Do my posts make me seem adversarial?

I wonder sometimes, how my posting makes my campaign come across.

After all, you see my posts and a smattering of comments by some of my players.

Often my posts are talking about rule changes, stuff my players have figured out how to use or abuse, and things I'd do differently. Mix in the stuff that has nothing at all to do with my game or my players that just pops into my head and gets thrown in, too. It's got to seem sometimes like I'm this grumpy GM with a hostile relationship with his players.

It's really far from that, though. Most of my gaming group were my friends outside of gaming (only a few recent additions were online-only or friends of friends, and only one is a direct gamer add-on.) We play games to play games with each other, not game with each other to play games - it's something for friends to do, not people who happen to do the same thing as each other.

So I write my games based on the idea that we all want more-or-less the same kind of fun. In game I might be harsh and strict. I might make bad rulings and be all stubborn about them. I might say "no" as my default answer and only come to "yes" if I'm convinced it's a great idea.

I write rules based on this idea, too - that they are for co-operative groups.

A good example are the XP rules - we've got a number of options on the table for changing them. It's not because I want to punish my players or whip them into line. It's a mix of the rules we've been using and suggestions from them mixed with suggestions from me to come up with ways of doing it. We all want the same thing - rewarding certain play approaches and not others - and it's just a question of how to do it.

The light armor thing recently is the same - the majority wanted jungle, and "there goes my mail!" was just a new challenge. So are the restrictions on chargen - some players would want them relaxed but they're not there to oppress them but rather to fulfill a greater group purpose. My crazy rulings on all sorts of things are also ones we generally agree on.

But yeah, sometimes, from comments, I feel like I'm giving them impression of being an adversarial GM riding herd on an uncooperative group of players and whipping them into line. Far from it. It's vastly friendlier and more cooperative than that, even if the perceived tone of my posts sometimes make it seem not so.