Free for all experiment game summary (part 4)

Analysis 


Pros


People seemed to have fun
The players were invested in the world
Players made characters that fit well in the world and were interesting
The game mechanics went smoothly and did not interfere with gameplay
I was able to create a mystery without any planning
The players interacted well with each other and often did not need my guidance
A lot of stuff happened (just look at how long that summary is)
Making each character have a secret worked out.

Cons
The party was split up almost the entire time
The players had no real reason to associate with each other
Not all answers that were given to me were used
Some world building answers were unrelated to everything else
The story was schizophrenic

Conclusion


Overall, I felt that this was a success.  The most important factor for me was, did the players have fun.  And I'm pretty confident that they did.  I felt that the 2d6 system worked well, we didn't have any combat but the skills and abilities seemed to work.  Much of how the system works is by having the GM make a decision, 'ok you're trying to do this, and I think that should be attribute X and skill Y'  I'm not sure how well that mechanic would work if it were someone else running the show.  But the way it was, I felt that the rules didn't get in the way of the game and the story.  Even though half of the players were new to the system, after character creation, we did not once need to stop to explain how something worked.  I think that also the reason that this worked well is because I had really great and creative players that made the world and the characters an interesting game.

I want to try this again, but there are things that will change.  During the world building stage, I think I will have people answering the questions round robin style, so that players can integrate other people's answers with theirs and make the world more connected.  I am also going to be more specific with how to start, giving the world bit more definition than 'anything goes'  And coming up with a way to give the characters a reason to work together (ie, a military squad, they are all related, they are all trapped in a given building, they know each other beforehand, etc).  I also want to make some questions more specific to the game.  If I for example decide that all the characters are students and the story starts at the school, I would say something like : "You all are students at a school, what is this school like?  What kinds of things do they study?"  Or if I want the story to have something to do with an evil overlord I would ask what is this evil overlord like?