Really fun video. Getting a consistent group together is probably the hardest part of running a game. If you can enjoy a game with even as few as one or two players, that can work well.

I use a few tricks to keep groups going:

• Have six full-time players.
• Have two “on call” players – these are players who are interested but might not be able to commit regularly and are willing to jump in when a spot is open.
• Run with as few as four. This means it takes five people cancelling before you can’t run a game.
• Run at a consistent time each week.
• Run shorter games – I go for 3 hours.

That’s helped me keep multiple groups going for ten years with one group consistent for about 20 years.

I wrote an article with my thoughts on running mysteries here:

https://slyflourish.com/running_investigations_and_mysteries.html

The new DMG likewise has a big table for figuring out how many rolls would succeed given a target number and number of rolls.

I have two approaches I prefer these days:

1. The damage pool. Instead of tracking individual damage, you pool damage in a single tally and remove the last monster hit when it crosses the HP of a monster. Add up all the damage and remove a bunch of monsters with an area attack.

2. Group up sets of monsters into four groups and then roll once for each group. If sixteen skeletons have to save versus a turn undead. Group them into four groups of four and roll four times.

We have a handful of ideas like this in Forge of Foes and the Lazy DMs Companion and released them under a CC license here:

https://slyflourish.com/lazy_gm_resource_document.html#runninghordes

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

Yay! Thank you!