Where do the Ravenloft books fall in terms of "officialness"/3rd party status in 3.5?

[FearlessGnome]

I've been having a look at some of the Ravenloft books, and there are feats, items and prestige classes there that look very interesting and strong but reasonable, to the point where they strike me as things that should be more frequently mentioned in various builds and discussions around here. It seems though they aren't quite published by WotC, but they (or many of them at least) do have a great big "Official Licensed Product" WotC sticker on them. So... where do they fall in terms of 'officialness'? Most 3rd party books don't have the Official Licensed Product thing, merely saying they are for use with "the D20 System", but Ravenloft books specifically have a WotC license. Does this make them about as official as books like Tome of Battle and Draconomicon, are they just 3rd party homebrew that paid a fee and got a 'Licensed' sticker, or do they live in some kind of nebulous mystery land between the two? Does anyone here have an opinion on how balanced the Ravenloft books are?

[ComaVision]

Well, the middleground between 1st party and 3rd party is 2nd party.



Seriously, they're 2nd party.

EDIT: I think the best comparison would be Dragon Magazine, which was licensed by WotC but created by Paizo.

[Kaje]

2nd party. They were created by you.

[Âmesang]

I think the best comparison would be Dragon Magazine, which was licensed by WotC but created by Paizo.
The Dragon goes back to the earliest days of D&D. :smalltongue: I believe Paizo just took over publication from 2002-2007, with WotC handling 2000-2002 and TSR before them.

[Big Fau]

S&S, the studio that wrote the 3.X Ravenloft series, petitioned to WotC for a proper license for their work. Legally speaking it isn't published by WotC, but it is considered official 3.X material (same with Iron Kingdoms IIRC, but different company).

The only WotC-published Ravenloft material that was printed in 3.5 was Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, which I believe used several NPC statblocks from S&S' 3.5 update to save a little time.

[thorr-kan]

Does anybody have an index of the S&S Ravenloft releases, broken down by 3.0 vs 3.5?

[dysprosium]

The Dragon goes back to the earliest days of D&D. :smalltongue: I believe Paizo just took over publication from 2002-2007, with WotC handling 2000-2002 and TSR before them.

This is true. Dragon Magazine is just about as old as D&D itself.


S&S, the studio that wrote the 3.X Ravenloft series, petitioned to WotC for a proper license for their work. Legally speaking it isn't published by WotC, but it is considered official 3.X material (same with Iron Kingdoms IIRC, but different company).

The only WotC-published Ravenloft material that was printed in 3.5 was Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, which I believe used several NPC statblocks from S&S' 3.5 update to save a little time.

This is also true. There are some Ravenloft themed things in Dragon Magazine 315 also.


Does anybody have an index of the S&S Ravenloft releases, broken down by 3.0 vs 3.5?

Linkity Link for Linking (http://www.tsrinfo.net/archive/3r/3r.htm) These are all technically 3.0.

[Duelpersonality]

Linkity Link for Linking (http://www.tsrinfo.net/archive/3r/3r.htm) These are all technically 3.0.

The Player's Handbook and Denizens of Dread are both 3.5, and the PHB is essentially just the 3.5 update of the campaign setting.

[thorr-kan]

Were Gazetteer Volume V and Legacy of Blood never released? (I'm wondering about the lack of links.)

[dysprosium]

The Player's Handbook and Denizens of Dread are both 3.5, and the PHB is essentially just the 3.5 update of the campaign setting.

So they are. :smalleek:


Were Gazetteer Volume V and Legacy of Blood never released? (I'm wondering about the lack of links.)

I know they were released. It is most likely that there aren't any product available at Amazon?

[thorr-kan]

So they are. :smalleek:



I know they were released. It is most likely that there aren't any product available at Amazon?

Thanks! I appreciate the information.

[Psyren]

1) "Second party" means you, the player/consumer of the product that WotC has created. It does not mean "more official than third, less official than first."

2) If WotC themselves didn't publish it, then it is third-party. Licensed third-party perhaps, but still third-party.

What should matter most for any material though is what your DM thinks of it, not forumites.


Does anyone here have an opinion on how balanced the Ravenloft books are?

I don't know anything about them except Devices, which personally make me cringe.

[ComaVision]

2) If WotC themselves didn't publish it, then it is third-party. Licensed third-party perhaps, but still third-party.


If it's licensed by WotC and WotC owns the IP, then it's first party, no? I'm aware that "second party" is not technically correct but it is an established term:



Second-party developer is a colloquial term used by gaming enthusiasts and media often used to describe two different types of game development studios:


Independently owned studios who take development contracts from the platform holders and what they produce will usually be exclusive to that platform.
Studios that are partially or wholly owned by the platform holder (also known as a subsidiary) and what they produce will usually be exclusive to that platform.


In reality, the resulting game is first party (since it is funded by the platform holder who usually owns the resulting IP), but the term helps to distinguish independent studios from those directly owned by the platform holder. These studios may have exclusive publishing agreements (or other business relationships) with the platform holder, while maintaining independence. Examples are Insomniac Games (which previously developed games solely for Sony's PlayStation platforms as an independent studio), ADK for SNK consoles, Rareware for Nintendo and later Microsoft, and Game Freak (which primarily develops the Nintendo-exclusive Pokémon game series).

EDIT: But this is the most important consideration anyway.


What should matter most for any material though is what your DM thinks of it, not forumites.

[Hecuba]

If it's licensed by WotC and WotC owns the IP, then it's first party, no?

If WotC owned the IP resulting from development and publication, then yes. Whether this is the case for 3e/3.5 licensed products depends on whether we the IP under discussion is the setting or the books. WotC retains ownership of the underlying IP for the setting (which it licensed to the developer to use in the book), but the copyright on the books themselves are generally retained by the publishing party.

This sets up a situation where the evolving setting is licensed 1st party content and the books that actually cause that process are licensed 3rd party content.

(For the licensed fan-continuation websites for settings like Dark Sun and SpellJammer, the situation is even more complex: IIRC, there were surrender of copyright clauses involved for the fan-created content in the event the product lines were brought back into use by WotC. That means that for those settings, you could make a good case that it would change from licensed 3rd party to licensed 1st party if WotC resumed the product line.)

In general, however, the best answer in practice is to:

Use the term licensed setting rather than 1st or 3rd party when you must discuss the topic. This makes clear the unusual situation of "between-ness".
Not really consider it at all: not all good d20 designers worked for WotC, and many of those that did didn't work for them exclusively. They did not have a monopoly on good content, and they certainly don't have a magic wand that gets rid of the bad content.

[Psyren]

I had a longer response typed up but Hecuba nailed it.

Also, the key word from the Wikipedia quote is "colloquial."

[Willie the Duck]

So... where do they fall in terms of 'officialness'?

I think I know what you are trying to get at, but honestly, there is no 'there' there. 'Officialness' was not a goal, nor a defined concept supported by WotC. Their focus was in producing their own products, which we would buy, and then a legal framework for other producers to make 3e products (through the OGL), sometimes including stuff which used WotC intellectual property (through licenses), which we would also buy and use with our WotC products. All these concepts such as RAW, 'official' and so forth are fan created intellectual constructs which WotC has never come down in support of or against. It's simply not a role they defined for themselves. They expected people to use whichever books, supplements, Dragon magazines, and house rules each individual DM and gaming group wanted and considered well made. As has been said or implied many times, if they had expected people to consider the rigorously analyzed wording of every book they made, used together, and with nothing left out (i.e. the RAW official ruleset) to be some kind of goal state, they would have made it more balanced and been more careful about interactions.