I thought I’d start a thread for interesting Dune articles after Jason Durall pointed me at this one from the guardian.
If anyone has some more add them to the list!
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Found this about another board game. This time based on Portal Games Detective game.
From what I can tell by the description it is a co-operative who-dunnit. Not sure on the replayability as it sounds like it has an overarching plot that you work though, but I will certainly check it out when it is released in Q4.
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Very cool.
Thank you for this.
I found this article on The Wargamer that is very interesting!
Military Theory: An Analysis of Warfare & Technology in the Dune Universe
News, guides, and reviews of board games, tabletop, and digital wargames
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The various Wargamer articles, including the latest on the design choices.
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The latest article on the game.
Not much new information but the devs talk about the artwork, the requirements of working under a licence and how they had to pitch the book between newcomers to Dune or RPGs & the fanatics of both. (Plus the subset of Orthodox Herbertarians 
)
Also we may see Maula Rifles.
Wormsign, p16 
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Hi, not sure if this belongs here but I wanted to get people’s feed back on one element of the Dune stories, and that is the issue with using Lasguns against shielding. We’re told that since doing this can essentially cause an atomic like explosion because of the way Lasers interact with the Holtzman effect on a sub atomic level. I have no issue with the concept persay, as it explains one of the basic tenants of the Dune Universe, ie. That swords are used to a high degree in major combats…but how have people been accounting for this in gameplay. it seems to me that while any act if doing this would be heavily de-incentivized by the possibility of death to friendly forces along with the enemy AND the ramifications to a house that let it happen, it doesnt address all the other ways it might happen anyway. There could be a non-house connected terrorist group that decides to open up with a Laser on a shield on perpose, or an emotionally unstable combatant that looses it and fires one off in an insanity induced rage. Hell, it may just happen accidentally. If I was in the confines of a major house’s holdings behind a house shield it would be like living with an atomic sword if Damoclese constantly over your head. Any thoughts on this?
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It came up on one of my earlier Dune campaigns when a player came up with the idea. My response was essentially that the Landsraad wouldnt mess about with due process and would wipe out all parties just to be on the safe side.
Which was fine for dissuading rational actors.
It would probably work for most terrorist groups as well as having a pogrom declared against your people or ideals would rapidly reduce the numbers willing to try it.
For non rational actors it is a lot trickier. The threat of retaliation doesn’t work if you just don’t care about it.
Here the easiest solution is to restrict who can have access to lasguns. Dune being a very fuedal system it probably is a lot easier to prevent lasguns falling into non-House hands.
Maybe they are only issued to elite forces even inside the House, with safety precautions such as a piece of material seperating the battery and weapon that can be quickly pulled clear when needed.
Fundamentally you will always have the risk, but it can be reduced at least.
Thank you. Good Idea. Incidentally, how have, or would you handle an actual occurrence of this? They don’t list, as far as I can see, how much damage might be generated and over what area. I would assume that a lasgun firing at at personal shield would create less damage than a lasgun firing at a house shield. Also, Im assuming that the damage would not be hampered by which side of the shield you were on. I was also thinking that the ammount of damage would be so severe that you might also just describe what happened than trying to figure out real game mechanics, ie. Everybody is vaporized out to a certain range, burned alive a little further out, Badly burned and irradiated a bit further, etc. Has it ever been mention in the books?
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The shield/lasgun interaction is one of the odd bits of Dune, physics wise.
It is described as a variable explosion in the novel.
“A lasgun-shield explosion was a dangerous variable, could be more powerful than atomics, could kill only the gunner and his shielded target.” [Jessica, Dune]
It doesn’t make it clear how the size of the explosion is determined, however.
I always viewed it as like rolling a percentile dice. Maybe modified by the power of the shield and lasgun, but fundamentally can go either way.
For instances in the book I can only recall 2 off hand.
- Duncan Idaho leaves a live shield during his escape from the battle of Arakeen. Pursuing Sarduakar using lasguns trigger it and get themselves all killed. (Minor explosion, maybe equivalent to an atillery shell to kill a whole squad?)
- Miles Teg uses them almost like space mines during Chapterhouse (been a long time since I read it). To have a real effect in a space battle you are presumably dealing with atomic level. But that was both off planet and well after the Imperium age when the Great Convention was dead, buried and displayed as an example in Leto IIs Rakis horde…
As for how i would handle it as a GM (other than giving Iain the stink eye for suggesting it) I would probably roll a percentile dice (d100) and use that as my guide for how much damage to narrate.
Roll low and I would let nearby players/NPCs off with munor damage, roll high and we move on to a Landsraad/Imperial ‘investigation force’ turning up to identity and deal with the situation.
Interesting to me is that the characters must have in the back of their minds that there’s always a chance that it could happen. A Sword of Damoclese situation that would be nerve wracking to say the least. Maybe only helped by being hopped up on Spice, or spice infused products.
So, how have people been dealing with spice use. Who uses it, how much and what happens during withdrawl if you are cut off from your supply. I would think that anyone on Arrakis is highly addicted. Up there at the same level or worse would be the specialized schools, the Spacer Guild, Mentates and Bene Gesserit. Then anyone who is part of a house hierarchy or military. I would suspect that the effects of withdrawl, beyond just dying, would be dependant on how much you use and how adicted you are. Are normal people who are part of the Hoi Polloi using it necessarily?