If I enter multiplayer and asign all characters to myself, will this allow me to play six self-generated characters? If so, how does this change the NPC quests/plots. Should you only play with 5 so you can always have an NPC about?

Yes, just start a IP game on your own computer and assign all six characters if you want full control. However, I would recommend you to use only 4 PCs so you can do several side(sub)quest at once, and also some of the NPCs are decent at what they do (along with some "interesting" interactions). And if you are using dail-up connections, to avoid the trouble to dail-in everytime you want to play, just copy the save game from multi-player save to single player, everything should be fine as long as the directory names of save games follow the appropriate format.

This may sound silly but i have not looked at the MP game at all. You mentioned dialing up. I do not have to dial up to use the MP do I? I was thinking you could use it stand alone like the single player.

For IP games (and my not so educated guess), I think the game needs to have your own (i.e. host) IP address in order to start under the TCP/IP option. In order to do that, I think you will have to be connected. It won't work if you select modem option since it will just seat there and wait for someone to call. This is troublesome for dail-up connections since it takes up the phone line (unless you turn call waiting off....). Also, sometimes it might appear that your game have crashed when you start a multi-player game, just wait...it takes a while for things to get loaded up.

You can use MP as a stand alone. You just assign all of the characters to yourself to control. I usually start a game with multiple-PC's this way, and then, like suggested earlier, save the game and transfer it from the MPSAVE folder to the SAVE folder and play in single-player. The game loads faster under single-player.

If you have a dial-up internet connection, you won't want to be connected to the net. To play with others, you want your internet connection working and then you all need to join-in on the host's IP address.

As to the question about playing MP, I haven't tried copying the saved games from the Multi-player folder to the single player folder, but you can run it as it is. The way you do this is by selecting a Serial connection (Computer to Computer via serial cable) or you can select TCP/IP (internet). When you create a game and then start, it will allow other users to jump in when they are ready. You do not need them to START the game. If you do not allow others to join, then you "OWN" all the characters. Some systems work better with serial, others work better with TCP/IP. My desktop computer liked serial better, but my laptop likes TCP/IP. The one benefit to playing TCP/IP is that if you start a game and you are connected to the internet, you can have a friend join up. Just a thought.