I try not to watch YouTube Shorts, because it’s easy to just swipe to the next one and thus spend much more time then you were planning to. However, I had a few minutes of waiting, so I did just that. (It’s fine to watch them if you know your scrolling is going to be interrupted.)

Now, I don’t know why, but for some reason YouTube assumes I want to see cooking videos. I like cooking and I do it regularly, but I don’t like these videos. There is a whole genre of videos promising a quick lunch with what you have in your cupboards, but they go on to explain how you needed to leave the meat marinate the previous night and amaranth makes the perfect side dish for this. The algorithm hasn’t understood (and it never will) that I don’t eat red meat and I try to avoid dairy products, so I wouldn’t touch many of the things it’s pushing me. AI content is not making this better, because the AI doesn’t have any understanding of what is actually important, so they just skip steps or important information like how long you should let something cook or in what temperature.

There’s actually a new genre of videos, which just criticizes these things and shows you how to actually make a healthy meal in a short amount of time or what is worth prepping or how you can cook easily for the whole weak and they are actually things actual people can do with ingredients you can find in your neighborhood grocery store.

Another thing YouTube has identified for me is that since I used to watch a lot of MtG videos, I must be interested in D&D, which I have a deep, deep dislike for. One might even call it a ‘hate’, which might be true. I have written about it negatively so much (with this post having being among the most read posts on this blog for over a year now and often, such as of this writing, number one). And of course, YouTube isn’t able to differentiate between D&D and actual RPGs, so… yeah.

So, YouTube pushed a short on me about how everyone wants to be like Matt Mercer or Brennan Lee Mulligan as a DM, going on to say they would rather be like Rod Serling. If these names mean nothing to you, Serling was the original creator of Twilight Zone, Mercer and Mulligan are high profile professional DMs with their own shows (Critical Role and Dimension 20, respectively).

Now, if you want to learn to cook and you see those videos where you need wagyu beef and fat made from tortured geese and there’s fifteen steps, twelve different spices of which you are only familiar with two (because everything has pepper and enough salt to raise your blood pressure to new heights) and two hour preparation time, are you going to be encouraged? No.

Okay, so if you see Mercer or Mulligan show off their meticulously built dioramas and minis, a lot of prepared dialogue and handouts, are you encouraged to try? Again, no.

The thing here is that these are people who are making content professionally, so they have the resources and the time to do these things. You shouldn’t feel the need to compete with them (unless you are being paid, of course). This is like social media in general. People always seem to have such great lives, but that just means that they are sharing the parts of their lives which are fun or interesting. They aren’t sharing how the lost a sock again or how the trash containers in their apartment building were full or how the line at the gas station is way too long again.

Can you prepare your food in such a way that you can actually eat it without risk? Okay, then you can cook. If you can figure out how to make it healthier, then you are already pretty good at it. If you serve other people your food and they still come back, than you are good. Recipes are not gospel. They are just good templates to start with.

This same thinking should apply to DMing as well. You don’t need to prep a lot. Do you know the rules roughly? Can you explain the world enough? Can you improvise just a little bit? Okay then, you are ready. If you lack confidence, you’ll find that. Most of the time your players are just happy to be able to play, so they won’t be too critical.

You can forget about the high production values. Those are outside of what anyone can ever expect from you fairly. Just look at the number of people who have worked on those aforementioned shows on IMDb and you can get an idea on how big these productions are. I mean, I assume you don’t have the money to pay a lore keeper to keep your world together or a cultural consultant making sure you don’t make anything offensive? Even Rod Serling, while he did write quite a few of the Twilight Zone episodes, would share the writing duties.

It’s not bad to learn from others, but it is bad to use these kinds of unattainable situations as your benchmark. There are so many bad DMs out there that if you just approach the whole thing with an open mind, you will be better then them, if you just remember to leave room for your players. Start with something like Fiasco if you need to see what to do to give power to your players.

… and that’s it. I was able to DM at 10. I wasn’t good, but I did it. The two main reasons why I’m better now, is that I have learned to let go of control and I have much more knowledge and wisdom based on the last 38 years of life (not necessarily DMing, just life and a lot of reading).