It really has been super fun so far. Unfortunately two players could not make it yesterday so we're trying to reschedule for later this week. I can't wait to see what the players will be doing with the stuff I have prepared for the journey to the Isle of Dread.

The players are indeed great. Though in addition to the five we have now, we also had five more, most of which dropped out right after their first session (and one even before that). The last one wasn't able to continue to completely unrelated reasons. This is the first time I've been trying to play with random people and it's been hugely succesful so far. There were two players I had some concerns about how well they would fit in with the rest of the group during their first sessions, but they both apparently got the same impression and dropped out after that. Now we've had the same five players for the last three games and they are working out great.
It's a very small sample size, but I've long suspected that dysfunctional groups primarily come from GMs not setting a good precedent for what manners are expected. You got to set the tone and other players will align to that, and most things will work themselves out.

I quickly realized during my preparations that the Isle of Dread actually is massive in size, at the scale of a moderately sized country, and that it really is amazingly easy to run a game with little preparation when you don't tie yourself to a script what the players have to do and how things need to play out. I used to prefer to have one game every two weeks, but with this setup I have I feel that I could easily run twice a week. It feels a lot more like entertainment for myself than doing work. So I'm seriously considering to expand the campaign to full West Marches mode with multiple and interchangeable groups, once this group has reached the Isle of Dread and I know when this semester will end.