The book suggests randomly picking a starting career. My players have always enjoyed the randomness of the starting careers. What about those who want to be either priests or wizards. Do they also start with a random pick and then move into the appropriate career once they have the necessary experience? Or should a GM allow them to start with a beginning career in the tracks for priests or wizards?

Surely, you do whatever makes sense for your game....

I've always been a fan of the random starting career. The random starting career is only what you were doing up until you decided (or fate decided for you) that you had a different path to tread; that of the adventurer. This time around, the default method of career selection isn't entirely random in that you pick 3 at random, but then choose one of those. Depending on your point of view that's either giving the players some control over starting career rather than it being completely random, or just forcing them to pick the the career they dislike least out of 3 equally unattractive choices. However, picking entirely at random or just choosing career outright are both listed as valid options.

If you choose to enforce random selection, then yes, the player wanting to play a Wizard or Priest would have to move into the career using advancements. In my game I have a player that wanted to play a Priest, but I enforced the draw 3, choose 1 method. He drew Zealot. He was originally planning on moving into Initiate as quickly as possible, but has now decided that he wants to take at least a few advances in his current career before making the switch.

An equally valid alternative is you could house rule it to allow those that prefer random selection to pick at random, while those that have a strong desire to play a specific career to do so. That way you can satisfy both camps.

I normally let people chose the career they want to. This is not to say that the system doesn't have it's bright sides, all the contrary. The reason is that I normally play with long time roleplayers that have their favorite role in the game. This helps most of them to really live their character to the limit of reality. And, leaving Priests and Wizards aside, it doens't make much of a difference anyway... The only two things that are really different are the stancemeters and the sockets... The stance meter is something I don't want to force on players. Some always play cautious, so why force them to be a Troll Slayer? And the sockets are not that much of a concern anyway, they are quite similar anyway...

For Wizards and Priests things are a bit different, but especially there I don't want to force my players into it. Just doesn't make sense.

Sidenote: I would really have liked to get more than one Priest and Wizard career card... I talked to a group today that got hold of the Tome of Blessings and wanted to play as a traveling priest group... Couldn't happen anyway, because Verena and Myrmidia are not yet in the game, but would really have been fun to play...

Greetings from Hell,

Lucifer