Official Books vs Unofficial: Your group's standard is?

[Umbran]

Other: We don't worry about who published the darned thing. We look at the content. We don't go to one side or the other in general, we go to the books that have the stuff with the mechanics and flavor we desire for a particular game.

 

[The_Gneech]

I use a fair amount of 3rd party dungeons and monsters; we rarely use any third party character options or rule systems however. Some of that is because we're lazy and stick with what can be easily done in E-Tools ... but also because there's plenty of stuff to be had just in the WotC stuff, at least for my current campaign.

Future campaigns may be different.

-The Gneech

 

[philreed]

Anything the DM will allow is fair game.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

I had no problems using 3rd party material when I was running 3e. Everything beyond the PH was done on a case by case basis.

 

[Davelozzi]

We don't have a formal policy but it works out that almost everything that we use is Wizard's stuff. Currently, one player uses a number of spells from Relics & Rituals but that's about it.

We used a bit more in the past. One player has a psion, and we use to use a lot of the Malhavoc materials to supplement, but ever since the XPH came out we prefer to stick with just that. Also, my brother used to use some spells from some third party evocation book, but we haven't touched it since he moved away a few months ago.

I use a bit more third party stuff as GM, but it's mostly in the form of using adventures (or chunks of them) rather than adopting prestige classes and other kinds of rules modules.

I love Green Ronin's Book of Fiends and Necromancer's Tome of Horrors (both I & II), but I never seem to use them in my games. Lack of appropriate minis might be one reason for this.

 

[the Jester]

Some. I scutinize everything, regardless of its source, before I let it in.

 

[danbuter]

The only stuff I use that isn't put out by WotC is Arms & Armor, and a number of monster books. I use the Wilderlands setting, but the box set has no rules in it.

 

[Li Shenron]

none of the above.

everything has to get DM approval. even the stuff in the core books.

While I agree that the DM can always decide if something doesn't exist in the campaign (even Mage Armor, or longswords, or the UMD skill if she wishes), do you actually mean that each time you level up you have to ask your DM: "Can I take Toughness, one more rank in Spellcraft, and Magic Missile?".

For us it works best that a set of character material is available by default (e.g. IMC in 3.0, it's PHB + DMG + the splatbooks + MotP - all the PrCls), while all the rest is by default in need of specific approval, mostly because I don't know the other material well enough. But I certainly wouldn't want to be notified for every PHB feat or spell...

 

[DragonLancer]

Mostly WotC material but with a few select 3rd party books. Everything approved by me first.

 

[Angel Tarragon]

I use a hefty amount of d20 material in my campaigns, more so than WotC material, but I have a lot of that too.