So what are you playing?

We are playing modified 5th Edition Dungeons and Dragons. Most of the game rules and resources are straight from the original D&D 5e Players Hand Book (PHB) and Dungeon Masters Guide (DMG). However there are new rules we’re implementing, some home brewed some taken from other sources. Finally the setting is completely home brewed, a selection of new items, gear, weapons, and spells are available, also a lot of monsters will be created specifically for this setting. You’ll find a lot of pop culture and video game references in our conversations and in game material, if you’re looking for a ‘Raw Tolkien Fantasy’ setting you’ve come to the wrong place.

I would describe the setting as ‘Age of Enlightenment Dungeons and Dragons’, there are guns (although expensive and semi-rare), armored prosthesis (Automail from FMA or Augmentation from Deus Ex), locomotives, and even the start of pharmaceuticals (drugs designed for a specific purpose). That being said, a lot of the civilian/peasant population doesn’t get to experience these wonders, and when they do it’s in rare circumstance. For example, moving to another town might be the only time a peasant rides a train, or when someone in town gets sick it might be a big ordeal to find the needed medicine to save a life. Adventurers and Nobility are far more likely to deal with these on a daily basis.

Who are you all? (Active Group)

We’re a group who plays in our local game store, it’s a public game so we tend to gain and lose some players annually, but we limit our group to 6 players (we tried 7, it barely worked) and a DM. We come from a variety of backgrounds,

Dungeon Master: Steven

Out of all the Steven’s he’s know, he’s always been the one to keep the N. He’s been playing D&D since 3.5 in his Highschool years where he played a lot of D&D and ran a lot of D20 modern (D&D rules in modern day). Steven is a futurist, loves new tech and as a result tends to bleed current interests into games he’s running, hence the constant tech creep in his fantasy settings. Has run far more games than he’s played in, and is addicted to collecting (and occasionally painting) minis. Steven’s a fan of the X-Com and Deus Ex series, loved both Ghost in the Shell and Psycho-Pass, watches far too many let’s plays, and the last three books he finished reading were Neuromancer, The Beam (Season 1) and Dune.

Player: Maria

Maria is fairly new to gaming and geekery. In high school, she spent her Friday nights with her friends at a gaming shop, sitting on the sidelines. At the beginning of Season 1, her friend Ash introduced her to the group and to the campaign. This was her first ever experience with tabletop gaming and with people willing to teach her how to play. She still has a lot to learn about the game and isn’t great with numbers, but as a writer, Maria loves the storytelling and roleplaying aspects. She likes to exercise her writing skills with side stories for the campaign which teeter between fanfiction and canon; these can be found sprinkled throughout some of her character profiles.

Player: Hunter

Player: Eli

Player: Jared

Player: Chris

I began playing D&D (1st edition) around age 8. I immediately fell in love with the game but my friends and I lost interest after a few years because we were too young to understand and enforce most of the rules. Cheating and winning all the time gets boring pretty quickly. We were basically a group of “Lawful-Good” murderers who roamed the continent killing everything that got in our path and finding every magical item in the book. There was absolutely no roleplaying. I often thought about starting again but didn’t know anyone else who was interested.

Sometime in the summer of 2015, I noticed a 5th edition Monster Manual displayed at a local bookstore. The Beholder’s eye caught my eye and I decided to buy it just for some entertaining reading. The info in the Monster Manual made me curious about the new rules of the game. I picked up the Player’s Handbook and Dungeon Master’s Guide, read for a month or so, and became obsessed with the idea of wanting to play again. I tried to get friends interested in playing with almost no success. Luckily for me, the local game shop put me in touch with the Age of Orion group.

I have been very impressed with the skill, imagination, and enthusiasm shown by our DM and the other players in the group. I feel like I went from not playing for decades to being put into the Superbowl of D&D. It is very nice to be playing with others who share a love of the game, have insightful perspectives and ideas about characters, rules, strategies, and are willing to help a newcomer get “up to speed” with their level of game-play. Roleplay is something I am very unaccustomed to and is heavily emphasized in Age of Orion. It makes the game much more engrossing and it is nice to have something challenging and uncomfortable to try to learn and improve my ability. I like the fact that I’m being taken out of my comfort zone by this game and also that it gives me an outlet for writing, which is something I’ve always enjoyed but haven’t had much reason to do before now. I couldn’t be happier to be a member of this group!

Player: Chet

Chet is a banker by day Cleric by. . . Wednesday. He has been playing games for a very long time. He started playing MTG (Magic the Gathering) more years ago than he would like to think about. Since then the thirst for new adventures has only grown more intense with age. He is an avid writer and reader of all sorts of things but especially science fiction. He enjoys players who aren’t afraid of RP and are willing to talk themselves into and hopefully out of sticky situations. His first sessions were in AD&D 2 towards the end of but he has been most recently playing pathfinder. (Please excuse the transitions there are many rules he will have to forget). Other interests include collecting games, woodworking, knots and knot tying, and fiddling with all sorts of different types of tech. Chet also spend way too much time playing around with his character development when he should probably be working on something Well here he is doing it again, but I’m sure you’ve already stopped reading this and Chet has work to do. So Chet will get back to work.