Tag Archives: carnage in wonderland

GM Submissions Open for Carnage in Wonderland

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As we kick things into gear behind the scenes for Carnage 14, we’d like to invite all our hard-working GMs to let loose the ideas that simmered away all winter, just waiting for the right moment.

The right moment, of course, is that the GM sign-up form is back and ready for action. Pour all your glorious, incandescent thoughts and strokes of genius into its samite fields, from where they progress to take form in the crucible of our mighty event database.

If you’re new to the sign-up form, take a look behind the jump for more information about filling it out the maximum happiness of all parties involved. Continue reading →

Down the Role-Playing Rabbit Hole to Wonderland

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"One, two! One, two! and through and through / The vorpal blade went snicker-snack." Art by John Tenniel.

Carnage’s theme this year comes from Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland. With a literary starting point like that, the role-playing GM is veritably besieged by ideas to borrow, spindle and mutilate to their desire. Beyond visiting the book itself for inspiration — Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and its sequel Through the Looking-Glass are both available to read online for free, thanks to websites like Project Gutenberg — you can see how Alice’s adventures inspired future authors. The Looking Glass Wars books by Frank Beddor reinvent Carroll’s books as distortions of the true history of an alternate universe. Jack Chalker’s Wonderland Gambit trilogy draws on imagery as part of a reality-bending tale. An episode of Warehouse 13 pitted agents against the mind-swapping properties of Lewis Carroll’s mirror.

Variations on Alice and her Wonderland companions have shown up in plenty of role-playing games, too. Dungeons & Dragons‘ vorpal sword comes from Through the Looking-Glass, in the poem “Jabberwocky.” Alice, Queen of Hearts is one of the most notorious villains of Empire City in the super hero game Silver Age Sentinels. Wonderland is a setting of surreal horror in which characters plumb the depths of layers of reality — or fight back against incursions from below. In the world of WitchCraft, the sleeping Red King dreams of the realm of Hod, sephiroth of dreams; if he woke up, the whole sephiroth would vanish.

One can also easily imagine a slapstick Toon caper through Wonderland, a cyberpunk thriller in which the Red Queen is a malevolent AI preying on deckers talented enough to enter her domain and a fantasy dungeon crawl through underground warrens to rescue the king’s youngest daughter from the avatars of primeval chaos.

Do you know of any other references or homages to Alice in Wonderland in role-playing games? Tell us in the comments section.

Just One of the Horsemen: Shoes and Ships and Sealing Wax

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As the Walrus stated . . . The time has come, to talk of many things: of shoes, and ships, and sealing-wax. Of cabbages and kings. And why the sea is boiling hot and whether pigs have wings.  And of course another year of CARNAGE! This time we are heading Down the Rabbit Hole, into Wonderland!

We are planning another great year of board gaming. There are plenty of new games out there, and lots of classics.  We are once again looking for GMs in the board game area. The following list covers some of the games we are looking to have presented at this years convention. It may seem large, but it is but a small sampling of all the great board games out there. If you do not see a favorite game on the list, please do not worry.  Some GMs have already planned their games for Carnage.  (Mansions of Madness, Battlestar Galactica, and A Game of Thrones to name a few.)  Just let us know you would like to see a certain game and we will do our best to get a GM for that game. Or even better, offer to GM your favorite game at Carnage to share with other board gamers. Additional newer games will be added to the list as they become available.

Also look for Carnage staff at various locations throughout New England and New York. We have already attended Total Con, TempleCon, Unity Games Day, EconoCon and even PAX East. We have run games at various stores in the area including The Game Castle in Londonderry, New Hampshire and Triple Play in West Lebanon, New Hampshire. We are also regularly at the Green Mountain Gamers game days throughout Vermont.  If you see one of us at a gaming event, come say hello.  Let us know what games you would like to see at Carnage.

So step through the looking glass and come to Carnage this year . . . after all,  We’re all mad here! Continue reading →