My big thing is to avoid hard numbers wherever possible. EG, you’ve got a big spooky encounter with complicated abilities, passive/lair effects, etc etc; it’s health pool is whatever the plot demands. :P Realize you underestimated the raw dps of your players? Bump that health up until it has a chance to show off what it can do and feel like a threat. Realize this thing will just murder the hell out of them? Tune it down until they only need 1-2 good hits to bring it down before they’re out. Similar with saving throws, bonuses to hit, ac, etc. I usually don’t commit to anything until at least a round or two has passed. Much easier to balance the interplay of complicated features and abilities after you’ve seen what they can do, and there’s no reason you can’t do that on the fly, assuming your players trust you to want them to have the best experience possible.

Doesn’t help that a lot of this gets internalized, I think. Like, fuck, there are plenty of terms that seem reasonably descriptive of me (bi, demi, enby, etc.) but… I’m super straight passing, and not super driven by sex or romantic relationships, so it’s like… I never really have to deal with these labels in my day-to-day? I stick he/they in stuff when people ask for pronouns, style myself somewhat androgynously, am well aware 90s David Boreanaz is objectively eye-candy, and I haven’t gone on a date in… years, because I just don’t really care. But claiming those labels feels improper, somehow. Both from a “born and raised christian, que toxic masculinity and internalized homophobia” perspective and a “I am in a position of extreme privilege where I haven’t had to face many of the struggles common to the LGBTQIA+ community, claiming a place there seems insulting” perspective. /shurg

TBH, my first campaign struggled largely because I tried too hard to make a sandbox. There was a little intro adventure, set up some lore and conflict, then I told them they could go wherever. They decide to travel to a nearby town thay mysteriously cut contact with the village they saved. Oh, there’s a cult and supernatural plague here? Cool, lets dip and wander to the active battlefield to the west, run into an imperial patrol and get drafted into the army. The enemy army is made up of strangely changed soldiers that refuse to stay dead. Spooky. Lets desert and go back to the first village, and investigate the strangely coordinated goblins that had them under threat. >> This all happened over the course of about five sessions. Their ability to run into, and then immediately drop, plot threads was unparalleled. :P