I dislike the oft repeated fudge advice. Why not just do a collaborative writing exercise if you don't want to actually use the rules of the game you're playing?

As a player, I would be crushed to find out the GM was fudging. It would make all of my decisions pointless.

As a GM, if you fudge, you are effectively removing the players' agency. You are becoming the sole arbiter of the story to be told, and they are just along for the ride.

If your spectators want that, cool. But I'd much rather be an active player.

I was thinking and trying to come to with something and I realized that I never got advice.

My path as a DM was essentially all "jump in and learn to swim".

First from the old red box an uncle left behind when he moved, trying to figure it out (and bashing my face into thac0 until giving up for years).

Then, when I got fed up with the first DM I played under, I said "fuck it", then finally figured thac0 out enough to run some d&d for friends, and decided I liked the mishmash my first DM used that was a gurps/d&d/marvel heroes/call of Cthulu abomination. I took the things I liked that he did, rejected what sucked for me, then gradually grafted on my own home brew stuff.

My group vastly preferred the near future, science fantasy setting I cooked up to standard d&d, so that was what mostly got played over the years until I essentially retired from running games (tried to run some here and there, with varying degrees of flake leading to aborted games).

So I never got advice. What I got was players, friends, giving me shit when things sucked and helping me cook shit up to fix what was broken. I call it "my" system, but the mechanics that weren't lifted from established systems then adapted are only maybe 90% mine. Even the ones I wholly cooked up got adjusted over time by my friends input.

My best friend completely designed two magic "schools", and had a major hand in coming up with racial abilities for our weird-ass wants.

And I think that's the advice I got indirectly. Make the game, whatever system it is, a thing of creativity and fun. The system doesn't fucking matter. The setting isn't important. The people are. Time and time again, my best shit as a DM wouldn't have happened without everyone being fully engaged, fully free to pull shit out of their ear and see what happened.

It's the advice I tend to give when asked. And it isn't just rule of cool writ long winded, because you don't actually have to do that for an engaging table. You can RAWdog the fuck out of dice and rules as long as players and DM are invested in mutual enjoyment.

Get your players to tell the story.

As a GM, I'm not the only story teller at the table. I ask my players to provide backstory, flesh out NPCs, explain how/why their characters can do things that aren't on the sheet.

It takes a lot of load off me, and it makes it more fun for everyone.

It's not a game if your players aren't able to make informed decisions. They can't make informed decisions if you keep arbitrarily changing the rules.

"You cannot have a meaningful campaign if strict time records are not kept." - Gary Gygax

This advice can be taken in various ways. My take is time goes by while your PCs are doing their thing.

Nefarious plans are carried out by evil minions and the latest exploits of your party of murder hobos has reached the next settlement. If your party does a side quest instead of saving the queen from a sacrificial ritual, they going to have more xp and gold but Orcus is now wearing a new queen skin loincloth.

Time drives the consequences of PC actions. The world continues on while your party is on their 6th long rest in a 5-room dungeon.

There are other games than DND. Play more of them and steal ideas from them.

I don't like that advice. Part of the fun of TTRPGs, to me, is the randomness involved in outcomes.

But if it works for you it works for you.

Best advice I've ever gotten was that the DM isn't responsible for everything. So now I let players handle the scheduling.

Tell your players they can also create part of the world. If a player wants to jump up, grab the chandelier and swing towards the enemies, then there's now a chandelier there. They don't have to ask if one is there first.

And print out a long list of names and a long list of quirks (like "gorgeous", "drunk ", "depressed", "freckled", "educated", "short-tempered", etc.)
Pick a name and 2+ quirks for every NPC they encounter, to give them more than "he's the shopkeeper" to play off of.
You can make similar lists for villages you didn't plan out, spaceships, etc. depending on the setting.

Similarly "The DM rolls the dice because it sounds good. Occasionally the dice tell an amazing story, unfortunately the DM must always tell an amazing story."

@mr_noxx
"Only prep what is either absolutely necessary for the next session, or actually fun to prep."
I get this one from Kevin Crawford. I find that it helps preventing prep from becoming a chore, and gives the nice long-term goal of making the "necessary" part of the Venn diagram as small as possible, and as overlapping with the "fun" part as possible.

I agree with this advice to a point. For me, it is a 50/50 decision. Fudging dice and cheating is part of dming to me, but it is a decision of when, where, and why. Crushing your players under under a severe string of bad luck can kill the game, but so can everything going their way. The point to me is to make the game compelling rather than a power trip, even if I am ultimately on my players' side

I have to roll in the open, otherwise I'd fudge every roll. I don't want my players to have a bad time. I equate failing on a roll with not having fun.

Instead, I roll in the open, and try to provide multiple ways to give a hint, or out of potentially lethal scenarios.

If it does not serve the fun of the people in the table you are allowed to gloss over it.

@mr_noxx do stars & wishes in the end of the session to prep the next session.