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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Asmor" data-source="post: 5190270" data-attributes="member: 1154">It's not really so much that one particular thing Masterplan was doing was necessarily illegal, but rather (I suspect WotC would argue...) Masterplan itself, like many fan-made tools--including the ones I've made--fundamentally violate WotC's copyright*.As such, the existence of such fan tools is at the discretion of WotC, and you need to be careful not to do anything that would make them want to exercise their copyright against you.For the most part, WotC's fairly reasonable. They're not TSR, and definitely not Games Workshop. They at least tacitly allow if not explicitly encourage fan-made tools which serve to enhance the game for their customers. As long as you're not selling the stuff for a profit or doing something which would raise red flags with WotC (and downloading the compendium wholesale was obviously risky in that regard), you should be fine.*It's worth noting that game mechanics are not copyrightable, and it's questionable whether Masterplan actually does violate WotC's copyrights. It's also rather moot; when a corporation with WotC's funding sends you a C&D, if there's a snowball's chance in hell that they might be in the right, you cease and desist. The law is all well and good, but who's got the resources to fight the battle to prove you're right?</blockquote>