when it comes to running a game for people in a world i made, it has to be good, i have to put my all into it, these people are giving me their time and attention and what i present to them has to solve the conundrum of both being an expression of myself as art and also as something that cares for and gives attention to each of them as a person and their characters, i cannot mess up the rules or introduce inconsistencies in the world, i will absolutely look at every storytelling game i have experienced to see if there are things to learn from and apply them
to be clear, the above is my first thought to myself, and it really is not an ideal mentality, the implicit "and if i fail at all that then i am worthless" is always tacked at the end
which is silly because when i make a mistake it is not a big deal, sometimes it is great, like once i messed up a character's name once and i decided to roll with it, so that character became two completely different characters - both of them the players loved for different reasons - like i almost had a mutiny at one point because the players were going to save one of those characters and they made me promise to not make the time it took to do that side-quest progress the main plot clock
happy little accident trees
that campaign started not long before critical role did, that is just a me thing, but i definitely did take inspiration from other gms online and that i knew personally