Masque of the Red Death

[Comet]

Simple question, people. What version is the best?
To my knowledge, there are two incarnations of this 1890's Ravenloft sourcebook:

The original one, back in the AD&D days.
And the new one, published by White Wolf's Sword and Sorcery in 2004 I think.

Which version of the Masque of the Red Death is the best?

[shadzar]

Um.. The original for AD&D, and the WW one for 3.x.

[Comet]

Okay, assume that I can play both versions and the differences between AD&D and 3.X aren't such a huge deal to me.
Which of the sourcebooks, on their own merits, is the better one? Do they contain about the same amount of flavour text and descriptions rather than sheer mechanics?
I'm mainly looking for "fluff" and inspirational story ideas and such. The system doesn't matter as much.

I know practically nothing about Masque of the Red Death books. What should I get to have the best reading experience?

[kjones]

If you're looking for inspiration, does this have anything to do with the Edgar Allen Poe short story of the same name?

[hamlet]

I've not seen the white wolf version of the setting, but AD&D version from the 1990's (not 80's) of Masque of the Red Death is quite good and, seeing as there's only three books (1 boxed set and two source books) that can be gotten for relatively cheap, I'd recommend that one.

It's not really a coherent setting so much as it is an idea primer. The actual setting is "Gothic Earth" which is to say this world, but with the assumption that monsters, ghosts, and demons really exist on the fringes of reality and magic does really bad things.