So, with the division of houses into 4 categories there’s no clear example of which known houses fall into which category - beyond House Corrino.
House Corrino is obviously a Great House.
The rulebook gives both House Atreides and House Harkonnen Major House status, but within the parameters of what constitutes which class of house in the House Creation section there’s no obvious reason why that is the case.
House Atreides, is it a Great House (the Imperial House seems to consider it a threat, although there is no mention of vassal Minor Houses) or a Major House (holds sway with the Landsraad), or a Minor House (effectively fell in less than 24 hours, no real evidence of established power-bases beyond Caladan)?
House Harkonnen, an argument could be made for Great House (it took on House Atreides, leveraged assistance from House Corrino), but narratively it was seen a “lesser house” than House Atreides, so that could make it a Major House (assuming Atreides is Great) or a Minor House (assuming Atreides is Major), or even a Nascent House (if Atreides is Minor).
Without concrete and clearly explained examples of why House X is a Major House the rules as written become largely meaningless; and are barely fit for purpose as a tool for GMs to create their own content.
The Rules are fine for creating a basic framework for Houses. Since you don’t need to assign fixed numbers to military strength or economy you don’t need fine detail.
There are also rumours that we will be getting more source books that cover Houses in more detail. (Modiphius is a business, they need to keep somethings back for additional books)
As to House Atreides and Harkonnen their profiles in Chapter 9 both fit (more or less) within the rules that are laid out to determine House size.
House Atreides has 1 Primary Domain (Pundi Rice) and multiple secondary domains (technically more than 2 but hey, narrative).
This means that they are a Major House, which is matched by the text that says while an old and respected House it is not one of the most powerful.
House Harkonnen also has 1 Primary Domain (Spice) and multiple secondary domains so it is also a Major House.
The rules are clear on House size as far as I can tell.
Nascent House: Single Secondary domain
Minor House: Single Primary domain & Single Secondary domain
Major House: Single Primary domain & Multiple Secondary domains
Great House: Multiple Primary domain & Multiple Secondary domains
What sort of additional rules do you want for the Houses?
Presumably some way to determine quality levels for assets that they possess. (Battalions, Spies, etc) If so then you can probably work up something based on House size and the domains that the House has taken.
I am not a rules heavy GM, so having the leeway in these rules works fine for me.
p86 in the rulebook is pretty clear about what defines a House ‘level’
The rules assume Harkonnen is a Great House as it has multiple planets (Geidi Prime, Lankiviel, and Arrakis to a certain degree) and possibly other moons.
The Atreides are a Major House as they have just one planet. Their danger to the Emperor comes from their popularity in the Landsraad rather than their actual power.
Corrino is a Great House, but its also the Imperial House which puts it in a class of its own for the most part.
That is part of the problem, poorly defined rules, lacking hard numbers, don’t really allow a GM to build anything other than loose narrative.
What would make them useable?
What is the Military difference, in mechanical terms, between a Minor and Major House?
How can even get close to running meaningful Warfare without knowing that?
We can easily put some numbers against everything if you want to.
Each size of House has 1 batallion they can use for offence.
Each battalion has a quality level equal to the level of Warfare + Kanly.
So a Major House with a Primary domain of Warfare has 3 quality 2 Batallions.
A Nascent House with a secondary domain of Kanly has 1 quality 1 Battalion.
That will give you some numerical figures that fit within the framework.
If I want to run a war game in my RPG I’ll buy Matt Colvilles Kingdom & Warfare though.
There are more House rules coming. There are 2 more source books that touch on Houses apparently. Maybe there will enough in there for you to run a war game in Dune.
I personally doubt it will ever be at the level of detail you are after. I just don’t think the philosophy behind it meshes like that.
Well, the Warfare Conflict Rules in Dune is supposed to cover that, right.
That you feel the need to buy a third-party rulebook to make it possible suggests my concern, that the RAW are not up to the job they profess to be, is a very valid concern.
Yup, Thalim is right.
Warfare already covers this and while I’d not rule out doing an epic Dune wargame sometime, which would be cool, its not on the list right now.
We will be looking in more detail at House relationships later on though.
I’ll remind you I never mentioned “war game”, you did, I said Warfare, which is one of the Conflict types listed in the Dune Core Rulebook and for which - apparently - rules have already been provided.
So trying to undermine my point by referencing a term YOU introduced to the discussion is not only a little disingenuous, but also doomed to failure.
I said Warfare.
You said you’d use a different set of rules.
Ergo the WARFARE Rules are not up to the job - which has pretty much been my ONLY point in all of my comments here.
But, I imagine I’ll be called a Troll again, just for pointing out obvious truths that are clearly evidenced in this very thread.
Given that in the other thread a poster who loves 2d20 games and has run them multiple times has said the Dune Rules, as written, do not teach new Players and GMs how to play, I can only assume you are unwilling to listen to any justified criticism of the game.
OK, allow me to explain the reason behind my saying you were trolling as you appear to have focused on the wrong part.
I did not call you a troll for having a difference of opinion or for your tone. Even if I disagree with both, that is on me.
I called you a troll primarily for the below quote:
I have just written a review for Amazon UK, and my closing statement is this:
As much as I love the source material in the book, I can honestly say there is no chance at all I’ll be running Dune using these rules, they are simply not fit for purpose.
I genuinely hope my review spares anyone else from wasting money on a product that doesn’t even attempt to be what it claims to be.
Disagreeing - not a troll
Writing a bad review - not a troll
Writing a bad review, coming to the developers forums, posting said review and then saying that you believe the game to be a waste of money and that you hope you stop people buying it? - Troll
Would I be a Troll if I wrote a glowing review, and said I hope other people buy and enjoy the game, and then posted that here?
If the causal factor for me being a Troll is “wrote honest review” and “mentioned review at developers website” then the actual content - negative or positive - of that review is 100% irrelevant. You are then dealing in principles - nothing wrong with that, we need more people with principles in this world
But if the causal factor is the review was negative and I mentioned it here, then you are dealing in particulars - and all that really means is you are reinforcing your own biases and insisting I adhere to them too, even if I disagree with them; and that is unprincipled, and we don’t need more of that.
If I genuinely believe something is bad, and not worth the money, the ONLY principled action I can take is to try and ensure other people have the information available to them to potentially avoiding that waste.
There are two places where it is most effective to do that: 1) the point of sale - in this case Amazon UK, and 2) the point of promotion - in this case here.
Anyone selling or promoting a product who frowns on genuine, negative reviews clearly doesn’t care about their customer’s interests.
Anyone selling a product who cares about their customer’s interests wants, in fact NEEDS, to see those negative reviews so the product can be improved.
As I said writing a bad review does not make you a troll.
It is the way you went out of your way to post that you were trying to stop people buying it. That you wanted the game to fail because it did not work how you felt it should.
If you had posted the review and also continued your arguments on here then that does not make the leap to troll.
But you wanted people to know that you were actively trying to stop people buying it. That is the key element in my viewing that post as trolling.
We clearly view the world differently in many aspects.
The best I can do is try to keep most of my interactions with people positive and not only view the world as negative.
I find Dune to be just crunchy enough to work, yet loose enough to create my OWN versions of what is right and wrong, or how much power a house has, and its title, be it Great, Major, Minor or Nascent. I find a call to not buy this book based on (not even sure what) to be an irresponsible abuse of power.
Just revivifying this topic after reading the Great Game. Are there any great houses barring Corrino?
Looking through the list in the Great Game, house Harkonnen is possibly “going on” for Great House status (per Andy’s comments above). Certainly in the novel, the Baron daydreams a lot about usurping the throne. However nobody else gets mentioned as a big fish in the novel, and looking through the Great Game, all the other houses listed are Major (not Great).
So is the synopsis that the power of the imperium is Corrino (solidly great), Harkonnen (great-ish) and then everyone else major (or minor)?
I’d say the Harkonnen are definitely a Great House. The main measure is that they have more than one planetary holding and they have Lankiviel, Giedi Prime and (arguably) Arrakis.
We stuck with mainly standard Major Houses for Great Game as thats the usual benchmark. So they’d be playing in the same ball park as the PCs House for the most part - or make a cool House Major for them to be a minor House of.
However, it is worth remembering that ‘Great’ is more of a bonus title than an actual one. If you think you can get away with calling your House Great and don’t get laughed off Kaitain you are good.
If you want more Great houses though, that is pretty easy. Feel free to hand another planet to one of them and take it from there (not many games let you say that either )
That all sounds pretty reasonable to me. I’m pretty happy with there just being a couple of great houses. Although I always had a soft spot for House Ordos in the Dune video game!
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