I just wanted to comment on how fun the Free RPG Day adventure for AToW was to run and (apparently) play! The group at my table had a blast!
Glad you all had fun!
There was the requisite amount of betrayal also when one of the PCs decided to run and take his chance at getting one of the enemy merc's 'Mechs, leaving another PC to be caught in an SMG crossfire and killed! When called on it, he said his character just shrugged said, "Hey, free 'Mech."
Hah! Awesome!
Cool moments in mine included when 2 players decided to get in a mock fight where Milton, the leader of the band would end up getting beat up, thus garnering sympathy from the cardplaying off-duty shift of "spec-ops".
Unfortunately the player running Katon decided Katon didn't like her leader that much, and put some serious hurt on...
Another player decided to seduce one of the MechWarriors (in no small part due to the amount of discomfort it would give me), and the plot to try to hire on the spec-ops and steal all 4 'Mechs was carefully abandoned.
Oh, and the seductress managed to get half her face blown off by a claymore I'd parked in the Locust; cockpit from an especially paranoid MW.
We also played out the chase swiftly on hex maps, which had a particularly amusing moment when a hostile Cicada slipped, and skidded right next to the Union that was picking them up. Thereby creating a situation where the DropShip's gunners could benefit from the -2 to-hit bonus of a target that's prone and adjacent...!
Also meant it couldn't shut down in surrender since the take-off exhaust blast would've vaporized it...
The adventure takes place in 3091 "near Paradise" in the FWL and the players are supposed to meet their contact on "Paradise", but wasn't that planet nuked by the Regulans during the Jihad aftermath according to FM: 3085?
Yeah, that's a goof of mine. Good eye. >.<
I embellished and when my players became curious as to what was in the box, told them that whatever it was was radioactive, hence the heavy box. They decided not to open it, but if they had I was going to say that the datachip inside had manufacturing specs for the Wraith, Eagle and Yeoman and had been secured from the radioactive ruins of Curtiss Militech.
Actually, a suggestion of what's in it should've made it to print.
"It contains a datachip that the mercenaries were tasked to extract, and that the players have been paid to steal before it’s delivered on Paradise."
That was made to be vague to give GMs a starting point, sounds like your idea was even cooler than mine, good job! That's nearly perfect in my mind; I could've nailed down even more what it was, but that'd also have reduced the odds of a GM coming up with something better than what I had in mind.
Players at the table presumed it glowed with a yellow hue, and belonged to someone named "Marsellus".
Paul