Like alot of AD&D, it is in part a collection of Dragon Magazine submissions and ideas from staff, retooled and better presented. For that alone its great as you dodnt have to backtrack issues to get some of this stuff.

But as with anything some is going to be useful to one and useless to another and that same thing might be overpowered or underpowered to yet another. The usual YMMV.

So personally some stuff I found useful and some alot less so. Here are a few

Comeliness: This was something a few players kept begging for and the rest didnt think was needed. It was used just short of none at all in anything else. It works. And for some its even useful.
Dark elves: seems ok-ish.
Cavalier: I think the number of players irked that Paladins were a subclass of Cavalier irked more people than the class itself. Though personally it and the barbarian feel kinda superfluous since you can get the same results by just role-playing a fighter.
Acrobat & Barbarian: Same issue as Cavalier.
New spells: Some of these would go on to become well known like Evard's Black Tentacles and Cantrips. Others fell by the wayside.
New Star rolling system: Not many seemed interested in using this one.
New equipment: This stuff seemed popular. New types of gear and new stuff got mounts even.
Social class rules: interesting but seemed to fall into obscurity. Same for the birth tables.
New treasures: Quite a number of these would become common D&D treasures. Others seem to have been forgotten. Lots of interesting new stuff.
New unarmed combat system: Not sure on this one. Never had a chance to use it.
New gods: Vastly expanded on the non human pantheons. Also some insight into why orcs are so destructive.
Polearms! I loved this section as it gave visual reference to all those titles.

It was known in our gaming circles as exhumed excretia - which I think tells you what we thought of it! Some of the spells and magic were ok, but nothing stood out.

In my gaming circles we enjoyed it and though did not use it too much. We were mostly happy with using the 1E core. As we began gaming at the end of 1E run and switched over to 2E.

Nor did we call it the imaginary names other posters are trying to say they did at the time of release. I like many of the posters at the time was between 12 and 14 and was not a pretentious edgelord at that age. Or trying to pretend they were. Like everyone else they called it by the proper name. Everything else is bullshit.

Of the things we used from it, most of them we had used from Dragon magazine, and had already made up our minds about pro or con before the book was released.  Our games were so disjointed and biased against the players at the time that some of the options didn't appreciably hurt anything. Higher stats meant the players might routinely make it to 3rd level instead of usually getting killed sooner, for example.  Then they'd likely die in the next adventure.  Honestly, the best thing about the book from my perspective was that I didn't need to thumb through all those magazines to look up the options we were going to use next.  Shortly after, we had one my two major breaks in gaming (late high school is not a fun time) and it became academic until college.  There, we were playing so many different games that whether or not a D&D game used UA didn't matter a whole lot.  Each GM decided on their own for their short campaign and all the players happily went with whatever the GM said.

Quote from: HappyDaze;1127611Unearthed Arcana was the first RPG book that I bought myself (as opposed to having been gifted to me or bought by parents) so it holds a special place for me. It was also the first RPG book that started to fall apart and shedding pages after only a couple of years of use, so it holds that special place for me too.

Yeah, came in to post this. When I finally graduated from BECMI to AD&D the book had already been out for many years and I didn't know any better so just bought it immediately and started using everything. In retrospect, some of the stuff was broken, but the binding...fell apart in about a month. I had purchased an old PHB from someone that was almost as old as I was that STILL has an excellent binding. UA, however, was pure garbage.

Quote from: Shasarak;1127592Yeah, it was great.  You had Drow, Cavaliers, Weapon Specialisation and Cantrips.

And who could forget a million and one Pole Arms!

QFT!

Quote from: sureshot;1127619Nor did we call it the imaginary names other posters are trying to say they did at the time of release. I like many of the posters at the time was between 12 and 14 and was not a pretentious edgelord at that age. Or trying to pretend they were. Like everyone else they called it by the proper name. Everything else is bullshit.

Up yours, you arrogant knob. It was releaased in 1985. I was 21 and in my second year at university. It may have been undergrad humour but it's true: Unearthed Excrementa.  [My gut feeling is that we may have got that from a fanzine (remember those) review and so it might be the sort of thing John Peterson could have in his archives.]

BTW, here's a snippet from Wikipedia - seen when I checked for the date:

"The original Unearthed Arcana contains errors in its text, which readers discovered and reported to Dragon magazine.[6] Even some positive reviews of the book pointed out the considerable number of mistakes.[7] Dragon editor Kim Mohan, with ideas from Gygax, Frank Mentzer, and Jeff Grubb, addressed the many errors found in the book. In the November 1985 issue of Dragon magazine, Mohan printed four pages of rules corrections as well as new supplementary material intended to be inserted into the book, and some explanations and justifications for items which were not actually errors,[6] and compiled a two-page list of type corrections meant to be pasted into further revisions of Unearthed Arcana.[8] Dragon also devoted the entirety of its "Sage Advice" column in the January 1987 issue to answering readers' questions about Unearthed Arcana, as a follow-up to Mohan's prior column.[9] However, the errata were not incorporated into later printings of the manual.[10]

You were just too puerile to recognise the tome of turds that it was.

To be fair to UA, if it had cantrips thne it did have the start of something that has become important for the shape of modern D&D.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127631You were just too puerile to recognise the tome of turds that it was.

What's your point?

I do like how they had two fucking pages of errata immediately and had to devote that much space to answer rules questions. That's ludicrous. And never update the book. I've always heard UA was nothing more than a halfassed cash grab, so if that quote is accurate the theory is confirmed.

Quote from: RPGPundit;1127581Honestly, there's almost nothing in it that I think improves the 1e game, or that seems particularly helpful to me. Is that an unpopular view?

I don't personally use much from UA. The stuff I do use is mostly from the new spells, new equipment/items, and rules from the DM's section and appendices, rather than the rules in the Player's section. I do think that you could use that player section material from UA for certain campaigns. But things like the cavalier or the thief-acrobat or drow PCs aren't a very good fit for the kind of D&D campaign I run.

With that said, I know some AD&D DMs that have a greater appreciation of UA. I'll quote T. Foster's UA apologia (originally posted on the knights-n-knaves forums):

Quote from: T. FosterThis probably will start an argument, because I'm pretty much the only regular poster here who doesn't consider the entire book to be an abomination that Ruined The Game.

First, a bit of background. UA is a collection of Gary Gygax's AD&D rules additions from, roughly, 1981-84. Most of its content had previously been published in modules (spells and magic items) and/or Dragon magazine (new classes, weapons, more spells, etc.). As early as 1982 Gary was talking in Dragon magazine about all of these additions as previews of an "AD&D Expansion" rulebook he was working on. Due to the chaotic and dysfunctional environment at TSR during that period, the book ended up being delayed for several years, and then when it was released it was a rush-product: Gary was busy trying to keep the company afloat so he basically designated a couple of staffers at TSR to go through the magazines to collect all his articles and turn them into a book (because TSR needed a "major" new release quickly in order to generate sales-volume). Because of that, the book is disjointed and incomplete (there were some more new classes and other additions that Gary mentioned but hadn't gotten around to writing yet) and some of the stuff is also under-playtested and has balance issues (in both directions - some things are overpowered, others are underpowered).

So, UA shouldn't be looked at as a "core" rulebook, but as a supplement - a bunch of additions and expansions to the baseline game that you can use if you find them interesting or leave aside if you don't. If you're just starting out with 1E you should probably use little if any of it at the start of your game: most of the additions will work better with experienced players who are feeling bored with the baseline material and looking for more options to refresh the experience.

That said, there is some stuff that's sort of "AD&D Errata" - things that were unintentionally left out of the core books - that there's no reason not to use. Stuff like the details on barding (horse armor) - it's included in the price list in the PH but without any explanation of what it does - and the rules for the effects of darkness, and the rules for how much a spell book weighs and how many spells it can hold, and especially the unarmed combat systems (which are much easier to use than the totally unwieldy rules in the DMG).

Beyond those, a lot of things can be added gradually or piecemeal - new classes, new weapons, new spells, new magic items, etc. It's probably worth looking over the various threads here to see what people's opinions are of what of that stuff is over- or underpowered and how we've resolved those issues. I have my own solutions, but you might decide you prefer someone else's, or will come up with your own (more reason to wait to add this stuff - until you're sufficiently experienced to recognize what's over- or underpowered and know how to fix it).

Lastly, and by far the most controversially, there are a few things that are changes/additions to the baseline rules that serve as "power-ups" to characters:

*Expanded options for demi-humans (allowing all demi-humans to become clerics (with high level limits) and elves to become rangers and druids; allowing formerly NPC-only sub-races (gray dwarfs, gray, wild, and dark elves, deep gnomes) as PCs)
*Allowing magic-users to use slings and thieves to use short bows
*Weapons specialization for fighters and rangers
*Allowing thieves to wear heavier armor (studded leather & elfin chain) w/ skill penalties
*"Method V" stat generation for human characters
*Minimum hp for 1st level characters
*Allowing spell-casting directly out of spell books

When people talk about hating UA and call it "AD&D 1.5," this is usually what they're talking about (along with the overpowered new spells and magic items).

I think there are a couple of reasons why these changes were made. One is that the average size of player-groups had decreased over the years since the original AD&D books were written - from an assumed group size of 5 or 6 PCs + numerous henchmen and hirelings so that many dungeon-parties numbered a dozen or more individuals down to perhaps 2 or 3 PCs with few, if any, allied NPCs. In order to maintain balance with stuff like the "number appearing" listings in the Monster Manuals and wandering monster tables, and published adventures, it was probably felt to be appropriate to boost the power of individual characters to make up the difference - so that a party of 4 or 5 "new" characters could pack as much punch as 8 or 9 "old" characters.

The other thing is that by the time Gary was writing all of this stuff he'd been playing the game (including OD&D) for ~10 years, and his in-house players were also all experienced vets who'd been playing almost as long, and he was less interested in low-level, low-powered stuff, and presumably felt it made sense to give PCs a boost to help get them to the "more interesting" parts of the game more quickly. The idea that a newly-generated 1st level character might be as effective as a 3rd level character generated using just the PH was not just acceptable, it was desirable.

So, just like how in the DMG Gary recommends if you're starting a new player in your campaign who's a "true novice" that it's best to start them with a 1st level character and set up special side-adventures for them away from the higher-level characters of the other players so that they get the full first-timer experience, but that if you're adding a new player who already has experience, or a new character for an experienced player, it's okay to give them a few levels and let them tag along with the main group until they're up to speed, whether or not to use the various character power-ups in UA probably depends on you and your player group: if you want the full low-level "newbie" experience with fragile characters and lots of men-at-arms and all that, don't use this stuff. But if you've already been there and done that and want to get to the "heroic tier" of the game more quickly, then these additions will help with that.

And now everybody else can tell you why I'm wrong and UA's only appropriate use is as kindling...

...As other folks have mentioned, if you're running "traditional" dungeon-crawls and wilderness hex-crawls a cavalier or acrobat isn't really going to fit (though a barbarian will). But if you've been doing that stuff for awhile and the focus is naturally shifting towards more "in-town" activity then those classes (and some of Gary's other proposed-but-not-detailed classes: mountebanks and jesters) begin to make more sense. It's an expansion of the scope of the game that was muddled in UA because the material was presented incomplete and out of context. If publication of UA had been followed a few months later by Wasp's Nest: The City of Stoink, as was originally planned, it would have been a lot more obvious how to use those classes in play, and how stuff like the social class table is actually game-relevant.

Quote from: estar;1127589It gets dumped on now, but back in the day were were all excited by its release and used many of its option. Weapons mastery was appreciated. I wouldn't use it now as it unbalanced things to much in the PC's favor.

This.

I loved it back in the day. But I'd never use it now. It serves as a reminder of those early evolution-era of D&D trying to grow out of the chaos of Dragon Magazine and 1e PHB slamming together. It was a catalyst, and nothing more. And for that, as a GM back then and now I can appreciate it. It made me start looking deeply under the hood of the rules and thinking of new possibilities. Oriental Adventures further pushed this envelope.

I bought it when it first came out, but I don't remember ever actually using it. Occasionally I'd see a magic item from it, but that was about it.

UA is inconsistent with 1e. It was just a cash grab to stem the financial bleeding of T$R. Neutral clerics, social class, comeliness, over-powered classes, weapon specialization, useless spells, etc.

Whereas the original game was very much a group effort (Gygax plus other DMs and players, including a nation-wide network of gaming groups), the rules in UA came primarily from one person which were first published as articles in DRAGON. Reader-submitted material was consistently superior, but they weren't staff and weren't members of the corporate elite at the company.

Inspiration for the game had long since dried up. TSR morphed into T$R around 1981 or so when there was a big turnover in the staff and the company became more greed oriented. Gygax became a corporate executive, went to Hollywood and got distracted by hookers and blow, came back and got bamboozled by a half-wit business woman.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127631Up yours, you arrogant knob.

Right back at you dickless non-edgelord.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127631BTW, here's a snippet from Wikipedia - seen when I checked for the date:

"The original Unearthed Arcana contains errors in its text, which readers discovered and reported to Dragon magazine.[6] Even some positive reviews of the book pointed out the considerable number of mistakes.[7] Dragon editor Kim Mohan, with ideas from Gygax, Frank Mentzer, and Jeff Grubb, addressed the many errors found in the book. In the November 1985 issue of Dragon magazine, Mohan printed four pages of rules corrections as well as new supplementary material intended to be inserted into the book, and some explanations and justifications for items which were not actually errors,[6] and compiled a two-page list of type corrections meant to be pasted into further revisions of Unearthed Arcana.[8] Dragon also devoted the entirety of its "Sage Advice" column in the January 1987 issue to answering readers' questions about Unearthed Arcana, as a follow-up to Mohan's prior column.[9] However, the errata were not incorporated into later printings of the manual.[10]

I never said it was perfect just that I enjoyed it at the time and found it a useful edition to the 1E line.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127631You were just too puerile to recognise the tome of turds that it was.

I was and am being honest you think when I started the hobby at age 12-15 that I was paying attention to errata or mistakes or bothering to check the print run of my rpgs. Hell no I was just enjoying having a new book for 1E. I was just excited with the new content. My 12-15 year old mindset had better things to do then over-analyze every damn word on the page.  Then again you strike me as the guy no matter the age was perfect at anything and everything. I can say that too from the safety of the keyboard. It is only in the last ten years I have become more critical of what I read. I would still enjoy to run or play in a 1E campaign. The core 1E were poorly organized even for that time and quite frankly much of Gygax advice on how to run the game was just too adversarial and reeked of being a micromanaging control freak imo. Who writes in the introduction on the book to run the game to punish a player for having access to the book. After all it's not like one needs the DMG to run the game or anything.

Quote from: Anselyn;1127631To be fair to UA, if it had cantrips thne it did have the start of something that has become important for the shape of modern D&D.

That we are in complete agreement.

Quote from: JeremyR;1127602Well, bear in mind, much of it wasn't exactly new. The new classes were in Dragon (and also suck) as were a lot of the spells (also from S4).  The gods of the demihumans/orcs was just filler from Dragon as well.
 
The new magic items though are useful, and the weapon specialization rules made the fighter (and ranger) much more on par with the magic-user and cleric.

And the new level limits and class combos were interesting.

Yeah, UA seemed to be primarily a collection of optional stuff from Dragon Magazine. Nice to have, but not necessary.

Quote from: sureshot;1127648Then again you strike me as the guy no matter the age was perfect at anything and everything.

Oh, that it were so ...

By 85 I has played AD&D, Gamma World then Traveller - in my hometown. At university, D&D was the club you joined but we had moved to Call of Cthulhu as someone had bought it.  Later we played DragonQuest in a long campaign.

To be honest, if you asked the 21 year-old me then I'm sure I'd have said that I'd moved on from D&D to more sophisticated new-generation games. But - I bought Monster Manual 2 and Unearthed Arcana when they came out as you never really want to lose your first love. I think that epithet was also the disappointment speaking that UA hadn't pulled me back to D&D.

Whilst the Fiend Folio was and is awesome, I remembered MMII as being a pointless waste of money: devils, dinosaurs and modrons. Having just looked at it again I see that some of its content has become core( derro, yuan-ti). But the MMII tarrasque will never have the same resonance for me as the purple worm - as that was the most dangerous thing in Holmes Basic (GW printing for us).

When UA came out, I did buy it and use it in my game. I skipped the character classes, the Cavalier just seemed wrong, Barbarian I had a version from White Dwarf and instead of the Thief Acrobat I used a Tumbler class from a UK fanzine my friend brought home at the end of the summer of '79. At the time, I liked Weapon Specialization and I thought the cantrips were neat, and we probably made some use of the new spells. We may have made some use of the alternate demi-humans and some of the other bits.

I agree that the MMII didn't provide all that much, though in my various monster adaptations I definitely have stuff from it, even a few things I ported to BX when I was setting up a BX based Yoon Suin campaign. These days I actually don't find the Fiend Folio all that useful either. When I set up my Yoon Suin monster list I tried to fill in gaps in the BX monsters or replace "basic" monsters than seemed to European with something that seemed to fit the Asian bent of Yoon Suin better. Back in the day I also ported some BECM monsters to my AD&D campaign.