Dragon Magazine Material

[atemu1234]

What is the official policy on Dragon Magazine material? Is it first party, third party, anything else?

[Rebel7284]

It's officially licensed material.

[BornValyrian]

I generally consider it "First Party, but..."

It is first party material, but it should be reviewed on a case by case basis. Much of that material is overpowered, underpowered, or just broken. Some things, like most of the things in Dragon Compendium, and others that you will find as you peruse things will be balanced to some degree.

One of my favorite classes, sha'ir, is in Dragon Compendium.

[torrasque666]

I believe that it is technically first party, as Dragon magazine is published by WoTC, as well as being one of the official magazines(Dungeon is the other, creative right?)

I however try to discourage it from being used in my games due to not everyone having access to it either in hard-copy or ebook, as well as being slightly difficult to find online. Also, stuff from there tends to seem.... over powered. Like the Unseelie Fey template. I saw it and was like "Really? Fly speed, DR, enhanced vision, and NO LA adjustment? Not even a +0? Doesn't that mean that it has LA - and therefore not fit for players?" And yet I tend to see it a lot for evil characters.

[Pluto!]

I believe that it is technically first party, as Dragon magazine is published by WoTC, as well as being one of the official magazines(Dungeon is the other, creative right?)
Not during its 3.5 run. It was published by Paizo until around the time 4e rolled, so it's definitely third party. Not that that it changes the merit of its contents in the slightest.

[137beth]

Due to the fact that Paizo published it but WotC has the rights to it (and had the rights to it immediately after its publication), I consider it 2nd party. I think it would technically be 3rd party, though.


I don't have an easy way to get access to it, so if one of my players wanted to use something from it, they would have to either bring in a hardcopy ahead of time or show me a portion of the relevant PDF (Paizo is still selling the PDFs on their website).
Due to the large amount of material everyone in my group has access to, and the fact that there is a considerable amount of 3rd party and homebrew content which is, in the opinion of most of my group, generally higher quality than Dragon stuff, and the fact that a lack of reviews makes it hard to gauge whether a particular issue of Dragon has good stuff in it without buying it first, Dragon material rarely sees play at my table.

[Pluto!]

Due to the fact that Paizo published it but WotC has the rights to it (and had the rights to it immediately after its publication), I consider it 2nd party. I think it would technically be 3rd party, though.

People keep writing this exact phrase, and it just doesn't make sense.

2nd party is a term that means something, namely that the content is produced by the consumer. It's stuff like self-designed campaign settings and adventures or homebrewed classes.

Publication ownership isn't generally something that users "consider" a publisher to have or which is granted by a matter of users' opinions; it's a much more direct question of IP ownership. In the case of d20 D&D, it boils entirely down to whether the publisher is named WotC. In this case, it's a very clear No, making Dragon 3rd party.

But the underlying question behind most of these "Is X 3rd party?" questions seems to usually be "Should I allow X?" That's an almost entirely unrelated question, as WotC's track record is no less spotted when it comes to producing balanced and interesting content than many 3rd party publishers.

In Dragon's case, production values are decent, materials are often more interesting than 1st party splatbooks, and balance rarely gets too crazy outside probable editing oversights like Unseelie Fey.

[SpawnOfMorbo]

It is official material that WotC hired a subcontractor to make.

There is even little stickers on the magazines that say the content is good to go for D&D games.

3.5 is already borked and allowing dragon mag won't actually break the game more than it already is. There is some interesting stuff in there, I love me some troll blooded. There are a few options for fighter that makes things work, sadly they didn't translate that work over to Pathfinder...

And people thought Pathfinder was going to be balanced when it came out (one of the initial selling points before they just gave that idea up)... My response was "Ooo awesome... Wait ain't that the dragon mag company?".


Edit.

Funny enough, the 3.5 OGL supports 3rd party material and is crafted so 3rd party material can be made to support the game. However, for whatever reason, D&D players tend to shy away from 3rd party like a damn vampire trying to get out of the sun. I think one of the reason 4e shifted from an OGL and WotC thought it would be ok is because many many people have a aversion to 3rd party material, hell even to Dragon Mag. This obviously backfired but that is because us gamers are weird apparently.

Note: I love 3rd party stuff unless I'm doing a one shot.

[Vaz]

It is as legal as your DM wants to make it.

I vet over content from the core game (as much as I love TO and abusive wizarding, good luck actually getting that character approved in one of my games), so vetting content from other books should be checked over as standard anyway. More stuff is always fun to see. This game has 10 year old content in it. Why not spice it up with something else. Just make sure you have the source material available for your DM to check it over in the essence of fairness.

[Carden-Gix'oth]

{Scrubbed}

[Darrin]

Dragon Magazine is third party material that says its officially first party content on the cover.

Make of that what you will.

[unseenmage]

Dragon Magazine is third party material that says its officially first party content on the cover.

Make of that what you will.

Specific trumps general?

[Malphegor]

It’s handy to have if a character needs it to exist as the player envisages them, or if a monster in it fits... It’s just kind of a pita to actually find stuff compared to nice organised books.

It’s got broken stuff here and there (southern magician lets you theurge without losing much) (it’s possible to be Highlander-Immortal with one feat), but you know what? This is 3.5, the whole thing is full of ‘ooh if I add that to this I become all powerful’, so honestly sprinkling Dragon bits doesn’t destroy games that much.

C’est la vie...

Except my current DM (who is lovely) has said to me basically: ‘only core and direct wotc material, I know what you’re like Malphegor, you’ll end up finding some obscure Prc involving juggling or something and somehow outclass a optimised wizard’, so I don’t get to play with Dragon much.

[DarkSoul]

{Scrub the post, scrub the quote}The post you're referring to was written three and a half years ago, when 3e issues of Dragon were a bit harder to find online. Also, quit posting links to copyrighted material if you plan on sticking around more than a month.