Dantir: Shady Cayes! Unfortunately this was the best photo of me :P And my ears kept falling off again because I forgot to put them on a headband, whoops. But it was super fun! It was set in the island region so we had 'boats' made of garden stands/stakes and bamboo sticks duct-taped as a border around waist height. We had to "man the oars" and pick up a corner to shuffle 'sail' around the oval! Though that sounds crude, it really didn't break the game for me 😊 And a highlight of 'sailing' was (after putting down the boat) fighting the tentacle arms of a kraken, made from foam and wielded by NPCs! Plus our 7-foot dwarf who used his warhammer to smack the jumping baby kraken out of the sky!
The plotlines were amazing as always and the NPCs were wonderful despite being short-staffed. However this weekend I did start noticing (mostly from talking about it afterwards) that certain plot hooks baited by the NPCs were either not taken or reinterpreted by the players. This is usually fine, and entertaining, for example when a combat encounter is circumvented by a magical wall of air! But one combat encounter this time was to "test our mettle" for the boat captain, and we talked around having to fight. Good for our hit points and bandage count, but as a result the new measure for being able to board was being able to row, and our best fighter was left behind because he couldn't. By being a player alone we should've fought for him to get onboard, but we didn't, and he was left onshore, cut out of the storyline he signed up for. :( I regret not saying anything very much.