Been awhile since we've been back into the Tomb of Annihilation. Hoping to get back into it and wrap it up eventually. Since ran two more sessions of my Innistrad adaptation and Mike's been running a campaign in his longstanding campaign world for D&D and we've all been having a great time playing in it, playing characters living on the borderlands of an expansive continental empire that is actively trying to conquer the disorganized remaining independent bits of the lands most of the PC's are from. I'm especially enjoying playing my Storm Sorcerer PC, finding it to be the most evocative and fun sorcerer subclass in 5e, and playing as kind of like the Flash, changed after being struck by lightning and "blessed by Thor".
Also agreed to co-advise a D&D club at school. We're mostly using various AL adventures to ease kids with various levels of experience with the game into it. They work well for our after school time frame and for the purpose of the club. Hoping some of the kids get into DMing and take the lead a bit more in the club but we all seem to be having a good time so far.
The Innistrad campaign was built around the second session, in which the failed saving throw from session one (the virtually impossible one) led to the transformation of the PC's into Kafkaesque bugs. Actually inspired by the Home Movies rock opera...
So they all turned into bugs. Then they had to escape their hometown by the Dark Sea as their friends and neighbors chased after them with brooms throwing rotten fruit and rocks while a wandering Knight attempted to slay the "monsters". The PC's staying in the cathedral got the bishop's support in helping them with the terrible curse and in rescuing the rest from fearful mob. They then decided to find the Archbishop of the Church of Avacyn in the capital city of Gavony. So they hit the road, making their way with a few minor encounters to Gavony, on the outskirts of which they discovered the Archbishop had left toward Stensia in the West in a crusade of sorts against some of the vampires found there. So they followed. As they passed a small village (the party mostly crept around settlements and by the sides of roads, trying to avoid contact with those who might misjudge them) they noticed the Knight from their town of Varno arriving. They decided to try to ambush him when he left. In the ensuing fight two of the PC's died as did the Knight, and a commotion ensued in the town where the sentries noticed the end of they battle and the death of the Knight and his horse.
We left off there and decided at the following session today that one of the PC's (Vaughn the Fighter) had actually only been maimed, losing a wing in the fight. The other player decided to make a new character - a bard, from the Gavony region, who decided she would investigate these creatures after calming down the scared villagers, and she ended up joining the bug party, leading them toward some mines she knew of to the south, but they quickly became lost. They then stumbled into a Kobold mining operation (used the Marrow Mines from Jon Sawatsky's Prepared! A dozen adventures for fifth edition, 2016). Eventually they negotiated a retreat out of the Kobold mines and fled back toward the Gavony River, running into the bounty hunters Heiko, Hank, Huck, and their faithful hound. They PC's slew the bounty hunters, discovering that they were themselves the monsters the hunters were seeking. They then made their way to the river ford to the town where the Archbishop was supposed to be staying, and surrendered themselves to the guards and (hopefully) into the Archbishop's protection, and we left off there.
