DCC74: 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!
Coelocanth: 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.