I'm glad this site has reached the point where raccoon memes hit my page. More, please!

Hey! It sounds like you've prepped a lot with the books and DM screen, which is a good sign!

As a DM, I jumped into running a full year long campaign after just running a couple one shots. It really IS easier than you think!

All you have to do is help your friends interact with the world in the books. That's your only job.

The only tips I have are these:
Make sure both your players AND yourself are having fun! It can be easy to stress and bend to your players every whim so they have as good a time as possible - don't do that. Make sure YOU'RE having fun, too! It'll improve your ability to run the game and everyone will be able to tell.

Don't worry about the tabletop aspect too much. I ran a game for over a year with nothing but my laptop and a map I drew with my friend that had the names of cities on it. I hid my dice behind my hand because there was no room for a DM screen - it really just comes down to you and your players having fun. The objects aren't necessary. Don't worry about not having them.

Have fun! Let us know how it went!

I fell off halfway through watching Love is War but I might pick it back up this weekend! Baldurs Gate got its hooks in me

LMAO someone stop me if this is a bot repost, but Twitter has the character limit because when Twitter was first founded you could text a phone number to post a tweet

Text messages had a limit of 150 characters or so. That means all the tweets did too.

That's all it is

As others have mentioned, those Spirit Guardians are phenomenal.

My personal honorable mentions are Silence to mess with enemy spellcasters, Beacon of Hope if you're in a tough fight and keep losing your front liners, and Spirit Shroud, if you are a melee Cleric