Advice on running Age of Worms?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Careful about being effective with Tome material. Rule Negative One is a motherfucker. Might not be a bad idea to intentionally sandbag some encounters to keep the heat off.

[radthemad4]

Um... sorry, what?

Because the DM is the final arbiter in ruling mechanics decisions, there's no such thing as objective power or utility. Power and utility is determined by what will be allowed at a table. And because most players aren't mathematicians nor game theorists and thus use incorrigible criteria (i.e. does this sourcebook look cheaply made, I dislike noncasters getting access to superpowers), what's allowed at a table is ultimately tribal and arbitrary. An officially published overpowered class is more likely to be allowed than a underpowered homebrew class simply because the former is officially sanctionary. Or if there are two proposed builds are of equal power, the one that uses fewer books (munchkin dumpster diving trolls!) and more of professional-quality books is more likely to be included -- without any regard to power.

Rule Negative One manifests itself in a number of arbitrary but familiar ways: don't bother analyzing books from third-party sources because they probably won't be allowed; wait until this expansion option gets published in an official book instead of using it straight out of the fanzines or playtest; try to keep your explanation of what your character does down to a minimum; if you have an unusual build be sure to pad your concept with unnecessary roleplaying filler you wouldn't have to do for less unusual builds to avoid an invocation of the Stormwind Fallacy and a subsequent ban, etc.

I'm the DM. Like my other players, the new guy doesn't actually know the rules (as far as I know... though I seriously doubt any of these guys are secretly char op gods...) Since Tome has so many classes, I just off handedly mentioned the ones that came to mind and he jumped at pokemon trainer. Him picking a Charmander was kind of fortunate as I was worried about the Acid Beetles causing a TPK.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Oh, Jesus radthemad4, I read your name as someone else. How embarrassing. Goddamn synthetic weed.