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What you can do, is learn individual lessons, and take small inspirations from them. In my case, my third watch-through of Escape from the Blood-keep brought me to want to be a more “rule of cool” style of DM – I used to be a total stickler for the Rules As Written and anything that deviated a bit from that was immediately quashed, but I realise my players and I both have more fun when we let things get a little bit weird. The smallest things, from how you approach your music in-game (if you have any) to trying to do voices or accents for NPC’s (Even really bad ones) can make a huge impact on your game.
The other, most important piece of advice is to be true to yourself as a DM. Brennan Lee Mulligan’s “Rule of Cool” style of running the game may have inspired my DM style but if you prefer a more rigid style or if you prefer hand drawing your combat maps instead of massive Dwarven Forge setups (like Mercer brings out for every single encounter), then that is your style, and that’s okay too. One of the most important lessons I’ve learned in my career (as a programmer, not a dm, strangely enough) is that if you’re enjoying something, it probably means you’re good at it, so if you enjoy DMing in a specific way, then that actually makes you better at it.
To be clear, what I’m saying is that if you’re enjoying what you’re doing, that means you have a talent for it. So enjoy it, and don’t let yourself or anyone else judge your style. Even if you never take a single lesson from any of “The Greats”, every game you run is experience, and every time you play, you’re getting better at it. If you’ve read this far, I know that it’s because you really want to have the best game that you can have, but I promise you, the best game in the world is always the one you’re in, playing with people you like, and having fun.
And once again, I’m so proud of you for all you do for your players, and yourself, to have a good game.
Now get out there and have fun.
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