It's not even possible to run a private server, running a server means running one for everyone. And yes, big part of the game is the paranoia related to other players.
bearkub - Are we running sourcemod? If not, run it. We run it on the Studio Rumble and its fantastic. Then you don't have to dish out rcon to every mod.
by being able to model things, you'd already set yourself apart from the endless stream of artists running our of school each year. you wouldn't believe the amount of applications we reject, simply because people are too addicted to zbrush.