I recently had a chance to watch Stalingrad, a documentary from 2003 about the “turning point of WWII” that debuted simultaneously in Germany and Russia. It’s divided into three parts, the Attack, the Kessel, and the Doom. Like most war docs these days, it uses a mix of archival footage and interviews with survivors. Both Germans and Russians are interviewed, though as usual the Italians and the Rumanians are not. The film covers the broad outlines of the campaign and gives the veterans a chance to tell their (often horrific) stories about the battle. One real bonus is that the filmmakers got access to Russian archives, so there’s some footage that’s been rarely seen in the West and one genuine revelation about the battle. Most accounts end with the German surrender and 90,000 prisoners marched off to captivity, only 6,000 of whom would return from the gulags. What Stalingrad asserts is that up to 10,000 German soldiers continued to resist the Red Army after the surrender, living in the sewers for over a month and harassing Soviet soldiers until they were finally captured or killed. I’ve read a lot of books about the battle of Stalingrad and have never heard this story, so that definitely piqued my interest.

My criticisms of the film are minor. First, it did not ID the names and units of the veterans when interviewing them. This is very common on the various History Channels and it would have been nice if Stalingrad had used the same format. Second, I would have enjoyed a little more tactical depth. The battle is discussed in very broad terms and I would have liked to see a bit more detail. The film was made for a general audience, so I understand why they focused more on the individual stories of the veterans though.

The American DVD is unfortunately dubbed and I found that really annoying. I was hoping I could turn it off and get subtitles but no. They even dubbed Hitler when showing archival footage. It just sounds wrong to have some voice actor trying to do Hitler. Weirdly, the DVD extras include additional interview footage that didn’t make it into the film and that is subtitled.

Overall, Stalingrad is well done. If the phrase “3-hour Stalingrad documentary” doesn’t immediately send you screaming from the room, I recommend checking it out.

Geek Dinner #77: Seattle Game Designers Assemble took place Saturday night (see my previous entry for the set up if you don’t know what I’m talking about). The fact that we were hosting dinner #77 was a good sign to an old punk like me (1977 being the high tide of the 70s punk rock explosion and all). And indeed everything clicked for the party and it seemed like everyone had a great time. I know I did.

The Wine
Stormhoek provided us with two bottles each of four different wines: Shiraz, Pinotage, Sauvignon Blanc, and Pinot Grigio. Nicole and John loved the Pinotage. Naturally, that was the one I didn’t get to try in all the hubbub. My favorite was the Pinot Grigio, and the Sauvignon Blanc was also tasty. This was no big surprise, as I’ve finally admitted that I prefer white wines to reds.

The Food
As always Nicole went to town with the cooking. As I’ve often said, she loves to cook and I love to eat–and that explains a lot. She’s already provided some recipes on her blog for those interested in things culinary. She served prosciutto-wrapped asparagus with citrus dip, lasagna rolls, mushroom salad with truffle oil, North Carolina-style pulled pork sandwiches, salad nicoise with seared tuna, and a summer fruit trifle with triple sec-flavored custard. I contributed a double batch of my hummus and prepared a cheese plate with Sage Derby, Brie, Danish Bleu, Aged Gouda, and an English Coastal Cheddar. I think the pulled pork and the trifle were the clear favorites. She made a lot of each one and it was all gone by the end of the night. My lunch plans for the week were dealt a blow without the pulled pork, but at least our guests left sated.

The Guests
Seattle, as many of you know already, is lousy with game designers. We invited over 40 people and had about twenty attendees. While we missed some friends who were out of the country or otherwise committed, the house was crowded and there enough guests that a couple left before I ever really got a chance to chat them up (good excuse for a next time). Amongst our guests:

Mike and Lisa Pondsmith: They are best known to hobby gamers as R. Talsorian, publisher of the Cyberpunk RPG. Mike also spent some years in the computer game biz at Microsoft and later Monolith.

Wolf and Shelly Baur: I worked with Wolf at WotC and previous that he was at TSR. He has a Joe job at MS but still does RPG work for WotC, Privateer, and Paizo and he’s also doing an interesting patronage project to see if this model can work for RPGs. Shelly has also been writing for Paizo’s Dragon Magazine these last few years. She can also break your neck with her Iron Palm technique.

Phil Boulle: Phil is a recent transplant to the Pacific Northwest, having left White Wolf after a long stint there to join the computer game world in Vancouver. He’s working at Relic, who do the 40K RTS Dawn of War. I joked that like me he must spend all his day thinking about 40K now. We were delighted he came down from Vancouver for the party. He brought he fiancee Sarah, who we hadn’t met before.

Eric Cagle: Another former WotC co-worker, Eric just recently went to work for Privateer. He’s also been doing freelance work for us lately on the WFRP line and is also starting a 40K project. He also brought his fiancee, Tina. She was nice enough to bring a quiche, but we just chuckled. Clearly she had never been to a Nicole-catered event before.

John and Jenny Tynes: We had thought John and Jenny wouldn’t be able to make it due to an illness but a last minute rally allowed them to attend. John of course is best known for his days at Pagan Publishing and his gold membership in the Cult of Lovecraft. These days he’s working at Flying Lab on the Pirates of the Burning Seas MMO. Jenny is an old school WotCite who now works for Hidden City.

Peter Adkison: Everyone’s favorite “gaming mogul”. He’s of course best known as the former CEO of WotC and the man who saved D&D.; These days he runs GenCon and Hidden City (and is thus Jenny’s boss).

Evan and Rona Sass: Evan is Green Ronin’s beloved webmaster. He was part of Rubicon Games years ago and the original Games & Gizmos retail stores here in Seattle. His lovely wife Rona was looking at the boardgames in the living room and commented that I had a lot of games. I said, “If you think this is a lot of games, you need to come upstairs and see the office.” Once Evan was assured that coming to my office was not a euphemism for anything, I brought them upstairs and showed her the depths of my insanity.

Jon Leitheusser: Until just recently, Jon was the Director of R&D; over at WizKids. He’s edited several Mutants & Masterminds books for GR over the last 18 months or so. Now that he’s got a little more time, we’ve just contracted him to co-write one as well.

Marc “Sparky” Schmalz: Sparky works part time for Green Ronin doing graphic design on top of his day job in the computer field. He’s also one of the Game Mechanics, whose d20 books GR publishes. He’s also a WotC survivor.

Wendy Wallace: Wait, can you guess? That’s right, another ex-WotCite! Wendy was one of the good brand managers at WotC. She was on the Magic: the Gathering team for many, many years. Nowadays she’s at REAL.

Seth Johnson: I first met Seth when he worked for Human Head but these days he’s a designer for WizKids. He’s co-writing that M&M; book with Jon. Sadly, Seth had to leave early because he had too much work to do before ComicCon. Hopefully, the Go-Go impersonators at ComicCon will make it worth his while.

Michelle Lyons: Michelle was an editor at WotC after my time but got to enjoy the same fun layoff experience as many of the folks on this list. I forgive her for being another devotee of the ancient cult of Shadowrun (yeah, like you, Kenson!). She edited our just-released Golden Age book for M&M;, as well as our Red Star book from a couple years back. Michelle’s currently working at MS.

Jess Lebow: Jess used to work in the fiction wing of WotC. We were laid off on the same day and later shot machine guns in Vegas (these two events are unrelated). He was the story guy behind the Guild Wars MMO but after some shabby treatment left there to go work for Mr. Tynes at Flying Lab. Now he’s learning the fun of pirates. Yarrr!

Rick Achberger: Last but certainly not least is Rick, my weekly opponent in wargames and minis games. He’s also one hell of a graphic designer. He worked with me on the Chainmail line at WotC, as well as his beloved Star Wars. For the last several years he’s been working at Pokemon USA, as well as freelancing on GR projects like Torches & Pitchforks and the Nocturnals: A Midnight Companion. Soon his Desert Rats will feel the wrath of my DAK.

The Wrap Up
People showed up promptly at 7 and the last guests rolled out around midnight. No one was shy about digging into the food, which was delicious and plentiful. I had a nice time catching up with some friends I don’t get to see all that often despite living in the same city. Late in the evening someone produced some cigars and a group of us went into the backyard to light up. It was a lovely cool evening with just a light breeze. As I stood there chatting with friends, puffing on a stogie, and enjoying a glass of Savignon Blanc, I was able to put aside the worries of daily life for a brief time. Clearly we should have parties more often.

Big thanks to Stormhoek for sponsoring our Geek Dinner. If you see their wine in your neck of the woods, do try it out. We give it our Geek Seal of Approval.

Nicole has links to pictures and recipes over on www.nikchick.com.

About a month ago I was reading the blog of my friend-for-life Cecil. She had just been to a “Geek Dinner” down in LA. This South African winery called Stormhoek was trying to do some out of the box marketing by sponsoring “100 Geek Dinners in 100 Days” and Cecil was reporting in from one such event. It sounded like a fun time, so I left a comment in her blog: “I’m a geek, I like wine, how do I get a winery to sponsor a dinner?” Within 24 hours someone from Stormhoek had responded to my comment and given me an e-mail address. I dropped him a line, explained what I did for a living, and suggested a Geek Dinner for game designers. Nicole and I picked a date and added the event at the wiki (http://thehughpage.com/Stormhoek’s_100_Geek_Dinners_in_100_Days). The Stormhoek folks were really nice and quite enthusiastic. As Nicole was planning the menu, they sent us signed and numbered prints for the guests and eight bottles of the wine for the event.

Last night we had the Geek Dinner, “Seattle Game Designers Assemble” (though technically we did also have one Canadian down from Vancouver). I’ll talk more about that in my next entry (must get back to work now) but the Reader’s Digest version is: damn, what a good time.

It’s a truism on the internet that posters and bloggers are far more likely to bitch than write something positive. It is with that in mind that I’d like to praise Battlefront for the way they’ve handled the 2nd edition of Flames of War (a WWII minis game).

The new $50 hardback game is due out in August. To ensure that the lion’s share of the fanbase moves to the new edition, Battlefront printed up a 164 page digest-sized book (in full color no less) that provides the entirety of the rules section of the new edition. They then sent these out to retailers who carry the line. If you had a first edition book, all you needed to do was go to your local store with it, get it stickered on the credits page, and then receive the digest-sized rules…for free. You could also handle it via the post if you had no local retailer. Thursday was the release day and Rick and I showed up at Oroboro. We got the new rules from Steve without a hitch and they also had the two new mid-war army compendiums, which collate all the previous army books, update them to the new rules, and add in some new options. I picked up Afrika and Rick got both that and Ostfront. I was impressed that the whole thing went off just as announced and really impressed at Battlefront’s strategy for the new edition. How can you complain about a new edition when the rules are given to you for free? I can only imagine what it cost to print all those color books, as color printing is much more expensive than doing it black and white. Frankly, I would have been just as satisfied getting a free black and white rulebook, but the color book is mighty cool. Big kudos to Battlefront.

As for the new edition itself, I haven’t fully digested it yet, but it’s looking good so far. The rules are much better organized, the writing is clearer, and there are plenty of examples and diagrams. Sad to say they didn’t fix my #1 pet peeve about the game (the way flame throwers work), but the rules for assaults and aircraft look much improved. Hopefully, I’ll have a chance to unleash my DAK soon and find out how it plays in comparison to 1st edition.

I was reading the new issue of Game Trade, the distributor Alliance’s monthly pre-order catalog and magazine, when I noticed they had a product spotlight on the Book of Erotic Fantasy. This is odd, because this title came out several years ago (and caused a fair bit of controversy with its “elf pron”). Even stranger, it was in the middle of the White Wolf section, despite being published by another company, Valar. Then I noticed that the book now had a White Wolf product code. I think I must have missed a press release somewhere.

Usually my summers include a lot of travel, mostly for conventions. There have been years when I’ve done Origins, ComicCon, and GenCon in the span of six weeks. Then in the fall things calm down. This year the opposite is developing. I’m going to GenCon this summer and that’s it, but I may have up to five trips in the fall.

Origins is going on right now. I’ve only missed one since it moved to Columbus in the mid-90s. Although I was glad not to have to stress about planning a trip, I had wondered if I’d wish I was there once it happened. To my surprise, I really don’t. It’d surely be nice to spend some time with the GR crew and other friends, but GenCon is in six weeks anyway. As it is I’ve been able to stay here and work on 40K and that’s for the best.

I was morbidly curious about the Origins Awards, though like last year GR declined to participate. The winners were announced this morning and the very first one listed was 2005 Game of the Year for Warmachine: Apotheosis. The trouble: Apotheosis is not a game, it’s a supplement. This makes it a rather funny choice, particularly when Warmachine itself already won an Origins Award for Best Minis Game a couple of years back. I think this is the sort of thing that continues to undermine what good intentioned people try to accomplish when they volunteer to work on the OAs. If the category is really Product of the Year, fine, make it so. It is not unreasonable to expect that an award for Game of the Year actually be a game, however. (And to be clear, I’m not knocking on Privateer. They are a fine company and make some great minis.)

This morning instead of standing in a booth at a con I was at Salty’s on Alki for a belated birthday brunch with Nik and Kate. Salty’s is right on the water and has an amazing view of downtown Seattle across the bay. Their brunch is terrific and we hadn’t been there since last summer, so we made the most of it. I’ve spent the rest of the day working but that’s a lot easier when one is fueled by smoked salmon, raw oysters, crab legs, prime rib, key lime pie, and chocolate mousse. Good stuff.

Went out with the family to see Superman Returns at the Cinerama last night. It was a pretty funny scene. Lots of people in their Superman wear, including an entire family down to the pajama clad 5 year old (complete with cape).

Spoilers follow.

I basically enjoyed the film. The new Superman was good and looked about perfect for the part. Kate Bosworth and Kevin Spacey also did well. The FX were nicely done and certainly Superman flying looked a lot cooler than it did in the Christopher Reeve era. It had some genuinely funny moments without becoming campy. I did, not, however, like the film as much as I had hoped. I basically had three problems with Superman Returns:

1) Lex Luthor’s evil scheme is just deeply stupid. Who the hell wants to live on an island made of crystal? When Kevin Spacey did the big reveal, I sat there thinking, “That can’t be the real evil scheme, can it?” Apparently so.

2) You never get the sense that Superman lives in a world of superheroes and supervillains. Thus most of his heroics are about stopping disasters. This is fine as far as it goes but man, it’d been nice to see some good superhero vs. villains fights. As it was one of the few times Superman is actually in a fight he’s so weakened by kryptonite that three goons Rodney King him.

3) The movie was too long by 20 minutes. At the end when he’s plummeting from space, I thought he would catch himself inches above the earth in a scene reminiscent of his childhood flashback from early in the film. Instead we got 15-20 minutes of complete tensionless “is he going to live” bs. Like there was any doubt.

Final verdict: entertaining but not as good as X-men 2. And really, I’d think I’d rather have seen Bryan Singer finish X-men 3 instead of doing Superman Returns. That would have had the added benefit of saving the X-men from the Brett Ratner.

There’s this dingy old hotel in the International District of Seattle. It’s the sort of place you’d use for a sordid tryst or maybe to meet your Tong contact to complete a heroin deal. As you walk up Jackson from the train station you can see the side of the building. Painted on there in big letters is the following: “Bush Hotel. Modern. Fireproof.” It is perfectly clear that the Bush Hotel is neither modern nor fireproof. I find this entirely appropriate.

I went and saw Chicago’s own the Tossers at El Corazon last night. This was the smallest crowd I’ve ever seen there. Several of the bands had 7 members (due to banjos, tin whistles, and the like) so I’d guess there were 30 band members and maybe 50 paying attendees at most. The show was also overbooked, with four opening bands. These ranged from terrible to pretty good. The best of the openers was Secret Agent Bill, whose penchant for mockery was right up my alley. Their song about teenagers in black eyeliner, “Only Trent Would Understand”, was a riot.

The Tossers finally came on about 11 and despite the late hour and small crowd, they put on an enthusiastic performance. They are another of the Irish punk bands, mining territory similar to contemporaries like the Skels and Flogging Molly. So basically, if you like the Pogues, you’d probably enjoy the Tossers. Unlike some of the opening acts, the band was tight and all their elements worked in harmony. Amusingly, because this was an all ages show, no alcohol was allowed on stage. Since nearly every Tossers song was about alcohol in one way or another, this made the band sad. The singer kept hoisting up an empty glass to toast the crowd. Later someone gave him a big bottle of cranberry juice. I’ve never seen someone so sad about having to drink juice.

Overall, a decent show. Since there were too many bands though, at midnight the club just flipped on the lights and kicked everyone out. The Tossers didn’t get a chance to finish their set or do any encores, it was just suddenly over. I’d gladly have seen one less opener so they could have done a full set.