I saw you mention bad-guy acting. We do indeed need villains. But I've been hoping NOT to allow any sense that players here are AGAINST each other. So I prefer that anyone who plays an evil character, ALSO plays at least one good character. (With so few of us, it makes sense anyway for all to play multiple people.)
Instead of trying to have "judge combat" (which was handled VERY BADLY by the judges of the short-lived Narnian roleplays), I'm trying to improvise a more "literary" system in which, as a storytelling device, we "lose" characters from time to time, but MAIN characters are not lightly discarded. When you read what has happened so far, you will see that I had an important good guy die already. Speaking of reading, you WILL read all the background, won't you?