I'm a long-time DM out of practice for some 6 years, and I've found some players who want me to run 5e from only the PHB (and MM if I can pull it off). Are there guides to stepping back into a DM's seat, how to be a better DM than I was, and how to homebrew well? None of us want to run the starter set.
Check out some of the links in my signature. Also, this post.
If you have any specific questions, post away and I (and others) will be happy to answer. Welcome back to the DM chair!
Haven't read it all, but thanks a bunch!
_Satyesu_ wrote:
I'm in the EXACT same position -- except replace 6 with 20, lol -- and I've found that it's not too tough to drop back into the driver's seat. The above advice is all great -- and I read through the links in iserith's sig and found them super helpful. (In fact, the blogs for two of them have lots of great insight for DMs and players.)
My friends and I decided to use the module in the basic boxed set as a starting point, just to familiarize ourselves wih the 5e system and to have some structure to fall back on. It's helped a lot.
Also important -- my friends and I discussed ahead of time the fact that we're all a little rusty when it comes to rules. We agreed that pausing to look stuff up when necessary, breaking out of character to discuss things that are confusing us, and being willing to bend the rules to move the story forward (rather than taking a lot of time to find an answer to a question) was definitely the way to go. Being tolerant of each others' relative newbie-ness makes a big difference. And as we get more comfortable and find our adventuring legs, we can drop the meta-gaming and pay more attention to the nuts and bolts.
The key is to keep it fun and to not get bogged down in rules to the point where you're spending more time looking up the stuff you don't know than actually playing. 
THAT SAID... I kept notes of the stuff that confused us, the info we couldn't immediately find, the areas of DM'ing that I felt less satisfied with, and I plan on going through the book and figuring those things out before the next session. I'm looking at those early situations as learning experiences. They're helping me zero in on where the holes in my information/knowledge are, and then plug them. But I don't want to drive myself or the players nuts plugging them while we're also trying to play. I've got a week to study!
Good luck, and have fun!
Basically bawylie's wonderful advice, from another angle:
- DM schedules the world-instigated events and NPC plans; DMs never plan the PCs' actions or choices.
- Give PCs what they want...with a price. (ie: Are they trying to capture monsters as pets? Allow them to do so if they can capture and feed them. Want a super weapon? Steal/win it from its current owner.)
New stuff:
- Surprise your players often. This is easier in a campaign that doesn't have a stringently specific aesthetic that would limit subject matter and scenario ideas.
- Fail faster; go ahead with something and learn from it for the next time. If I sit down and just do it, I can devise one or two 5-hour sessions worth of material in a few hours.
- Ask the players for a critique after each session.