Well, the *worst* book is definitely UNEARTHED ARCANA, for reasons well-known.

But the book I personally hate the most is GREYHAWK ADVENTURES, because it nullified the framework of LEGENDS & Lore, in that it stated that no PC can't find or fight a true deity, and from now on, all gods writeups would be the stats of their Avatars.

I guess Diomedes only injured Aphrodite's "avatar", and Raistlin only killed off the "avatars" of Takshisis, Paladine and the rest of the Krinn Pantheons...

Greyhawk - It was all filler.  I can't think of a single reason to crack the book open and look for an idea or information.

Ankles wrote:DL Adventures? Despite its great essay about the moral laws of Krynn's alignments? Despite the fact that it really attempted to present Krynn as a new campaign setting?

Why?

You asked our least favorite...

Second would be the Greyhawk Book for the reasons stated above.
Filled with useless filler.

I voted Unearthed Arcana. All of the rule changes and tacked-on bits felt a little like a betrayal. Paladins are now a subclass of some class that didn't exist a moment ago? Blech. Illusionists now have to take "read illusionist magic"? Oh, druids can now progress beyond 15th level? The level limits for demi-humans I've been adhering to for 5 years no longer apply? Etc.

I would have been fine with UA had it been marketed as the 2nd edition of AD&D that never was, for which it was basically a preview, but instead it came across as a hodgepodge of Dragon magazine articles. If it had been done more thoughtfully, and been marketed as a fragment of the wholesale overhaul of AD&D that it basically it was, rather than as a bunch of official rules expansions that didn't really fit with what had gone before, at least I could have separated it in my head as to its usefulness. Instead, I spent the next couple of years trying to shoehorn it into the "canon" of AD&D, largely unsuccessfully.

I went with OA. Other than being an interesting read in spots, I just had zero use for it. I guess it was a solid enough book, but for me it was useless.

DL would be next. Even though it is a HC book, I never really though of it as a real rule book. More of a campaign accessory. I guess you could say the same thing aboout GH. I like GH much better as there are some general things that can be applied to any campaign setting.

Despite some problems with UA, I do like it as a product. Yes, some things are just stupid (namely Cavalier). Meta (on above post) sums them up. But other things were good enough.

Unearthed Arcana blew up the game.  

But, one could argue that it was blown before by all the rules variants in DRAGON.  Could argue...but would be wrong.

Oriental Adventures followed by Dragonlance. Both were pieces of.

FormCritic wrote:Unearthed Arcana blew up the game.  

But, one could argue that it was blown before by all the rules variants in DRAGON.  Could argue...but would be wrong.

I think this largely happened when adopted in its entirety. I'm not sure if that was its intended use.

The designers should have emphasized the selective use of the rules, particularly given teenagers - probably their biggest demographic - were unlikely to have the courage to customize their campaign so diligently.

The ones I don't like are Wilderness Survival Guide (this isn't a survivalist show) and Manual of the Planes (the Gord novels had more interesting planar settings).  They just feel ... forced, like paid assignments passed on to people who really didn't have any passion for their assigned products.

I don't like a lot of the systems in DSG, but it has some fun ideas and fluff so it's not despised like those other two.