Well, I survived another gaming weekend and what a nice day it was. The weather was great - almost a crime to be indoors - and there was a great turnout for a long day of game fun. I didn't win anything this time (shame) but I did come away with some new games to play. I was able to test my newly designed game 'Land Dreadnoughts' and found, to my pleasant surprise, that the mechanics worked very well and I will need only minor changes to the rules. Even better was the interest shown by others and the offer of publishing the game if I can get it into a more 'polished' state. As you can imagine, this is very exciting and I've been working away at cleaning up the counters and revising the rules. Who knows.......
On other 'fronts', I have been reading H. G. Wells 'War in the Air' in order to get some inspiration on adding air power to my game. Considering that the book was written just over 100 years ago, it is a remarkable novel and predates many of the 'end of the world' stories of today. To be honest, I think it would make a quite stunning movie as some of the scenes depicted would look amazing on the big screen - is anyone in Hollywood listening? Talking about Hollywood (sort of), I was able to find a copy of a TV film that I remember seeing many, many years ago and the memory of that movie has stayed with me ever since. It is 'The Resistible Rise of Arturo Ui' filmed in 1972 and based on the Bertold Brecht 1941 play of the same name. It is an amazing sideways look at the rise of Adolph Hitler and there are all the obvious parallels. The title character is beautifully played and has a real sense of menace about him. It really is a morality tale that says, 'if we don't keep alert, the Hitlers of this world will rise again and again'. This rather obscure little film took a lot of searching to find and my copy is rather poor and grainy, but the brilliance of the story shines through and still sends a frisson of fear down my back. If you can find it, you will not be disappointed.
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