Welcome to Gamebanshee.
There's nothing wrong with posting your questions here. We enjoy answering questions like yours. But ultimately, you will have to do your own research and make your own decisions. You will get a lot of conflicting advice.
My own recommendations will probably not be popular. But as prune1 said, they're just my opinions.
I think that mods are great, but I still think that you should keep them to a minimum, especially since you are an old school RPGer. I like to use the patches that fix bugs and correct broken dialogues. I also like "convenience tweaks" such as extra Bags of Holding, infinite stacking, 100% spell scribing (which I can accomplish by doing it the hard way, so I might as well do it the easy way), and so forth.
I like many of the NPC mods. But if you are playing the game for the first time in ten years (did I understand you correctly?), then I think you should play with the original NPCs. There are already too many NPCs to choose from, and you won't be able to play with all of them, so there's no need to add more to the list.
For my most unpopular recommendation,
I don't think you should install BG1Tutu. BG1 is a well-balanced game, and Tutu unbalances it. I also think that the BG2 interface spoils the original atmosphere of BG1. While I like the idea of "continuity", I don't think it's possible to make BG1 and BG2 more continuous without unbalancing BG1 or spoiling the BG1 atmosphere or forcing Bg1 into a mold that simply doesn't fit. To me, it's more fun to play BG1 and BG2 separately than it would be to play BG1Tutu, because it feels the way it's supposed to feel--you're playing two great games, and they're great the way they are. I also think Tutu causes a lot of complications. For example, a character that is optimal in BG1 is less than optimal in BG2, so you're forced to think about character development issues in BG1 that were never part of the original game. I'd rather start a new character in BG2 and PRETEND they're the same. In a nutshell, if you want continuity, it's just as effective to play them separately and PRETEND you're playing the same character.
Don't underestimate the power of your imagination, and USE it. I think the best enhancements to the game come from your own imagination. For example, you can create your own character background, and you can pretend that your character is talking to the NPCs even when the game does not provide pre-written dialogue. You can also deviate from the canned quests slightly and "do your own thing", and you can even pretend that you have stopped (i.e., paused) to smell the roses.
For BG1, I recommend the Dudley Fixes and a couple of components from the Ease of Use Pack such as larger stacks of ammo.
For BG2, I recommend either the Baldurdash fixes or the G3 Fixpack (you should only use one or the other), a few components from the G3 Tweak Pack, a few components from the SimDing0 Tweak Pack, Ascension, and the Pocket Plane Group Banter Pack (which adds extra dialogues for the existing NPCs). If you install more than one NPC mod, you might be interested in the Pocket Plane Group Cross Mod Banter Pack.
For a more detailed list of specific mod recommendations, you can read one of my previous posts:
http://www.gamebanshee.com/forums/speak ... post602550
That list is old, and I don't know how many of the mods have been "deprecated" by new mods (that is, made obsolete my newer mods, so you shouldn't install the older ones). The main thing is that I listed the features that I like to install from each mod. I've never had any compatibility problems with those selections.
