I recently bought the gothic series and, upon trying to play the first one, nothing happened. I have clicked the desktop shortcut, the play button on gog galaxy, and the launcher in the game files, all with the same results. There are no error messages or any reaction from my computer at all. Do i need any external programs to run it? Or is my there something wrong with my download? Please help :)

Which version of Windows are you using?

It's very hard to help you, since you provided no information about your system.

That said, the issue could be related to Galaxy client: do other games installed with Galaxy work?
You may want to reinstall the game outside Galaxy, using the classic installer.

Anyway I also suggest you to install the Gothic ½ SystemPack to improve compatibility with modern systems.

Is the SystemPack legal/safe? The site seems a little shady.

I am using windows 10, with a 64 bit OS. Is there any other relevant info that could help?

I just installed Gothic earlier on a Windows 10 build, and it started up with no issue. I know this doesn't exactly help you, but if you have updates deferred, you might want to install them.

I am using the most current build of Win 10 (CU)

Just since you already posted here - so you downloaded it recently from Gog, and the game worked out of the box?
I'm asking since I still have a physical copy lying around, which, with much pain, fiddling, and downloading of patches I got to work on my old Win 7 PC.
I'm kind of tempted to repurchase the game on Gog (since it's very cheap right now), but really only if there aren't major hiccups to be expected, since I already went through that once ;) I'm on Win 10/64 bit, same as the OP.

Sorry about the delayed response, I was at work earlier, and then played through The Vanishing of Ethan Carter. Yes, I bought Gothic 1 a day or two ago when it first went on sale, installed it, and fired it up using Win 10 with no tweaking needed. It's 100% vanilla, as vanilla as the GOG version is, anyway.

I am greatly annoyed when GOG versions require tweaking to get to work properly, but that isn't the case with this one. I'm planning on starting my "official" playthrough very soon :)

Well, they don't claim compatibility for Win 7/10, so I actually think Gog isn't really at fault for that... I might take a chance with it, since it is so very cheap right now ;) Thanks for the reply!

You're welcome! Be aware that the Creator's Update seems to have increased compatibility for a lot of titles while breaking it for a handful, notably Dungeon Siege 2: Broken World, and Space Siege. You can still get them to run, but you have to modify the .ini file to a custom setup.

GOG is my go-to play whenever possible. I hope you pick Gothic up, I've seen streamers playing it and it looks awesome.

Well, I was quite pleasantly surprised that, so far, Windows 10 hasn't caused any issues with games for me - although I haven't tried any old clunkers, yet ;)
Oh, I have played Gothic (and the sequels, except for the God forsaken EE, which Gog seems to really want to push on me now).
If it's your first run, you're in for a treat - and a very awkward control scheme... A really great game, although I'm a bit biased - lots of good memories of that one...

Thanks! I'm looking forward to it!

This has been an interesting thread for me since I'm planning on playing Gothic I again for the first time in years. I bought it from GOG but it may need to be updated. I was worried since I'm using a Win7/64 machine. Note, "was". :)

I'm finding that some of the older games on GOG need less adjusting :)