I GM a fairly casual group.  We get together once a week when things actually go as planned.  We only play maybe 4-5 hour sessions due to work schedules and social lives.

One of my players had the fantastic idea of starting a characters blog for the group.  Basically between sessions they can post entries about what their character thinks about the current situation, what they do between story arcs, anything they want really.  This also let's me post intriguing introductions to new scenarios or important new characters.  In turn I reward any player who does an entry with either a minor milestone or a free fate point at the start of the next session.

I'm wondering does anyone else do things like this to keep players invested and interested in the game between sessions?  I would like to do more things like above since my group desnt get to play nearly as much as I would like.

So I've been kicking around this character idea for a little bit and wouldn't mind some advice on making sure it's balanced.  I'm trying to make a were-spider character.  But the idea of someone turning into one single spider seems a bit underwhelming.  I have two ideas that I would really like to use together for one character, just not sure how I should set up the powers and refresh costs.

My first idea was the character turns into a swarm of spiders roughly equal to his body mass.  Each one containing a fraction of his consciousness, meaning the spiders have to stay within a general radius of each other or the stray ones turn into ectoplasm.  This counters any "i know everything that's going on because I have spiders at every location we've ever been do this scenario" game breakers.

The second is one large spider with the same body mass as the character in human form.  I figure a slightly modified Hulking Size power would work (it's big for a spider).  But trade out the stealth penalty for something else, as a 200 pound spider that can climb walls could still be stealthy.

Both ideas alone are easy enough to do.  But if I want a character that can do both, would just making them double up on Beast Change be fair?  I'm just not sure -1 refresh balances out a 3rd stat load out you can flip to pretty much on the fly.  Though I'm thinking powers taken for each form would never overlap.  By that I mean if the giant spider form had Claws and Venom, the spider swarm would not.