in answer to 1) I think that mortals are vital to the story both as antagonists and as protagonists. While the characters of the inquisition, vampire hunters, and evil-doers in general are definately in-line with Narrator character (In that they are best handled with the same level of mystery that we attributed to the rare creatures and dark shadows of the antagonists) ghouls and kinfolk are equally necessary as allowable pawns and assistants of the player characters. Not to mention "ghoul-duty" is a great role-playing tool. It's often said that the worst thing a game can do is become 'too many generals and not enough grunts.' Ghouls, kinfolk, and the man on the street are the basest level of grunt you can have. I agree with making the more esoteric human characters restricted, but to take away all humans is going too far in my opinion.
2) I have always been preferenced to a situtation where a player has only one character. There are a couple of reasons for this. One is that it cuts down on confusion. You don't have someone flipping back and forth again and again in the course of an evening. This can create problems finding the character you are looking for and lets not even think about how that can be abused if someone were to decide he didn't WANT certain people to find a certain character. I have tried to institute a one PC per night protocol, reinforced by the charcter sheet control, in which whatever character you got from me at the beginning of the game you were for that game entirely. But beyond even that, one character period a person would get our numbers stable so that we know how many vamps we have, how many humans, and how many mortals. The second thing that having only one character does is, surprisingly, keeps your perspective a little detached from the character. What inevitably happens is you come up with a great charcter concept that you really want to play next. This "chomping at the bit" removes the deep connection to the original character. It keeps things in perspective.
3)I'm all for a tabletop of the game in the downtimes if no one has opposition. I already have kinda worked and figured we could alternate weeks, with one being the vampire players, the other being the werewolf players, and then two sessions a week in which everyone plays together. The miscellaneous character types would show up to whichever games they wanted to due to their flexibility. The other characters could cross genres with a decent reason, but how exactly they would fit in to the other games plot would have to be discussed.
4) I am all for a 'Generation Party" were all the players gather for an event and work on their old characters, new characters anything. I think it will help everyone. Another thing we can do is called 'Getting up to date.' In which I explain all the plots going down and were they led the game. This I would only do if we were going to do what Steve suggested in retiring old characters and starting fresh ones in the spring. Marci and I are up to anything you guys can schedule. Till next!
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