Afloat

Afloat is lightweight modpack that changes overworld terrain to floating islands using "Aetherial islands" by Klinbee. The modpack add simple traversal tools like gliders and grappling hooks, as well as more sophisticated transports in the form of immersive aircraft and VS: Clockwork. Asside from the nessisary inclusion of the create mod, this pack preserves the intended vanilla game-loop; get tools, build cool stuff, get better tools, build cooler stuff.

If you find your friends to be more of a nuciance than you're willing to allow, the inclusion of just enough guns and create big cannons should provide you with all the tools you may need to gently persuade them to act accordingly.

In the future, I may add custom floating dungeons for players to tackle in both their airships and on the ground. However this detracts from the vanilla game-loop, so it is still under deliberation.