If you’re on the mailing list you will have seen that we’ve started a closed beta test for Dune.
While we welcome anyone to join and offer feedback, it is a term of our licence to do it under a non-disclosure agreement and give out the beta documents only to those who have signed up.
So, if you’d like to take a look at the game and run the fully playable adventure with the pregen characters provided you can sign up here:
Due to the volume of responses we’ll be sending out mass email links at the end of the week so you may not get a response until then. But drop us a line if a weekend has passed since you signed up and you’ve not seen anything.
I also have to remind you that these documents can’t be shared outside the closed beta. Should you see it posted anywhere in your internet travels, please drop us a line and we will try to get it removed. Piracy isn’t just bad for the industry in general but may cause problems with our licence - either delaying or even ending the product line.
Otherwise, we really hope you enjoy seeing the bare bones of what we’ve been working on.
We’ll be creating a closed forum for you to discuss the beta, and ask questions about the rules and what plans we have there. Anyone signed up will get the link for that when it is active, but in the meantime please save all comments about the beta for the closed forum.
Thanks everyone for your patience, we hope this is what you’ve been waiting for!
Use Zoom! I’ve found that it has helped me start to get past my frustration and loathing for online play. Closest experiences I’ve had to everyone physically sitting at the same table, being able to see everyone face to face is a must, as opposed to disembodied voices,and not having to worry about Roll20 technical issues.
With different groups we have used Zoom and Google Hangouts.
The main issue I’ve found is that you can’t have little side conversations with other players while the GM is dealing with someone else.
I’ve tried using the chat function but it doesn’t seem to flow right.
Maybe I’m just not with it like these millenials nowadays.
Our group is lucky in this: due to Luddism, jobs & geography, the five or six of us have to interact in person—and out play area is open area covered porch—so we’ve kept playing at the table.
And since our secondary gm signed up for the beta test without telling the rest of us…
We’ve had a discussion in our group about the Beta. We are hoping to play through the scenario soon (we have a number of other campaigns/scenarios we are running, so it’s about finding a ‘slot’). Is this were we get to discuss it without breaching the non-disclosure?
The LUG version, which is now worth a bomb because there were only a few thousand made, came out in 2000. I remember being at the UK con where it was released and the vendor immediately increased the cost of buying it as he knew there was a demand. WotC then lost the license, along with the Star Trek license they had accrued from the same LUG takeover, a few weeks later. The Star Trek license moved on to Decipher, who ended up with their own problems, and the Dune game just moved into the aether.
Dune is something of a holy grail game license, I think, as with making a great movie of it. For me, its also the best science fiction novel (and series) ever. Can’t wait to get into the RPG!
Basically, anyone can sign up. So just get one of your players to sign up and add the others as a new group. But tell them not to read the adventure when they get the beta
