Ok so been playing G1 a couple of hours but i cant work out what my options are!
I know you can be a fighter, mage or somewhere in the middle but im not sure if that corrosponds directly to old camp, new camp and swamp?!
I like the idea of the fire mages but what route allows me to become part of them?
Also is there a 'cannon' route to take that makes the most sense with G2 and G3?
Thanks guys!

Minor spoilers:
You can become a fighter in any of the Camps. So if you want a fighter, you can pick any of them.
The most usual Mage path is to join the Old Camp first, which gets you access to the Fire Mages. Joining the New Camp makes becoming a Mage more difficult.
The Swamp camp does not have a "Mage path" as such, although you can use some spells as a fighter (but these are not as powerful as those obtained from the other Camps).
You generally have enough skill points to play a fighter, mage or a bit of both if you wish - but you won't be able to maximise everything, this is not Oblivion :-)
There isn't really a "canon" path as such since you can pick classes throughout the trilogy.

Great, thanks for the tips!

One more thing - there is a possible "conversion" - choosing Old Camp Warrior does not prevent you from becoming a Water Mage later on.

Note that the different groups of magicians don't actually restrict the spells you can cast to that particular element category, e.g. a Water Mage can use fireballs and vice versa for Fire Mages. Only your "circle" (magic knowledge level) determines what runes you have access to.
Regardless of which one you join you should buy up all the runes you can find and experiment to find your favourites; each camp has certain runes not available elsewhere, so you need to shop around, and some special runes can only be found as loot.