I'm interested in gathering some information. In your respective campaigns, how often are the PCs relatively "normal" to begin with? What are the average mental balances? Do you impose minimum and/or maximum deviations from zero? I'm starting a new, low-intensity campaign and I'd like the characters to begin as pretty normal. I'm also interested in what basic kinds of character concepts have worked well or really not worked well at all. I was planning on have my players create forensic psychologist-types, as in Millennium, X-Files, Profiler, etc. I'd appreciate any and all thoughts on these matters. Thanks.

PC's should start around -25 to +25 as per the KULT rule book...Most players, however, like to take TONS of disadvantages to get extra skill points...I like Players to invent their own Archetypes to play because most people don't like having their options too limited...As long as they understand the setting and type of games you want to run then don't try to make them play specific role (unless they like that sort of thing..whip whip whip...

I guess you already have counted this out, but a normal human has 11 in all attributes, of course with some small changes.

In the campaign I am running (which is detailed on my web site) I chose to have relatively 'normal' beginning characters as well. I allowed a deviation from 0 of +/- 20 max and disallowed certain advantages and disadvantages such as magical intuition and the like which allow for a greater vision of the Truth. I did have the advantage that none of the people I run the game for have any idea what the Real story is as they do not own the books and have never played it before.

There are advantages and disadvantages to having your players being law enforcement officials of some type. In one sense they are much easier to manipulate as their world view tends to be fairly uniform. They have to (or at least should try initially to) operate within the constraints of a justice system which generally is not too keen on the usual player activities such as breaking and entering and bullets flying at the drop of a hat. Until they start to get an inkling that 'things are not as they seem' they should roleplay under the constraints of the law. Once they see that the law and everything else is a construct within the jail these limitations will probably begin to be ignored in the name of expediency. Their fellow officers of the law will not be sharing their enlightenment necessarily which can lead to a number of interesting situations as the characters try to justify their disregard for due process to the other members of their particular law enforcement agency.

Once again, thanks for the useful reply, Erik. I have been to your page many times and I find it very informative. The idea of the characters being law enforcement officials is not "official" yet. But even if we do go with that, things should be OK because

a) the players are really top-notch role-players and understand the constraints they'd be under and

b) I'm thinking of burying them somewhere in the bureaucracy of the US NSA, which might be able to cover up their occasional excessive zeal.

Well, if you're going to start a low level campaign, your characters could possibly have mental balances somewhere between ...-25 - +25. However, since your idea of having characters confronted with spooky crimes and stuff they would probably be under 0.Negative balances tend to have bad effects when they are confronted with terror or dread or whatever... low mental balance (-10 perhaps) and a high EGO should be easy to play. Perhaps a bit boring though...

I tend to dislike having the PCs as servants of the law. I rather give them a more vital role in the scenario than just the blokes who get to clean everything up. Nothing motivates a player like having the PCs wife, girlfriend or relative being the victim.

Of course, after a few incidents the PC might run out of relatives...