GMing, like cooking, is all about preparedness

I wanted to take some time today to talk a little about how cooking and gaming relate to each other so you're getting an extra post this week.  One of the things that really got me thinking about starting a blog is noticing the little areas in life where the skills of being a GM and a player relate to the skill of cooking and vise versa.  Some gaming traits have proven useful as I learn to cook, but there is one big way cooking has helped my gaming.  That is the fun little French term 'mise en place'.  

Mise en place literally means 'putting in place' and it is a term that you've probably heard if you watch cooking shows or read books on the subject.  It's the practice of doing as much preparation as you can, before you start cooking. This ensures that once things get started they run smoothly.  It's also a fun phrase to pull out if you want to sound like you know what you're doing (note: it's pronounced me zahn ploss).  

Don't start cooking when things still look like this.

Ahh, much better.

This practice of preparation makes a world of difference for me when I cook.  I'm not a great improvisational cook (someone who can throw a dash of this and a handful of that and end up with something amazing).  If I start to get behind, don't chop something quick enough or forget to shred some cheese, I start to get panicked and the whole thing goes downhill from there.  But if I have a chance to set up my kitchen beforehand, I can make some delicious meals while blithely chatting with my wife and our guests.  I can't stress this enough: if you don't think that you're a good cook, find a recipe and just follow these steps. You'll feel like a pro.  

1. Read the whole recipe before you start
2. Chop up everything that needs to be chopped
3. Measure out every spice, oil and ingredient you need
4. Lay out everything in the order that it's used before you start

If you stay calm and move through the steps, you will successful.  Here's my setup for the Turkey 'Chili'.

Since you're clever, you've probably already figured out how this relates to GMing.  Running a good game is about 70% preparation.  As I said in the game prep entry a couple of weeks ago you want to have as much as you can laid out before you ever sit at the table.  This will help limit your need to invent things on the fly, and drastically reduce panic at the table.   If you already run games this way, you can now use these skills in your cooking.  

If you don't, the next time you run a game try to identify the places where your table falls apart.  When you lose control of the players and things go off the rails you'll find that it is usually caused by some small failure of preparation.  The players lost interest while you were looking up a monster, figuring out an NPC name, or trying to remember what a cubicle farm looks like while they are getting ready to raid an office.  Write down what you learn from these situations and look over your notes a couple of hours before your next game. You soon find things running much more smoothly.