware of it and talk about it. This isn't sour grapes, for me. It's problem-solving. The problem being this weirdness in the agreement, the solution being to try and persuade WotC, as much as possible, to stop asking us not to eat the apple if they fully expect us to eat the apple.For a much more nuanced description of this problem, see Paradise Lost, and/or any discussion on the Problem of Evil in Monotheism. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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