My friend Howie and I go way back. Like 7th grade, which is a long time ago, now. When I told him about Atlas Reckoning (AR) a year back, he was eager. But when you have a baby, gaming becomes a cost you sometimes can't afford. But now at his kid's 6 month mark, we were able to make it happen.

We gathered 4 players: 2 with RPG experience (Howie and Sasha), 2 with very little (Sonia and Lien). We went through some world building and AR setup, and had enough time to do a combat.

The premise was Earth, after a Mars mission brought back the Gorp - a substance left behind by some extra-terrestrials. Unfortunately, that material has the power to terraform a planet by perverting the life forms, and after the initial human die-off, we find some survivors in two camps: those transformed and re-combined with other animals and such into Behemoths, and those that have gained the power to control the strange technology spin-offs (and Atlases) that scientists have created using Gorp technology.

We didn't have enough time to do the downtime sequence unfortunately, as that's a really great 50% of the game. That said, I really like how everyone started getting into their various character stories, even those without a lot of RPG background.

At the end of session, you could already see Howie's mind turning around how he would change mechanics. Obviously he isn't skilled enough at knowing what the game is supposed to look like yet, but even so, he was leaning towards more sync-style guess-your-copilots-card type mechanics during combat, such as the mechanics you'd find in the card game Hanabi.

I have since tried to schedule a follow-up session, but no go as of yet. For that, I am sad.