Unearthed Arcana was interesting. It was of mixed quality, but enough good stuff to make it worth having.
My copy fell apart though, I must have got a bad print run.

Manual of the planes was interesting enough to have. I used it a fair bit and found it useful.

Deities and Demigods was fun to read, although didn't really use it much in actual gameplay.
I remember many and long discussions with other Roleplayers about the various beings in that book.

Monster manual 2 and Fiend Folio were both worth having. It's nice to have a large library of monsters to choose from and fun to browse in between gaming.

I DID own Oriental Adventures and read it quite a bit, but never ran it. Still, it was interesting and I don't regret buying it and I did mine it for ideas for RPGs.

Dungeoneers survival guide and Wilderness survival guide were a waste of money. Hardly ever used it and it all seemed pointless.

FF is excellent. I think MMII and UA were trash. OA is kind of cheesy. Would have loved to have seen the original Francois Froideval version. Not a fan of NWP's but aside from that, the Survival Guides are actually pretty decent. I found they get a lot of unfair criticism involving just plain wrong facts. MotP I used to love. Now, less so. Seems the more I learn about the stories and myths the outer planes were based on, the further off the mark I find the MotP material. I'd rather just use the Cosmos Builder from the Gygaxian Fantasy Series. The Greyhawk stuff is excellent. Packed with great content.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1077555Unearthed Arcana was interesting. It was of mixed quality, but enough good stuff to make it worth having.
My copy fell apart though, I must have got a bad print run.

Pretty sure they were all like that!

Quote from: S'mon;1077568Pretty sure they were all like that!

I've owned 4 or 5 original printings; of those, one held together.  The reprint from...2012?  2014?  Is of course solid.  I think if those had come out with failing bindings someone at WotC would've been ritually burned at the stake.

Also the reprint has the (rather serious) errata corrected, or rather the entire missing page is put back in place.  I wish they'd put it where it belonged but that would've required re-typesetting the entire book, I guess, so they deleted a full-page illustration between the Players Section and the Dungeon Masters Section and stuck it there.  Better than nothing.

When they came out, I ate up the Wilderness Survival Guide and the Dungeoneers Survival Guide. But then after some playing using bits and pieces from them, I realized that all that detail really was overkill.

I think there is useful information in them, and I would be interested in a system neutral book that had material like environment descriptions with ideas on what a magical or otherwise exotic environment might look like. Also, nice well researched, and easy to translate into gaming, detailed travel times would be helpful. Something that would make it easy to take a game setting map and the players intended mode and expectations of travel and determine how long the journey would take. Some kind of expedition logistics would be helpful too, perhaps at three levels of detail.

Frank

Quote from: S'mon;1077568Pretty sure they were all like that!

Quote from: thedungeondelver;1077572I've owned 4 or 5 original printings; of those, one held together.  The reprint from...2012?  2014?  Is of course solid.  I think if those had come out with failing bindings someone at WotC would've been ritually burned at the stake.

Also the reprint has the (rather serious) errata corrected, or rather the entire missing page is put back in place.  I wish they'd put it where it belonged but that would've required re-typesetting the entire book, I guess, so they deleted a full-page illustration between the Players Section and the Dungeon Masters Section and stuck it there.  Better than nothing.

Mine is still fine and it saw a-lot of use.

And there were quite a few reported issued with the 5e core books, particularly the PHB coming apart.

Quote from: Shasarak;1077464I must admit that I never meet anyone who did not like Skills and Powers.

I didn't like it. I never ran it, but I played in a 2e game that used this. Felt like wannabe Rolemaster. I guess it's okay, if that's what you're after. But if I'm playing D&D, I want it to be D&D. And if I want RM, I'll play RM (FWIW, I actually like RM2). S&P was like some weird mix of the two that didn't do either approach as well as the real deal.

Quote from: Spinachcat;1077470Oriental Adventures was a great alternate D&D, but Bushido did it better.

Bushido was my game of choice for running Far East games, although I haven't run it in a long time. I do agree that OA would probably work okay, though.

Quote from: S'mon;1077568Pretty sure [the UA books] were all like that [and fell apart]!

My copy of UA didn't hold up very long at all. It came apart after only moderate use, within the first year or so. The majority of the TSR copies I've handled have been coming apart. I did get the WotC reprint. It's still together.

Quote from: Philotomy Jurament;1077637I didn't like it. I never ran it, but I played in a 2e game that used this. Felt like wannabe Rolemaster. I guess it's okay, if that's what you're after. But if I'm playing D&D, I want it to be D&D. And if I want RM, I'll play RM (FWIW, I actually like RM2). S&P was like some weird mix of the two that didn't do either approach as well as the real deal.

Thats weird, Skills and Powers was nothing like Rolemaster and exactly like DnD.

Quote from: Shasarak;1077649Thats weird, Skills and Powers was nothing like Rolemaster and exactly like DnD.

I recall seeing a lot of similarities between that 2e game (with S&P, and I think he was using C&T, too) and RM's Character Law. More stats. Point to spend (still class based, but points allowing more customization). Et cetera. It's been a long time, so I don't recall the details.

Skills and Powers is rather like 3e (or PF) which is rather like RoleMaster in several important ways. I think S&P is sort of a high transition point (begun in UA) from a skillless class system to the muddled hyper-customized class/skill system of Wizards of the Coast DnD. And RM was invented to turn 1e into just that sort of system.

Looking at Medieval Fantasy; simply giving your PC a background, suggests they possess certain skills.

They would have likely learned skills from their parents, if they weren't fortunate enough to have received formalized training.  If their father was a Blacksmith; they would learn fire building skills, forging, tempering, sharpening, tool making, tool repair, etc.  Perhaps also a little bit of woodworking and leather craft.

I like 1E secondary skill(s).  They give a background, but don't require charbuilding beyond generation.  

But I'm only playing to do stuff; I don't really care about the character per se.  I see characters like scrapbooks; valuable to the extent they reflect activity already enjoyed.

Quote from: Omega;1077622And there were quite a few reported issued with the 5e core books, particularly the PHB coming apart.

Yep, I bought a first print PHB of DnD 5e and it didn't take long for the pages to start falling out.

Quote from: danskmacabre;1077764Yep, I bought a first print PHB of DnD 5e and it didn't take long for the pages to start falling out.

WOTC was amazing at providing replacements, I was super-impressed.

Quote from: Motorskills;1077804WOTC was amazing at providing replacements, I was super-impressed.

Yeah I could have chased it up, but I only heard about their replacement policy several months after the book was in a really bad state, so I just didn't bother chasing it.
As I live in Australia, I figured it'd be a hassle to get a replacement arranged from the USA.