Did you mean AD&D or D&D, 2 different styles of gaming (wasnt impressed with D&D as much as AD&D).
I think the Unearthed Arcana was one of my more favorite books to use
The whole ad&d vs d&d got screwed up badly
They released "3rd Edition D&D" which doesn't make sense any way you look at it. The 3rd was obviously counting forward from 2nd edition AD&D, however they dropped the "advanced" tag and started pretending that there was no such thing as regular D&D (instead, there's "basic" D&D and "D&DM" the miniatures skirmish game that is a lot like chainmail).
I did game and still do game (shouldn't be too surprising given my white and nerdy quiz score
), but I've never had a good play by e-mail game go for any period of time.
There's talk of 4th edition coming out too, I'd expect it by 2008 from everything I hear. I'm hoping that they streamline some of the combat rules. At present, most of my players fear doing things like trip attempts, disarm attempts, etc since combat suddenly starts taking 10 minutes a round
I also hate a lot of the "skill" system in 3.X. It seemed like a good idea at the time, but they included skills for things like "diplomacy" and "gather information". Nothing kills role playing more than having your players walk into a tavern and saying "I'm going to role a gather information check!" rather than try and talk through what they plan on doing. When I DM, I tend to downplay those skills and require accompanying role playing to some extent.
