So, Primez hasn't responded to my PM, meaning we can assume s/he's not coming back to the game. :( And unless we really shake things up this time, Vena, I don't know if I will stay on either. Considering how hard it has been to get this thing started (and taking full responsibility for my own role in that), I have a proposition.

Instead of everyone walking into the Three Broomsticks like all the other times, let's go ahead and set up the start of the game in Germany, or France, somewhere a few steps ahead on the itinerary. We can assume that all of the PCs have met by then, and are now generally acquainted with each other, and [i]begin[/i] the game on an interesting note. A wounded, bloodied hag stumbles into the bar or wherever they are, muttering darkly in Russian (or Greek, or Czech, just a language that isn't the same as where they are). She orders a drink, then proceeds to keel over and [i]die[/i] right in front of our band of impressionable youths, who are understandably quite puzzled about all this. 

Two Muggle police officers burst in, call an ambulance, all that good stuff. It turns out that the hag was beaten to death by [i]Muggles[/i], not attacked by any other magical creature, and that starts our Pilgrims thinking that maybe the separation between Muggle and magical worlds is more tenuous than they once believed. They are diverted from their relatively straightforward journey, into the dark world of modern intelligence wars and the greatest threat to the status quo since Voldemort himself, but by that time it's too late! They're in it, and they can't get out! They have to see it through to the end, and face incredible dangers, traveling through the parallel worlds of technology and magic, all the while learning what it means to be [i]truly[/i] magical...

You know, [i]something[/i] like that. It needs a hook. I know you have at least some stuff planned already, so why not start with the hook, and skip the slower setting-up stages? That's where the game has died, time and again, for very little reason. What do you say?