I put my top tips here after about 15 years of collecting the best tips from hundreds of GMs:

https://slyflourish.com/top_advice.html

• Let the Story Unfold at the Table
• Set Up Situations and Let the Characters Navigate Them
• Be On the Characters Side
• Use Tools and Techniques that Help You Prepare to Improvise
• Focus on your Next Game
• Build Your World, Campaign, and Adventures from the Characters Outwards
• Pay Attention to Pacing
• Focus on the Fiction First and Mechanics Second

The OSR podcast Between Two Cairns does critiques of old school adventures.

https://open.spotify.com/show/6jxIIEDsjAfm5H6n7kcn8f

The Black Flag SRD also has some simpler spellcaster NPCs.

https://koboldpress.com/black-flag-reference-document/

This article may help:

https://slyflourish.com/getting_started_with_dnd.html

I’d love a go at Crown and Skull by Runehammer. It looks really interesting. I’d like to play it before I run it and, frankly, just don’t have the time.

Here’s some data on the topic!

https://slyflourish.com/facebook_surveys.html#onlinevsoffline2023

Question: This is a poll for D&D DMs and RPG GMs. Do you primarily play online or in person?

YouTube poll posted 18 April 2023 on YouTube, 2,900 respondents.

Response % of total Primarily online 41% Primarily in person 46% Both roughly equally 13%

Also some advice for in person maps:

https://slyflourish.com/drawing_maps.html

Yay! Thank you!