We managed to generate characters and run the first session before Christmas. The first part of the adventure ran more-or-less as expected and was a sucess amongst the players.
My group is organized around three of us who will meet up and play every second week, while other friends will turn up and play with pre-gen characters when they can. The two "core" players decided on creating a spy and a naval officer (merchant marine). Both were from the same small community in the Red League, and events had drawn them into business together in Equinox.
As noted earlier I chose to introduce the adventure by having the PCs hired by a company man to look into the disappearance of Winston Shanter. The characters were given a lead on where he might be living (under a false identity), and the assassination was set to just prior to their arrival at that lacation (I choose The Venus on Level 0). I was happy I chose this timing, because the players began their investigation by looking into Kora Company, Winston Shanter, and the identity of their employer first. As soon as they were confronted by the assassination, however; they were drawn in more directly and got focused on sweet-talking and bribing their way into the scene of the crime, especially once the victim was identified as their mark.
The two greatest challanges the players gave me as a GM this session was their investigation into corporate conflicts and the ambus at the warehouse. Since the PCs started looking into Kora Company before focusing exclusively on the hunt for Winston, questions were raised about certain corporate constalations, histories, agendas, and reputations. This was a great line of inquiry that I saw helped develop the mystery and tension of the adventure (
What's going on behind the scenes of this disappearing Manager?), but it was a challange to feed this to the players on the spot. I wish I had been more prepared for this, with a slightly better knowledge of these relevant corporations and conflicts that could potentially thicken the plot. As it was I ended up weaving a tail of intriue relative to the technological arms race of supercavitation and hypercavitation torpedoes between Mediterrainean Union and the Hegemony, playing on Gladius's role as an arms company run by the Cult of the Trident in this conflict. Fortunately I managed to keep the whole subject inconclusive enough to "develop or drop" depending on how the story evolves.
The second GM challange was warehouse ambush. As soon as the PCs came under fire, their (sensible) tactic was to fall back with the intent of escaping. Had the PCs managed to get away, leaving the ambushing smugglers to escape; I felt this would greatly delay the storyline progression. Fortunately, one of the players took a nasty wound and I managed to keep them in the scene and push the confrontation to a cease fire where the cooler heads and dialogue prevailed. As it was the scene made for a nice climax/resolution for the first session, but like I said it felt like I got lucky. Seeing it from the players' perspective it made perfect sense to get out of there - both to avoid the ambushing smugglers and the attention from the inevitable Watcher response - but that would have left the session far less effective. I don't know how I would find the time to recover both a climatic scene and a satisfactory storyline progression before our real-world playing time would have run out that evening had the players escaped. This could simply have been fixed by how I set up the ambush (i.e. the map and how I described the scene), leaving no obvious avenue of escape.
It turned out well, however; and the players were both happywith the evening's session and keen to play again - what better stamp of approval is there?
For my part actually running the first session on Equinox brought the city more to life, and thus made it both easier and more enjoyable re-reading the Equinox sourcebook. This time with a notebook marking referances to the various larger corporations and their agendas...
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