More.

Since its kinda early sunday morning, and this weighs heavily on my mind, I go on about it here.

Fuck!

Sigh.

Okay, so if this game dies, where does it leave me? If I get a second job will I even have any time for running a game?

It leaves me feeling awfully anxious though. Like I said, I can't imagine his reason for leaving. I didn't see any writing on the wall. There are some small points of friction in the group, but I'm talking small game-related stuff. I just fiercely wonder if it was something completely unrelated, or if somehow I neglected him or otherwise ran him off.

Man, otherwise, it makes me look at the way that I run games and interact with players. Like, I've read about folks doing surveys after gaming sessions, which always sounded like a cool idea to me, but that I figured my players might see it as a little overboard. And what to put on a survey?

Did you enjoy the session? Rate the session on a scale of 1 to 10. What did you not enjoy about the session? If you/your character could work on or accomplish one thing, what would it be (example: "I want to try to find the answer to the cipher we found in the library", or "It sure would rock of those terrorists we fought last time came back, this time with giant robots") Did you have fun? Do you think the other players had fun?

And it makes me concerned about my style of running a game. (Naturally, this has me questioning the very fabric of my gamer-ness, great) I try to play fast and lose, and I'm interested in focusing on the Players themselves, first, the game and character and story second, and the system a very distant third. I don't generate carefully scripted, tightly wrapped adventures ahead of time, but instead come up with a framework, and try to move through it while being adaptable to the players and their characters. As opposed to the old way of reading the adventure to the players, and smacking them when they color outside of the lines.

Grumble grumble, blah. /winds down.