Tag Archives: Role-Playing Games

Andre Kruppa

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Andre Kruppa is an inveterate road GM, bringing his theatrical style of role-playing with props, sound effects, lighting and more to tabletop conventions all over New England, be it in the Call of Cthulhu or Star Wars milieus, or powered by his very own Lucid Dreams game engine.

TARA: How did you get into the tabletop hobby?

It started with a session of basic Dungeons & Dragons in a study hall in 1978 and quickly escalated from there. I was running Dungeons & Dragons within the week. That quickly led to branching out into board games like Avalon Hill’s Starship Troopers, some miniatures gaming, and eventually gothic, weird, and cosmic horror role-playing.

I discovered Runequest in 1979 and it paved the way later for Call of Cthulhu in 1981. I’ve been playing a mix of role-playing, miniatures, and board games ever since!

TARA: What brought you to Carnage originally?

ANDRE: I first came to Carnage because I had re-kindled my interest in historical miniatures gaming. I drove up to play in a few sessions and check it out. This was probably around 2000 or so. Many of the role-playing settings I favor are historical fantasy and historical miniatures games and the research required go hand in hand with my approach toward role-playing settings. I started running games at Carnage the following year!

TARA: What inspired you to develop Lucid Dreams?

ANDRE: I wanted a tool kit to allow a variety of grittier role-playing scenarios set in any era with a broad range of tools for the Game Master. The Lucid Dreams Role-playing Engine offers a skill-based system with increases gained from use and training. Horror, fear, and insanity effects are modeled. Options include organizations to support Player Character operations. Resources include Wealth, with abstracted mechanics to reduce record keeping, and Social Class, to help define character background and station, as well as options for Contacts, Fame, Retainers, Agents, Glory, Wealth, Spies, Military Force, and more to be used as needed  Combat is lethal, revolves around a simple Shock Test, and is fairly fast-paced.

TARA: What makes Lucid Dreams unique?

ANDRE: The system facilitates a number of campaign styles allowing for direct challenges as well as games involving action in the wings from spying to military raids. The rules for organizations allow modeling of anything from a feudal estate to a detective agency or governmental branch office to help support play.

TARA: What is your most memorable moment at the tables at a Carnage convention?

ANDRE: There have been so many fun moments. I think we all do this largely for the shared excitement of a given collaborative scene or story. For me, some of the most fun is at the end when the madness and mayhem ensues.

To read more about the Lucid Dreams role-playing game, visit Andre’s website, Game Soapbox, and like Game Soapbox on Facebook. You can get a peek of theatrical role-playing on Game Soapbox Productions’ YouTube channel. The very bold will find Andre running games of Derelict Adrift and The Missing at Carnage 21 this year. After that, book Andre to run games through Dark Phoenix Events.

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Robin Lea

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Robin Lea, with the Killington resort's ski slopes in the background.
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Robin Lea is a game designer and author, working under the Peryton Publishing imprint to create games like Qalidar: Resistance. She lives in Cleveland, Ohio, with her old man. This year at Carnage 21, you can find Robin running Just Another Layover and Dungeon!

TARA: What game are you playing the most right now?

ROBIN: Icons. I’m running a regular campaign and playing in another one. I’m also playing in a regular Buffy the Vampire Slayer game.

TARA: How was GenCon this year?

ROBIN: It was really nice. I ran fewer games than in previous years, didn’t have any particular obligations, and just kind of wandered around and enjoyed the craziness. One of my old friends from Arkansas showed up too, which is always fun.

TARA: What was the first “gamer” game you ever played?

ROBIN: The first RPG I played was D&D, with the sort of purplish box and the Erol Otus cover. I suppose if we’re talking about anything that counts as a serious gamer game, it’s probably this old Avalon Hill game my dad had, called Alexander the Great. It was about his invasion of Persia and had some fairly complicated “clashing army” rules. They seemed complicated then, anyway.

TARA: What brought you to Carnage originally?

ROBIN: Back in 2009, my old man was chatting with one of the organizers on a now-defunct RPG-based social network and somehow got the idea that he had committed to absolutely definitely go to Carnage that year. It sounded like a fun trip, so off we went. After that, we were hooked. It’s a fairly long drive from Cleveland, but it’s worth it.

TARA: What is your favorite thing about Carnage?

That’s a tough one! Carnage is my favorite convention and there are a lot of things I love. I guess the word would be “cozy,” which covers both the amazing location and all the friends I’ve made there.

Outside of running into her at Carnage, you can reach Robin online through her website, on Facebook, and on Twitter as @RChristinaLea.

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Oscar Rios

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Oscar Rios is the president of Golden Goblin Press, specializing in Call of Cthulhu role-playing content. This year at Carnage 21, you can find Oscar running games of Robotech and Cthulhu Invictus, as well as performing Glimpses Into the Empire — LIVE!

TARA: What makes role-playing the Cthulhu mythos in a historical era uniquely interesting?

OSCAR: It’s a double escape for players. Their characters are living in another time and place, a citizen of a different historical period, be that the Jazz Era, the Victorian period, Dark Ages, or Classical period. Secondly, this individual is also involved in battling strange cults, monsters, and alien gods to defend mankind from their malignant horror.

TARA: How did you get involved with the Cthulhu Invictus setting?

OSCAR: I was a play tester to the original version, and became the setting’s biggest fan. I’ve written a large number of scenarios for the setting over the years, including the settings only published campaign, The Legacy of Arrius Lurco. My company, Golden Goblin Press, produced a supplement scenario collection called De Horrore Cosmico, and when we tried to publish a sequel  to that book Chaosium asked if we would take over the setting and convert it to 7th edition. We jumped at the opportunity and spent to next two years completely overhauling the setting from the ground up. Writing for Cthulhu Invictus for over ten years, I’d learned a lot about that period of history, its culture, mythology and the setting’s strengths and weaknesses.

TARA: Are you working on anything new you can tell us about?

OSCAR: We are finishing up several projects, including Riding the Northbound, a hobo-themed 1920s scenario; Tails of Valor, a Cathulhu scenario collection – yes, you play as a cat fighting the Cthulhu Mythos – I am re-writing a couple of scenarios for Britannia and Beyond, our first setting supplement for the new 7th edition Cthulhu Invictus; and will soon be writing a scenario for Tales of the Pacific, a 1920s scenario collection set across the Pacific islands).

TARA: What at Carnage are you excited about this year?

OSCAR: Getting away from my day to day grind, to relax gaming with great people on a mountain top resort in Vermont. What’s not to get excited about?  I’m also doing a live performance of Glimpses into the Empire on Friday night. That’s my fan-contributed segment on the ENnie Award-winning Miskatonic University Podcast, where I share amazing stories from the ancient world. There is also the Extra Life charity raffle, which we love supporting and participating in.

TARA: What’s your favorite thing about going to game conventions?

OSCAR: For gamers like me, it’s a safe place to be yourself, because this is my community. I’ve been going to gaming conventions since 1984, and it’s become a huge part of who I am. This is where people understand what I do, why I love it, and don’t judge me for it. That was true when I was 13, and it’s still true today. Gaming conventions are where I’ve made most of my friends. It’s where I found amazing people to work with in this industry, who helped me found Golden Goblin Press, and continue to help run it with me. In a cold and brutal world, gaming conventions are the warm glow of a window, the smell of a hot meal, and the soft bed of coming home. Sorry if I wax poetic, it’s kind of my thing.

To get in touch with Oscar, you can visit Golden Goblin Press’ official website and their Facebook page.

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GM Submissions Closing Soon for Carnage 21

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The submission period for GMs to run games at Carnage 21 is winding down. If you’re interested in hosting a game or other event at the convention this year, head over to the registration site and submit your idea today. Submissions close at the end of July 31st so that Carnage staff can build this year’s schedule to make the best convention possible. Proposals submitted after July 31st will be considered and schedule on an as available basis in terms of space and scheduling.

Not sure what to run this year? Get in touch with your field marshal and find out where the schedule needs a little shoring up. Not sure which field marshal you need to talk to? Email info@carnagecon.com and we’ll get you in touch with the right person.

Carnage XX Blog Roundup

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If you couldn’t make it to Carnage this year, or there was just too much going on for you to see everything, some of our friends who came kindly wrote about their experiences at the convention this year. Check it out:

Thank You for 20 Years of Carnage

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Even Steam Park can be timey-wimey, with the right player at the table.

The certified comedians of Improvised Weapons make Dungeons & Dragons even funnier.

Mike and Doug snuck into the cheap seats at Fenway Park.

Robin Lea gets into her role running “Timelash Redux.”

This year at Carnage XX, we:

  • raised over $2300 for Children’s Miracle Network hospitals with Team NEG and Extra Life
  • raised over $1100 to find a cure for cancer with Gamers for a Cure
  • proposed — and accepted! — marriage during Cards Against Humanity
  • told ghost stories by the fireside with Oscar Rios and Golden Goblin Press
  • caught a ball game at Fenway Park with Green Monster Invades the Green Mountains
  • streamed Dungeons & Dragons games for laughs and good causes with Improvised Weapons, Gemhammer and Sons and Victory Condition Gaming
  • passed Sneaky Carnage cards around all weekend
  • played a ton more games

Thank you, everyone, who helped make Carnage possible this year, last year and every year prior since Carnage at the Crossroads kicked the whole thing off in 1998. A convention like Carnage exists entirely because of you, the gamer, the one who wants to spend a whole weekend meeting new friends, trying new games and enjoying the daylights out of the tabletop hobby.

From the very beginning, Carnage has been a labor of love. The committee members love playing games, learning new games, teaching the games they love to other people. But you can’t make a whole convention out of that without so many more people also believing in that same vision of sharing their love for the hobby. Without GMs to teach the games and players to play them, there would be no Carnage.

Moreover, without the friendships that spring up among conventioneers — there’s nothing quite like standing in line to pick up your badge and catching up with friends you haven’t seen since last year, or the annual Saturday night dinner out before rushing back — there’s no way Carnage could have lasted 20 years. Carnage is here because you are here. Carnage is fun because you make it fun. You make the friendships and the memories that keep you and all your friends coming back. Every year, we are humbled that you all choose Carnage to be the place to renew those friendships, make new ones and celebrate our hobby.

Thank you, each and every one of you, for helping make Carnage the best little game convention in New England for the last 20 years. We could not have done it without you.

Carnage 21 is November 2-4, 2018 in Killington, Vermont. We’ll see you on the mountain!

New Starfinder Scenario and Friday Afternoon Seats

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With the convention less than a month out, the schedule is pretty well set, but there are some additions we wanted you to know about.

Astral Source: Infiltrating the Liminal Zone

Per Eisenman has taken Paizo’s new Starfinder rule set and used it to power his own creation, Astral Source. In 2121, Earth’s solar system is a very different place: “The Corporatocracy provides a benevolent oligarchy in the inner system, while the outer system is a frontier where the Resistance takes root.”

Check out the full write-up and get your ticket on Tabletop.Events.

More Friday Afternoon Seats

The Friday afternoon slot at Carnage keeps growing in popularity every year, to the point that soon after registration, there were only a handful of seats available in role-playing games outside the organized play categories. Thanks to the graciousness of our GMs, these role-playing scenarios have seats available for the Friday afternoon crowd:

  • Summer Break and Killer Birds — Robots, magnitrine drives, gauss freighters — this is the 80’s as it should have been.
  • The Big City Caper! — Mix one mad scientist, two criminal masterminds, three sports championships, four powerful and mysterious artifacts, five families, and the 1924 Democrat National Convention, and you’ve got a recipe for adventure!
  • Village in the Mists — The designer himself of the old school-inspired Thunder Classic Roleplaying dares you to solve the mystery of the abandoned village Kembi!

If you’re not already, be sure to follow Carnage on Facebook and Twitter.

Adventurers League Registration Update for Carnage XX

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When registration opened last Monday, attendees may have noticed that none of the Dungeons & Dragons games listed within the Adventurers League Organized Play category were available for sign-up. Adventurers League offerings at Carnage have been coordinated by Mark Merida with the Role Initiative, as in the last few years. To help explain the delay in the opening of registration for Adventurers League games and the plan going forward, Mark prepared the following (you can download the original PDF here):

Dear Carnage Community,

You may have noticed that registration for Adventurers League has been delayed past the start of Carnage’s pre-registration. This was caused by a miscommunication on our end, and we regret the impact that this has had on Carnage registrants, Adventurers League players, and our Kickstarter patrons. We understand that this has, despite our best intentions, caused an inconvenience to the Carnage community, and for that we apologize.

In an effort to open communication, we would like to announce that sign-ups for Adventurers League will open on October 2nd. All attendees will be able to access our registration section in Tabletop Events, and select the games of their choice. While we understand that this later date is an inconvenience, we hope that this clarification demonstrates our earnest desire to do right by the community of gamers who make this all possible.

We’re also excited to announce that as a good faith gesture to the community, we have collaborated with convention staff to offer a seat at each of our Tier 2 Author Only tables, available as prizes through a Carnage-orchestrated raffle that will take place after October 2nd. These are special events that provide limited access to exclusive modules that can only be run by their authors, the Adventurers League Admins.

We look forward to seeing you at Carnage!

Mark Merida, Convention Organizer
The Role Initiative

Carnage’s first concern is ensuring as smooth and pleasant a convention experience as possible for all attendees, from registration to the convention weekend itself. We truly regret any inconvenience or confusion this has caused attendees planning to participate in the Adventurers League games at the convention this year.

Looking forward, general registration will open on October 2nd as planned, with tickets made available through the Tabletop.Events registration system. For those interested in the “Author Only” tickets to be raffled off, you can stay up to date on how to participate here on the Carnage website, or on the convention’s Facebook and Twitter feeds. We will share how the raffle will operate in the coming days.

Thank you to everyone for your patience and good grace in working through this. We look forward to seeing you all at Killington for the convention!

Carnage XX Opens for Registration!

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Text: "Register Now for Carnage. Registration closes 10.24.17."

Click to visit the online registration system and get your Carnage XX badge today.

Note: This post links to the 2017 convention schedule and is made available for informational purposes only. If you’re looking for the current year’s convention book, check the sidebar, or the top of the News page, to see if it has been released yet.

Registration for Carnage XX has officially opened! This year, we are using a third party website, Tabletop.Events, to facilitate attendee registration before and during the convention this year. Visit our site there, Carnage XX 2017, to browse the schedule of games for the weekend. This system has the ability to filter the schedule by game type, rules used, time of day and search for keywords, so you can find exactly what you’re looking for fast.

How It Works

We have a short walkthrough written up if you’d like more detail about how to use the new online registration system.

Once you create an account with Tabletop.Events, you can purchase badges for yourself, friends and family members with a credit card and sign up for seats in games for all the badges you’ve purchased, plus preorder Carnage souvenir shirts. When you arrive at the convention, you can pick up your packet with your badge and tickets from the convention registration desk at noon on Friday and go enjoy the weekend!

This registration system works in real time, meaning the seats you see listed as open are available at that moment. If a game is full, you can get on the game’s wait list, which means you will be notified when a seat becomes available. Carnage staff will be keeping an eye on which games fill up to see where we might be able to add games to the schedule, so don’t be shy about using the wait list button.

After you’ve completed buying your badge, you can continue to manage your registration, adding and removing games from your schedule, until the end October 24th. At that point, registration will close until the convention begins so we can process badges and packets. After that, all financial transactions are final and game reservations can’t be adjusted until the convention begins.

Important Dates to Remember

Registration reopens noon on Friday, November 3rd, at which point preregistered attendees can pick up their packets. The online registration system then reopen so people can purchase walk-up badges and make their ticket reservations on their personal devices. If you need help or don’t have a web-ready device, the convention registration desk staff can give assistance.

If you’re looking for the traditional convention book and paper registration form, we still have it for you in electronic format as soon as we are able. Below you can download the paper registration form, and will be able to download the convention book when we are able to post it. Please note that if you choose to register by mail, your game choices will be entered as and when able by convention staff, and seats may no longer be available in your chosen games.

    • Carnage XX has come and gone, but you can see what fun we had by looking at the Tabletop.Events schedule here — 2017
    • The Carnage XX Registration Book is a PDF of the convention schedule as it published in September 2017. [PDF, 1.6MB]

Carnage XX Wants You to Run Games

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This November, Carnage celebrates twenty years of playing tabletop games in Vermont with a bang, but we can’t do it without your help! A tabletop game convention is only as good as the variety and quality of games that are on offer. At Carnage, all the games, which may be similar to the one on 겜블시티 라이브카지노, are run by volunteer GMs, people who step up to teach or moderate a game as a service to those who want to play. We can’t do it without all our GMs, and we’re grateful for each and every one of you! Use this guide with super contra cheats if you love playing video games like Super C.

To submit a game proposal, visit our GM Sign Up form and fill in the details of the game you’d like to run. After Carnage reviews your proposal, the appropriate field marshal will be in touch to discuss it further. Submissions must be received by July 31st in order to be included in the Carnage convention book, which is the primary catalog of what’s scheduled to play at the convention. Once the convention book is assembled and the online registration system populated, sometime around late September, we’ll announce that pre-registration is open and invite conventioneers to sign up. You can also check out this promo before submitting crypto to your gaming site.

Traditionally, there is a theme set for Carnage each year. For those who want it, the theme gives some guidance to the role-playing or miniatures scenarios they write or the board games they select. In celebration of twenty years of Carnage, the theme for 2017 is officially “whatever.” Choose whatever theme you like for your games this year from Carnages past, from the Z-grade alien invaders of Carnage 9 from Outer Space to the simpler halcyon days of lounging by the lake at Camp Carnage. “Whatever” is entirely what you choose to make it, so get creative, and get those proposals in by July 31st!