I wonder if this will make it easier to get the books, or maby discounts since it will all be owned by the same group. Im excited yet terrified about this merger lol only time will tell if its a good thing or not.

I'm less concerned about characters and more of homebrew content. Is WotC going to own and then potentially publish homebrew on the site? Some of it is really good and they shouldn't get the credit for it.

Nothing quite like a hostile corporate takeover to sour fun creative spirits. Can't really blame WOTC for this since they've had more an enough going wrong since they were taken over by Hasbro, so I'll just be blaming the greedy, exploitative crooks at Hasbro for this latest wave of self-destructive behavior and victim-blaming the D&D fanbase for not being on board with the changes they use to exploit them. Just use this site for base info references and build your character sheets on  Roll20: Online virtual tabletop for pen and paper RPGs and board games. Far less of a hassle, no company trying to claim full ownership of your homebrew or character ideas (I have heard the argument that since they own the system in which you built your character they get to own the characters by default, but that is total horse $#!% from one of their beurocratic boot lickers). The interface is less than intuitive to be sure but it gets the job done and Id rather deal with that than anything they're promising to do here. As for Hasbro themselves, they can feel free to feast upon the contents of the final 6 feet of my intestines, and may they not only choke while doing sp but spend an eternity haunted by the stench that remains.

NDAs are a mother and I am still bound by mine.

Quote from vinternet >>

Clauses like this are A) Almost always written in this overly-broad, scary way, and B) Almost always intended to allow the company to just do the normal things you expect them to do on the web site- i.e. "reproduce" and "publish" your work by making it visible to other users on the site when you ask for it to be.

Intended uses and how things actually get used are always tricky. You never just give blatant trust - that's dumb and is how people get screwed over. This is the entire reason "legalese" exists in the first place - to clearly define exactly what can and cannot be done so as to avoid abuse. Sure, this does allow those simple things - it also happens to allow them to just take things from people that they would otherwise have to pay for. It's a valid concern.

Point being, people literally get paid to make characters, monsters, etc. They don't do it for free. This would allow Wizards to take those custom creations and simply claim them as their own and not have to pay people to create them. Is that what they will do? Who knows... but it makes it where they can do that. For example, they could choose to clarify and state that their right to reproduce, etc the content is limited to X (X being the website itself, the ability of them to post it so others can see it and use it in their campaigns, etc... and clarify that they don't own the content nor could they take it to use in an official book at any future point) but they explicitly choose not to limit their use that way. Why? Because while they may not currently intend to do so, they aren't going to hamstring themselves from the ability to do so in the future if they change their minds.

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Quote from Vesperwood >>

This crap is exactly what I was afraid of when Beyond was being purchased. WotC effectively owns my characters and homebrew. What a waste of all my money. Expect to lose a ton of customers if that ToS does not change.

To all those being alarmist about the new Terms & Conditions and how (a) you don't own your characters and (b) about giving Wizards a license to your homebrew.... you NEVER owned your characters, even under Fandom--you have a license to the character through the content you have purchased.  And you ALWAYS had granted Fandom a license to either use your homebrew or allow any third-party they wished, including their allowing Wizards to use the fan-created content if they so wished.

So, with respect, you have a bit of egg on your face--"this crap" that you are complaining about is something you have been A-okay with for however long you have been using Beyond.  As for it causing a "ton of customers" to leave?  It never really stopped those customers before.

Uh, no. This is literally not true. Everyone has ALWAYS owned their own characters - you can make up your own character and you own it. Period. Wizards or anyone else doesn't magically get license to your character that you made up just because they own the world you played the character in. That's nonsense. Always has been.

What Wizards owns, would be anything you give them. Nothing more. Posting a character online doesn't make it Wizard's. Posting it on Wizard's website does - because that is the terms of their website. They have to post those terms because unless they do, those terms cannot be used against the people on the site. That's why they post the terms in the first place. They don't post TOS just out of the goodness of their non-existent hearts. They post them because they must, legally. No posted terms stating that what you post is owned, then they don't own shit.

Thus, without the terms, they own nothing. You retain ownership of what you make. Period. As someone above tried to explain:

Quote from Torgranael >>

Any parts of your content that is based on existing copyrighted material can technically be considered theirs if they bother to come knocking. Any parts of it that aren't, are solely yours (though you may potentially need to contend with third parties if using their content. If you write up a brand new world that's fine, it's yours. If you create a stat-block for your own creatures, you keep the rights to the creature, but WoTC has rights to use that stat-block for their own purposes. 

So yes, you own your characters. The character is your idea, and not based on their content. The stats, spells, etc? Those are. So they can claim ownership of say, the particular race/stat/level build, but you own the named creature. Their actions, personality, etc? That is all yours. So, the particular character sheet info? Theirs. The character? Yours.

People aren't just "being alarmist" and attempting to shut people down with such language to paint them as ignorant or stupid and worrying over nothing is pathetic. If this was as simple as "you used their idea, they own it" then no one would be able to make third party content in the first place. Wizards would own it all. So either A) You're lacking understanding about how this actually works or B) You're do understand it, but you're lacking understanding at how to actually explain it properly, because what you said is flat out wrong.

What I think you were trying to say is that while you do, in fact, own your characters... you didn't own every aspect of them, and the parts you are giving to Wizards by using the site are the same parts you had already given Fandom so this is "nothing new".

Quote from Kazamura >>

You mean sift, not shift. 

Also it kind of doesn't matter if you're okay with it or not, you agreed to their terms the moment you made your account to use their homebrew creator to make your stuff and again when you uploaded. That was the deal Fandom set in place in order for their tools to be used by us. Now it's WoTC in charge. 

To use your analogy for a second, you're beholden to the law no matter who is president at the time so long as the law doesn't change. Not liking who's in charge all of the sudden is not justification for breaking the law willingly (not by itself anyway).

The best way to keep the rights to your material as you see fit would be to not use DnD beyond to publish it, or Wizard's books/tools to create it. That's the price one pays for convenience, you gotta play by other's rules when you use their tools.

You were fine initially, but this part is simply ridiculous.

Yes, not liking who the president is, is in fact, a valid reason to have an issue with certain permissions. I might trust Fandom to not abuse things, but that doesn't mean I similarly trust WoTC to not abuse those things. People are perfectly valid if they are willing to make a broad agreement with one person, but not that same agreement with another person. I might tell my mother my bank info because I trust her not to steal from me, that doesn't mean I have to give that same info to anyone else I do business with. You sound insane.

Look at real life. Do you trust the current US President? Did you trust the last one? Do you have equal trust for them both just because they held the same powers? Should we equally trust anyone who happens to hold that office, just because the office is the same? I doubt you think that, no matter which side you were on.

This person clearly had reasons they trusted Fandom with broad permissions, that in no way obligates them to give that same trust to anyone else.

Furthermore, your analogy is shit - he isn't "breaking the law". He's choosing to not enter into a binding agreement with someone because he doesn't trust them. He is fully capable of entering an agreement with someone he trusts and refusing that very same agreement with someone he doesn't. You're just shilling for WoTC for some stupid reason.

Quote from Welverein >>

Quote from Artemis_Nightingale >>

Quote from ZestandXaxe >>

Quote from MDN74 >>

So, under the new ToS am I understanding that WoTC will own my characters and content also? If so I see a deactivation coming soon. 

 Is this what you are referring to?
"5.2. License to Wizards. By posting or submitting any User Content to or through the Websites, Games, or Services, you hereby irrevocably grant to Wizards a worldwide, perpetual, irrevocable, royalty-free, non-exclusive, and fully sublicensable license to use, reproduce, modify, adapt, publish, translate, create derivative works from, distribute, perform and display such User Content (in whole or in part) in any media and to incorporate the User Content into other works in any format or medium now known or later developed. The foregoing grants shall include the right to: (i) exploit any proprietary rights in such User Content, including but not limited to, rights under copyright, trademark or patent laws under any relevant jurisdiction; (ii) your name, likeness, and any other information included in your User Content, without any obligation to you. You waive any and all claims that any use by us or our licensees of your User Content violates any of your rights, including moral rights, privacy rights, rights to publicity, proprietary, attribution, or other rights, and rights to any material or ideas contained in your User Content."

Seems a valid concern. Would be good to get clarification. 

 My gosh, they make it sound like they're gonna own our Souls. I would like clarification too, since I'm a writer and the characters I use in games become beloved enough to be converted to stories. For understandable reasons, I'd prefer to NOT have a copyright issue with my own characters 

 Any character you created in Dndbeyond.com was already under the same conditions. You use copyrighted material as soon as you use something which not 100% homebrew, hence you already do not own the full right on it.

Yes. We know this. However, Fandom is far less likely to do anything if we were to say, decide to write a book using our own characters that we created for a campaign here, than WoTC is. Should people have already worried about these terms not being specifically limited to doing the bare minimum for making the site work as intended? Yes. Are they wrong for worrying more about WoTC than Fandom? No.

People can have different levels of trust for different people and organizations. Saying we should all trust WoTC with the terms just because we trusted Fandom with them, is a nonsense argument.

Some of us are authors. Some of us were considering making our campaigns into actual books a la Dragonlance. Now if we want to do so we'll have to not use this service because WoTC is sue happy where Fandom isn't as sue happy.

People have valid concerns. You may not have those concerns. That's fine. But that doesn't undermine other people having them.

Will this mean in the future there will be bundles were Purchases of Hard Cover copies will include a digital access code?

There are ways for this to happen, Mostly with getting the books wrapped or sealed in a box. Also I can see this being the case with online transactions were there has been a purchase Authenticated. There is a Difference between the Physical and the Digital in essence of Application, mostly with using the Character creator with DnD Beyond. You can't access the rules and Many Many Many Races and Subclasses etc. without access to the digital. I like having a Hard copy as a DM so that I may read the rules in a setting that is comfortable and not damaging my Retinas but I would like a Digital Copies so that my players can have access of it as well. I do not believe this will screw anyone over with these methods. They still due this with DVDs with a VUDU code sealed in the box, walmart being a prime example. I'd gladly pay 1.25x the physical book price to get access to both. 

Will the setup of this website change? I just learned how to use this 

eyo 

Worried about my home brew 

I am wondering this same question. I don't have a WotC account as well.

It would be really nice if we could access books on dndbeyond which we purchased in paper form. (It's a bit weird that you have to pay for it twice)

Start saving stuff to your computer now, just in case.

Question:

Will Wizards of the Coast uphold/honor the Legendary Bundle discount for members that at one point purchased the entire available library?

I made that purchase a few years ago when I started out on DnD Beyond, and the then-permanent discount has empowered me to continuously keep the account updated with most of the newest material for myself and the party members that join our campaigns. I'd hate to lose it! I checked around the FAQ and other threads, but couldn't find a definite answer to this. Thanks!

As Wizards of the Coast are joining, does that mean we will be able to put physical books we have into our accounts?