Premade short campaigns for a new DM and experienced players?
Hello!
One of my long-running online groups has unfortunately lost our Forever DM to the horrors of real-life responsibilities, but we want to keep the group running. However, none of us have ever tried DMing before.
I offered to give it a go, as I have the most free time and experience being a player out of all of us.
I'm mostly worried about balancing things properly, as this is not something I've ever had to think about as a player.
I'm not an especially creative person, and I don't have a ton of free time, so writing my own campaign or setting is out of the question at least for now. So I've been looking for recommendations for a pre-written short campaign or mini-campaign to run to try to get the hang of things.
Eventually I want to run Dungeons of Drakkenheim for this group, as I've played through it as a player with another group and really enjoyed it, but I think it might be a bit much for me for my first time.
Problem: This is a long-running group of fairly experienced players. We've already played through Curse of Strahd, Wild Beyond the Witchlight, Tomb of Annihilation and most of the Candlekeep Mysteries one-shots together. Most of us are also part of separate groups that are currently running other published campaigns (Out of the Abyss, Descent into Avernus, and Rime of the Frostmaiden respectively).
I saw a lot of recommendations for first-time DMs to run something simple like Lost Mines of Phandelver, but I worry that it might be a little bit too "DnD 101" and simplistic for an experienced group. I might be wrong though.
So I am looking for ideas as to what I could plan on running for them, maybe something not published by Wizards, that wouldn't be too simplistic, but wouldn't require an experienced DM to be run properly.