To start off, I would again like to apologize for the formatting of the character recap posts. They just would not cooperate in the colors, and I'm certain some of them are impossible to read for some folks. Believe me, they're just as frustrating for me as they are for you, and I guess I'm gonna have to say to either c/p them to notepad or highlight them for ease of reading.
As far as the body of the game goes, however, I really like what we had going there, and I wish that I hadn't run aground with GM's stall/writer's block, because there was great momentum at the start and quite a lot of potential for some great stories to evolve from what was being done. The reboot could have been good for a couple of characters/players, but I got discouraged at so few still willing to continue that I just killed it.
There was a lot that I took away from this game that has helped me as a GM overall, though. I'm much better at creating and personalizing NPCs on the fly, which is a skill that I had never quite gotten right, I felt. Developing Raymond's contacts and Jason's employer and roommate really helped me define what was necessary for believable NPCs in my games.
Further, rational assumptions were another thing that I've paid more attention to in the scope of running a game. With Steve asking so many questions about Jamaal's personal possessions, I became much more aware of what the typical character in any given setting would have common access to. As an example, I have always thought it safe to assume that once a character in my Pathfinder games chugs a potion, they toss the vial it was in. In my current campaign, it came up that Angela's character keeps all hers, as she is an Alchemist and that makes perfect sense, but she also assumed that the others would keep theirs, as well, which thankfully I was not alone in assuming (the players of the other PCs agreed) that they did not, though both of the guys have agreed to keep theirs on her request.
I think, ultimately, I stretched myself too thin with this experiment. I had quite a few characters, all from different backgrounds, all pursuing different goals, and instead of going with a unified story that they could all interact with, I decided to go unique with all of them, having them interact with the different facets of the World of Darkness. This meant that in addition to trying to think out and provide entertaining stories and stimuli, I was reading multiple game books at once, trying to stay ahead of the players with certain aspects whose rules I was ignorant to. Not the smartest way to run a game of any sort.
I would definitely like to run another game via text, possibly getting some old gamer pals involved who have moved away, but as to what system I would like to run, I currently have no clue, and I'm not sure if I could convince anyone to jump back in who was in this past game, due to how quickly it crashed and burned.
Perhaps play-by-post is a better method, or some of the online game tables?
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