Ya

Thanks for the comments guys, positive and negative.

1) Being railroaded by plot and not contributing to the story. Yeah, never good. Next campaign will start out totally open, so go wherever and do whatever you want. I'll begin by posting a list of open 'threads' such as the Arena and Mysterious X, and you guys can sit in the driver's seat. Then again, this game, parody though it may be, follows RPG narrative like most games do: very linear in the very beginning, opens up around 3rd level, then gradually becomes more linear. I mean, Frodo and Sam probably hatetd how linear their campaign was, and probably hated that Sauron was higher level than they were. Same for Tanis Half-Elven vs. the Dragon Lords. But I've tried to stay true to what Dave mentioned: that at any time, you can walk away and change things.

2) Ed quitting? Um, because he didn't have an internet connection? Because it was too much to read? He wasn't having fun? He got a girlfriend? Mike and Chris quit too, that's fine, it's their own choice. For me, I figure I'm doing something wrong if BOTH Dave and Paul hate it. Ed doesn't respond to the millions of infinity group emails, except for a brief flurry about a month ago. So maybe email isn't fun for him either?

3) Finally, I like what this has come down to. One round, everything's staked on making the right choices. It could be fantastic and wrap up everything. That's ultimately why I play D&D instead of Call of Cthulhu.