I'm depressed.

But I don't know why.

It's odd. My job is actually getting better (or I'm going to be fired, either of which works for me). I did okay in the Demon: the Fallen campaign last night (my character didn't really do too much, but he didn't screw anything up, either).

But I did achieve a few revelations about gaming, both good and bad.

The good revelations are....

...well, okay. I lied. There's only bad revelations. But some of them are personally relevant, and some of them are generally relevant.

Generally speaking, I don't like failing. I don't like botching. I don't like it when my character should be able to do something, but can't, for whatever reason. Case in point, my Verbena manages to botch his roll for his life rote. I'm sure it should be possible, but it seems like over-reliance on dice on the first roll. Realistically, on an extended roll, with a proper focus, extra time, in my mage's paradigm, in his (and his Tradition's) prime sphere (life), with a knowledge backing it up (medicine), botching in a non-stressful and non-rushed (or, strictly speaking, even plot critical) situation when it does not add to the story should not be possible. It doesn't add to the story. Obviously, saying that something beneficial is without risk is stupid. But in reality, relying on the dice to say that even though it's what you're best at, you fucked up ... pisses me off. I thing something should be done to mitigate the situation, there. Such as, you can't botch on your first roll -- you can only fail. After that point, there's already invested power in the effect, and it can easily go haywire.

All of my demon's botches were for intensely relevant things, and things in stressful situations where making a bad roll and screwing up is not only possible, but likely sucks, but hey, them's the breaks.

I think the major (specific) issue I have with this situation, though, is that the GM wants the world of darkness to be a painful and unhappy experience for the characters, because it's the world of darkness.

Which makes me think ... since my own life is already less than steller, why do I want to play a simulated or artificial or otherwise pretend me to get more screwed over? Winning, having your character able to achieve success in a game, when I can't in reality is cool -- that at least gives you the fun of (for a time) escaping your limitations. Getting fucked over in every possible way doesn't really make for a fun game, and instead mostly just ... well ... makes the experience suck.

I respect that the GM wants failure to be a (constant) aspect of the game. But it's just not fun for me. I don't want it to be impossible for me to lose, or get hurt, or make mistakes, but I don't think the other players actually paid attention -- I counted. I botched -- not failed, BOTCHED -- sixteen consecutive critical rolls between the Mage and Demon games when I was still allowed to play in both, over the course of three weeks.

When a situation occurs that goes, "You, the master of Life, a Verbena (who is, not, BTW, as cool as the Walkurai), botch, take four levels of damage, and enjoy a -2 dice pool penalty to all actions until your damage heals," I ALSO think it's really unreasonable of the GM (and other players) to think that I should not only take this in stride, but have fun with it. Especially when the other players have all achieved sixteen successes at whatever, and have managed to create an army of spirits, a flaming sword of holy energy, massive quantities of explosive munitions, and horrible, horrible, horrible COINCIDENTAL wonders like skin-to-agg-soaking-armor.

The more I think about it, the more it feels like Sterling never wanted me in his Mage campaign. And now, even though I'm rolling better, it seems a lot like he doesn't want me in his Demon campaign, either.

After I left the Mage campaign, I explained to Sterling WHY I was unhappy with my character, and he said I could play a Sorcerer (human hedge-mage) instead of a fully awakened Mage. Sez I, "Great!" After a while (a few weeks of discussions with him, off and on), I finally say that I think it's unfair of me to make him do all this so I can game with everyone else, and I should really just suck it up and play the Mage character.

He said that this was awesome, and that he wanted (ideally) one of each Tradition to be represented.

And then last Thursday, when we were talking about his online Mage character, I start realizing all kinds of cool things that my Mage character can at least TRY to do. I mention one of them to Sterling, to get an idea of how feasible it is, and then he immediately goes off on this speech about how I can't come back to the game -- he's cool with it, but I'd have to clear it with the other players, first. And then he complains about the time I walked away from the game, and sulked (hello, lucky botch #15, in the DEMON campaign, NOT the Mage campaign), and said that it made the other players uncomfortable.

So I dropped it right there.

Now, in the game I run, Sterling really takes over my role as the GM -- a lot. He basically talks over other people and says, "as soon as this happens, I...." and then goes on this tirade about what his character does. I think this is actually kind of fun, since his character tends to do really neat stuff.

I tried doing it in today's campaign, with him, and it only pissed him off.

So.

I've considered things, and then looked back at ... pretty much every campaign I've ever played in.

I've come to the realization that I just suck as a player. I can't pull off the fun and cool shit, my character designs are abysmal, and don't have sufficient dice pools to do ANYTHING, and I'm waaaaay too self-centered to actually work with other players in a team. Add to that the fact that I bitch, constantly, and make the experience less fun for everyone else....

...and then I realized that the whole thing Sterling was telling me in the car on the trip to San Francisco on Thursday about this player online who was horrible and ruined the game for everyone else (though, he personally didn't ever complain to her). He may not have meant it that way -- but it was an analogy for my attitude in ... every game I've ever played in.

In conclusion, I have to assume that everything is my fault. The reason for this is actually pretty logical. I can't change other people. (Well, actually, I can. But it's not my place to do so.) I can change myself.

Therefore, any flaw in interaction has to be something I need to change about myself.

But until I can figure it out, I think I need to stop gaming. Completely. I'll try and finish up the two campaigns I'm currently running, and drop out of everything I'm playing in. While the experience has been educational, I can't torture my friends by trying to make them game with me until I can fix my attitude.

Fuck.

This all seems right to me. But at the same time, it also seems stupid. Like I may be blaming myself a bit too much. And then I have to wonder how accurate my assumptions actually are.... ....and how much of it is just whiny attention whoring.

Anyway. Last Thursday I went up to the city with Sterling to pick up some medication (whee, long trip. :/). That was actually kind of fun. Friday, I went to the Winchester Mystery House with Wally (for his birthday, which was ALSO Sterling's birthday).

I did something on Saturday. I think I hung out at Wally and Cheri's, and we played games and such. My memories are less than perfectly clear.

On Sunday I was feeling horrible again (I can't lose this cough) so I stayed home. Some time towards the evening, I was dragged out to see Aliens vs. Predator, which was kind of cool, but really deserved to be better.

On Monday I ... was at work. On Tuesday, I attended a meeting with the new department manager, who (though, not in so many words) told me I was either transfering out or being fired. And on Wednesday I had a gaming session whereupon I learned that now that my Demon character has enjoyed a small measure of success, it can only go downhill for him, and if I play him further, the GM will destroy him. Because it's the World of Darkness. And, hey. If you don't botch every roll (it's drama! Botching a roll that makes it so you can never interact with a given NPC AND getting said NPC and his companions to hunt you to the death without even trying to speak about it), er, I mean, have the POSSIBILITY of botching every roll, then it's not the WoD.

But hey. I hated non WoD games, too, so I'm relatively certain it's my fault.

Re: I can change myself, etc.

Bleah. I'll have more free time if I don't game. I could probably work out and lose weight, or something.

Something to think on.

After serious thought (and equally serious lack of potent drugs) I have come to the following conclusion:

I can't handle customer service anymore.

So. Stress at work has been building, and getting to me, slowly but surely. The long and short of it is that I don't enjoy CS. But before that, the department where I work is exceedingly poorly handled ... the management is trying, but the technical issues and the lack of training means pretty much everyone in level one tech support (in CS, basically), can't do anything but apologize and promise vaguely that a real technican will call them back. Maybe.

I'm tired. I want to handle documentation. I don't have any prospects. I'm moving at the end of the next month, and will need a lot of money for the first month of rent, and the deposit. So I'm going to be casting my lot as a temp. Whee~!

Before I go, I'm drawing up a massive list of things that could be done to improve the department, and make it more workable. I know a few other techs that are there are unhappy ... but many have a higher tolerance for stress than I do, so maybe I can at least help make it more manageable for them before I go.

That's pretty much it.

The story of the three hour march to light rail just doesn't seem important anymore.

So.

Hmm.

Just to clarify, any mailing list I'm on is already part of my friends list. So don't worry about that.

I don't have as much to say as I hoped.

Anyway. I'm really enjoying the Demon: the Fallen campaign, now that I've replaced my evil suck dice. Going to see how Mage works with the power of new dice, and new ideas. I'm still really annoyed by a number of things, though.

Sterling and Jim both put a lot of stock into the World of Darkness, and I think the main problem the both of them have is that they can't eye the WoD as anything less than a unified front. They can't look at one thing in it (say, for example, Werewolves) without also imagining how it works with some other thing (like, oh, Demons).

Except that everyone knows that White Wolf did not balance them for one- another, so it's pretty much not going to work.

Knowing that, both Sterling and Jim act like the WoD works with all facets of itself entirely, even though it really doesn't.... Which results in some interesting details. Anyway.

I'm also in an Exalted campaign, playing a Lunar in a Solar circle. I feel kind of like a power-gamer, except that my character is probably one of the least combat-capable characters there. It's fun, either way, though.

I'm contemplating building a Sixth Age Exalted/WoD game, where after the WoD ends in the Apocylpse campaign, the Exalted return. Details on this will, of course, require seeing how the PCs usher in the Sixth Age. They could preserve the world. They could iredeemably change it.

Should be fun to see.

Hmm. Come to think of it ... I've found that running a shorter campaign is actually kind of fun ... seems to work better than my sprawlingly epic designs of little content. Hmm.

I'm stealing time.

Sneaky little thiefs, tech supportlingses are.&nbsp_place_holder; Sneaky little thieves.

I need to blog.&nbsp_place_holder; Too much to whine about.&nbsp_place_holder; Not enough time to do it.

Stress.&nbsp_place_holder; Unhappiness.

Stay tuned for a State-of-the-Brian-address sometime in the near future.

We hope.

The spammers have won.

I no longer have an e-mail address.

As of today, I now recieve over 200 spam e-mails a day, and less than 1 legitimate e-mail (not counting MLs).

So. I'm going to set up a very simple filter.

All e-mail sent to me is automatically rejected unless it's from an ML I'm on, or they have the correct passphrase in the subject line.

Which is '[4chan]' (without the quotation marks).

I hate you all, spammers. You've made a once valulable tool a mockery.

Anyway.

I had something important to say. But it kind of faded in the face of yet another 2000+ e-mail load of over 95% spam.

So. Wallace does not need smack lain down upon him. And I didn't go to Comic- con -- though I'd love a job proofreading manga. Hell. I'd probably love being an editor for a magazine. But I don't write for a living, I answer the phones.

Le sigh.