The reason why I sent that email to Rick (he got that firsthand from me--I took his class at BYU) was because we've changed our submission guidelines so that we're no longer doing just shared-world anymore, so that's why you had that in your head about us. Previously, we were only doing shared-world within Dragonlance: The New Adventures, etc. but now we're able to look at stand-alones.
The legal document, like I just posted to the listserv, is mainly an acknowledgement that you know that submitting your idea doesn't mean we don't have other projects in the works that might have similar ideas--i.e. you acknowledge we won't steal your ideas. Mainly this is just a formality required by our legal department.
Our contracts do approach industry standards, and things are getting better all the time as far as our competitiveness goes--though of course we're still very new and to be honest, can't compete with the kind of numbers EUOL has garnered from larger, more established imprints, of course. But we are competitive for new authors, I think, and I think you'll find it worth your while to submit.