Okay, so being totally new to this series, and AD&D as well, I am a total noob with all of it. So I am going to print off the game manuals, and GOG provides two manuls for BG 1; they are 'Baldur's Gate' and 'Tales of the Sword Coast' (the expansion). Should I just print off the ToSC manual rather than mess with the other one? Would there be anything missing or not covered as completely? Sorry if this is a dumb question, but again I am very new to all this and don't want to waste time and paper. And toner!

The first area of BG1 is a pretty good tutorial area. But the world of BG1 and 2 is just different enough to require getting familiar with BG1 first. Have fun.

I would print off the first manual and read the TotSC manual to see what changes were made. The only thing you may want to print off from the Tales manual are the new spells (if you want to have the descriptions handy). Possibly the tables if you find you need to reference them. The best thing to do is read both before printing, then you can easily decide what you need to print and what you can skip. I tend to cobble together a personal manual from the important/significant pieces of the multiple manuals when in a situation like this.

Thanks. You know, I just took a moment to actually peek at the ToSC manual, and I noticed it does mostly just describe the changes, and it is a LOT shorter. Before I even had time to look, I just assumed it'd be exactly the same, but with some hard-to-notice changes that a noob like me would either miss or be more confused by. I guess I should learn to read first, ask questions later.

I have played BG-1 a little bit so far, after going through all the dice rolling BS. Looks like a pretty advanced interface to me, a guy who's really only ever played the Ultima series. I'm trying to do this w/o using a walkthrough, at least for spoiler types of things. I do like walkthroughs for having lists of stuff that I could make myself, though. Just saves time and doesn't feel at all like cheating.

I have a printed copy of BG2 with me and that made it through BG1 and 2. Really, all you need are a few charts in the back for building your character. Everything else is self-explanatory.

I would recommend moving Tool Tip delay in options to the quickest setting if you suffer from "I have no idea what this icon is/does-itis" like me. I can't ever tell what a spell is by an icon. I need the words.

Enjoy your adventure. It's one of the best.

If you hold tab, it'll make any tooltips appear immediately. Handy for figuring out which people in the cities are named (and thus will probably have something to say) and which are just called 'commoner' or suchlike, and thus won't. You may need tutu/BGT to be installed for that, though.