PotA Session 5

We managed to survive the great land shark attack.  First there was the resolution to the question, "How far ahead are Thoril and Maendir scouting?"  The answer wound up at a quarter mile, which is practical for scouting but not for encounters.  Then there was a diversion to the inn at Westbridge, to reset the context of where they were.  And I wound up rolling an encounter during the night.

So I sketched out a layout of inn, pasture, barn and makeshift extra pasture, since they had so many wagons and oxen.  None of the encounters were making a lot of sense, so I settled on some wolves being attracted to all the extra oxen.  Truth, Freyja and Maendir were on watch.  Maendir spotted them and advanced on them, yelling.  This alerted the others.  Truth cast a fire bolt in their general direction, and rolled a 1 for damage.  So at least he didn't set the grass on fire.  Freyja joined up with Maendir, so they were a mini-pack in opposition.

Meanwhile, Thoril was sleeping in the woods, and one of the more alert wolves went to check him out.  He used body language to indicate that he was not prey, and the wolf pondered how to classify him.

Back at the main incursion, the wolves split into two groups on either side of Maendir/Freyja.  Maendir cast speak with animals and told the wolves to back off.  Truth tried using thaumaturgy to echo Maendir's howling, but a bad perception roll had him apologizing to the wolves instead: "I'm just a child, I don't know any better."  In the end, the wolves decided that this was more opposition than they wanted to deal with, so they withdrew.

Finally, we got the caravan on the road again.  Near the end of the day's travel, Maendir and Thoril missed their perception rolls, both with a 6.  In the front wagon, Zook also rolled a 6.  I gave the scouts another chance and this time Maendir rolled a 16.  He noticed a tremor in the ground -- behind him, toward the caravan.  Finally, someone had a clue!

So Thoril and Maendir started running back to the caravan, from a quarter mile out.  I gave them 5 rounds of running before the bulette emerged in front of the caravan, but that still put them 650 feet out.  Let that be a lesson to roll better on perception.

The bulette used its Deadly Leap to pounce on the lead oxen.  The target ox rolled a 19! for its save, resulting in half damage.  The stupid Monster Manual somehow fails to have an entry for oxen, so I used the HP for draft horse instead -- 19.  The ox took 8 damage, thanks to its stellar rolling.  Also, I dropped the damage rolls by one die so it wouldn't insta-kill a party member.

Since there are 8 wagons in the caravan, the party was all strung out.  Zook was the only one close and the others had to find a way to target it.  Fortunately for Su'uvarax, eldritch blast has a terrific range.  The oxen rolled the lowest initiative, but they eventually scattered out of the way.

In the next round, I rolled to see what the bulette would target, since there were several wagons nearby.  It went for something slightly out of range.  With the wagons out of the way, the party had much better line of sight.  Also, the NPC guards fired crossbows; their rolls were either really bad or really good.

In the third round, Freyja and Silaqui managed to make it up from the end of the caravan.  Freyja threw her javelin and Silaqui took the kill with a chromatic orb; since the bulette had 1 hit point by then, it was the definition of overkill.  But I didn't tell them that, because what's the point?

The fight ended with Thoril and Maendir still 400+ feet out. The players think that the scouts should have horses.

Next session, I unleash the cockatrices.  Per the MM, they're not a hazard unless they feel threatened.  I don't want to park them right next to the road.  My next thought was to have the party find a flock of sheep untended, milling about on the road; an investigation would lead them to some stone sheep and shepherds.  But would they all investigate?  So now the plan is that they overtake a flock on the road, which moves aside to let them pass, and some sheep range into the cockatrices' territory.  Cue outraged cockatrices.  After that, they should pull into Red Larch.  I'll let them wander around town (need to study up on the NPCs) and then do the Tomb of Moving Stones.

PotA Session 4

Scheduling problems resulted in a delay and a Tuesday game; next week is back to Wednesday.  I am still feeling the lingering effects of the Cold That Won't Go Away, so it was a light session.

I did take a look at the map of the Dessarin Valley, so I could correlate the when and the where of various events.  Encounters are kind of tricky, since I wound up creating a large caravan.  Ragtag bandits groups aren't going to assail a string of 8 wagons with 16 guards and 10 drovers and assorted passengers.  On the plus side, they aren't going to be attacked by any cultists, either; I'd rather the group have to go looking for them.

We finished up some of the details of the Great Fire Snake Arson Attempt in Triboar.  I showed them the symbol of the fire cult, which they discovered on the corpses of the arsonists.  Nobody knew anything about the symbol, or the arsonists.  They learned that one of the arsonists had submitted a couple of fire snake casks as cargo, which is how the casks ended up inside the cargo warehouse (no burgling required).  And they found shards of dark glass where the casks had come apart; Su'uvarax knew that salamander eggs were made of obsidian.  So they put all the pieces together.

The caravan set out in the morning.  The first point of interest on the map was Black Maw Bog.  This is where I first started noticing the limitation on good encounters; random predators wouldn't attack such a large target.  They did see giant toads, and I was prepared to have wanderers get pounced on, but they were careful.  Freyja took the opportunity to examine new and interesting plant life, and collected some samples.

Su'uvarax asked Liliandra about the Sumber Hills.  She mentioned the Haunted Keeps, although she's not sure where they lie, and also Summit Hall over on the east side, home of the Knights of Samular.  They're an order of paladins of Tyr.

During the next day, they discovered the remains of the caravan.  Thoril and Freyja investigated, and pieced together the story.  Since Freyja is a member of the Eagle clan, she's into birds, plus she rolled well, so she identified giant vultures as the initial attackers.  Thoril also realized that there weren't as many corpses as one would expect.  Some of the cargo seemed to be missing, too.

While the caravan was making camp, a patrol from the Knights of Samular rode up: a veteran and 2 novices.  Thoril made fun of their armor and tried to tackle one of the novices, but had no purchase.  Initially, the novice demurred at taking off his armor to fight, but the veteran gave him the nod.  Thoril managed to roll well and take him down a couple of times, but never quite pinned him.  His victory was a boon to his fellow guards, who bet on him against the merchants, who were more impressed with the paladin. 

The groups exchanged news, since the knights had just come from Westbridge.  They were very interested in the caravan attack, and the story of the arson attempt decided them to head all the way up to Triboar for more information.  In return, the caravan learned that Westbridge was talking about some children who went missing from a local homestead, and that a delegation from Mirabar was expected to stop at Summit Hall to return the body of a fallen comrade.  Liliandra had come down from Mirabar with the delegation before pausing in Triboar, so she was able to tell them about it.  She also mentioned a couple of merchants who were overdue in Triboar from Waterdeep, and a group of adventurers from Triboar who hadn't been seen in a while.

In the morning, the caravan proceeded to Westbridge.  The town was still talking about the missing children, and the innkeeper also mentioned a dwarven prospector who hadn't been seen in several days.  So a general theme of people going missing has been established.  The innkeeper also provided a lot of detail about the delegation from Mirabar, which passed through Westbridge.  Fancier than their usual customers.  There were some diplomats, and a dwarf historian transporting his library to Waterdeep, which he mentioned since Su'uvarax was once again disappointed in his search for a library in the village.  During the discussion, Liliandra mentioned that the nearby Kryptgarden Forest was home to an ancient green dragon.  Su'uvarax was initially interested in talking to it, but no one wanted to go with him, so he tabled the idea.

Freyja had been monitoring the weather.  She noticed that rain clouds were moving toward the Sumber Hills from all directions, which is not how rain clouds usually work.  She got the innkeeper to talk about the weather, and he mentioned how, when it rained, it tended to be a short, heavy deluge -- not at all useful for crops.  Which was a concern, since the local farms provided a lot of food for cities in the region.

So a lot of seeds have been planted for future investigation.

Coming up next, they could do with an encounter.  Given the size of the caravan, I'm inclined to postpone a jackalwere encounter until after the party is on their own.  I'm still going to use the cockatrices, but I want them closer to Red Larch.  If anyone gets petrified, that will give the whole caravan an excuse to linger for a day.  So it's going to be a monster, and since the players got to fight an ankheg in Lost Mine of Phandelver, I'm thinking bullette (land shark).  It's usually a CR 5 monster with a 4d12+4 bite attack, which could easily kill characters.  I might scale back the damage and hit points, and make it a CR 4 encounter instead.  I can have it emerge basically right underneath the advance scouts (Thoril and Maendir) and then it has to close with the caravan.  That would give everyone a chance to react, at least.

PotA Session 3

We started promptly, which was useful.  The party, along with the stablehands and drovers, spread out across the inn yard looking for more fire snakes.  I put two fire cultists in position to keep people out of the warehouse and another two tracking Silaqui, since she was so effective against the fire snakes.  These were standard thug NPCs with the Charger feat added to give them some fire cult flavor -- a suggestion from somewhere that I liked.  There were four more snakes lurking.  The first went off inside the inn, but no one was downstairs to notice.  The second fire snake went off outside the inn; the arsonists had doused the fence with oil to help it catch fire and travel up past the inn's stone foundation.

Some stablehands spotted the new fire.  At this point, the team on Silaqui was able to close and attack.  They had multiattack and all four hits landed, so she dropped.  Fortunately, Truth and Zook were in the area, heard the yells of nearby hands and came over to help.  Meanwhile, Su'uvarax found the warehouse was locked, which he figured meant no fire snakes, so he had wandered closer to the inn and went to address that snake.  Liliandra the minstrel had hopped out a 2nd story window (so much faster than the stairs).  She put the fire snake to sleep, which made her the next target.  Maendir, hanging out in the wagon yard, saw a glow from the warehouse and went over.  When he tried prying the hasp free to open the door, he was attacked by the second team; they dropped him, too.

At this point, the fire cultists were looking entirely too effective, so I cut their hit points by 10 so they'd go down sooner.  Looking back, I misinterpreted their feat:  they use Dash (so a double move) and get a bonus attack, but I was giving them their multiattack instead of a single attack.  Oops.

Since the cultists were so mobile and the party was so spread out, it took a while for them to gain some traction.  Fortunately, the cultists didn't roll so well on their next targets and wound up staying in one place for a round, which gave the party a chance to converge a little.  Once they started helping each other, they were able to work their way through the various targets.

Thoril (the elf barbarian) kept using a Dash to close with a target, which left him without an attack.  Three times in a row, a spellcaster moved into range of his target and finished it with a spell before he had a chance to hit it.  So we got our first running joke -- always an important milestone.  Thoril was able to kill a fire snake with a thrown handaxe, so he wasn't left feeling totally useless.

Unfortunately, Maendir rolled terribly on his death saving throws.  I gave Todd the option of keeping the character or coming up with a new one, and Maendir survived.  Todd didn't see the point of the animal companion -- he was playing a pregen character because he doesn't have the PHB and ranger isn't in the Basic Rules PDF.  We copied the relevant pages for his reference.  I'm glad he's keeping the ranger, but I'm hoping he'll switch to the Hunter archetype so I can stop reading all the "how to fix Beastmaster" threads.

Yesterday, I realized that Todd doesn't have the writeups for all the ranger spells, either, so I bought spell cards.  I wound up buying all the spell cards, because I'm a compleatist.  They look like they would be more useful for classes that prepare spells from a list, as opposed to classes that only know certain spells.

The spellcasters were using Roll20 to cast spells, which is a new thing for them.  Richard wrote a macro for Scorching Ray, which has multiple attacks for the same spell, and shared it with Randy for Zook's magic missile spell.  In other Roll20 developments, I discovered NPC character sheets, which I used for the cultist and fire snake attacks.

Some clues to drop:

• Truth and Zook examined the fire snake casks; I forgot about the shards from the obsidian eggs.
• A couple of merchants are overdue from Waterdeep; this caravan will be asked to watch for them.

Diane sent a note that Freyja will check the weather each morning.  So now I have to come up with some odd weather, which is due to all the elemental energies.  I think rain clouds will get pulled toward the Sumber Hills, which means less rain in other parts of the Sword Coast.  But constant rain would make the fire cult unhappy.  So I think when it rains, it comes down in a deluge -- not good for farming, and this is a breadbasket region.  Other times, the clouds burn off and no rain falls. Some weird wind effects and earth tremors.  Maybe a tornado?  Too big right now, but maybe later as the elemental energies build.

Coming up:  caravan travel.  I think one encounter during the day, when they're strung out, and once at night, when they're in camp.  They also need to find the remains of a caravan that was attacked by the air cult -- so tracks of giant birds.  I need to check the map to see how many days they'll be on the road.  Maybe some benign encounters from the random encounter table, to mix it up.  They should pass at least one caravan coming up from Waterdeep; this would be a good time to drop some news about the missing delegation.

PotA Session 2

We lost a lot of time because I let people choose their tokens in Roll20, which led to people doing image searches and trying out different images.  Looks like the ultimate solution is to use Hero Forge to create a figure, take a picture and paint it in PhotoShop.  Will and Richard are the most into it, so I am leaving them to it.  Richard's character is a tiefling favored soul sorcerer named Truth.

We did some more character intro stuff, signing up for the caravan and sparring or otherwise demonstrating their credentials to be crew instead of cargo.  It took some prodding but Martin remembered that he was looking for books and checked out a shop.  This was a chance to drop some info about the dwarven sage who was in the now-missing delegation.  There are at least three characters looking for answers to particular questions, so wanting to talk to the sage should provide motivation to investigate the delegation's disappearance.  Liliandra can drop more info to get them interested.

Once we recovered Randy from childcare duties, we were able to proceed with the great fire snake extravaganza.  I needed everyone to pick their sleeping spot.  Most of them bunked in the yard around the wagons, and two more were in the barn.  The first fire snake to emerge was in the barn, where the Silaqui the wizard and Zook the gnome were sleeping.  They both had cold spells and were able to deal with it fairly expeditiously, although Zook was attacked before diving into a stall and slamming the door.

As the outdoorsy types headed for the commotion in the barn, they encountered another fire snake emerging next to a wagon.  Silaqui recognized the glowing cask and rolled it away from the wagon before it burst open.  The gathered characters dispatched it with a little struggle.

The stablemaster has the hands and the drovers who were sleeping in the barn searching the yard for more snakes.  Su'uvarax the warlock made a beeline for the cargo warehouse, since it was the only enclosed space.  That's as far as we've gotten.

There are two fire snakes planted in the cargo warehouse and the door has a lock.  I want the party to confront their lack of thieves tools early on, so they can decide if they want to handle it themselves or incorporate Liliandra.  There are two more snakes, one outside the inn and one planted just inside the front door.  They'll be going off more at the same time.  I also have a few cultists to drop into the mix.  Silaqui has been very effective against the fire snakes, so someone will try to take her out, and someone else will want to keep Su'uvarax out of the cargo warehouse.

Once the caravan leaves the inn, I'll do a jackalwere ambush on the second day.  Discovering the remains of a previous caravan, with signs of giant birds, should happen south of Westbridge.  I also want to hit them with a flock of cockatrices, perhaps closer to Red Larch.  Other clues:  the innkeeper will ask Liliandra to keep an eye out for the missing merchants from Waterdeep, and folks in Westbridge will be talking about the siblings who went missing from a nearby homestead.

We're playing in a week, since Richard will be home from college on break.  To do:

• Take another pass through character sheets
• Finalize cultist details
• Reread upcoming sections on Red Larch and the Haunted Keeps

Planning for Session 2

We generally play every two weeks, which gives me time to work on small and big picture stuff. 

The biggish picture has been the plotline for the investigation.  Based on difficulty, the optimal order for the Haunted Keeps is air, earth, water, fire.  However, investigating the delegation's disappearance points to earth and water.  Granted, I can't control how the party proceeds, but if there's a logical through-line, then the party at least has a way to get to the optimal progression.

I had been thinking of having the caravan encounter the remains of a previous caravan, which had been attacked by large birds and was missing bodies -- let all the outdoorsy types exercise their tracking skills to analyze the scene.  That would lead them to Feathergale Spire with suspicions.  However, that means two investigations.  Then I realized:  If I show them a caravan which was attacked by large birds, and they hear about another caravan going awry, they could assume it's the same root cause.  So they deal with the air keep, then have to investigate the delegation, which points to the earth and water keeps.  At that point, they'll probably investigate the fourth keep (fire) because they've figured out the pattern.  If not, they can find out that the "druids" have advertised a ritual which will end the weather problems, which the human barbarian will want to check out.  In a pinch, I can always have Rosemary meet up with some druids in Red Larch, and head out to the fire fest in order to make business contacts.

Next up:  I want the players to have a chance to test out their characters before committing, which implies an adventure in Triboar before the caravan leaves.  I like introducing the fire element early, so we'll let the fire snakes show up here.  They hatch from obsidian eggs, and burning down the inn is totally up the fire cult's alley.  So, a half dozen eggs, each packed in a pitch-lined cask cushioned with straw, left in a few locations around the inn.  Now I have to come up with an inn layout, but I can borrow bits from the Bargewright Inn.

In order to help all the characters get acquainted, I'm going to have them sign up with the caravan master as either cargo or employees.  They'll get to demonstrate their skills.  So, caravan master Marco and head drover Val.  How many wagons?  There will be a couple spare drovers, so let's say 8 wagons and 10 drovers.  Ideally two guards per wagon, but maybe 6 characters and 10 NPCs.  Now I can set up a page in Roll20 for caravan encounters.  I researched element-related creatures and I think a flock of cockatrices would provide a challenge.  Plus the jackalweres from the random encounter table are interesting.

New question:  If the characters sign on as caravan guards, how can they leave the caravan in Red Larch?  Say a caravan arrives from Secomber; part of that will travel north to Triboar and another part will circle south to Waterdeep.  That will give their caravan enough protection to continue without them.

I reviewed all the character sheets in Roll20, as much as was there.  I want to allocate some uncommon magic items, utility doodads.  The barbarian is the only one without darkvision, so we'll want a convenient light source.  The Gem of Brightness seems like something the gnome would have.  The ranger gets a Quiver of Ehlonna for lots of ammunition for the dungeon crawls.  Always nice to have a bag of holding; that seems like something a traveling wizard would pack.  The human barbarian is an Uthgardt, which makes magic tricky.  But she took proficiency in medicine and the herbalism kit, so she gets a jar of Keoghtom's ointment from her shaman.

I like the weapon of warning and the ring of water walking, but they feel a little too powerful for 3rd level.  Maybe a couple of +1 daggers to round things out.  I'll have to study the magic items some more.

Map issues:  Lots of talk about discrepancies in the maps.  I bought the online versions and printed everything out.  Most things line up internally, although I'll rotate a couple of nodes to avoid collisions.  The bigger issue is arranging the Haunted Keeps.  I'm going to resize the Dessarin Valley map scale so 1 hex = 5 miles, not 10.  I'm not too chuffed about lining up the entrances to the surface, since most of them are pretty far from the temples.  However, the Sacred Stone Monastery should move north of the Riverguard Keep.

Things to do:

• Dessarin Valley map adjustments
• Set up Triboar inn in Roll20
• Set up caravan in Roll20
• Prod people to complete characters
• Finish doodad allocation

PotA Session 1

As expected, we spent most of the session working on characters.  I got people thinking about their new characters a couple of months ago, and they had two weeks since our last game to put something together.  Some people did more DM consulting than others.

I was really looking forward to this process as a way to see what people want to get out of the game.  As a DM, I'm finding that I really like narrative, so I want this to be a story.  I didn't want to just plunk people down in a tavern and have them all team up.  I spent time going over the map, picking out likely places for people to be from.  But of course, some people had their own ideas. 

• (Thoril) Will had his character ready a month ago.  He has an elven barbarian based on a Germanic tribe that herded aurochs.  I'm curious to see how the DEX-based barbarian plays out.  As a coming-of-age rite, he is seeking an adventure that will inspire an epic poem.
• (Su'uvarax) Martin decided on a dragonborn warlock, Great Old One patron.  He was separated from his clan and adopted by barbarians.  Also, he went with black scales, with the idea that they're really rare and there's some significance to being a black dragonborn.  When exploring an old site, he discovered a book which had an incantation to invoke Ouroboros. 
• (Freyja) Diane wanted a barbarian to keep it simple and smash things.  Since she wanted to be human, I suggested the variant human build.  I offered her the Uthgardt tribes so she didn't have to come up with a barbarian culture.  I also had the idea of a mission:  the weather has been off, the shaman thinks the city people are causing it with magic, they need someone to investigate.  She wanted the mission to be her idea, as a way of proving herself to her tribe and resolving some personal conflicts.
• (Silaqui) Ellen wanted a fighter/mage combo.  I suggested the Bladesinger arcane tradition, which she liked.  I was thinking she would be from Silverymoon, but she had picked the Far Traveler background and was from Evermeet instead.
• (Maendir) Todd went with a pre-generated ranger, wood elf, Beast Master, owl companion, archery.  I had come up with a story for him:  He was a ranger in the Neverwinter Forest who knew Reidoth and was recruited to help the folk hero defeat the dragon in Thundertree.  (We skipped that part and didn't bother going back.)  Seeing a dragon sparked an interest in exploring the world.  To start off with, he's doing a favor for the noble, playing bodyguard to the noble's second cousin, who is looking for markets for the Phandelver mine in the interior.
• (Zook) Randy settled on a gnome sorcerer with wild magic.  It was awakened when he was exploring some old ruins and now he's trying to find an explanation of what happened to him.  Since gnomes were from hilly areas, I was thinking he could be from either the Dessarin Hills or the hills by Conyberry.  When I heard about the ruins, I decided that he was poking around in the area of the old watchtower from the fallen Netherese empire, near the necromancer from Lost Mines of Phandelver.
• Richard couldn't make the session but when we discussed character ideas when finishing up LMoP, he wanted to do a magic/cleric combination.  I offered to let him use Favored Soul, so he's going with that.  Probably a tiefling.  I'm looking forward to a winged tiefling.

Since the party was light on healing and didn't have anyone with proficiency in thieves' tools, I put together a half-elven bard with the Urchin background.  Liliandra will be useful for feeding information to the party.  The noble's second cousin who's doing business development for the mine isn't leveled.  Rosemary's there to provide a reason for traveling around, and possibly get into useful trouble.

Now that we knew more or less who everyone was, I needed to get them together, along with seeding some adventure hooks.  Silaqui had been traveling all over, so I decided she had gone up along the coast to Neverwinter, and was turning inland for a change.  So she was in a caravan that came across the Triboar Trail, which Maendir and Rosemary joined.  Zook spent some time observing caravan traffic around Conyberry before hopping onto a caravan to Triboar.

I put the dragonborn in the High Forest near the Dessarin River.  When he was grown, he went to Silverymoon to see if he could learn about his missing clan.  They had info on dragonborn history, culture, anatomy -- a lot of academic material, but nothing about specific dragonborn.  He decided to go to Waterdeep to find more dragonborn.  Freyja was trying to find people who knew magic, but Silverymoon was too big a city for her.  She met Su'uvarax on the road out of the city.  She's from the Golden Eagle clan and decided his golden eyes were like the eagles, plus he seemed knowledgeable about magic and it was sad that he was missing his clan.  So they travelled west together.  Su'uvarax had a message from his patron: "Power gathers in the Sumber Hills.  Investigate."  That pointed him to the Long Road, and Triboar.

Thoril was working as a caravan guard along the Long Road, so that got him to Triboar.  I had planned to put his barbarians in the High Forest with Su'uvarax, but Will had picked a different location.  Still, elven barbarians in the region probably keep in touch periodically, so Thoril had heard of Su'uvarax.

I'm using Liliandra and Rosemary to get various people acquainted before they head south on the caravan.  Nice development:  Su'uvarax is looking for libraries, or booksellers, so that will tie in with the sage's books.

Plans:

• The party's caravan will be attacked by something weird.  I'm going to do a little more research, but the current plan is fire snakes.
• Liliandra will tell them about the Haunted Keeps, as something that might interest Silaqui.  Also, she arrived in Triboar with the delegation from Mirabar.  Possibly some of their guards were dragonborn.
• The caravan from Conyberry that Silaqui, Maendir and Rosemary came across with turned south, while the characters lingered in Triboar.  That caravan was attacked by the air cult.  So when the party investigates Feathergale Spire, a halfling spice merchant from that caravan will be working in the kitchens.

Intro

I have been playing various RPGs (mostly D&D) since college. About 1.5 years ago, my twice-a-month group decided to try out D&D 5e and I volunteered to DM. We ran the Lost Mine of Phandelver adventure with the pre-generated characters, because it was just a test. They liked it, we kept going.

When we finished, I wanted to give everyone a chance to play characters of their choice. There were some complaints about starting over again at 1st level -- that the previous year of play would be a "waste." So I compromised on starting at 3rd level, which is when most characters start to branch out.

It took me a while to settle on the material for the next campaign. I don't feel up to writing my own yet, so that meant published sources. I knew that Out of the Abyss was right out; our campaign before this left us bogged down in the Underdark and I'm quite sure most of the players had no desire to go back there. In the end, what tipped the scales toward Princes of the Apocalypse is that most of the players had done the classic Temple of Elemental Evil way back in the dawn of time, before I joined, and they had a great time. Once I found out that PotA was a re-imagining of those same themes, and that it was generally well-received, I made my decision.

My weekly game, where I'm a player, is doing a 5e adaptation of ToEE, so that will be an interesting point of comparison.

We're using Roll20. Most of the game is in-person, but people were bringing tablets and laptops, so it's actually easier than using figures. (My group really likes maps, so theater of the mind didn't do it for them.) Richard is finishing college, so this simplifies the tech challenges of sharing the field of play. We're gradually discovering the various features.

So the players are still getting accustomed to the system, the DM is still getting accustomed to running the campaign, and we're all still getting accustomed to the tool set. It's a big ol' voyage of discovery.