I just got the game on Steam and want to get some mods to: make it look better, enhance the game play.   
 
After looking through Nexus and some forums, it wasn't very clear which mods were compatible and sometimes what the mods did at all.  I would like to keep the amount of mods to a minimum.  All I want to do is get some good graphic mods, bug fixes, and any game play mods that really enhance the game (rather than change it, as this is my first play through.) 
 
Any help would be great, thanks.

If this is your first playthrough, then I would suggest to go without mods (beyond patches, cause this game is kind of broken). Modding is best done on subsequent playthroughs, when you have an idea about what elements you hate.

@Beforet said:

If this is your first playthrough, then I would suggest to go without mods (beyond patches, cause this game is kind of broken). Modding is best done on subsequent playthroughs, when you have an idea about what elements you hate.

Fan patches or just official stuff?

@Beforet said:

If this is your first playthrough, then I would suggest to go without mods (beyond patches, cause this game is kind of broken). Modding is best done on subsequent playthroughs, when you have an idea about what elements you hate.

I agree with this.

@Barrock said:

@Beforet said:

If this is your first playthrough, then I would suggest to go without mods (beyond patches, cause this game is kind of broken). Modding is best done on subsequent playthroughs, when you have an idea about what elements you hate.

Fan patches or just official stuff?

Any fan patch titled "Unofficial Fallout New Vegas" or similar you should download. Those tend to be huge bugfixes. Otherwise I can't help, I never really got started with NV. And install Fallout Mod Manager. You're not installing any big mods yet, but it should make installing those fan patches easier.

Is there a specific Unofficial Fallout New Vegas fan patch? Not sure if there's one on Falloutnexus or not?

A sprint mod? Wow. That's all I've ever needed in Fallout. BRILLIANT!!!
 
I'm not even being sarcastic. Since there's no vehicles, I would LOVE to be able to run.

Down load smoke mod...100,000 caps , can level everything to 100 & u get the alien blaster

 requiem from the capital wasteland which merges New Vegas and the Capital wasteland from Fallout 3 into one game 

You should probably wait until the July 19 patch. It's supposed to be a pretty large patch and it will probably break some mods before the mod authors update their mods. If you still want to play I would suggest you to only install graphic enhancing mods for your first playthrough. Avoid large gameplay altering mods like Project Nevada.
Poco Bueno is probably the only mod I would use for my first playthrough. EVE too but it's pretty new so you should probably wait a couple of updates.