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I'm looking at my mac options from GOG and I'm wondering.. Planescape or Baldurs Gate?

Skip Baldur's Gate 1. Baldur's Gate 2 is much better in pretty much every way. My advice would be to play both Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate 2. Both are two of the greatest computer role playing games every made. Baldur's Gate 2 doesn't have a good story mainly because Bioware has never believed in bothering to hire good writers, but the combat is great fun. Especially the mage combat. Definitely try some of the mods that are available for it. Most importantly SCSII aka Sword Coast Strategems II. It vastly improves enemy AI to the point of making the game one of the most challenging I've ever played. Challenging and fun too. BG2Fixpack and BG2Tweaks are also mandatory.

PS:T is very much an interactive novel. A very good one. I am one of those who also enjoyed the combat, but nearly everyone complains about Torment combat it seems. It's not as good as Baldur's Gate 2, but it is still far better than the vast majority of cRPGs IMO. Torment is so good that it transcends game-ness and becomes something different.

I'm looking at my mac options from GOG and I'm wondering.. Planescape or Baldurs Gate?

Skip Baldur's Gate 1. Baldur's Gate 2 is much better in pretty much every way. My advice would be to play both Planescape: Torment and Baldur's Gate 2. Both are two of the greatest computer role playing games every made. Baldur's Gate 2 doesn't have a good story mainly because Bioware has never believed in bothering to hire good writers, but the combat is great fun. Especially the mage combat. Definitely try some of the mods that are available for it. Most importantly SCSII aka Sword Coast Strategems II. It vastly improves enemy AI to the point of making the game one of the most challenging I've ever played. Challenging and fun too. BG2Fixpack and BG2Tweaks are also mandatory.

PS:T is very much an interactive novel. A very good one. I am one of those who also enjoyed the combat, but nearly everyone complains about Torment combat it seems. It's not as good as Baldur's Gate 2, but it is still far better than the vast majority of cRPGs IMO. Torment is so good that it transcends game-ness and becomes something different.

Don't hype it too much, you're unnecessarily raising the expectations of new players.
For someone used to modern video games, it's just not that good.

The game is absolutely excellent. It cannot be hyped too much

For someone used to mindlessly clicking on enemies and having the storyline delivered via cut-scenes, the game may not be too good. But if you are willing to read for the story, you should be fine even today

Also, while I am at it, there is a high-res mod available. That may be useful to today's gamer.

I'm actually in the midst of a Baldurs Gate 2 game right now. That was a game well worth buying. I think I still have a paper manual and cloth map somewhere. And you could actually back up the discs. So I play right from my original disc images for that warm and fuzzy feeling. Definitely buy Throne of Baal as well. Although you should probably first see if you like Shadows of Amn. If you don't then you certainly won't like ToB expansion. They install together as one (mostly) contiguous game but SoA can be played by itself.

Go to gibberlings 3 for some mods. Definitely at least install the BG2 fixpack and BG2 tweaks. Some other mods to consider are sword coast strategems 2, ascension, unfinished business, longer road, and DAportraits. For web forums definitely check out the BG2 (and BG1) gamebanshee forum and sorcerers.net. I'm not sure BG2 is a game that I would really want to buy from GoG, but neither Interplay nor Black Isle are around anymore so I guess it is your only choice other than torrent sites or ebay and the original game has a CD check so your GOG version will be better in that sense. Still, if you can find an original boxed Baldurs Gate 2 complete with ring bound manual on ebay and it isn't too expensive I would go for it. One of the best computer games ever made. And with mods like SCS2 it is even more fun, although that mod is still a little buggy.

Right now I'm playing Fallout 2 with a high rez patch on a 22" LCD. I've also got a widescreen mod installed for Torment, but it works with any Infinity Engine game.

For Infinity engine-based RPGs — the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, plus Planetscape Torment —, you can use the Gibberlings 3 widescreen mod. I have also been lucky with Arcanum, since Terra Arcanum hosts a high resolution patch that works perfectly.

A mod was released for these games which pretty much handles higher resolution. It does that not by up-scaling but rather by showing you a larger section of the hand-drawn pixel-perfect game map, keeping the original crispness.
The mod can be found here.
Nice example screenshots for Planescape: Torment here.

I have found gibberlings three to be a great Infinity Engine modding site. http://www.gibberlings3.net/ Damn shame that gaming has become so mainstream. Companies like Black Isle get dismantled while crappy fluff games continue to thrive and make record profits because they have shiny new graphics. Nevermind that they have the same boring repetitive gameplay. *sigh* I get so tired of hearing "yeah but the graphics are dated" out of people when it comes to good games. They are missing the fragging point.