I'm particularly fond of the design choice to activate childlock if you press the cancel button twice, which results in every public microwave at my uni getting locked accidentally on a regular basis. Handy for me cause I know how to unlock them so theres always some free ones

I've managed to talk 3 people to death, I love bards

that likely means your instance hasn't federated with lemm.ee or has it blocked, check the block list and if its not blocked search the text "!osr@lemm.ee" in your community search, it will show not found but if you leave it a second to index it and try again it should work

The most useful advice I've got is to plan only a few sessions ahead (in detail) so you don't lose too much when the players change direction. This doesn't mean you should ignore larger plots, just try not to get hung up on details.

Apart from that try not to prep plot but prep situations, which is to say: "the players will then talk to the wizard to ask about x" is very limited but "most people in the town know the Wizard is an expert on x" gives more freedom as to how the scenario will go.

I personally also like to focus on factions and characters and their motivations. So knowing the villain's plan or how factions are coming into conflict and then relating that into consequences the players can see works for keeping things feeling consistent and lets me work up new plot threads on the fly

IMO it goes triply so for games with guns, if regular enemies can just shrug off bullets to the head I have difficulty enjoying it cause it just makes the weapons feel weak