How many players/how many characters? Parties seem to get unwieldy after about 6 characters. Partly this is just because stereotypical adventuring isn't built for it -- 10 foot corridors are too tight for more people. :) And also, with too many "main" characters, it's hard to build a narrative with everyone getting some attention.
That's not to say it's impossible, particularly if the game works not as one party, but as separate "scenes", with a few people here, a few people there, affecting each other's situation as they go along...
I'd love to be able to run something like that. However, I think the amount of time and energy required for administration (by me) might be far more than I'm willing or able to provide. If the revenue from the game reaches the point when I can do it as a full time job, then we'll try it out. ("Revenue? What revenue?" Stop freaking out -- it's just a joke.)
I am hoping that some players will prefer to be "character actors" - running several characters who aren't "proper" PCs: the mysterious druid, the barkeeper, the prince, the villain. As a result, the main party will be in the more typical 3-7 person range.
I have the theory that then the DM's role will more often be that of referee, rather than referee _and_ source of conflict. If the bad guy figures out what the secret plan is, it's got nothing to do with what the DM knows, just that the bad guy really was clever. Also, the "NPC's" can be more 3-dimensional, with more personal effort being put into them, and on several occasions, players won't know if they're interacting with a DM mouthpiece, or with another player.
In terms of DM's "cpu time", I'd like to think that players running more of the story characters would make for less work for the DM day-to-day, but surely that will be offset by getting information to and from more people. But overall, I'm optimistic that this would give more of the DM's personal attention to your character, and a better story, than if we had one big 12 character party. In addition, some people might find playing occasionally-occurring characters easier on their schedules than striving to send an update every day.
Which brings us to player's absence, or at least nonresponsiveness. I like the idea of "phasing", partly because it reminds me so much of Vaarsuvius's conveniently appearing familiar in Order of the Stick. I recall treating absent people in tabletop games in much the same way.
My concern is that "absence" in a blog game is bound to be more stilted, because of the time dilation. Not being around for a 4 hour game session makes it easier to elide the character away; if someone is out sick for a day right in the midst of their character rescuing the rest of the party from the mind flayer's clutches, it's hard to throw them into hibernation. Perhaps this would work, if every day (or at least every week) of gameplay had some closure. If every fight were concluded in one day, then having someone phase out could work, while having someone phase out mid-battle would be hard to manage.
It seems to me that this is one of the tradeoffs of the blog (or online, non-live) format. If the players are willing to give up some of the control of their character, the game can move along faster. If you give up some of the granularity of the combat process, then the combat can be resolved in a few days, rather than a few weeks. If alternatively you accept that when you're absent, your character will have an "understudy" representing you, then the game won't be halted waiting for people.
But these aren't tradeoffs for me as much as they're tradeoffs for y'all. What do you think -- what do you want to happen to your character when you're unavailable? How specific do you want to make your combat decisions?
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