That animal companion thing sounds like the daemons in His Dark Materials, which is cool.
Lots of neat unusual concepts there too, I like. Though using familiar names like orc and goblin just makes things confusing. They should have come up with different names for their weird races.
Most companies are doing this, sticking arbitration agreements in their user agreements. Most of the time it benefits them hugely since arbitration is typically much more favorable to them than court (which is already incredibly favorable to them).
Once in a while it bites them; I recall reading some company where thousands of users started going to arbitration, and that costs them cause they pay the arbitration fees. In that case they tried to weasel out of the arbitration agreement, but last I heard a judge made them stick to it, forcing them to pay arbitration fees for every user that was asking for it.
That is one perspective that works for some people but I strongly disagree.
Dice rolls exist to resolve conflicts between the player and DM stories, yes…but they also exist to create new and interesting situations which neither player nor DM would have chosen.
Yes, the dice can create unsatisfying moments and even end characters or entire parties in a way that doesn’t feel great. But for each time they have done so in my experience, they have created far more awesome moments, simply by following the rules. And without allowing the unsatisfying ones, the good ones don’t really happen either, and don’t feel as satisfying.
This developed because it couldn’t be fixed in our world, long enough for these people to develop communities, culture, and literally their own language.
In a world where it could always have been fixed, such communities and cultures are not likely to have ever developed, since the only people who could not get it fixed would be poor, and the poor are in a bad position to gather together in groups based on their shared experience and thus be able to form their own culture.
Furthermore, people not wanting to be cured today exist in a world where there already are significant accomodations for their disabilities. It is not likely these people would be able to do this if our society had not made the collective decision to put in the effort needed to accommodate disabilities.