Saturday night nerding

Caution possible Tomb Of Annihilation spoilers. 

After a six month (or what seemed like it) hiatus I jumped back in with the 5e group.  They have been playing thru "Tomb Of Annihilation" and are now at level 9.  Rather than play my original character (who was only leveled up to 4th) I decided to just print off a pre gen.  From the original group of adventurers only one was left.  As we had one new player that evening, the DM took both of us aside to try and figure out how we would meet up with the group in the Forbidden City (it's ormu or whatever, but it's the forbidden city only titled).  I came up with the concept that we had left the port city around the same time and were slowly following the group of intrepid adventurers.  Hoping to meet up with them.  However there was a LOT of complications and we only finally caught up with them inside the city.  I stepped out of the bushes to say HI! and was blasted by the warlock with eldritch blast (I hate that damn spell).

We ended up doing a bit of exploring of a amphitheater, apparently looking for a place to take these weird square stones (honestly I don't know what is going on in the game, I've been following the play reports, but if your not there it really makes no sense). 

As is typical with fifth ed,  we got into a large fight (with some smaller dinosaurs).  During the combat (which basically lasted most of the session) we started hearing THUNKS coming from the jungle. 

CUE every Jurassic Park joke you can think of.

And on CUE after a few rounds of combat with the smaller dinosaurs, a very large hungry T-Rex came out of the bushes.  (Because challenge ratings).

My character (a rogue) decided to bum rush the T Rex, because after all I'm just AC and HP on a piece of paper. 

A few of the others stayed back, covering themselves with dung (this was happening when the first set of dinos showed up).  They did however finally get into the melee, but at that point we had almost decimated the t rex.  Seriously whilst I bitch up about eldritch blast, the sneak attack feature is friggin deadly.

Anyways, we killed the thing, did a bit more exploring, then found this weirdo tomb.  A bit of a puzzle.  Which none of us were awake enough to figure out.  Bunch of statues, apparently they looked like the stones we were carrying around (ancient evil gods).

I then did some investigating, found a secret door and a necklace, put it on.  Which then lead me to the correct place to put the stones.  (another entrance).  Which was a bit of hand waving by the DM but that's fine as we were all quite tired at this point.

As a personal note, I'm unsure as to whether the DM is getting bored with the campaign, or burned out.  It feels like he's trying to push it thru a bit.  I really hope that, that is not the case.  As well I hope that we aren't handwaved another level next time (for challenge levels), I like the idea of growing into a character and it's skills.  Whatever the case, it's gaming and it's fun. 

Part of the problem I feel is the following:
1.  This group owns/collects all of the WOTC sanctioned material.

2.  All of these adventures are made (for the most part) to be campaigns that take you from level 1 - 20

3.  Playing these campaigns on a weekly basis would get you thru them a lot quicker.  (we meet every three weeks).

4.  People have the new BRIGHT and shiny module and they get excited about playing that one, which makes people want to fast forward the current module.

All of this would be thrown out the window if I was running a game, as I'd want to do a sandbox, home brew thing.  That said I don't really want to DM 5e for awhile.  However after having picked up a copy of Greyhawk, and playing a game on the weekend I got a LOT of inspiration.  That's another post, I've got a lot of ideas rolling around my head.