T
here's something lovely about being a game master for role-playing games, in that you can give concrete expression to a lot of ideas that otherwise would sit idle, or would require tremendous amounts of effort and resources were they to be incarnated in something like a book or a film. I have a predilection for "little arts", whose audience is tiny, but whose integrity is great, and role-playing games are a wonderful instantiation. You're making a story together with just a few friends -- ideally, all operating on high levels of improvisation and creativity, for no one but yourselves, every moment bespoke for your particular proclivities and interests. If done well, they're extremely powerful, but they cannot be shared, in the same way that dreams cannot be shared.
In particular, RPGs give me great freedom to explore the genre of Horror, generally via the game Monster of the Week. Preparing for a session often involves me sitting alone in the dark, trying my hardest to scare myself, and then analyzing, condensing, and writing down for use that kernel of fear. I will never be a film director, and probably will never write a novel, but I can come up with scary ideas, and test them out on my friends and family in a very direct, relatively easy, and remarkably effective way. I cannot tell you how satisfying it is to elicit groans of fear and wonder from my players with ideas that I've had, and actually feel like I have a fairly distinct "voice" within the horror genre, that will never see the light of day outside of these little sessions. The very mortality of these stories endears them greatly to me. They will be forgotten, and they were never for anyone but us, but they served their purpose well.