My 2 Cents
I collected all the old modules in their original printing (and still have em) and loved reading them. I also loved the DL books, though they were simple quick reads, that almost made them more fun. I attempted to run the modules no less than on 4 separate occasions over the years and ended up quitting each time before the group entered Tharkas in the 2nd module. It just wasn't any fun railroading the group, and the players didn't like being led about by invisible rings set in their noses. I quite honestly have no idea how you could play out the war by using the novels as an outline without railroading the entire party.
What I would suggest is that you run an adventure path that takes the group through a parallel of the original heroes, not the events themselves. Make the adventure very important to he war, perhaps even vital to the Freedom of Krynn like the mission of the Hero's of the Lance. However, keep the Hero’s of the Lance storyline the way they are in the books, doing exactly as they did in the original story and seperate from the new PC's storyline. Have the events of the war trigger throughout the new modules as things the players hear about, and even modify the storyline the players are playing according to the events that happen in the war. But have the adventures that the PC's are playing be different than those the Hero's of the Lance are experiencing.
Yes there were alternate paths through the trigeminal DL series... it was still a blatant railroad. Certain events had to happen to allow other events to happen because they were published in the DL novels that way, and if the PC's were to be involved in those events they had no choice but to be forced into a given path. Heck, you weren't even supposed to be able to kill off the bad guys... they had to be able to show up later when they were needed for the storyline. The modules gave examples of how to prevent the demise of certain key figures!
Yay! Kudos for doing the war in 3.5. Don't make the mistake of having the players run the original characters from the novels, and don't make it an event triggered adventure where the PC's have to do this no matter what, or else the campaign falls apart. Setup a timeline where the PC Heroes hear about the events we are all familiar with in the novels, and then offer the stats for the original Heroes of the Lance as a web enhancement rather than wasting page space on them.
