First off, happy birthday, victor_shaw, and many happy returns! :thumbsup:
My own reading of the rules is a mixed bag. A lot I like, and some that I'm apprehensive about.
The Narration system I feel is a little daunting to wrap my head around. I like it for non-combat situations, but I'd prefer (and am glad CGL gave the option for) a more traditional initiative system for combat, just as who goes first is important to me in a combat situation. Also, for combat, I'd have liked a little more granular movement rules to allow for more tactical decisions for the players and GM, but maybe that's part of the Narration process I missed (maybe something like "Sam Pell moves up to Close range, dodging and weaving, and ducking behind a Tri-Dee billboard for cover, trying to get behind the Maskirovka agent as best he can" is supposed to be the norm rather than just "I move to Close range").
That being said, I am very interested in it for non-combat situations as is, with one caveat. In the rules it does say that players and thre GM are supposed to roll with Narrations rather than overruling them. I just fear that that can lead not so much to powergaming, but spotlight-stealing. The GM ought to be given some agency to put his or her foot down when something is about to cause OOC trouble in the group and I don't quite see that in there. (I missed something akin to it on page 62, which covers some, but not all, of my concerns).I like the idea that die rolls are not made for every task, but just ones that have a chance of failure (even though this is supposed to be the default assumption in RPGs), and I like the improvisational nature of play and giving the players some shared ownership in the story and not just "you're going to the Tomb of Horrors, like it or lump it, and all roads you may try to go will lead to Acererak." It does take a group that's willing to risk going off the rails and a DM who's not going to "rocks fall, everyone dies" the group every time he or she sees them change the story's direction. That is going to be a major paradigm shift for groups who have played traditional "Dungeons & Travellers"-style games. And it is going to take careful pre-game communication among the group to find their comfort zone since improvisations can take the game in directions players or the GM may adamantly not want to go.
Mech Combat: I like it very much so far. I'm still getting my head around it completely, but it does look to e to strike that sweet spot for Mech combat in an RPG setting. TW and even Alpha Strike, as great as they are, are unsuited to RPG sessions just by virtue of the length it takes to play a full game -- you're essentially pausing one game to play another, and that's not even getting into the issues of "OK, just how do we handle characters on foot in the middle of a raging Mech battle?" or "OK, how do we handle a character taking a TW point of damage when we go back to character scale?"
This eliminates those issues handily, I think. I like that the system is recognizably BattleTech in design, and is not just abstract or merely narrative. And I'm grateful for the option to use BattleTech minis in the combats. Any chance to push around brightly painted plastic is a bonus to me.
Character creation: THANKYOUTHANKYOUTHANKYOU! I was completely turned off by AToW by how complex creation was. The process is a breeze in this game. I like the simplified skills and the actually IMO innovative way of linking the damage charts to the STR and WIL attributes. Also, the simplified life paths are a blessing (they remind me almost of Mongoose Traveller's background skills more than anything).
One thing though, why were the skills put all the way at the front of the book and not with the rest of the creation rules? It makes for a lot of page flipping between a good 30-40 pages. Also, I'm still trying to grok the mech conversion rules with regards to missile weapons.
My only concern so far is a lack of a money system (I understand where the devs were going with the idea in trying to keep it from being "Papers and Paychecks" or "AccountTech", and I heartily agree that's not what I want either), as being broke can be a story impetus for the players (how do they pay to replace the faulty actuator on Loren Ipsum's Phoenix Hawk? Can they scrape up enough money to get passage on a Dropship to get to Dustball? What if they sell T.B. Dee's Marauder? Or want to monetize salvage? What if they want to go to the black market on Victoria and haggle over highly illegal support weapons?). It doesn't seem to be something that can be just left to Narration (this is one of those times where the GM ought to be allowed to put a foot down if the player says "oh, and Sam Pell, looking at the 50 billion C-Bills on his cred-chip...") and purchasing items, especially very expensive items on occasion (*coughbattlemechscough*) is a part of the game experience. And I don't see how that can be done without even an abstract money/wealth/credit system.
That being said, I like the idea of starting equipment the character just *has*, and doesn't have to keep track of, as well as the idea of "A-Team ammunition" for the most part, though I think the GM ought to be able to spend a plot point if it's dramatically appropriate to say "and your ammo just ran out. What do you do?".
Which brings me to plot points, which I think I will absolutely love. Letting players and the GM spend points to change the situation (as long as it's not retconning something that's already happened, I'm not quite on board with that) or get situational advantage or just to make the scenario more dramatic is always a plus.