Rob David and Guy Hoyle argue that PCs are more likely to be in the oddball cults, while others are less likely to allow such latitude in choosing cults. I lean towards Rob's position, although, like many of these situations, there are good arguments on both sides. Unless the GM pushes players towards the mainline cults, then the players are likely to gravitate towards the minority cults exactly because they're different! The advantages of having different ranges of skills and spells to draw on is too useful to ignore.
Our present lot are cousins from the Cinsina tribe
who had to get the hell out of Sartar after Starbrow's
Revolt, so we're all Orlanthi, but still a somewhat
motley lot. Barntar, Odayla, Elmal, Orlanth and Vinga
(was Ernaldan, converted out of hero-worship) are
their cults. (Elmal is a common choice in one clan,
so that was actually mainstream for him.) We played a
couple of scenarios set in Sartar, placed on our way
back to Cinsina lands after the collapse of the
rebellion. The rest has been out in Prax. Avoiding
too-deep ties where we are (because we still want to
go back home) has been necessary to keep the group
together.
We still devote the necessary time to do fieldwork in
Garhound, our adoptive home, but because none of us
has yet married in, there's lots of time that we're
available to serve the Zola Fel, and just plain earn a
living as traders/contractors with boat-for-hire.
(One of us should really join Issaries, but it just
hasn't come up...)
Probably Heortling society permits youngish clan members (and almost certainly restricted to males only) who haven't married may be able to go wandering with a group of likeminded youths to get valuable experience. Do things like visit some of the more distant relatives, see potential brides, impress the parents, etc. However, it's unlikely that the clan chief or tribal king is going to feel that this kind of group are competent or mature enough to be entrusted with serious problems. Expendable, perhaps, but that's not quite the same!
Once you get married, then unless you actually game farming life, or are all traders in Issaries (minority anyway), your acceptable reasons for being able to take off and travel become really restricted. Just in the interests of mild realism, playing fringe cultists without day-in, day-out, sunrise-to-sunset work to do is a great advantage.
So, on balance, I'm definitely comfortable with a skewed range of cult choices in PCs.
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