More people should know this

nptitim

Maybe most people already do know this but I only found out by stumbling across this tidbit on a random multiplayer forum page, but you can play BGEE with anywhere from 1-6 custom players by yourself. I often found that just having 1 main PC and then recruiting the other NPC's could be annoying if they weren't what I wanted or I was trying to mimic a PnP game I had played. You simply start up a multiplayer game with yourself, import in the characters you want, and you are good to go. To me this is a feature that should be advertised and not something you just happen to be able to work around. I just wanted to share this in case there were some other players out there that wanted a more IWD like party but didn't know how to set it up.

Dee

From the Sword Coast Survival Guide, p74:

Also on the permissions screen is an option, "Listen to Join Requests," which allows the leader to listen to requests to join the session or to turn off requests if there are enough players in the game. For example, the leader might only want to have one or two people in the game, so having people requesting to join could get annoying. An interesting facet of multiplayer is that the player creating the session can choose to play solo. The advantage to this is that all characters in the party can then be created from scratch.

Note: While we specifically included this option due to popular request, we actually recommend playing the game with NPCs recruited into the party; they'll have more personality.

The Note is the important part to explain why it's not widely advertised, but the underlined bit does say that what you describe is specifically allowed.

MERLANCE

Thats not as important to BG1 because the original NPCs don't have much personality. Aside from a few very rare banters between select people (xzar+montaron vs khalid+jaheira or Kivan vs Viconia) and a few rare additions to quest (Coran in the city with the baby) they are pretty much one dimensional.

Dee

True (with the exception of the new NPCs). That text originally came from the BG2 manual, but I left it there because it seemed like an appropriate message to gamers, that there were all these NPCs running around for a reason.

Silverstar

If you do not wish to go through the character arbitration screen each time you load the game, as well as not having the delay when pausing, you can copy your savegame from the mpsave folder to the save folder after you've made your party.

rdarken

I totally disagree on the NPCs being one-dimensional. They may not be as developed as the NPCs in BG2, but they are way more interesting. They don't explicitly tell you about themselves, but they do have a backstory on their Character Page and there are lots of hints about them in the small bit of banter there is. Plus, their special abilities... I feel like that alone gives them all a history we don't fully know.

and_then_or

My second run through BG (yes 15 yrs ago) I used the multi-player function to build my own party. I was having a hard time 'understanding' the NPC's in the game and thought this was closer to pnp, which is what I was familiar with.

Now I am not a powergamer and often struggle w/ the boss battles, but holy cow was the build-your-own-party overpowered. Game got boring.

Now I'm really attached to some of the charaters (no doubt as a result of BG2 and replaying).

However you could role-play a mult-player run through. Say six clerics (all using only staffs) on a quest for.... Sounds like a BBC sitcom.

Silverstar

Well there's no reason you can't use a mix of companions and custom characters. Like say you want a bard but aren't happy with any of the game's ones you simply add a custom bard and fill the other roles with characters you -do- like.

IchigoRXC

Also with BG1 NPC project the npcs have a lot greater depth to them. Once BG:EE is more stable, I hope to see the NPC project updated for our pleasure