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    Question [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    SINCE I HAVE MADE A DOGS BREAKFAST OF ASKING THIS QUESTION, CAN PEOPLE JUST POINT ME TO OFFICIAL LICENSED PRODUCTS THAT WEREN'T PRINTED BY WOTC.

    ALSO, ANY BOOKS OTHER THAN THE OBVIOUS (PHB. MM, CAd etc etc.) THAT WOTC PUBLISHED FOR 3E, LIKE THE DIABLO STUFF.


    I know this has been done to death in the past, but I couldn't find anything recent enough not be be necro.

    Some assertions here recently have got me wondering what is official/1st party WotC 3E material, and what isn't?

    How many levels of "official" are there? Official and released by WotC; officially endorsed and released by other publishers; other levels of official?

    Obviously, all the officially published WotC 3.0 and 3.5 books are.

    Online web articles on the WotC websites(s) are.

    The Dragon Compendium hardcover and Shackled City hardcover are officially endorsed?

    Dragon Magazine and Dungeon Magazine aren't as clear cut, I believe?

    The Dragonlance campaign setting book is; other 3E Dragonlance material appears not to be.

    Apparently, the 3E Diablo book is?

    Kalamar material genuinely confuses me. What's official, if any?

    AFAIK, none of the Ravenloft 3E material is?

    The fan produced Planescape and Athas material is not, I assume.

    There's other official WotC 3E material (Call of Cthulhu, d20 Modern etc. AFAIK, none of this, except for a small section in CoC, is designed for use with 3E D&D?

    Please help me understand and classify.

    Cheers - T

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    I would say anything published/printed by WotC.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Dragon/Dungeon magazine is either 1st party or licensed party depending on the issue. Wikipedia has some details about Dragon and Dungeon.

    More generally, it's not clear to me that there is any distinction between 'licensed' and 'endorsed', so I believe there are 3 tiers of 'officialness': first party, licensed second party, and third party.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Ask your DM, I guess. I'd say anything with the WotC seal on it counts. Typically people aren't super consistent. I've heard "1st party material for 3.5/3.0" to both include or not include CoC, Dragon Mag, Kalamar, or Dragonlance.

    Which is a shame, because the CoC 3.5 spells are super good.
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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Quote Originally Posted by Zanos View Post
    Ask your DM, I guess. I'd say anything with the WotC seal on it counts. Typically people aren't super consistent. I've heard "1st party material for 3.5/3.0" to both include or not include CoC, Dragon Mag, Kalamar, or Dragonlance.
    I am the DM, in most cases. This isn't for asking permission at my table, as such.

    Looking for community consensus, or citations, for my own reference.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    How about content by WotC designers in third party products? Bruce Cordell designed 3.5e psionics, and also wrote a 3rd party supplement called Hyperconscious. Most people that like psionics consider Hyperconscious valid for the table.

    I think you have to look at these products on a case by case basis. Most of the Dragonlance products are fine for inclusion at the table, although reserves of strength may have to be banned.

    I haven't delved deeply into Kingdoms of Kalamar, but what I have seen I did not like in terms of design or balance.

    Dragon Magazine gets bagged quite a lot and what to include or exclude from Dragon Magazine requires discretion. In my opinion there is some great content there. The mage feats from Dragon Magazine #359 are great and it would be a shame if they were excluded from a table just because it came from Dragon Magazine.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    It bears repeating that banning 3rd party offerings purely for reasons of balance is dubious given that a lot of the most egregious material balance wise can be found in the PHB and MM1
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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Same as usual: "Official" doesn't mean anything other than what the person saying it wants it to be.

    The only thing that makes something "official" is someone with "the authority to decide what's official" making the decision.

    Dragon Magazine touts itself as all being "official" DnD content. Anything that managed to get published with such a phrase would be similarly official content. I would bet plenty of things on that list don't use the word "official" anywhere in them, and yet are considered by some to "obviously" be official content.

    You mention the Ravenloft 3E material- is that Expedition to Castle Ravenloft, or some other material? 'Cause people mention the non-magical "devices" in there all the time- maybe not as a "practical" expectation that a table will allow them, but certainly as an "official" way of getting non-magical magic items.


    The criteria used by corporations and licensing to determine what logos go on what and who gets the sales money have nothing to do with the authors or coherency of whatever the "official" body of work might be. They are completely meaningless for gaming purposes, even claims that 1st party content has better quality control quickly fall flat in either direction with a little analysis- better copy editors maybe, but just as much busted. I have not seen a single time someone has ever given a good reason for wanting "official only" or "1st party only" answers, aside from the tautological "my group only allows/uses all official 1st party."

    The entire idea is that there is a specific body of sources which everyone has, and anything outside of which is not valid. That's not how reality or DnD works. But it sure as heck does let people argue that X busted thing is totally official and thus they deserve to break the game, or Y busted thing isn't even official so it doesn't matter.

    As I've said before, trying to run a game where "all official/1st party is allowed" is an exercise in gambling, retcons, and walkbacks, since instead of doing the DM's job of checking content beforehand, you're either A: allowing things in without looking and possibly having to fix the problems later, or B: checking things before they're used and potentially having to walk back your "all allowed" standpoint over and over. Both make it obvious that the initial statement was a failure, and it's either blind luck or a set of unwritten rules the group is actually following which holds it together. Stating a preference that the players not inundate you with requests for far flung 3rd party or wiki homebrew requests is entirely reasonable of course, but that's not what the sentence says.



    There is a general set of books that are widely known and relevant to most forum discussion, but the criteria it's based on has more to do with availability, recognizability, and whether or not something is perceived as its own setting. This set of books is much smaller than even the somewhat more defined "1st party" list, because there are plenty of 1st party books plenty of people don't use or which have little reason to expect reference to- the entire pile of pre-made adventures, any setting book that isn't so thick with mechanics people are constantly mentioning it, bad-guy books, and also just several books which came out so late in the run that the forum scene has already coalesced its body of memetic knowledge without them. Generic non-setting content found abundantly in major bookstores during the height of the game's popularity seen and used both by early and late adopters beats small 3rd party publisher and monthly magazine subscription content that most people never saw. It's that simple.
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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Wow, people are usually so opinionated on this topic; I ask the question, and suddenly most folks are all cruisy about it.


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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    In the case of Kingdoms of Kalamar, the primary reason it is asserted as being first party springs out of its books invariably carrying a seal that says 'Official D&D' or similar, from around 2001 - 2007. Officially licensed = first party, in most people's minds.

    It's a bit more complex than that, mainly because WOTC was -- arguably -- arm-twisted into putting that seal onto those books. Kenzer & Company owned the rights to Knights of the Dinner Table, a comic strip which ran in Dragon magazine, about a gaming group that played a (then fictional) parody of AD&D called Hackmaster. Wizards of the Coast republished the magazines in their Dragon Magazine Archive CD ... and in doing so, either deliberately or inadvertently (but in any event, allegedly) breached the publishing contract for the strip with Kenzer, which had some forward-thinking provisions about their products reappearing in an electronic format.

    A lawsuit from Kenzer ensued. The case was settled out of court, and part of the settlement included (a) a license for Kenzer to produce derivative products from Dungeons & Dragons until 2007; and (b) Kenzer & Company having the right to use the official D&D logo for their D&D-compatible products, unlike most third-party publishers who could only use the D20 logo or OGL.

    I don't think there's much comment or material around from the designers or anyone involved at the time about whether any of Kenzer's books were actually balanced with WOTC's products or whether WOTC had much of a hand in it at all. Given the way the seal turned up on the books I'd guess they were probably completely separate, but honestly there's no way to tell on that score.


    For Oriental Adventures and Dragonlance, it's a bit different: in each case, the 'flagship' campaign setting book was directly published by WOTC and seems to have been playtested by them, but all of the subsequent books were produced by the third party publisher who was collaborating with WOTC at the time and therefore is third party. Oriental Adventures was basically a joint venture between WOTC and Alderac Entertainment Group (AEG) to promote AEG's Legends of the Five Rings system, and in all of the AEG L5R books, dual stats appeared for both 3rd ed and the L5R system. But, bar Oriental Adventures, none were written by WOTC.


    That being said, I'm finding it a very interesting exercise to Google the names of the writers or designers credited in third party books, simply because (based on my limited sample of 20+ third party books over in my review thread, which covers around the 2000 - 2005 time period) there seems to have been a lot of staff going between third party publishers and WOTC itself. WOTC ditched a large number of designers in 2001 which led to a number of them going freelance, or opening their own publishing houses. Bruce Cordell would go on to write for Malhavoc Press. Indeed Monte Cook himself ejected from WOTC and set up Malhavoc Press early in 3rd edition's run anyway. Jonathan Tweet lasted until 2008, but was laid off and started on 13th Age. Skip Williams was ditched in 2002 and did freelance work, including Races of the Wild for WOTC. It was also not that uncommon for designers to go in the other direction: Mike Mearls worked for AEG before WOTC hired him - and he was the lead designer for fourth and fifth edition until he quit last year.

    Indeed some authors worked both sides simultaneously as freelancers or similar: Matthew Sernett was the editor-in-chief for Dragon magazine right in 3.5's run from 316-326, and went across to Paizo with the magazines. He has design credits on Fiend Folio, MM 3, Spell Compendium, and even Tome of Battle. He also wrote the Advanced Bestiary for the entirely third party publisher Green Ronin Publishing with a publication date of 2004, meaning he'd possibly been writing it while still at WOTC.

    The only caution I'd have on that is not to judge guys whose names are storied now on their achievements back in 2001-2005 or so. Most of the third party authors I've seen had only just started their careers when the splatbook storm broke around 2001 or so, and in some cases it shows. Hell, guys who'd literally designed the 'E' in BECMI tried their hand at third party publishing (Green Ronin, The Assassin's Handbook) and (in my view) whiffed it.

    (It's funny to occasionally come across shade being thrown between publishers even back then. Monte Cook seemed not to like Mongoose Publishing under Matthew Sprange, maybe because Sprange seems to have been a publishing machine and/or was bringing out splatbooks at laxative speed: Mongoose demanded authors pump out 128 pages of text per month, and Sprange smashed out any number of Slayers' Guides, let alone the Quintessential series of books, in the space of months when third edition was first released.)
    Last edited by Saintheart; 2021-07-28 at 04:22 AM.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    The simple definition for me for "first-party" is who the publisher is. If it's WotC it's first-party, if not, not.

    Beyond that, there is licensed third party (like the Kalamar and Ravenloft stuff that gets to use the trademarked logo), and just plain third party that doesn't. I don't distinguish between these except to note that the former is easier to get community opinions on.
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    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Question Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    @Saintheart very interesting, did not know the backstory on Kalamar.

    OK, since my question isn't getting much traction, I'll ask another way: can anyone provide a list of officially endorsed 3.X profucts that weren't published by WotC?

    And can anyone provide a list of WotC published 3.X products, outside of the obvious books?

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    This is an incomplete list of setting unspecific 3.x sourcebooks, roughly sorted by publishing date. Not included are any adventures and most of the 3.0 books whose contents were updated in 3.5 books (like, for example, Song & Silence):
    • Player's Handbook
    • Dungeon Master's Guide
    • Monster Manual
    • Oriental Adventures
    • Deities & Demigods
    • Stronghold Builder's Guidebook
    • Epic Level Handbook
    • Monster Manual 2
    • Book of Vile Darkness
    • Savage Species
    • Arms and Equipment Guide
    • Fiend Folio
    • Ghostwalk
    • Miniatures Handbook
    • Book of Exalted Deeds
    • Draconomicon
    • Complete Warrior
    • Unearthed Arcana
    • Expanded Psionics Handbook
    • Complete Divine
    • Planar Handbook
    • Monster Manual 3
    • Races of Stone
    • Frostburn
    • Libris Mortis
    • Complete Arcane
    • Races of Destiny
    • Complete Adventurer
    • Sandstorm
    • Lords of Madness
    • Heroes of Battle
    • Dungeon Master's Guide 2
    • Weapons of Legacy
    • Stormwrack
    • Magic of Incarnum
    • Heroes of Horror
    • Spell Compendium
    • Races of the Dragon
    • Tome of Magic
    • Complete Psionics
    • Player's Handbook 2
    • Fiendish Codex 1
    • Monster Manual 4
    • Tome of Battle
    • Dragon Magic
    • Monster Manual 5
    • Complete Mage
    • Cityscape
    • Fiendish Codex 2
    • Complete Scoundrel
    • Dungeonscape
    • Magic Item Compendium
    • Drow of the Underdark
    • Complete Champion
    • Rules Compendium
    • Elder Evils
    • Exemplars of Evil


    Setting specific books will follow.

    Edit: Forgotten Realms:
    • Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting
    • Magic of Faerûn
    • Lords of Darkness
    • Monsters of Faerûn
    • Silver Marches
    • Faiths & Pantheons
    • Races of Faerûn
    • Unapproachable East
    • Underdark
    • Player's Guide to Faerûn
    • Serpent Kingdoms
    • Shining South
    • Lost Empires of Faerûn
    • Champions of Ruin
    • City of Splendors: Waterdeep
    • Champions of Valor
    • Power of Faerûn
    • Mysteries of the Moon Sea
    • Dragons of Faerûn
    • Grand History of the Realms


    and Eberron:
    • Eberron Campaign Setting
    • Sharn: City of Towers
    • Races of Eberron
    • Five Nations
    • Explorer's Handbook
    • Magic of Eberron
    • Player's Guide to Eberron
    • Secrets of Xendrik
    • Faiths of Eberron
    • Dragonmarked
    • Secrets of Sarlona
    • The Forge of War
    • Dragons of Eberron
    • City of Stormreach
    • Adventurer's Guide to Eberron


    Edit 2: Living Greyhawk Gazeteer.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ravenl...nd_3.5_edition

    looks like 21 ravenloft titles under the sword sorcery line, officially licensed by wotc


    https://web.archive.org/web/20160304...t.us/kk/kk.htm

    looks like 40 kingdom of kalamar titles, i didnt realize there was so many adventures of which i now need to acquire, lol


    http://www.planewalker.com/
    http://www.birthright.net/
    http://www.spelljammer.org/
    those all are official fansites approved by wotc and allowed to use the OGL for converted material

    @Saintheart with so many authors of official material publishing material for other companies or stuff that that didnt make the cut in the various books they worked on that got posted at candlekeep, some times its hard to draw the line on whats official and whats not. like gary gygax wrote the slayers guide to dragons for mongoose, i mean seriously, the guy that invented the game wrote a book about dragons, for another comapny and i cant use it at your table? you see what i mean?

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Quote Originally Posted by Thurbane View Post
    OK, since my question isn't getting much traction, I'll ask another way: can anyone provide a list of officially endorsed 3.X profucts that weren't published by WotC?
    "Officially endorsed?" By who?
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Thumbs down Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    "Officially endorsed?" By who?
    WotC.

    You know, I'm starting to regret making this thread. In my mind it was a relatively simple question, and one I'd seen threads on before.

    Seems I have been incredibly unclear with my intent in asking the question.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Well, this is where we could get philosophical about it: what significance applies to 'officially endorsed' anyway?

    I'm only all postmodernist about it simply because of repeated interactions with holes in WOTC's QA, editing, and in some cases, base concepts. WOTC turned out several if not many products themselves which sure are 'officially endorsed' but which you'd need a hole in the head to use or apply as written. Legacy Weapons. Truenamers. Challenge Rating. Vow of Poverty. Fighters (haha). If some of this stuff turned up from third party publishers unaffiliated with WOTC you'd never hear about it unless some crusty old forum poster with too much time on his hands and a strange affection for secondhand books started doing miniature reviews at random of twenty year old splats.

    I doubt there was that much serious playtesting past, say, the first year of 3.5. There just wouldn't have been the money in it, not with fourth edition on the horizon promising to correct all of third edition's ills. Tome of Battle was their last hurrah, and that sucker they couldn't even be bothered issuing proper errata (let alone that it was a testbed for some of fourth's central concepts).

    Sure, it might help to know what WOTC's in-house teams actually wrote and what some random freelancer slapped together in his garage. Doesn't automatically tell you what's quality and what's not.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    You can find a list of 1st party D&D 3e sourcebooks in the Consolidated Lists. Scroll to the bottom.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Quote Originally Posted by Thurbane View Post
    WotC.

    You know, I'm starting to regret making this thread. In my mind it was a relatively simple question, and one I'd seen threads on before.

    Seems I have been incredibly unclear with my intent in asking the question.
    There are three categories for WotC "endorsement" as I see them:

    1) Stuff they've published themselves
    2) Stuff they licensed to another publisher
    3) Everything else

    The strict definition of "first-party" is the #1, while some expand it to include #1 and #2. I'm not aware of any other ways that WotC could or would "endorse" something.
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    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    IMO Dragon Magazine is more official than other licensed material because:
    1. Paizo was actually just the WotC magazine division at the time.
    2. The majority of issues were actually published by WotC or TSR; Paizo only controlled it for a few years, and not even for all of 3e.
    3. It's referenced as canon in 1st party books such as Elder Evils and Spell Compendium.
    4. Most 3rd party licensed books only licensed their respective setting, but still used the d20 OGL for the rules. Dragon and Dungeon had full access to the IP, including the rules system and all official campaign worlds.
    5. Paizo was contracted to produce the magazine each month, where other 3rd party publishers were basically "You have the license for X years, go nuts."

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Quote Originally Posted by Troacctid View Post
    You can find a list of 1st party D&D 3e sourcebooks in the Consolidated Lists. Scroll to the bottom.
    Thanks.

    Again, I feel I have asked this whole question wrong, or in a convoluted way.

    I know 1st party books are 1st party, but thanks for the reference point.

    Quote Originally Posted by Psyren View Post
    There are three categories for WotC "endorsement" as I see them:

    1) Stuff they've published themselves
    2) Stuff they licensed to another publisher
    3) Everything else

    The strict definition of "first-party" is the #1, while some expand it to include #1 and #2. I'm not aware of any other ways that WotC could or would "endorse" something.
    Perhaps I should have used the word licensed, instead of endorsed.

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    Question Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    I will try to be more succinct:

    What 3E products were licensed, but not printed, by WotC.

    Besides the obvious books, and online articles, what else did WotC publish for 3E (i.e. 3E Diablo, game day modules etc.)?

    What is the licensing/"official" status of the following:

    1. 3E Dragonlance books besides the campaign setting book.
    2. 3E Kalamar books.
    3. 3E Ravenloft books.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Ravenloft books bear the WotC's "Licensed Product" seal. The same for the Dragonlance campaign setting, but not for any other 3e Dragonlance books.

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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    A while back I was pointed at The TSR Archive. It is a fan-made site in aid of book collectors. While unofficial, it does contain the Item Code for each product. I don't know if you or anyone is willing to base the "officialness" of any product based of its code, but certainly opportunity arises for rampant speculation.
    Last edited by mattie_p; 2021-07-30 at 04:37 PM.
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    Default Re: [3.X] What is Official/1st Party 3E D&D Material

    Quote Originally Posted by Thurbane View Post
    I will try to be more succinct:

    What 3E products were licensed, but not printed, by WotC.

    Besides the obvious books, and online articles, what else did WotC publish for 3E (i.e. 3E Diablo, game day modules etc.)?

    What is the licensing/"official" status of the following:

    1. 3E Dragonlance books besides the campaign setting book.
    2. 3E Kalamar books.
    3. 3E Ravenloft books.
    Diablo is a standalone book that's kind of meant to be in its own separate ecosystem, even though it is compatible. It's not canon for D&D 3.5e, partly because of that and partly because WotC's license for the setting expired and they had no reason to continue supporting it. Similarly, D20 Modern is published by WotC under the d20 System, but is considered a separate, independent ruleset.

    Organized Play modules are also published by WotC, IIRC, but most of them are very difficult to find as they were not widely distributed.

    Dragonlance and Ravenloft operate under the "You have the license for X years, go nuts" model that I mentioned above (except for DCS and EtCR). This means they're technically d20 products that simply take place in official D&D settings. IMO, they should be treated as canonical for their setting, but non-canonical for any other setting. Kalamar is kind of similar, although presumably the terms of its license were different, since Kalamar was the publisher's setting, not D&D's. It's 3rd party, but they managed to get the rights to display the D&D branding on it.

    Since their original publication, the licenses have lapsed. WotC has taken back control over Dragonlance and Ravenloft, and cut Kalamar loose. The DMs Guild (official outlet for D&D PDFs) now retroactively lists WotC as the publisher for the Dragonlance and Ravenloft books. Kalamar is not listed on the DMs Guild, and is instead relegated to the parent site, DriveThruRPG, which hosts most of the other 3rd party d20 PDFs.

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