Or you can have them, but have them as background characters.  Then you could play with it. 

"I've been to see Patrick."
"Patrick Flannigan?"
"Patrick Murphy."
"The one with the mole?"
"Nah, the other one."
"The one that runs the bakery?"
"No, the other ... Look, it's not important. What's important is what I found out."

Beautiful.

You can also indicate that the names are the same, but then call them differently.  Patrick Murphy one goes by 'Pat', Patrick Murphy two goes by 'Murph', Patrick Murphy three goes by 'Tinkerbell'....    etc.

No web site to put it up on (ok, I actually do have one but it is all private use), and I was poking around Facebook but didn't find a DFRPG group!  Perhaps a tiny banner that would go on the wall, or even just creating a group that could then show in wall feeds would be a good marketing idea? 

Take care and thanks for all of the hard work!

I’ve not read any of these books. How is it, from a Reader’s standpoint? Is it okay to follow along with, as opposed to riding in one character’s head for the bulk of story, or does it get tiresome after a while?

Ok, I just want to quickly touch on this first.  A Golden Rule would be "Read of those who have gone before."  Whatever your intended genre, immerse yourself in it.  If you haven't read Martin or Jordan, I would suggest you do so, as it will give you some idea of how to do the epic (mostly) well.  Take a look at Fiest's "Magician" as well, though there are a lot fewer POVs there.
(There is no reason why only picking one character and telling the whole story from their POV necessitates you to pick the hero.)
[/quote]

Now on to other things:

I’d like to be able to explore the emotions and motivations of the secondary characters, but I don’t think I can pull that off with my l33t dialogue skillz.

I second the "l33t skillz develop with practice" motion from neuro

(There is no reason why only picking one character and telling the whole story from their POV necessitates you to pick the hero.)

In fact, it can be argued that many truly successful stories use someone else.  Why, for instance, did Doyle write the Sherlock Holmes stories from Watson's point of view?


Now on to the original post:
Can/Should all of them be allowed to take the stage as POV characters?
- Yes they can, but they shouldn't necessarily.  It may be better to have one (not the main hero) who is the POV.  However, you can rotate through.  There's nothing that says you only have to have one main character, though one will usually tend to stand out anyway.

And if so, how often do they need to be brought to center stage?
- If they are that close to the hero, not often if at all.  If they are the 'sidekick' POV, all the time, by the nature of the thing.  If they are one of the main characters or dual (tertiary, etc.) heroes, also all the time if you want to use their POV, but ideally again just keep them center stage but from someone else's viewpoint.  For instance, it is much more interesting, in the Chronicles of Prydain, to see how Taran (the former pig-boy) interacts with the other warriors, his newfound friends, and his own fears than it would be to watch from Gawain's (the prince) POV.

In a slightly different vein, but within the same Quest/story, what about characters that join for a brief period but are then left behind along the way? Can they be POV characters too?
- Yes they can.  Anyone can be. The question is do they need to be?  I understand the point of this, but make sure you have a subplot that ties in.  For instance, if you are following (POV'ing) the 'hero', you can't just drop people off needlessly, but you can drop the pig-boy off in a town, thinking you are leaving him in safety, only to have him get mixed up in just the trouble you were trying to avoid.

And, for those left behind, how often should they be brought forward, to say their piece then fade back again?
- As often as needed.  If they are doing something interesting, it should be worth showing.  HOWEVER: Consider that if you use 3rd person limited you can always hop over to the bad guys and listen in on their conversations.  Then give the bad guys a reason to get together and try to stick with one POV per group.  Go back to them occasionally, but not overmuch. 


Finally a note on one-shot POVs.  They can be useful, but should be used sparingly.  Take for instance a scene from a story I'm writing.  We have a view from space as missiles head in to Earth.  Then We flash to a local in (specific continent undetermined), get a taste of his life, and use his POV to show the pretty wicked devastation and turmoil caused on the ground when one of these hits.  The POV is dead afterwards, so we are good to go. 

Similarly another POV is used just as you are mentioning (left behind characters), but throughout the book.  I found some ways to tie him in more tightly (brother of the main character, saves some asteroid miners from death) before he gets killed towards the end.

Anyway, just my $.55.   Hope it helps!

As a rule, I'd agree that this is very messy.  If you are doing rotating scenes with the first five or so, it can be difficult to give them solid tags, depending on the viewpoint you are using.  That said, a third-person limited viewpoint combined with separate isolated "solo" scenes should help.

Then you go on to the hero and his family.  If that is all done from one viewpoint, with solid tags, as Belial mentioned, you should be good to go.  I want to mention a pet peeve here though.  Robert Jordan's WoT has a HUGE cast of characters, and many of them have excessively similar names.  Please make the names clearly distinct from one another, and use them carefully in conjunction with your tags.

Also, write it out, and you may find you have a few short chapters rather than just a chapter with a bunch of scenes... that may help some.  Finally, make sure that your hero comes up quickly, because the reader needs to know who they are identifying with.

Have fun!

Yeah, I have to say, I love finishing each scene and/or chapter.  It just feels like another step closer to the top of the mountain.

At the same time, I also feel many times like I'm just working to get the plot down, so I sometimes have to fight with myself over going back and 'playing' with stuff I've just written, and second-guessing myself all the time.

But generally, I get a sense of step-by-step completion.

I'm with you, and I'd be up for doing some exercises.  The site was originally intended as any easy way for my friends and I to do a group, since we are at a distance from each other.  We'll be there one way or another. 

As for Authors not being protected, I'll have to look for those threads.  I know there are several large online workshops (http://critters.org/index.ht is a great example).  Here's there take on story pirating: http://critters.org/faq.ht#Q24 .

A smaller group should definitely be easier to handle, too.

Here's a link to some good copyright info as well: http://fairuse.stanford.edu/Copyright_and_Fair_Use_Overview/chapter0/index.html

Unscrupulous folks can certainly try to get around this, but there are lots of reasons why they won't.  Also, as you mentioned, most of the drafts people want to have critiqued actually suck (sorry, no offense, but it really is true).

Now, I'm the same person that said I was concerned about someplace like WEbook.  They are a publisher and that just invites too many problems as far as keeping things on their servers.  What I've set up maintains file dates, author info, licensing restrictions, and nothing is available except to registered users.  (Though I'm thinking of going the Critters method and requiring real names.)

Again, we'll be out there regardless, just posting it here as an option for folks, as I'm here fairly often.  Later!