Why We Do This

[kilroy]

The other day a thought occurred to me along the lines of: "Roleplaying is like being in a never-ending television series with an infinite special effects budget." It has the immediacy of video games combined with the imaginative power of reading: you get to do anything. It's hard to beat.

The thought's floating in my brain as a counterpoint to another thought I'm wrestling with at the moment: the fact that I haven't figured out how to tell a story with the worldgamething that fires me up. It's got me examining what exactly I want, whether it would be served by running another game, and if so what that game would look like.

I've been the GM for a long time now, waaaaaaay more than I've been a player (especially recently). It's skewed my perspective significantly. I've done a lot of world design and built a lot of stories. What I haven't had is the sense of being in the audience, of exploring a new world or watching something unfold in surprising ways. Not that I haven't been surprised-- my players surprised me constantly-- but when you're the person shaping the narrative there's no sense of wonder. The enjoyment of the moment is tempered by constantly looking two steps ahead to make sure the next moment is still going to work.

The joys are different as a GM. You don't usually get to win, you don't usually get to explore, and you don't usually get to develop characters deeply. Instead you get to baffle and enable players-- to evoke emotions from them through the world you create. You get to really work your creative juices through wild improvisation. You get aesthetic control: the ability to shape the story to your standards, to make sure that it's something you enjoy. And at the end of the day-- if it works-- you get to say "This is mine."

These are non-trivial rewards, and they've been enough for me for many years. But now? I'm not so sure. GMing is an awful lot of work if you take it seriously, and I need something I'm relatively sure of to make it worthwhile. I need a seed idea, something I haven't seen before and don't mind working to make real.

Or I need to hang it up for a while, of course.