I've gone all these years and have never played BG1. I'm downloading it now and excited about starting--would you guys recommend installing any mods, or going through the "normal" way? One thing I really don't want is instability/crashes. Thanks for any tips.

It is your first time playing, therefore you owe it to yourself to not install any mods. BG1 is quite stable on it's own -- I have played it many, many times, and it has never crashed on me once in it's vanilla format. Think about mods later, once you have experienced BG1 as it should be... at least for the first time.

I'm playing BG 1 the first time myself. I followed the conservative modders guide which can be found here.

At the very least I would install the widescreen mod and the GUI mod. This will allow the game to run on modern resolutions and increase the size of the in-game text.

Be aware that even with the posted 'conservative guide', you will NOT be playing BG1. There is simply too much added, even with that slimmed down 'guide'. Play it as BG1 first, then, and only then, can you decide for yourself whether it's better with, or without mods.

Thanks for the info all. I'm 2 min away from installing, so I'll go with it out-of-the-box for now. After I'm done I'll look more into that mod page.

Great thing is I have the ref guide/manual/map already, have had it on my wall for years when I bought the game. But gog makes it so easy, I'm enjoying buying all these games again and them being so easy to run.

I'll be back in a week or so when I'm done with the game!

Peace

lol Good Luck!

In a week, you must have a lot of free time on your hands. I haven't even gotten to BG City and I've been playing for almost a month. Only an hour or two every other day, but still.