Did you use UA in your 1E games?

Please list your experiance with using the book, and if you think it was a net positive or negative on the game.

When the book first came out we did. But after a year, we dropped it (only mining it for magical items and spells). I thought it had a negative impact on the game.

We used it. At the time it was great and cool and gave us exciting new options. But we were teenagers and didn't think too hard about issues like new races and classes outshining the old. In retrospect, how big a problem barbarians and cavaliers and super-races were became apparent.

When it comes down to it, the book exhibits early examples of what I consider fundamental gaming flaws. Chief among them being "kewl powers for bad attitudes" and "power escalation".

If you sift though the crap, there was some good stuff in there that you could use. And I think the game has progressed from lessons learned due to the book.

We did use it as kids, but now when we play a game of 1e we tend to stick to the PH only and really only use that for spells.

Oh yes we used it. A friend and myself made Drow fighters who were brothers. Played them for a long time. To us a Drow was a superfied elf, there was no consequences for us walking around the surface.

HELLS NO.

i still believe UA was written by Gary for his powergaming scions.

Used a lot of stuff from the UA. It was a great book, and whether it was for powergamers or not, I felt it added quite a bit of enjoyment to the game..

Used it all initially. Then (as I was DM), I banned all the new races and classes, but kept the rest - especially the spells.

We started using UA the moment it came out. Doubtless there were some bits we didn't use (e.g. we never allowed drow PCs), but that was true of the core books as well.

If I were to play oAD&D again, I'd probably not use UA or be even more selective about it. But then, the shoddy quality of it compared to my other 1e hardbacks, it probably wouldn't survive actual gaming anyway.

Yes, we used it for the most part. The increased level caps were welcomed as I recall. We used the spells pretty extensively, as well as many of the magic items (which all made the change and lasted well into 2e). We didn't use the new races so much, but not out of anything other than circumstance - nobody was interested in playing the new variants. We also used the new classes pretty extensively. I recall the cavalier in particular as being heavily unbalanced. The barbarian was a bit better, assuming that your DM enforced the class' restrictions. Didn't UA introduce expanded specialisation rules as well? We used those too. My main problem with the book, actually, was that it wasn't well incorporated into subsequent adventure releases (I recall seeing some implementation of its rules here and there, but nothing widespread). This made UA characters more powerful than their levels would suggest when running them through 1e adventures, as those adventures weren't generally tailored for UA characters.

We used all of it at first and then within a few months all we continued to use were the spells and magic items. The cavalier was the most popular feature IMC.