Orthane Productions is a tabletop role-playing game studio creating The Kingdom of Keshanar. This is a fantastical re-imagining of what ancient Egypt could have been in a TTRPG world where the magic, the gods, and the monsters are real. Brought to you by an international crew of writers, game designers, artists, and historians, this D&D 5e campaign setting is even vetted by a PhD Egyptologist. Find out more at Keshanar.com.
Carrie Jo Patton hosts the Unicorn Company Podcast, a BattleTech focused miniatures gaming podcast and YouTube channel. Her YouTube channel focuses primarily on miniatures, miniature games, and BattleTech fiction reviews. Her podcast covers a variety of topics, from BattleTech lore and technology, to the intersection of the LGBTQ community and gaming. She has also helped to playtest a number of rulebooks and supplements for Catalyst Game Labs, including the Alpha Strike Commander’s Edition and PseudoTech: Arcade Operations. In addition to her tabletop gaming experience, she is an established commission painter having won local awards, and placed in convention painting competitions. She is also an experienced 3D printing enthusiast, having worked with both FDM and resin printing.
In her personal life, Carrie enjoys reading, trying to paint original art on canvas, spending time with her partners, petting cats, and of course painting little plastic stompy robots. She has a interest in military history, going back to her childhood, when her parents bought her an over 400-page tome detailing the events of Pearl Harbor. Carrie has played everything from modern miniatures and board games to Avalon Hill games such as Victory in the Pacific, she also has a history of fundraising, having organized fundraisers for the Trevor Project, and having raised over $15,000 dollars to help at risk LGBTQ youth.
We are Pushing Dragons, a Dungeons and Dragons live play with a twist. We take elements of cosplay, live action role-play, and improv to create a hilarious and interactive D&D adventure. Using a stripped-down version of 5th Edition, the audience rolls on behalf of the player characters and can influence the player’s actions.
Unlike other live plays, we don’t sit around the table. Our game is performed on a stage with the players and monsters often venturing into the audience. It is an exciting and energetic experience with a lot of audience participation.
Pushing Dragons can be seen monthly at the Push Comedy Theater (Norfolk, VA) where they just celebrated two years of sold-out shows. The show has also made appearances at the Virginia Beach Funny Bone, MarsCon, Tidewater Comicon and our own Dragon Faire.
Jack is the Vice-Chair of the Modern Enigma Society Board of Directors. He has more than thirty years of gaming and LARP experience. Having been a storyteller since he was a little kid, about fourteen years ago he began putting his work on paper. In addition to working as a freelance editor, he returned to his childhood dream of being a writer, and has now written more than fifty short novels, many of them spicy romances, under his pen names, available on Amazon.
Joan Wendland is a Renaissance woman. Engineer, game designer, author, juggler, and sometimes stand-up comic. She can do almost anything but sew or draw. She lives in both northern Virginia and Ottawa, Canada, but is still a Jersey girl at heart.
Joan’s fine card games can be found at blood-and-cardstock.com.
Her writing blog is located at zoo-illuminati.com.
Her Twitter and BSky handles are @BandCGames.
Christopher Weuve is a naval analyst and wargame designer. He spent six years at the Center for Naval Analyses (did you know the Combat Information Center of a Burke-class destroyer would make an excellent starship bridge?), and then five years on the faculty of the US Naval War College, of which he is a graduate. After a decade as an intelligence analyst, he’s now back to designing wargames, and is the co-founder of the Connections Online wargame conference, held every April.
Outside the day job, Chris is a co-founder of BuNine (David Weber’s Honorverse analytic visualization team), and has also consulted with Chuck Gannon, Walter Hunt, Alec Peters, Tom Harlan, John Lumpkin, and others. His work has been featured by Baen Books, the US Naval War College Review, Foreign Policy, and the Discovery Channel. Since May 2020 he’s been the co-host (with Pat Doyle) of Starfleet Tactical on the Ares Studio channel on YouTube.
Chris is (to the best of his knowledge) the only person ever interviewed (twice!) by the journal Foreign Policy about science fiction warships. His hobbies are naval history, science fiction, and not speaking for his employer.
J. Yamil is a writer and TTRPG designer based in Durham, NC. He lives with his partner and their trio of feline familiars.
He has worked with Stiff Whiskers Press, Goodman Games and Newsarama, where he has showcased his versatility and creativity. He has served as a lead admin for the Gongfarmer’s Almanac for 2024 and 2025. Yamil has participated in panels discussing diversity at the table and RPG safety tools at various conventions such as GaryCon and ConCarolinas.
He is currently hard at work on various projects for 5e, Dungeon Crawl Classics and Weird Frontiers.
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