Been waiting on the OS upgrade, since I'm checking to make sure people have backed up stuff. Though I'm pretty sure I will sign up for it today.

Basically, I've been told that to upgrade, I have to order a new VPS on a new server, as the one I want is incompatible with the server I'm on right now. Apparently. So they have to go through the fun process of transferring my data and giving me a new IP and etc.

I did save backups of my sis's, Eni, Rin and Selina's directories, and MAY do it again right before I know the site will go offline, but if I REALLY wanted to be thorough, I should go on IRC and tell people myself. Meeeh don't wanna. I know Eni reads this now and then, so Rin is the only one who'd be kinda in the dark. I'm just... having a hard time nowadays being communicative with anyone. I feel like withdrawing more and more. Maybe I will still try to nudge him myself though, I really ought to. :(

Compounding my asocial behavior is the fact I had a bad situation happen with RPoL recently. I am reluctant to write about it much because I don't want to risk any messy fallout if the people involved read this. But it put me in a terrible mood for a while, and so I feel inclined to detail it. Perhaps it will be therapeutic.

At the beginning of the week, I had a player give a lengthy commentary about one of the threads in a RPoL game I run. I don't have much confidence in my abilities as an ST, so the delivery of those comments (IMO it seemed borderline condescending, as if I needed to be 'schooled') really badly triggered my self-doubt and self-loathing.

The issue here is not that I don't want to take criticism for my writing. I may take it hard, but in the end I try to listen to everyone's comments, and compare them to what I have done. Every day I strive to improve my abilities, and ensure my players are comfortable and having fun.

But it's different when the comments are unfounded, based on barely even a week of posting, when I have had players who stayed with the game from the start who have never once complained to me being a railroader, or that PC actions never make any real difference in the outcome. The player's assumption was immediately that I'm out to screw my players, and it was left to me to CONFIRM that I would NOT. I came out of reading that believing that he/she did not trust my abilities as a ST whatsoever, and possibly even believed he/she could do my job better. (Admittedly, I did also recently make lengthy commentary about a GM that player knows personally. So it also crossed my mind that the player had taken this attitude because of the problem I had in that game. But on the other hand... I was never told by that GM that I'd hurt any feelings or was out of line, so if that's the case 'doing it back' would be *very* passive-aggressive.)

In any case... I was so stunned by the player's opinion that I just went straight to bed in shock. I was downright horrified, at first. I have enough trouble believing my players like my games, despite all their efforts to tell me so. I always think I could be doing 'more' (therefore exhausting myself posting too often) or 'better' (constantly scrutinizing everything I write for the smallest sign of a fault or potential for misunderstanding). I slave HOURS just to feel an iota of satisfaction with what I do, and I NEVER do that just for myself, but for the enjoyment of the players as well.

Then here was this long-winded comment basically suggesting that I really DO look like I'm failing at my job as an ST. After all, why would someone take the time to write something like that unless they were supremely unsatisfied with my judgment calls? I felt like all the hours of thought and planning and careful writing I put into everything were just effectively dismissed as "NOT ENOUGH". This is about as close as one can push me toward my fears of inadequacy and failure.

And it made me very, very paranoid. I hadn't expected such words from that particular person. I thought the person actually liked and trusted me. Later on the person admitted [he/she] is just lacking in tact (though this doesn't have much weight with me -- I don't tend to be understanding of people who lack empathy, claim to know it, yet do nothing to change it.) Nonetheless, I started to wonder whether other players of mine could be thinking the same things about my game and just not saying it. Maybe they also thought I skewed encounters toward my tastes and sensibilities without caring about what the players want to do!

So I asked them. I posted an OOC message about the situation, I sent PMs and IMs. The answer I got every single time was that I've been good and fair and the level of challenge is worthwhile. I even directly asked the other people in the scene that one player had trouble with, and neither of THEM thought I'd done anything wrong either, or explained things unclearly.

At this point, it finally hit me. Why was this one person even complaining? The player had barely started playing again. He/she was thrust into a situation where the circumstances are largely out of his/her control due to decisions others had made previously. Nor could the player be certain I wasn't going to give the group a break later, once the current scenario was quelled. Unfortunately, I feel that my job as an ST is not to hand-hold my players and make scenarios with easy, obvious outs -- it's to create a situation that's believable, but not impossible.

And I thought I'd done that. In fact, everyone else thought I'd succeeded at that, except that one player. He/she was the one that didn't fit, the only one who couldn't trust I will resolve things without forcing the group to do things a particular way. So I shouldn't have to feel bad about that. In fact I have 12 players who are there because they like my style, and 1 who possibly doesn't.

So in the end, I was able to get over my shock and self-loathing over this situation. But I also think that I may eventually end up having to drop the player. I am VERY uncomfortable now trying to think of scenarios that won't trigger this person to pass negative judgments about them, mistaking my desire to create realistic odds for some sort of ST sadism. So now the entire thread may suffer very badly for this. Doing that effectively kills my creativity so now the players in that thread are more likely to get easy, bland challenges, or even get skipped ahead altogether to the next scenario.

I guess the moral of the story is that I should not try to put players that are used to a more lenient ST style into difficult infiltration missions. :P

And that's enough of that. I guess I'll see later whether writing this will get me in trouble or not. Right now I really should try to go back into bed and get more sleep (sigh...) I may also start contacting HostForWeb about my OS upgrade in the meantime. Man, I hope I can do it even with my debit card being close to expiration date (end of July)... I'm annoyed, because I have such a short window with which to get the new expiration and be able to change the info on all of the sites I have monthly fees from. Grrrr. I just wish the bank would give me the new date already so I don't have to be scared I won't be able to pay for my site.