Underappreciated YouTube channels

[JEB]

To start out the New Year, thought I'd share a handful of YouTube channels I enjoy, but which also don't seem to get as much attention as they deserve.

Arcade Music Tribute
Covers of retro video game soundtracks, accompanied by some neat original music videos.

Strange Brain Parts
Reviews the history of comics and the comic industry, mainly forgotten and lesser-known independent titles from the 1980s and 1990s.

Alex Morone
Electronic musician. He came to my attention from his earliest songs/videos, based on vintage SF films.

DJ Axis
Another electronic musician, who mixes video game covers with original works. Used to do tracks for ScrewAttack in the 2000s, made a reappearance more recently.

Please share some favorite channels of your own!

 

[Mannahnin]

Wandering DMs is my go-to for underappreciated. Paul and Dan have a great friendship and it's usually very much like spending an hour with a couple of passionate (and good humored, kind-spirited... just NICE) gaming buddies and hearing them share their thoughts and maybe debate a little. Livestreamed, not edited (aside from their competitive D&D reality show experiment, The Big Bad), so it's very natural and companionable and casual. Five years down they're a bit more polished than they started, and have gotten some very good gaming industry guests, but their audience is still smaller than it should be.

https://www.youtube.com/@WanderingDMs

 

[CleverNickName]

Some of my favorites:

Practical Engineering makes the highly-technical world of engineering approachable and easy to understand. I like to watch it with my spouse and point at the television and say "that's what I do for a living!"

Fascinating Horror offers mini-documentaries on catastrophes, natural disasters, and historic tragedies. Nothing gory, nothing sensationalized, just good content respectfully packaged.

How To Cook That debunks the blight of bad cooking videos, dumb stunts, and harmful misinformation on YouTube, in an intelligent and family-friendly way. I own her cookbook, too, and it's more food science than food photography.

Extra Credits is a channel about game development, run by game developers. Most of their content is centered around video games and the video game industry, but they dabble in TTRPGs as well.

Tasting History is a great channel for history enthusiasts, food enthusiasts, and the cool people who happen to be both. I have his cookbook, too. (I'm a sucker for geeky cookbooks.)

 

[overgeeked]

Bandit's Keep. Daniel's channel is great. He's not as polished as some YouTubers and that's a breath of fresh air. But his videos are good, usually filled with advice that is really helpful, especially for newer players and GMs.

Questing Beast. Ben is one of the more prominent OSR creators and advocates. But he's not widely known outside the OSR scene, which is an absolute shame. He's got a lot of great reviews and advice.

Dungeon Craft. Professor DM has a mix of crafting advice and GM advice, mostly focusing on old-school play. He's sinking into angry clickbait land. Hopefully he'll pull himself out of that spiral.

The DM's Craft. DM Scotty has a lot of great crafting advice for modelling, building terrain, etc. He's also got a fantastic RPG out called EZD6.

The Alexandrian. Justin's blog is widely appreciated...but for some reason he doesn't seem to be getting much traction on YouTube.

Game Maker's Toolkit. This is a video game design YouTube channel and there's so much great stuff to steal for RPG design. This is a must-watch video from a channel filled with must-watch videos.

WillE. Another channel dedicated to video games, specifically World of Warcraft, but the linked video is something everyone should watch.

Adam Millard - Architect of Games. Another video game channel with a game design POV. Again, tons of great videos absolutely loaded with great design ideas just waiting for RPG designers to use.

 

[overgeeked]

Tasting History is a great channel for history enthusiasts, food enthusiasts, and the cool people who happen to be both. I have his cookbook, too. (I'm a sucker for geeky cookbooks.)

Max is great. But I wouldn't say his channel is underappreciated. He's got something like half the planet as patrons and subscribers. We watch his stuff whenever it comes out and I got the cookbook for my wife when it came out. We've only tried a few of his recipes, but what we've done I remember liking.

Internet Shaquille is another great cooking YouTuber. We've tried a few of his recipes and they were fantastic. I got my base chicken tinga recipe from him, tweaked it a little bit, and we've been making that every other week since.

 

[the Jester]

Weird Explorer - this is the guy who started me on my exotic fruit quest.

ESOTERICA - very interesting if you're into real world occult topics and history.

Wilderness Cooking - peaceful, cool, and interesting cooking done outdoors in Azerbaijan and surrounding areas.

Gozillarex - ever wonder how many fighting styles Chris Evans' Captain America knows?

Toehider - if you want a one-man band with amazing musical ability, this is for you.

Janovich - Interested in some deep dives into Warhammer 40K battles and warfare?

Auralnauts - a mix of electronic music and Star Wars parodies.

 

[overgeeked]

Ah. Can't believe I forgot to give a shout out to Bob World Builder! His channel is great and he's almost always positive. Plus he regularly talks up non-WotC games, especially the fantastic Dungeon Crawl Classics. News dropped today that he's doing his own game soon. Seems to be a lot of that going around.

 

[dulsi]

Pointy Hat - Often designs new monsters, subclasses, etc for 5e.
Austin McConnell - Hard to describe this one. He has some interesting history videos. He has videos about his public domain superhero universe. He has videos about useless information.

 

[Velderan]

WillE. Another channel dedicated to video games, specifically World of Warcraft, but the linked video is something everyone should watch.

Topics like that one are where I generally agree with a point I believe you've made in other threads about TTRPGs having plenty they can learn from video games. The concept of "this is too good to not do" is definitely a thing.

 

[overgeeked]

Topics like that one are where I generally agree with a point I believe you've made in other threads about TTRPGs having plenty they can learn from video games. The concept of "this is too good to not do" is definitely a thing.

Yeah. I do go on about it.

It’s a two-way street. At least it could be. Video games have taken from RPGs for decades and they still do. I watched a GDC video the other day about RPG rules video games should steal. Lots of indy games made that list.