I’m a big fan of @[email protected]’s trick of preparing secrets, clues, or general plot point revelations in advance and without anticipating the context of where or how they will be revealed. That is, you just prepare a list of ten facts or details that will engage the players if and when they learn them, and you improvise how they learn them at the table. It’s great for when a player character unexpectedly goes to the library to aimlessly look for clues, or the PCs start talking with an NPC and you need to drop some nugget of info to make the conversation feel worthwhile.

https://slyflourish.com/sharing_secrets.html

“make failure interesting or don’t roll”

Talk with your players if someone’s unhappy. Don’t be afraid to go meta to talk about things that are causing problems, including for yourself. Seriously, communication can solve so many problems. I was able to stop a player from needing to leave the game by cutting a subplot that was really upsetting him, and was able to reassure another player twice about some things that were triggering them.

Play the game the way it wants to be played.

Each game has a specific style/way it’s designed to be played. The system is for that specific thing, and usually it’s worth playing through at least a quick start, starter set, or simple module to figure out what that game demands.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t hack or homebrew, but you should keep in mind what the system wants when you’re bolting things on to it.