Hey, just finished it! A really cool concept that I look forward to trying with my group.
Just a recommendation: As someone who has not played a FitD rpg before, an example of play, even a short one, would be extremely helpful to show how the mechanics are supposed to interact.
In general, some more examples would be nice, even just as recommendations, for example for the Tiers. What kind of obstacle would a Tier 2 obstacle for example be?
It's just a small criticism, which is probably none for more experienced FitD players. Overall I really enjoyed my read of the rulebook and I look forward to playing it!
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Great points! Examples of play are key to getting folks who haven't gotten much FitD to the table to really grok the way the interlocking systems work together in play to ground the ongoing fiction. As it stands, we were trying to get the ashcan, the in-development and earliest iterable playtest, into folks hands. There's still a lot of work to be done before we can call anything finished or really be happy with the draft as a whole.
As for Tier, it's a helpful abstraction but it's hard to nail down. Tier 2's magnitude, scale, and quality is a discussion that might occur in the fiction, but as a quick wag of what I'd consider a Tier 2 obstacle? That'd be a checkpoint patrolled by 8 guards in bodyarmor with automatic weapons. They've got effective gear, communications equipment, there are more of them than a standard Cell, and they've got positional superiority. That's a /tough/ challenge to a cell starting out, overwhelming maybe. But with the tools available to a Cell--teamwork, flashbacks, using stress, load items, etc--they can bypass or overcome a Tier 2 challenge even as a Tier 0. It's a nasty setback, but doable.
Tier's abstract, and it's something that we'll definitely be exploring in greater detail as the ashcan develops.