Ephemeral Role-playing

[jack]

One of the strange things about GMing is that it's a naturally ephemeral hobby. If you get really good at writing, you might write stories people keep reading years later. If you get really good at playing a musical instrument, you might play to larger audiences or at higher-profile occasions.

Whereas, if you get really good at GM'ing, you'll still only ever really do it with four other people, and many of the ideas you have will get recycled into an "ideas" folder because they didn't come in play.

Some people write modules or stream games, but that's not for everyone.

That's not bad, I just personally find it really hard to enjoy moments for themselves without wanting to save them forever.

Comments

[aldabra]

I imagine you end up with a bunch of plot and dialogue which didn't go quite how you would have expected and could be repurposed as stories? Concentrated enjoyable moments have potential.

[jack]

I do save everything that doesn't fit (both in text files, and just swilling around in my brain), and as Liv reminds me, doing that almost certainly gives me lots of grist for any future creative endeavours, so it's not wasted. But I have difficulty reminding my brain of this :)

And yes, there is a fair amount of overlap between stories and roleplaying, and I often borrow ideas, but a lot of the specifics for one just don't serve the needs of the other, and vice versa.

And for that matter, I do LOVE my session write-ups, even if they're different they're clearly twinned with sessions.