New to Sly Flourish? Start Here or subscribe to the newsletter. Listen to articles on Readings and Reflections.

Go Easy On Yourself

by Mike on 29 September 2025

Go easy on yourself. Your game doesn't have to be perfect. Your voices don't need to be spot on. It's fine to look things up in your books at the table or ask your friends for clarification on a rule.

Online discourse in the RPG hobby helps us game masters expand our knowledge of RPGs tremendously. We're able to get the opinions of thousands of other game masters and use those experiences to shape our own style when we sit down with our friends and run our games.

But there's a risk. We hear it when we discuss the "Mercer Effect" in which GMs worry that players expect Critical Role levels of performance from our games and are disappointed when it turns out to be a normal game.

My expectation, based on some data, is that the Mercer effect isn't as much of a problem as some GMs might think. Most players just want to enjoy a game. They don't need (and shouldn't expect) Hollywood-level performances around our tables.

Going beyond this concern, though, I hear GMs who put a lot of pressure on themselves for things like

A-tier NPC voice work
super rich and deep storylines
perfectly executed combat tactics
awe-inspiring location descriptions
deep interwoven character backgrounds

and so on.

RPGs offer us an incredible opportunity to get together with our friends and share awesome creative stories together. But they're also just games. Your players just want a good time and to see their characters do awesome stuff. It's ok to screw up an NPC's voice, forget their name, or forget they even exist. It's ok to fall back on your players to help you fill in parts of the game you might have dropped. It's ok to forget some monster abilities or forget to mention a crucial description of a room only to remember it later.

You don't need to be perfect to run a fun game. Focus on the fundamentals that make games great:

Let the story unfold during the game.
Be fans of the characters and their heroic activities.
Prepare what you need to help you improvise at the table.
Focus on what makes sense in the world and adjust as needed to ensure the game remains fun.
Focus on the friends in front of you, the session you're running, and the characters they're playing.
Seek positive feedback to ensure the game's heading in the right direction.

It's fine to seek to improve in our craft as game masters. Take in new information, advice, tips, tricks, tools, and other stuff. Continually hone your GMing technique bit by bit. Seek to improve session by session.

But go easy on yourself at the same time. Focus on your friends and your game and having a great time.

More Sly Flourish Stuff

Each week I record an episode of the Lazy RPG Talk Show (also available as a podcast) in which I talk about all things in tabletop RPGs.

Last Week's Lazy RPG Talk Show Topics

Here are last week's topics with time stamped links to the YouTube video.

Patreon Questions and Answers

Also on the Talk Show, I answer questions from Sly Flourish Patrons. Here are last week's questions and answers.

Talk Show Links

Here are links to the sites I referenced during the talk show.

Last week I also posted a couple of YouTube videos on Lightning Rods for Every Class – Showcase Powerful Character Abilities and Return to the Shrine of the Lower Left Hand – Dragon Empire Prep Session 38.

RPG Tips

Each week I think about what I learned in my last RPG session and write them up as RPG tips. Here are this week's tips:

Keep the names of the characters in front of you oriented to the players sitting around the table.
Draw sketches of villages, towns, and other environments to make them feel real.
Use tokens to show monster positions even if you have no terrain to speak of.
Make sure players are ok with big in-game decisions by "pausing for a minute".
Write notes to yourself during the game. Take a picture with your phone for a digital record.
Keep last session's notes handy if you need to reference something.
Flavor monsters with connections to gods and villainous factions.

Share this article using this link: https://slyflourish.com/go_easy_on_yourself.html

Subscribe to Sly Flourish

Subscribe to the weekly Sly Flourish newsletter and receive a free adventure generator PDF!

Get More from Sly Flourish

Sly Flourish's Books

Have a question or want to contact me? Check out Sly Flourish's Frequently Asked Questions.

This work is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license. It allows reusers to distribute, remix, adapt, and build upon the material in any medium or format, for noncommercial purposes only by including the following statement in the new work:

This work includes material taken from SlyFlourish.com by Michael E. Shea available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license.

This site may use affiliate links to Amazon and DriveThruRPG. Thanks for your support!