What is the 'Party' status on War of the Lance?

[weckar]

I've never quite understood where 3.0/3.5 Dragonlance material falls on the 1st/2nd/3rd party spectrum. It's not nearly as clear-cut as Ravenloft (and even that is a bit of a mess).

Specifically, the book War of the Lance has a lot on non-setting-specific goodies where I wonder if I could use them in a 1st-party-only game?

[Bullet06320]

the Dragonlance campaign setting is published by WOTC, the rest are officially licensed 3rd party I think, Dragonlance has been around since the early days anyways
im not 100% but I think Margaret Weiss owns the Dragonlance name and may have published the rest under the OGL

the Ravonloft name was licensed to whitewolf for 3rd edition publishing, so makes it official 3rd party

except the return to ravenloft book which was published by WOTC

when in doubt ask the DM

[Psyren]

Specifically, the book War of the Lance has a lot on non-setting-specific goodies where I wonder if I could use them in a 1st-party-only game?

Your DM can answer this specific question much more authoritatively than a bunch of yahoos on the internet (I include myself in that category.) Personally I only consider books published BY WotC to be first-party, and perhaps-not-so-coincidentally these tend to have the less-broken stuff.

[ViperMagnum357]

Only the Dragonlance Campaign Setting is first party-the rest was produced under license, so is technically third party. However, all the Dragonlance supplementary materials were produced under the Wizard's license, hence have the stamp 'official licensed product' surrounding the WOTC emblem, so they can also be considered the OTHER 2nd party license (second party usually refers to whoever purchases the actual book). This leaves the entire line closer to first party than anything printed under OGL or comparable licenses, and WOTC had input into what got printed-so the entire line falls into a nebulous quasi-legit first party continuation, similar to the Kingdom of Kalamar line-which no one wants to acknowledge because the few things from that line which are not dreck are either mechanically or competitively broken.

TL:DR the book is whatever your DM says it is, with reasonable interpretations including 1st party, 3rd party, or something between.