A New Adventure/Campaign: Spelljammer

 The usual DM of my Sunday group has been extremely busy for several months now, and while we had started a new Spelljammer campaign after the previous one fell apart (the plot was largely centered around a PC whose player became a dad and thus was too busy to play regularly) we only got three sessions in (maybe four?) before she got busy. Then, we started doing a Kids on Bikes game, but the player who took over as GM for that one got overwhelmed with work and didn't have the energy to run things (he's a new GM too) and so, as a back-up to the back-up, I decided I could run a second (homebrew) campaign.

So I might be insane.

But we just had our first session tonight. The players wanted to start in a bit more of a space-western vibe (I'll confess I might be going a little off-tone for that by introducing a lot of "UFO conspiracy" elements) so I began the campaign with the players' ship crash-landing on a "colony world" near a tiny town in a desert region (though it's a desert with reddish-purple rock, a pale yellow sky, and floating blue cacti, to make sure you know you're on an alien world).

Their ship is a Living Ship (the players managed to beg me enough to let them get something a little fancier than the 20k ships) and so the ship itself will be able to fully repair now that the Treant built into it has been healed a little, but their Spelljamming helm has been destroyed, keeping them grounded until they can get a new one.

Thus far, they've only left the ship and headed in the direction of the town, getting attacked by an Ankheg along the route (the fight was a little tougher than it might have otherwise been because it recharged its acid spray) and then gone down a canyon where they're being attacked by Goon Balloons (and a couple of gnolls - probably going to cut down the number of gnolls given how rough the fight went and the fact that they didn't take a short rest - I don't want to TPK in the second fight).

Anyway, the party is a Giff Paladin, an Astral Elf Monk, a Autognome Cleric, and a Thri-kreen Artificer. It's pretty well balanced, and already I'm enjoying the personalities that are emerging.