Ok, I'm never going to try to run a 5-player game of IAWA again. (4+GM) Too hard to give everybody enough screen time - when the smartphones and laptops came out I knew I had lost. That said, there was a lot to like:

Ishaq the pickpocket, played by Amanuel, particular strength "Aladdin-like agility"
Zarides the wizard, played by Mike, particular strength Pulling the secrets from others minds via a magical potion.
Simon Hansu, pilgrim and stranger to this land, played by Edward, particular strength his staff and wolf-style martial arts.
Roderick the Heretic, played by Dave. Particular strength: convincing others with logic.

Some of my favorite moments:

This is a realm where the Liche Queen is worshipped as a god - and Roderick managed to get under her skin. She demands he recant, and while arguing he gets her to admit that she is not, in fact, a god, and she flees from the room in shame - but the torturer continues to beat him.
(This was a good example of "Answerer Narrates" - he won the second round, answering the queen's challenge, and got to narrate that his logic got to her, but ultimately she won the final round.)

Simon Hansu is torn between his search for harmony and visions that he seek out a girl in the swampy marshland that was once a battleground of demons. In his quest he comes across Roderick being tortured - the same man who framed him with the priesthood earlier in the game - and rushes to help. I had decided the torturer was pretty much a mook and wasn't going to require the dice - the conversation went something like this:
Me: His back is to you. You have an opportunity.
Edward: I rush up with my staff.
Me: Are you going for the kill or to stun?
Edward: I'll go for the kill but take what I can get.
Me: Ok, he's dead. You take his head off with a sickening crunch. Wait - how many people has your character killed before?
Edward: This is my first. This is a traumatic moment for me.

Mike's Wizard was played throughout the game as only being in it for himself, but at the end, when the Liche Queen tells him she'll give him her magical secrets if he gives her his apprentice, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Kind of a "Han Solo" moment! Instead he mixes poison in with his mind-reading potion and finishes her off. (She had already been weakened by a battle of wills with Ishaq.)

As the Queen's castle was falling, Amanuel narrated a cool ending for Ishaq where his sister was trapped under some rubble but he lacked the strength to save her - and even though she told him to save others and himself he stayed with her and they died together in the collapsing castle.

Some great stuff there - and most of it diceless...

Edward: This is my first. This is a traumatic moment for me.

That's great stuff.

Ok, I'm never going to try to run a 5-player game of IAWA again. (4+GM) Too hard to give everybody enough screen time - when the smartphones and laptops came out I knew I had lost.

Ouch. That's a potential pitfall of GM-stance: putting yourself in the position of providing entertainment for the players. I make that mistake myself sometimes. It shouldn't be a GM's job to entertain players, it's everyone's job to entertain each other (and themselves), at least that's what we shoot for at the meetup games. But jeez, laptops etc at the table are a party foul in any weather. What the heck, people?

Anyway, with four players you don't really need central antagonist NPCs in IaWA. You can just let the PCs be each other's antagonists (the same applies with even fewer players). It also solves the screen time problem, because the central interaction becomes player-to-player, rather than player-to-GM.

I exaggerate, the netbooks and smartphones only came out briefly and then were quickly put away.

A problem may be that four guys who don't know each other don't want to get their face-stabbing on right away - they chose independent best interests. I could have taken a stronger hand in encouraging some attacky best interests - reading the best interests section aloud from the rulebook instead of summarizing would have helped.