Video Preview: "You Are Not Prepared". Fighting back against the Resistance.
Here's an early video preview of a video looking at the anxiety we often feel before we prepare or run a D&D game and how to help combat it. Enjoy!!
If you find the video is marked "private", that means I've queued it up for publication on YouTube and it will be back in in a few days. Thanks!
"You Are Not Prepared for your Next D&D Game" – Battling the Resistance (YouTube)
Comments (14)
Thanks for this.
We need a name for the good feelings from after playing. I like to think about how that will overpower the anxious feelings from before playing.
I know the name of the feeling DURING the game that I feel. Flow! Once you get into flow, the Resistance goes away, at least for me. After a good game? Euphoria? Good conversation for the Patreon discord channel!
This video helped a lot today. I have my game tomorrow and with a full weekend I am left to only prep on Monday nights. I use your system and it has helped me prep my games. But this video is what helped me today . Thanks for the content.
I am so glad! Go get em!
Hey Sly, Having trouble finding content/pre-made adventures for Explorers Guide to Wildemount that I just picked up(not including the 4 level 1's inside it). I can always whip something up using your adventure generators, but was just wondering if you had anything in this campaign setting or any great ideas? Maybe you could do a video and come up with something sometime if you have a chance, like you did with Eberron a few weeks back.
Hi there! Unfortunately I just haven't had the time to dig into Wildemount and I'm not a huge Critical Role guy. I love what they're doing but I just haven't found the time to dig into their lore. Sorry I can't be more help!
I agree wholeheartedly! It always seems that the less I prepare the less I get the Heebie jeebies! This last weeks game I literally (because i had no spare time last week) prepped for like 1/2 hour- threw on some maps and quickly altered something from another adventure. I was so worried I didn’t have enough “content”, but I just leaned into my players and they generated all the content I needed. It was a very fun game!
While RotLDM/LDMW provide a *way* to prep, there is a "meta" principle it establishes that I find even more fundamental: that smaller, lighter, and more nimble planning is possible. Once I was able to conceive it, my Resistance diminished substantially and I could enjoy the process again.
As long as I have a story to tell, and the story has several ways of being played out, I'm confident in GMing it. I use Knives a lot to improvise during these, so I don't have to really make the whole thing. And that is great, because making the whole thing is guaranteed to fire back on you, as players tend to go off script quite easily. So I have opening scene fleshed out but unresolved, and then a series of potential encounters, and a possible ending that might get redefined on the fly. The further I go down the story, the less defined things are. It might be terrifying for some but for me it works wonders. The only drawback is that if the story is too good, I sometimes giggle like a bad villain while GMing as it starts collapsing into the final form.
I live for those giggly moments.
Thank you!
This video was very good, powerful stuff! Thanks, Mike.
Love this note, it really does creep up on you just like stage fright. Personally I try to remind myself of all the other times I was nervous and on cusp of cancelling because of my anxiety but then 15 minutes in I'd completely left that nervousness behind and was on my way. It's like a water slide, it's scary at the top before you start but once you take the plunge it's out of your control and you can just have fun with it.