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Do you play your games modded or vanilla and why?
I personally usually heavily mod my games, due to finding the process of modding itself fun, along with me preferring to spend a LONG time at one run through.
As an example, I'd give minecraft where I usually play so-called expert packs, which are basically taking a lot of mods and making them depend on each other for progression.
I almost always play the games unmodded for first playthrough (outside of graphical mods, anyway). Beyond that, I'm happy to dive well below sea level into the modding rabbit hole. After all, why not? You can get so much replay value -- effectively entirely different games, in some cases!
Mount and Blade, Bethesda games, even Monster Hunter games (so much custom postgame content!) -- I see no reason not to!
I usually try and do a first playthrough vanilla, then I'll go all out. Games I find really fun to mod are classic Doom & Doom II, and Skyrim (I use the Special Edition because it's way more stable than the original.) Doom is an amazing game to mod. There are 25 years worth of mods to play around with, so you'll basically never run out of things to do. I personally like finding a cool new gameplay changing mod and then testing out my new abilities on a megawad (compilation of maps) or slaughter map (that one's self-explanatory.) Doom just feels like an infinite playground. I like modding Skyrim because it's already such and interesting and captivating game world, so I love adding more stuff to that world. I also like adjusting the game to be just how I like it to look and feel.
I play DotA, but not much to mod outside of in-game cosmetics/gambling, since it's a competitive game.
I prefer no mods if the game is recent - I want my experience to be authentic, especially the first time around. But if the game is old, like a 10 years old game or even older usually you do want some mods to fix bugs and add modern features, a good example is Alpha Centauri, that still is a great game, but you just can't stomach it without mods for at least mouse wheel zoom.
As a Bethesda fan (RIP), modded to the tits is usually the go-to. And then even games like World of Warcraft can benefit greatly from mods/add-ons.
My philosophy would be, whenever possible, utilize mods to enhance or straight up fix the game you're playing. Developers are great, but they can't have the foresight of an entire fanbase and they also don't have the technology or justification to build for the tech that we have now/in the future.
Only games I tend to play unmodded either don't support mods or the mods aren't good. I play Tetris unmodded. And Overwatch I guess lol.
I play basically everything unmodded. I don't mod on my first playthrough, and I rarely play a game twice.
The exceptions to this tend to be big open world games, and then I stick to mods that are centered around QOL fixes. I did some modding of weapon names and inventory limits for STALKER: Shadow of Chernobyl. I used some UI fix for Oblivion. I installed some mods for New Vegas, but I can't recall what.
And for those games that "require" mods to play nowadays, I tend to go through all the trouble of installing the mods, making sure the game still loads, and then never playing the game. I'm looking at you original editions of Baldur's Gate, Planescape: Torment, Temple of Elemental Evil, and Vampire: Bloodlines.
Generally, if there's a good survival mod, I'll go for it, regardless of whether I've played the game yet or not—one of the reasons I liked Breath of the Wild so much is that it had survival mechanics, and really the only reason I spent over a dozen hours on Skyrim was because of the mod "Frostbite."
I generally play a game for a while on vanilla and then start to get crazy with mods to keep me interested.
Lately I've been playing the Project Brutality and Hideous Destructor mods for Doom 2. They're completely different gameplay experiences.
PB is basically an obnoxious 16 year old boy's hilariously over the top gory murder fantasy. HD turns the game into a hyper-realistic, slow paced experience similar to the original Rainbow Six and Ghost Recon games.
Depends on the game but most of the time, I'll play with mods/add ons, especially if it's something I've played before.
If it's something that I'm giving a try after its been out awhile, I'll usually check out what mods are out there, what they fix/don't fix, and go from there.
RTS games usually get pretty robust mod options like Star Wars Empire at War and it's multitude of mods that pit different shows/movies against each other like Star Wars vs Star Trek or a really good Stargate SG1 mod that replaced all the units in the game with Stargate units and ships or overhaul mods that expand on the game itself with new ships and characters from various eras of the Star Wars universe.
The Total War games are good about it too. There's some seriously awesome GoT and Lord of the Rings mods out there since both franchises have been sorely lacking in RTSs. LotR had the excellent Battle for Middle Earth games but both franchises could use a top notch RTS.
If it wasn't for mods, I wouldn't have over 1000 hours in Rimworld and probably several thousand in Minecraft. Mods significantly increase the lifespan of a game.
I've modded Skyrim and Fallout 4 because I find the vanilla weapons and armour boring. And I've modded The Witcher 3 for that Gwent card trader, which makes it easier to buy Gwent cards. Oh, and Kingdom Come Deliverance because I can't be arsed brewing Saviour Schnapps just to save the game. So, I guess you could say I do mod a lot of my games.