I'm more interested in having mods.
In case anyone happened to be interested in modded gameplay, I'd personally suggest the following not-terribly-intrusive mods:
- Project Red: A successor to Red Power (discontinued since 1.4.7). Greatly simplifies redstone circuits adding single-block logic gates, redstone cables that can run on walls, ceilings, etc. (and can be separated by colour) and various coloured lighting fixtures.
- Computercraft: Adds programmable computers that can interface with redstone signals (i.e use redstone as input or output, including cables from the mod above) and can be programmed using Lua (an easy to learn language).
- Railcraft: Fantastic mod for multiplayer, although more complex than the above. Expands on the concept of minecarts and adds things like proper switchable junctions and linking between carts to create trains. Includes locomotives (forget that silly useless furnace minecart that makes no sense) to pull said trains and various new carts (liquid tank cart, workbench cart, track relayer, tunnel bore). New types of tracks (cheap wooden, reinforced, high-speed, etc.) and special utility tracks (directional, gated, station, etc.), automatic cart loaders/unloaders. There's also signalling which is fantastic for organising all the above in games with more than 1 player.
Not all of these have been released for the latest version of Minecraft, however.