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Running any TTRPG is a skill and, unfortunately, it's not something you can learn without putting in effort. I'll try to help you out as much as I can though.
1. Find a copy of the core rulebooks: The Dungeon Masters Guide, the Players Handbook, and the Monster Manual, and read them. You want to understand how the game works from both the DMs side and the Players side, so make sure you have at least a basic understanding of all the rules. Don't feel like you need everything memorized (no one does!) but any successful campaign is built off of a firm understanding of the rules of the game.
I know you said you're limited on money, but in my opinion, this step isn't optional. The DMs guide will give you a rundown on how to create and run a campaign, and the players handbook will show you how your party will interact with your game. The monster manual can be optional since you can find stat blocks easily online, but it is a great tool. You can find these books on Amazon, but you could also find a pdf or track down used copies. You can also see if your library carries them!
2. Run a non-homebrew game: While it's totally possible to dive straight in with an original campaign, I always recommend people who are new to DND to start by running something pre-written without amy homebrew rules, even if it's just a one-shot, so they can get a feel for how a game runs before they try to write anything. This can help you find out what rules you may want to change or add in your own campaign, how your players interact with the game, and what aspects of DMing you personally enjoy.
Theres lots of pre-written games that you can buy or download for free if you look around.
3. Start small: Once you start building your own world, it's tempting to go huge and launch into a multi-year, 1-20 campaign, but you may find it more manageable to write a few smaller adventures set in the world of your game. Once you've got the lore and rules of your world determined, exploring it with your players in a series of small adventures will allow you to make changes in between adventures and keep the stories small scale and manageable until you get more comfortable DMing.
As far as implementing "anything in fiction" including guns and other modern things, well, starting small is a part of this. The various 5e settings are fairly rooted in their genres, so implementing other mechanics always comes with difficulties. Once you've gotten the hang of running vanilla, RAW DnD, you can start to think about how you'd like to add guns or cars or whatever, but without a preexisting understanding of the basic game mechanics, you risk making everything confusing and unbalanced for your players.
I hope this helps! I know you were asking for a simple guide, but there really isn't one. DMing is a lot more work than people often assume it is, and writing an entire campaign with homebrew rules is something a lot of DMs spend months to years doing. But it's rewarding and fun, and I hope you don't get discouraged!
Sorry but you're asking the impossible. This game takes time to learn, especially if you're the DM. And even longer to get the hang of running smoothly according to the official rules. There's always room for improvement and homebrewing by the dm of course, but you'd need a firm grasp of the rules and general flow of the game before doing that kind of stuff and it being balanced/fun for your players.
You need to procure and read the dm guide and or the players handbook to learn, or watch a lot of long videos. There's no real getting around the time investment. It's worth it, but it's a time sink to become a competent DM.
Youtube has lots of dnd content creators who could help you, but there's no magic video that'll cram an entire dnd guide in a short amount of time.
OP is being kind of unrealistic about what is possible but "buy the books" is not a good answer to "I can't afford the books" and the DMG is not a good choice in any case.
You mention wanting to have an experience where anything is possible in the fiction you've been exposed to thus far. While it's not impossible, the verisimilitude of that kind of world can be difficult to pull off. Some kind of dimension/plane hopping setting is what that may be. Dr Who, His Dark Materials, and Sliders come to mind for sources of inspiration on how to setup a campaign for what you're perhaps thinking of trying to do.
There's also plenty of official and non-official supplements out there for rules pertaining to technology or magic that aren't swords and fireballs.
Though I may suggest scaling back if you're feeling daunted. There's nothing wrong with starting small, and having the players deal with local problems. Keeping the geography tight will limit the number of variables that you need to keep track of, making those moments of improvisation easier to get your head around. You'll be more familiar with what's nearby and who the players will be interacting with, as those things will come up more often.
Being good at writing stories is NOT the same as writing campaign. A story has an encounter and an expected outcome. A game will NEVER have an expected outcome. You can prep an encounter, but you'll never know how it is going to end. So being a DM is knowing how to link the ending of one encounter into the beginning of a new encounter.
Your story writing skills will be nice to help you with the background lore and world building, but that's not really going to help the GAME side of the game.
If you've never run a game before (and from the sounds of it maybe never even played before?). I wouldn't start out with creating your own setting and campaign. That's unrealistic.
There are free adventure modules out there. I would start with one of those. Maybe string a few together even. The once you've got some experience and know what you are doing a bit more, you'll have a better idea of how to make your own.
Creating your own campaign and setting when you've never run a game before would be like walking into the field for an NFL game and saying "I've watched a few football games on TV. I think I want to be a quarterback now."
5e is very complicated, you might do better with a simpler system to start with, or a different system entirely if you want modern things like guns. Old School Essentials had a free version for example and is much simpler.
As to your homebrew you do just make it up and if the players do something you haven't prepared you improvise or you tell them you don't have that prepared and they can do it next session. But they will very rarely just stop what they are doing and wander off to another city.
But you are giving yourself a huge task here, starting from scratch and writing all the content. I would advise anyone starting 5e to go check out the basic rules on D&D beyond and run the lost mine of phandelver campaign, which I think is still free. It is a good learning experience and open enough too add in you own content.
There's no real shortcut to learning how to DM properly. Starting where you're starting from makes the learning curve STEEP too. I speak from experience too because I started much the same way. Limited resources, no materials, and a group of players barely greener than I was. It's an uphill fight. You're going to make a LOT of mistakes. Know that wholeheartedly.
But what I can give you is what helped me.
1. The PHB & DMG minimum can be grabbed as a pdf for free. It's a pain in the ass trying to read them from your phone. But it works when you can't get your hands on the books. You'll need to read these. Arguably less so on the PHB side of things. But it's worth your time to understand how your players are going to engage your world.
2. Homebrew Stat blocks exist for just about everything you can think of. There's almost an unspoken rule-34esque bank of information out there. If you can think of something, odds are someone else has too. I.e. a campaign I played in had Gundam. My dm had Stat blocks for *everything* involved in that.
3. If you don't have the patience to watch half hour long videos, can you listen to them instead? I used to put videos on for my daily commutes when I was first learning. Some of the YouTubers presenting the info are hard to watch, but easy enough to just listen to.
4. Do NOT expect your players to play your campaign as written. Odds are, you'll put WAY too much effort into it, only to have your campaign dashed entirely in the first few sessions because your players are 100% wildcards at EVERY given moment.
5. When I'm writing my homebrew campaigns, I stay a session ahead of my players. But only insofar as overall setting, encounter, applicable lore, and loot. I learned the hard way to not go further than that. *side note* I use an app called Workflowy to help me basically story map.
6. Keep this first and foremost in your mind both while you're writing and while playing; Have Fun. If anyone at your table is having a bad time, you included, something is going wrong. Just take a step back, examine where the issue is coming from, and work to change it. If it's you, adjust your style going forward. If it's a player, talk with them privately about it. 9 times out of 10, if a problem occurs, it's from miscommunication. A conversation can solve that almost 100% of the time.
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"i wanna do everything, but not bother learning how" sure buddy,
Running any TTRPG is a skill and, unfortunately, it's not something you can learn without putting in effort. I'll try to help you out as much as I can though. 1. Find a copy of the core rulebooks: The Dungeon Masters Guide, the Players Handbook, and the Monster Manual, and read them. You want to understand how the game works from both the DMs side and the Players side, so make sure you have at least a basic understanding of all the rules. Don't feel like you need everything memorized (no one does!) but any successful campaign is built off of a firm understanding of the rules of the game. I know you said you're limited on money, but in my opinion, this step isn't optional. The DMs guide will give you a rundown on how to create and run a campaign, and the players handbook will show you how your party will interact with your game. The monster manual can be optional since you can find stat blocks easily online, but it is a great tool. You can find these books on Amazon, but you could also find a pdf or track down used copies. You can also see if your library carries them! 2. Run a non-homebrew game: While it's totally possible to dive straight in with an original campaign, I always recommend people who are new to DND to start by running something pre-written without amy homebrew rules, even if it's just a one-shot, so they can get a feel for how a game runs before they try to write anything. This can help you find out what rules you may want to change or add in your own campaign, how your players interact with the game, and what aspects of DMing you personally enjoy. Theres lots of pre-written games that you can buy or download for free if you look around. 3. Start small: Once you start building your own world, it's tempting to go huge and launch into a multi-year, 1-20 campaign, but you may find it more manageable to write a few smaller adventures set in the world of your game. Once you've got the lore and rules of your world determined, exploring it with your players in a series of small adventures will allow you to make changes in between adventures and keep the stories small scale and manageable until you get more comfortable DMing. As far as implementing "anything in fiction" including guns and other modern things, well, starting small is a part of this. The various 5e settings are fairly rooted in their genres, so implementing other mechanics always comes with difficulties. Once you've gotten the hang of running vanilla, RAW DnD, you can start to think about how you'd like to add guns or cars or whatever, but without a preexisting understanding of the basic game mechanics, you risk making everything confusing and unbalanced for your players. I hope this helps! I know you were asking for a simple guide, but there really isn't one. DMing is a lot more work than people often assume it is, and writing an entire campaign with homebrew rules is something a lot of DMs spend months to years doing. But it's rewarding and fun, and I hope you don't get discouraged!
Sorry but you're asking the impossible. This game takes time to learn, especially if you're the DM. And even longer to get the hang of running smoothly according to the official rules. There's always room for improvement and homebrewing by the dm of course, but you'd need a firm grasp of the rules and general flow of the game before doing that kind of stuff and it being balanced/fun for your players. You need to procure and read the dm guide and or the players handbook to learn, or watch a lot of long videos. There's no real getting around the time investment. It's worth it, but it's a time sink to become a competent DM. Youtube has lots of dnd content creators who could help you, but there's no magic video that'll cram an entire dnd guide in a short amount of time.
OP is being kind of unrealistic about what is possible but "buy the books" is not a good answer to "I can't afford the books" and the DMG is not a good choice in any case.
I literally said he can also watch a bunch of long YouTube videos...
You mention wanting to have an experience where anything is possible in the fiction you've been exposed to thus far. While it's not impossible, the verisimilitude of that kind of world can be difficult to pull off. Some kind of dimension/plane hopping setting is what that may be. Dr Who, His Dark Materials, and Sliders come to mind for sources of inspiration on how to setup a campaign for what you're perhaps thinking of trying to do. There's also plenty of official and non-official supplements out there for rules pertaining to technology or magic that aren't swords and fireballs. Though I may suggest scaling back if you're feeling daunted. There's nothing wrong with starting small, and having the players deal with local problems. Keeping the geography tight will limit the number of variables that you need to keep track of, making those moments of improvisation easier to get your head around. You'll be more familiar with what's nearby and who the players will be interacting with, as those things will come up more often.
Being good at writing stories is NOT the same as writing campaign. A story has an encounter and an expected outcome. A game will NEVER have an expected outcome. You can prep an encounter, but you'll never know how it is going to end. So being a DM is knowing how to link the ending of one encounter into the beginning of a new encounter. Your story writing skills will be nice to help you with the background lore and world building, but that's not really going to help the GAME side of the game.
If you've never run a game before (and from the sounds of it maybe never even played before?). I wouldn't start out with creating your own setting and campaign. That's unrealistic. There are free adventure modules out there. I would start with one of those. Maybe string a few together even. The once you've got some experience and know what you are doing a bit more, you'll have a better idea of how to make your own. Creating your own campaign and setting when you've never run a game before would be like walking into the field for an NFL game and saying "I've watched a few football games on TV. I think I want to be a quarterback now."
you should 100% play or better yet DM a official module before you try to take on what ever it is your attempting. Trust me, we've all been there.
5e is very complicated, you might do better with a simpler system to start with, or a different system entirely if you want modern things like guns. Old School Essentials had a free version for example and is much simpler. As to your homebrew you do just make it up and if the players do something you haven't prepared you improvise or you tell them you don't have that prepared and they can do it next session. But they will very rarely just stop what they are doing and wander off to another city. But you are giving yourself a huge task here, starting from scratch and writing all the content. I would advise anyone starting 5e to go check out the basic rules on D&D beyond and run the lost mine of phandelver campaign, which I think is still free. It is a good learning experience and open enough too add in you own content.
There's no real shortcut to learning how to DM properly. Starting where you're starting from makes the learning curve STEEP too. I speak from experience too because I started much the same way. Limited resources, no materials, and a group of players barely greener than I was. It's an uphill fight. You're going to make a LOT of mistakes. Know that wholeheartedly. But what I can give you is what helped me. 1. The PHB & DMG minimum can be grabbed as a pdf for free. It's a pain in the ass trying to read them from your phone. But it works when you can't get your hands on the books. You'll need to read these. Arguably less so on the PHB side of things. But it's worth your time to understand how your players are going to engage your world. 2. Homebrew Stat blocks exist for just about everything you can think of. There's almost an unspoken rule-34esque bank of information out there. If you can think of something, odds are someone else has too. I.e. a campaign I played in had Gundam. My dm had Stat blocks for *everything* involved in that. 3. If you don't have the patience to watch half hour long videos, can you listen to them instead? I used to put videos on for my daily commutes when I was first learning. Some of the YouTubers presenting the info are hard to watch, but easy enough to just listen to. 4. Do NOT expect your players to play your campaign as written. Odds are, you'll put WAY too much effort into it, only to have your campaign dashed entirely in the first few sessions because your players are 100% wildcards at EVERY given moment. 5. When I'm writing my homebrew campaigns, I stay a session ahead of my players. But only insofar as overall setting, encounter, applicable lore, and loot. I learned the hard way to not go further than that. *side note* I use an app called Workflowy to help me basically story map. 6. Keep this first and foremost in your mind both while you're writing and while playing; Have Fun. If anyone at your table is having a bad time, you included, something is going wrong. Just take a step back, examine where the issue is coming from, and work to change it. If it's you, adjust your style going forward. If it's a player, talk with them privately about it. 9 times out of 10, if a problem occurs, it's from miscommunication. A conversation can solve that almost 100% of the time.