Hello and welcome to the game! I'm sure it's going to be great. Or well, I hope so at least... As for your questions: 1. Yes it is a bit of a trap. The first campaign I ran I told my players to make characters with only 950 CP and that I would give them morphs later. Which I did to a total worth of 75 CP per character (including bought augmentations) so as to give them a bit of a "bonus". Other ways to do it is simply to give them starting morphs that makes sense for their character even though it may be unbalanced or give them a certain amount of CP only for morphs. It is possible to have "insurance" to give players back morphs of identical costs if they lose it but I feel that sort of take away the "fear" of loosing something good and the surprise of whatever you might get later. Not all groups really care about character balance in a way that if they fall into a trap (which buying expensive morphs is) they'll feel it's okay and won't be upset. If that is your group then obviously you don't need to do anything special (I feel the game was written for this kind of group) but otherwise giving people sort of "equal worth" morphs is a good plan. 2. This one is more tricky. You may have to simply fill them in, either at the start or when stuff comes up. Otherwise you might want to encourage creation of characters that really doesn't know all that much so that the players and characters both learn during the game. 3. Don't introduce them to too much weirdness or too much stuff at once. Start slow and gradually introduce them to the stuff that EP holds, resleeving, reputation systems etc. Once they have gotten a feel for how the world works and what is the "standard" then you can start bringing in other creepyness like exurgents etc.

"The mesh" isn't a thing, in the sense you're thinking of. Any time you have multiple mesh inserts within range of each other, they'll all connect up to form a local network, and if you're anywhere people live, that range is going to be plenty to link everyone up. So if you live on Mars, you pretty much have the same sort of wide ranging internet coverage as present day earth- All of Mars and its satellites, basically. None of the technology in Eclipse Phase though gets around that pesky speed of light restriction though, so when you're going planet to planet, or random outer system habs in the middle of nowhere to, anywhere else, you aren't really going to have that sort of regular information sharing. You're dealing with some sort of laser/microwave radio transmission sorta deal, potentially taking a several minutes per request for information to relay around properly, assuming the proper hardware is set up somewhere. I believe the net effect is a bit like catching local news vs. national news. Someone vaporizes a major city on Mars, you'll hear about it anywhere in the system within the hour. Local gossip from distant habs though is going to be off your radar, unless it's something you've specifically set your muse up to go dig around for. And there's bound to be some isolationist habs which are only going to have local mesh access, off in the middle of nowhere, where nobody's heard anything from anyone since they first launched and that's the way they like it. That said, I'd say the average person's level of common knowledge is similar to present day. You have your fields of interest, you know plenty about them. You know plenty about your immediate environment and the little quirks involved in living there. You had a decent education and probably failed to retain much from it. The big difference is the whole muse thing. You know how there's certain people who will be having a conversation with you, and the moment something comes up that they're a bit curious about, they pull out a smartphone and get on wikipedia about it? Muses are little personal AI pets who do that for everyone, all the time, so if you need to be in the know about something, here's an article projected onto your retina. Mechanically, muses are also a fantastic innovation. Anytime the players want to research something, "OK, you have your muse start scouring around for something on that." As soon as you work out what you want your players to know, or you're done resolving something more important, "So here's what your muse managed to pull up on that earlier request..."

As the operation got under way, my Sentinels ended up leaving their personal morphs at a body bank and purchasing a rental (2%/day, minimum 5 days; this includes "danger insurance" that pays for 80% of the morph in case of damage/death) morph that they could "drive like its a rental." So that is one way for the Sentinels to keep their personal, purchased morphs out of harm. The downside is resleeving in the middle of an operation which then incurs a -10 penalty usually unless they are really good at resleeving or lucky.

I don't really agree on the not allowing pink bubblegum haired characters, if you're just meaning silly characters in general. The core books allow a lot of room for weird and bizarre character types. The important thing, however, is to remind players that such a character is going to be viewed as weird and out of place. For instance, the pissed off Firewall proxy is likely not going to be assuaged with cupcakes, your impractically large sword will in fact be impracticable, and your weird hair and unique fashion choice are going to be a huge target for anyone hunting you.

1. I recommend one of two routes. If you're playing Firewall and want to emphasize the need to be fluid about bodies, start your players bodiless and give some randomness to the bodies they're given when they arrive on their next job. Maybe roll a d100 / 2 and use the result as the max CP cost of the basic morph they can start with, and then have them use favours or cred if they want something better/new mods. If you plan on players staying reasonably set in their locales or want them to build regular shapes they use, try using the Morph Pool rules, provided here: http://gorbash.wikidot.com/morph-pool I've tried the latter, and it works, but it tends to prevent people from trying new bodies once they've got control of what they want. 2. This isn't usually too much of an issue. What's an issue is when GM knowledge is less than player/character knowledge. A GM being corrected can really slow things down. A GM not being corrected can lead to massive misunderstandings. A knowledgeable GM should ideally know to roll the character's Knowledge skill privately whenever the relevant moment comes up, assuming the player doesn't ask outright. Take a moment to explain as much to your players, telling them to ask whenever they wonder if there might be relevant knowledge to be had. 3. Oh my, a litany, but, most often, these are things you learn by doing and reading. Off the top of my head, remember that Rep isn't currency but a complex social web of favours; that not everything is available everywhere; that heavily-armed outsiders typically aren't going to get favourable receptions in most places; and that very few people are evil for its own sake. Make sure that your players always deal with the consequences of their actions. As for advice, if you include Psi in your game, use this: http://eclipsephase.com/psi-revamped A thousand times, PLEASE, use that.

we have another thread full of some useful tips http://eclipsephase.com/help-me-not-blow-my-first-attempt-dm

Yes, the snowflake issues is what I meant.