What order should I play these CRPGs in?

Hello forum! Been awhile :)

 

So, I am looking to play through some classic RPGs and I've pretty much knocked out all the ones on the SNES (which was actually quite a painful experience once you treaded off the path from well known titles and cult classics...two words...Ancient Magic. *shutters*) I was going to move on to PS1 and PS2 next but before that I wanted to play through some well known PC rpgs. These are the names that are being thrown around:

 

Planescape: Torment

 

Baldur's Gate 1

 

Baldur's Gate 2

 

Neverwinter Nights 1

 

Neverwinter Nights 2

 

Icewind Dale 1

 

Icewind Dale 2

 

Now, it appears that these are somehow related? Like they take place in the same multiverse? I'm very much a "play it in order" kind of gamer. Anyone know what order to play these in or a recommendation of what order to play these in? Thanks in advance.

From that list I have only played Baldur's Gate and NWN 1&2, I recommend all 3 though. And from what I know they are all set in Forgotten Realms, but there is no other connection between the games, story wise, so I'm not sure that the order matters, beyond the obvious (BG 1 before BG 2).

As said, the games are set in the "Forgotten Realms", which is the biggest offizial setting for the D&D and AD&D PnP-RPGs, with hundreds of books and several dozen computer games placed in it.


Baldur's Gate, Neverwinter and Icewind Dale are basically different regions/cities in that world, while the Planescape is a magical dimension on that setting.


EDIT:


If you're interested in learning more, this might be a good start:


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Dungeons_%26_Dragons_video_games

I've played Neverwinter Nights, but mainly to create custom content on the PC.  If you like D&D, it should be a fine choice.

Planescape: torment has the best rpg story of all time.  So go with that one.  :)

Thanks for all the answers! 

@Andar, that list is exactly what I was looking for.

Looks like I will be starting with Baldur's Gate 1. Seeing how many expansions Neverwinter Nights 1 has (9!!!) it appears that I have quite a daunting task ahead of me. But it shall be a fun & interesting one. Afterwords, I will apparently know mostly everything about the Forgotten Realms storylines lol 

Those are only the official expansions - the big difference between the NWN series and the other series was that the NWN came with an editor, and there are dozens of fan-games based on NWN1 and NWN2.
Nope, only the computer-based storylines. That wasn't a joke about the hundreds of books published about the forgotten realms setting. The first novel was published 1987, and most of the years since then had more than a dozen books per year published (with several dozen authors writing them).
http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Portal:Novels

Yeah I came across this when I was looking up info earlier: http://o-love.net/realms/fr_time_notable.html Massive timeline for Forgotten Realms.

D&D would be a good choice. That's what I played first. 

@Ralpf, thanks for the reading material! Spent an entire afternoon reading that haha

@doncht, I played 3.5 for a while and then found pathfinder :) great games

That's the recommended order I suggest, as I believe it'll give you a nice change of pace with each game and not get you (completely) burned out with playing just the Infinity Engine games. I don't recommend playing Neverwinter Nights 1, the official modules for it are awful, though there are some decent custom made modules people have made, and combat is absolutely dreadful (easily the worst I've played in any RPG). I only kept NWN2 on the list because of Mask of the Betrayer and Storm of Zehir.

Just wanted to add that The Icewind Dales (great name for a band!) are both quite different from the BG series - they have more of an emphasis on combat, and I personally found them a LOT harder than the BG series.

Also, people are saying to ignore the first Neverwinter Nights - I don't agree myself, but I can totally see their point. I would like to say these 2 things about it:

1. The graphics are weird. NWN2 graphics are pretty good, but NWN has very blocky graphics, and doesn't 'feel' like a D&D game. The characters feel like D&D characters, but they feel like they're in some bizarre proto-mmo world, not the Forgotten Realms. Which I personally LIKE about the game, but it doesn't feel like a living city with a personality - like Baldur's Gate did. I know I'm talking about 'feel' a lot, but that's important to me.

2. The storylines for NWN and NWN2 are only very loosely linked. Storywise, there's no need to play NWN in order to understand the NWN2 storyline, beyond vague references to party characters and NPCs from the first NWN.

I wish I could play all these games again for the first time - I'm jealous! :)