I noticed that Time of War is out in paper and I had a few questions before I decide to 'purchase' it:
1) Are there any addons planned already? And if so which ones?
2) Does it bring anything to the regular tabletop game? If so what?
3) How 'difficult' is the game? Is it dice roll intensive or far more 'rp' orientated?
4) I read here and there the focus does not lie on the mechbattles is this true?
5) Is there a 'seperate' systems for fighting in mechs or does it use the tabletop ruleset?
6) Does the system allow the Clans to be played 'easily' or does it have a tendency to push you towards the 'traditional' ('good') factions? As is the case in many rpg systems.
7) If I were to try to use the game to draw more people into the Battletech universe, how good is it for that?
8) Are there any facets of the rpg you find noteworthy and make it stand out? Something you yourself believe is a strength of the system?
Chiming in a bit later here, sorry.
1) Right after AToW was released, Herb (at least I think it was Herb, definitely a dev though) actually put up a poll and discussion asking us what we would like to see as the first rules extension. No announcements, though, but we'll likely get something. Out of the gate, though, AToW gives you plenty of options and Era Report: 3052 includes some detail for making characters for scenarios around the Clan Invasion Era.
2) Everyone else seems to have taken that to mean are they compatible; the answer of course, is absolutely. As for the ability to bring something to the tabletop game itself, I think it can bring some stuff to it, the pilot abilities are quite interesting and having actual skills, lets you control more actions with more granularity than just roll against piloting or gunnery. Additionally, if you plan to deploy infantry formations, AToW provides many additional rules for playing them. I have described AToW as the Tactical Operations for PBIs; it brings alot more neat rules to the table, but you have to be choosy about them since they tend to bog down gameplay.
3)The focus is on the roleplay aspect, so most of the challenge comes from acting out another persona. Certain skills were actually excised from the previous version to decrease the amount of 'roll'playing
4) The focus is wherever the gamemaster decides it is. You can play without your characters ever using or engaging mechs or you could roleplay battles with the AtoW skills and TW rules and have a campaign that is all action.
5) AToW is built to be scaleable. There is a whole section on bringing heavy units to the field, meant to bridge the gap between personal combat and regular TW scale combat, but if there are no boots on the ground you can use TW rules modified to take your characters other skills into account. (I imagine you could use the quickstrike rule too, but you'll have to modify them yourself. [BT is fairly flexible I have found])
6) In BT the are no 'good' factions. The Word of Blake and Stefan Amaris are the only truly evil factions; everyone else is a shade of grey, and if anyone tries to tell you a faction is 'good' they are using hyperbole to promote their favorite faction. Anyways, I imagine remembering Zel and proper clan protocol can be challenging if you want to go for 100% accuracy, but that's not a difficulty of the rules; AToW seems to make it fairly easy to play multitudes of characters from all the different factions, the difficulty is doing your research if you want to go for accuracy, but tha may or may not be fun depending on the group.
Anyways it's nice to hear you are planning on getting this. Do you already have Tactical Operations? If not, I would highly recommend you purchase it as well. A time of War integrates quite well with the tabletop rules so the advanced stuff adds some interesting options to your game if you have combat in your RP campaign, plus I can imagine justifying custom units and any advanced/experimental tech on them would be easier. This is if you plan to bring the big stomping death machines into your campaigns of course.
