Obviously, Clash

But I will shout out that Traveller V has rules for mentats and Tielexu Face Dancers as Talents.

Quote from: David Johansen;943804Obviously, Clash

But I will shout out that Traveller V has rules for mentats and Tielexu Face Dancers as Talents.

Yeah, David - the actual system doesn't matter all that much beyond a minimum. The tools matter, though!

Quote from: Voros;943777Yeah I looked around to see if anyone had come up with a hack for the setting. I've heard Fading Suns is basically Dune with the serial numbers filed off and is on sale on Bundle of Holding right now. I picked it up.

It's also a bit 40K Lite with the serial numbers filed off.

Fading Suns is a lot like Dune in a focus on many elements like Merchant Guilds, Fanatics, and Noble Houses and Intrigue. It's really a great kitchen sink fantasy science fiction post-apocalyptic setting with great flavor. I'm not a huge fan of the Victory Point System or VPS mechanics though. If I were to try to play Fading Suns or Dune for that matter I'd probably use the flavor of that world and that setting but use mechanics that I know and work for me like Savage Worlds. As always YMMV, and you might find GURPS or Traveller mechanics more to your liking with such an universe.

Dune is great but like Star Wars has that problem of being so well-known, at least the main story. Brian Herbert has The Legends of Dune prequel novel trilogy set 10,000 years before Frank's work which might be a fun setting to play in with the PCs having to fight off cymeks and other fighting robots to try and save humanity from robot enslavement.

Quote from: slayride35;943816Fading Suns is a lot like Dune in a focus on many elements like Merchant Guilds, Fanatics, and Noble Houses and Intrigue. It's really a great kitchen sink fantasy science fiction post-apocalyptic setting with great flavor. I'm not a huge fan of the Victory Point System or VPS mechanics though. If I were to try to play Fading Suns or Dune for that matter I'd probably use the flavor of that world and that setting but use mechanics that I know and work for me like Savage Worlds. As always YMMV, and you might find GURPS or Traveller mechanics more to your liking with such an universe.

Dune is great but like Star Wars has that problem of being so well-known, at least the main story. Brian Herbert has The Legends of Dune prequel novel trilogy set 10,000 years before Frank's work which might be a fun setting to play in with the PCs having to fight off cymeks and other fighting robots to try and save humanity from robot enslavement.

Star Wars has the advantage of having had several side stories written, including novels and comics, as well as cartoons both past and present, which expands the universe in a way that Dune never got.  And that's not touching the Video Games, or the RPGs, or miniatures...  Star Wars has a lot more to do, because there are examples of things to do for those who aren't Luke, Han or Leia.

FYI: I love Fading Suns.

Actually I think the period just before Dune the novel would be perfect. Noble Houses feuding would be something on a player scale, rather than armies and space navies. Assassinations, schemes, political maneuvering, scandal... It would be as entertaining as Renaissance Italy.

How I'd run it is for the PCs to be given missions by a noble who's such an obvious nitwit that the PCs will eventually stop doing what they're told but have the missions be there as a default if the PCs are overwhelmed or indecisive.

There's only maybe a dozen worlds touched on in the original series.  I think you'd want to random generate worlds.  Many people only want to meet the people from the book or go to the places in the book when they game in a setting.  Similarly they'll want to play the professions from the book, mentats, face dancers, navigators, gholas, blood bound house soldiers.

My thought would be to run a game during the Jihad, either as Fremen death commandos or as local soldiers standing against them.

It's probably worth noting that there has been an official Dune RPG - Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium.

It was full colour and looked impressive, with a system based on the same engine that powered the Last unicorn Star Trek games (D6 dice pools).

It ran OK, with an attempt to build campaigns on running minor Houses in the Imperium. The main problem was that it was quite reliant on supplements, which never happened because the game was immediately canceled.

If I was going to see a new RPG based upon Dune, I'd like to see it based on RuneQuest/Mythras insofar that the various agencies that train characters in Dune (the Mentats, Bene Gesserits, etc) could be well presented with the Cults affiliation systems in those games. It could work in other games like Traveller, but the high skill speciality aspects of the setting might not be quite the same.

With regards to games that have been clearly influenced by Dune - the Warhammer 40K games and Fading Suns - I feel that they are bit too gothic in feel. Dune was always weirdly anachronistic   as a far future, feudal/caste society, however, I also tend to reference it through the imagery of Jodorowsky or David Lynch even though their respective attempts to film it were failures. I feel that Dune is more psychedelic than Goth.

Yeah my mental picture of the setting is heavily influenced by Lynch's film.

Quote from: estar;943769Given the source material, I would focus on presenting Arrakis as place to adventure in and only give brief mention of the wider galaxy. If that well received then I would focus on similar sourcebooks for other aspect of the Dune setting. The last Dune RPG I had focused a lot on the noble houses and their intrigues.

I'd want an Ars Magica-style system where the PCs are all members of a noble house who is taking over the production of Spice on the planet and they need to figure out how to secure the planet and maximize Spice production.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;943839I'd want an Ars Magica-style system where the PCs are all members of a noble house who is taking over the production of Spice on the planet and they need to figure out how to secure the planet and maximize Spice production.

That is pretty much what Dune: Chronicles of the Imperium was intending to be. Ars Magica was definitely an influence.

What about the (REALLY) short lived Dune RPG from Last Unicorn?

Dune seems something more suited to a wargame or board game.

But it could be possible to run a Dune campaign simmilar to how Birthright works, or BECMI.

Quote from: Omega;943856Dune seems something more suited to a wargame or board game.

Dune would make for an awesome Diplomacy variant