I recently became involved with a face to face group for the first time in a long while. Now the current DM is having to leave for personal reasons and I have been nominated to run the next campaign (which I am pleased with).
I gave the players the choice of three games in which I would run a campaign:
1) SCAP (described a real brief overview with no spoilers)
2) Masks of Nyarlathotep (Call of Cthulhu)
3) Homebrew Sci-Fi (have some ideas floating around here)
The players chose SCAP and we began brainstorming character ideas. My style of play is to give the players choices so I decided to move it to Forgotten Realms to make all of those choices available as well. So far it looks like we are shaping up with the following
1) Human (Damaran) Cleric of Tyr (Brother of Paladin)
2) Human (Damaran) Paladin of Tyr (Sister of Cleric)
3) Unknown Rogue
4) Unknown Arcanist of some type
So the group looks pretty balanced for now. I am happy about that. I think I will need to put some thought into how to deal with the Paladin's Sense Evil abilities, but I know there has been stuff on the boards on this already.
Also, Tyr will be substituted for St. Cuthbert in this campaign so this will work out quite well. Jenya and Alek Tercival can have prodigees... They are also interested in their characters being from a noble family, so that will be another good angle for me to work.
For the rogue, I think I will do what I can to replace Patch from the orphanage with this character. I did this in the online game I ran for the rogue and it worked out VERY well.
That leaves the arcane caster type. We'll see what she decides to play, but she is the youngest member of the group (16 year old daughter of two of the other players) and is not real outgoing, so it is difficult to tell what she would like. I definately need to make sure she shines often (fragile ego). I am thinking that if I can swing it she will be pulled into the Striders (or more likely Harpers in the FR).
Anyway, so now I am off to peruse the boards (including my own old posts) as well as rpggenius...
Let the fun... BEGIN!!!!
Sean Mahoney
If you haven't noticed it yet, check the back of the book for a section about recommendations to players for classes for the campaign, along with traits that characters can choose.
As far as the evil thing...what I do is say that in a given population, around 20% ping evil and around 20% ping good. Being evil is not a crime. Doing certain evils is. Killing citizens because they are evil is murder.
There are several threads about advice for starting DMs on this board. Search for "starting" or "new".