Quote from: David Johansen;944338So, campaigns: Masters of a Minor House, Agents of a Great House, Agents of the Sisterhood, Fremen Under the Beast, Fremen on Jihad, Against the Fremen Jihad, Smugglers of Dune, Intrigues and Follies of the Face Dancers, Hired Swords for Hire, Seekers of the Diaspora, Honoured Matres Tell All, We're All Duncan Idaho Here.

Any others?

That should be "We're Living In Our Own Duncan Idaho", David!

Added: Dammit CKreuger! Same damned idea!

So here's your Dune scenario:

It's on the eve (so to speak) of the Atredies' assumption of power on Arakkis.  Everything is going JUST AS PLANNED except...except, there's a location where the Spacing Guild's prescience is failing them.  Several Minor Houses are to pay fealty to the Emperor Shaddam IV as a functional acknowledgement that power was justly and fairly handed over.  The Guild, of course, moving the House Lords to Kaitain for the ceremony.

The problem is, again, Guild prescience is hitting a "blind spot" for which they cannot account.  They've narrowed it down to a minor world, home of the lesser House Sung, but beyond that they cannot say.  The Guild would rather not involve the Emperor and the unsubtle Sardaukar, nor the questionable Assassin's Guild, so from whatever social circle (within reason) the characters currently inhabit they are tapped to investigate.

It turns out Duke Sung has located, deep within a forgotten vault on his planet, a functioning Thinking Machine, a remnant of the Butlerian Jihad!  The intellect of the machine is so mighty that it bends and distorts prescient abilities, much like a supermassive body in space bends and distorts space and time.

He has activated some of it's "lesser" functions (e.g., it can speak, and see, etc.), but he hasn't fully unlocked the Machine Intellect's full potential - yet.  Bewitched by the promises of power and authority the machine has made, Duke Sung is planning to use the events on Kaitain as an ambush, to try and seize power in a coup d'etat.  The Thinking Machine will focus all of it's prescience into outwitting the various house guards and defense units.

The Guild knows "something" is amiss, but cannot ascertain what.  Since they cannot request enough Sardaukar to drop onto the world and commit planetary genocide without casus belli they have summoned the group to investigate.

A good GM will argue heavily for the Thinking Machine, making a compelling case to try and convince the players to side with it (even setting aside its megalomania to play on their sympathies); Sung knows what he has done will disgrace his entire House if he can't pull this off, forcing his Household into exile and him into a few thousand years in a Pain Amplifier.  The vaults where the Thinking Machine is located should be full of deadly defense systems, plus household retainers fighting to protect the Duke from "assassins".  Once the players arrive on-world, the Guild will Interdict the planet: no one lands, no-one takes off until they can report back.  Even if the party sides with the Machine and attempts to betray the Guild (and by extension, the Empire), the "blind spot" will remain, and they'll have to take the Highliner by storm and navigate to Kaitain without the assistance of the Guild...

I think that's a pretty good "Dune Universe" adventure right there.

Yeah, not bad at all.

So, what would the careers for Dune Traveller be?  Bene Geseret, Noble, Soldier, Doctor, Guildsman, Serf, Outcast (includes Fremen?)

The Telexeiu provide a couple alternate races like Face Dancers and Gholas but we're looking at a human only universe.  I'd think that the noble class might have slight attribute advantages owing to Bene Geseret eugenics.

I'm not a Traveller wonk. If I were going to use an established system I'd be tempted to use CP2020's Interlock and create the infrastructure and sub-systems on my own or Savage Worlds (because I'm lazy).

I'm less concerned about "careers" than I am the subsystems in which those careers would engage.

Ballpark sub-systems I'd be interestedin: Prana-Bindu of the Bene Gesserit, the full capabilities of the Mentats, the actual benefits of the Spice. Generational rules that could allow the PC's to actually create the Kwisatz Haderach (and what that would even look like in gameplay), gene-manipulation for Face Dancers and Gholas. And of course there's the tech in the Encyclopedia that would need work.

Quote from: TrippyHippy;944327It just sounds like you're shoe-horning an Edge of Empire/Cyberpunk game into the Dune setting, though. You are missing out on the rich narrative tropes and themes of the books themselves.

I agree. Remove the political intrigue and empire builder aspects and its no longer Dune. You might as well be playing any given generic SF setting.

"Hey! Romeo and Juliet was a great setting. But I dont like all that romance and machinations. Lets play pirates!" :rolleyes:

Quote from: Omega;944485I agree. Remove the political intrigue and empire builder aspects and its no longer Dune. You might as well be playing any given generic SF setting.

"Hey! Romeo and Juliet was a great setting. But I dont like all that romance and machinations. Lets play pirates!" :rolleyes:

You want to play House Corrino, the Bene Tleilaxu or CHOAM, there are way better ways to do House v. House than a RPG system designed to represent the actions of an individual, like some of the aforementioned boardgames or you want to Bene Gesserit it, use Microscope, and head on over to Other Games to talk about it.  

If you're focused on individual level play, then you can interact with the broader agencies through the character, as they would without necessarily being Shaddam IV.

Not necessarily. But removing the intrigue and kingdom builder aspects from the setting does kinda leave out the main thrust of the setting.

If the PCs just ditch all that and head off to sell wine on the tradeways then what was the point in even setting it in the Dune universe?

If the PCs plan to get involved with all the machinations then that is a different matter. I think theres plenty of opportunities for non-big-gun level PCs to play around with and potentially work their way upwards or be very involved in the intrigues from different angles.

Quote from: CRKrueger;944490You want to play House Corrino, the Bene Tleilaxu or CHOAM, there are way better ways to do House v. House than a RPG system designed to represent the actions of an individual, like some of the aforementioned boardgames or you want to Bene Gesserit it, use Microscope, and head on over to Other Games to talk about it.  

If you're focused on individual level play, then you can interact with the broader agencies through the character, as they would without necessarily being Shaddam IV.

These things are not mutually exclusive. See D&D Companion, ASoIaF RPG, Rogue Trader, et al.

First: THere is a lot more Dune in Fading Suns that a couple of noble houses that might be somewhat heavy reskins of houses from Dune, also Settembrini, in this case, can fuck off for not having a clue.  For fairness sake, I'll point out you can do a decent Star Wars in the setting as well (seriously: Light Sabers and psychic powers. Fuck you: Jedi!).

What is missing is Dune and the Spice itself, both of which could be added easily enough.  Turning Fading Suns into Dune is a bit more work than that, but all the tools are pretty much in place at the level FS plays at.  Ships aren't bouncing in and out of lightspeed, so chaging Gates to Jumpships is simple enough. YOu've got psychic powers that can be used for Bene Gesserit, and for Tlielaxu (I think...), and others.  FS had its own version of the butlerian jihad, so think machines are rare in the setting and generally viewed as heretical.  

So, the tools are there to change the setting, including shields that require slow moving attacks to penetrate (though no laz-nuke effect, but lasers are rare weapons in the setting anyway.).


Secondly: I'm not entirely sure I buy the repeated refrain that there is no room for adventures in Dune, due to social castes etc.  The Books/Movies take a generally top down look from the upper classes, who do have very rigidly defined roles and responsibilities, yet also a fair amount of freedom. The fremen have a lot of freedom, we can assume Spice Smugglers have a lot of freedom. Gurney Haleck doesn't have much struggle to find a place in the galaxy despite losing his noble patron... and he started out as a Harkonnen Slave on Geidi Prime, so clearly people... other than rulers of a House... have quite a bit of freedom, we just don't see much of it, given the focus.

For that matter: Princess Irulan goes from (brain fart... capital world (Tm)) to Geidie Prime to intrigue directly with (Sting?... fuck my memory is shit today), against the Emperor's wishes...  at least in teh Sci-fi special version of the movie.  People do shit for their own reasons in defiance of the rules all the damn time, is what I'm saying. Even in Dune.

How much freedom does a Bene Gesserit Missionary have? I'd guess quite a bit. Dropped on a savage world and creating a form of religion later sisters can manipulate if they need too is a pretty big job, and one that doesn't call for calling back home for orders every other day.  I seem to recall Duncan's service after becoming a Swordsman of Girahz (SP???!!!!) was more voluntary than compulsory, done out of a sense of obligation to his patron rather than legal decree. Again: We don't see Swordmasters roaming around on their own because teh focus is no on members of this random school (and we can assume many other similarly elite martial schools exist, just as at LEAST two schools of mentats exist...), but on members of House Atreidies and their entourage.   We can only speculate on 'former' Sadukar floating around the galaxy like bums, because we're TOLD by the people who are as far from teh trenches as you can get that they Sadukar are fanatically loyal, that they are special.

They could well be wrong. How many Sadukar were left for dead on Arrakis that may have found a new life among Spice Smugglers, or perhaps among even the Fremen (not likely, given animosity between the two, but still possible...)?

But that doesn't answer the question.  How do you make a Dune game work?

Fair enough. I need to see a few questions answered first.

What do you NEED out of a Dune game?  Do you HAVE to play politics in the Landsraad?  Do you need to have random adventures having Firefly-esque 'jobs'?

Here's the thing: If we take Fading Suns as a template, you can easily build a party of Spice Smugglers. You could have a noble's entourage, including Noble.  You could play a military style game, with religious holy knights doing commando raids on dirty heretics (in dune? Well, Fish Speakers maybe?, or Sadukar seeking out Fremen rebels...)... You could play non-Navigator Spacing Guild members with a small ship of their own doing... technical stuff. I dunno, that last one isn't up my alley, but you could do it.

What you can't really do is play Politics on the grand scheme. Space naval battles (using Noble Armadas), sure.  And there isn't much saying you CAN'T be the Duke of an entire, hotly contested, world... but that's 'background fluff' for your character, mostly.   The GM would have to create the 'higher level' play for himself.

IN which case, maybe take a look at Reskinning Burning Empires, with Dune style rules instead of invasions of Mind worms.  IF you like Burning Wheel style rules, of course, with antagonistic GMs playing the hostile parties and so forth, and play structured around rigid acts and scenes and shit.

Beyond what you NEED for it to be Dune (and for the sake of argument I'm discounting the need to replay the damn books word for word....), what exactly is your playstyle?  Me? I can't stand narrative metamechanics, so any rule set based on that is right out the window... barring perhaps some metamechanics to abstract events larger than characters (politics...).  Me? I want a sandbox, a playground. I don't want to be forced to play politics, or even nessessarily to play politics through abstracts, rather than meeting NPCs and making deals that will hopefully play out on a grander scale (which FS does allow if not actually support). A FS based Dune, as I sort of described it above would be right up my alley, whereas I could enjoy, but to a much lesser extent, a simpler Burning Empires 'politics uber alles' take, and a Hero Quest super-narrative? Fuck off with a backhoe... but that's me, and you were asking, I assume, for You.

To be tendentious: Do it in GURPS, already. Jeez... they probably have a fucking book for it anyway. Somewhere.

Quote from: Omega;944485I agree. Remove the political intrigue and empire builder aspects and its no longer Dune. You might as well be playing any given generic SF setting.

But you don't have to remove those aspects. You just need to have an approach to the setting that allows players the freedom to have adventures in the Dune universe. This is more easily accomplished with the edge characters interacting with all that intrigue and empire building. (and religion and spice powers and everything else)

I'm not sure that the concept of 'Spice smugglers' even exists in Dune. If that were the case, then it somewhat undermines the entire premise of the politics of the setting - "He who controls the spice" and all that. Dune doesn't really have Star Wars-style freighters either. They have whopping great star craft that move through the universe by folding space-time, and are only able to be operated by Navigators. The Guilds in Dune are powerful monopolies.

I'm no expert as I've only read the first book and seen the movie about a billion times but that's what I thought as well. The Spacing Guild has a monopoly on space travel.

Spice Smugglers are Canon, Dune Book One even. Gurney Halleck falls in with Smugglers after the fall of House Atredies and before joining Maud'dib. Smugglers pay the Spacing Guild a portion of their cargo of Spice to avoid customs. Mind you that the single largest consumer of Spice per capita is the Spacing Guild, the Navigators literally live in an atmosphere of spice gas as they mutate.

I believe smugglers are mentioned several times, to the point where they were known to use the Poles to hide in the magnetics to avoid detection, but I'm starting to get into less certain territory there.  I've been dealing with a non-canon expansion to set up a detailed setting for use in the Fading Suns thread... basically explaining the logistics and economics of Spice Smuggling almost as an aside.

Quote from: Ratman_tf;944559But you don't have to remove those aspects. You just need to have an approach to the setting that allows players the freedom to have adventures in the Dune universe. This is more easily accomplished with the edge characters interacting with all that intrigue and empire building. (and religion and spice powers and everything else)

I was thinking about this the other day. I've often toyed with the idea of running a Dune campaign and for some reason, I think running it during Dune Messiah would be pretty cool. Something about that book felt gameable to me. Another thought I had is start at the beginning with the players as Fremen, and simply remove Paul Atreides or shift his role to an unknown personality, so things can be new to the players but they can still be part of similar events and developments.

Well I've put a bit of a start into a Traveller variant.  I'm thinking alliances and fiefs will be an important part of it and starship combat all but unknown.  After all, impenetrable shields are impenetrable.

http://www.therpgsite.com/showthread.php?36059-Traveller-Dune&p=944596#post944596