Here is a recap of my experience playing the fast play.
First I'd have to say read the expansion portion of the fast play after you have reviewed the rules, the sample combat really helped drive home the concepts and give a feel for the pacing of the game. The 2 extra sample characters were nice too as one of my players really wanted to play a dwarf.
I had a group of 4 players with a fair bit of experience with a few systems, mostly d20 based (D&D, Starwars, Some Gurps). We made steady progress through the adventure and it took us just over 2 hours to run it, most of which was us double checking ourselves and having to reference things we weren't certain of. Everyone enjoyed the module and were genuinely getting interested in who their character was. Unanimously the favorite part was the clock for combat. We all agreed that it added a dynamic aspect to combat with the trade off of a single hard hit vs multiple smaller ones. I found both Magic and Martial abilities to be equally valid choices, we all know what happens when one is exponentially better than the other.
The biggest complaint is that we felt like much of the information was absent, mostly the skills section but those weren't required for the module and could be guessed at their use if a player wanted to try and use them. Aside from that there was a spell in Alexander's abilities that wasn't listed, but on closer examination he didn't know it despite him having an affinity for it. So the two big complaints were understandable once you look at it in the light of this being intended as an intro to be run at a Con. not a "lite" version of the rules system. The other minor complaint was that there wasn't much danger of losing. My players are used to me trying to beat their characters to within an inch of their life and when we run up against a module that is intended for a Con then they can't use that level of threat.
Overall my group enjoyed the game and we do play on at least getting the core book to really feel out the entire system. I have already pulled out my 10 year old Codex Arcanis paperback to brush up on the setting and start planning story ideas. Now it is just to find a regular day to run again.
