How to do Dune: The Roleplaying Game well?

@Trippy You need to reread the books if you think there’s no psionics. Because it’s eminently clear you haven’t read them recently.

Near the end of Dune (novel, not movies)

“Be hush, child,” the Emperor said, and he sank back into his throne, hand to chin, studying the Baron.

“I do not take the Emperor’s orders,” Alia said. She turned, looked up at the old Reverend Mother. “She knows.”

The Emperor glanced up at his Truthsayer. “What does she mean?”

“That child is an abomination!” the old woman said. “Her mother deserves a punishment greater than anything in history. Death! It cannot come too quickly for that child or for the one who spawned her!” The old woman pointed a finger at Alia. “Get out of my mind!”

“T-P?” the Emperor whispered. He snapped his attention back to Alia. “By the Great Mother!”

“You don’t understand, Majesty,” the old woman said. “Not telepathy. She’s in my mind. She’s like the ones before me, the ones who gave me their memories. She stands in my mind! She cannot be there, but she is!”

The Sharing (see Chapterhouse) is the ability to transmit memories between bene gesserit.
Prescience is presented as a psionic artefact; why? Because it doesn’t work on Guild Navigators, nor on the line of Muad’dib.

I think you need to read it again. There is no psionics in Dune. The Bene Gesserit are essentially running a con job on the matter. They surround themselves in mysteries and mysticism, but they are applying close observation and manipulation.

Prescience is a matter of the Spice and perceptual awareness - again not explained within a psionic paradigm. If the Spice is capable of folding space-time and increasing awareness, then the perspectives of those proficient in its use alters them, both in terms of perception and physically. Again its a theme based on a form of transhumanism, but it isn’t psionics.

Even in the example you give the Reverent mother actually rejects the idea of ‘telepathy’ - and refers to memory manipulation. A different concept, entirely. You’ve cited a piece that actually proves your argument is wrong. If you read the whole of the text, you will find all sorts of references throughout that provides subtle, but certainly apparent hints that all the mysticism in the setting is explained through scientific explanations. The religion in Dune is a deliberate, calculated manipulation.

No wonder you don’t think it’s sci-fi - you’ve overlooked the aspects of it that are sci-fi!

The abiity to transfer memories one to another is explicit in Chapterhouse.
I just don’t have an electronic copy.

How would Alia manipulate the memory of someone she’d never before met?

Either Alia is a restored personality from the past (but then how could she trigger Gaius Helen), a telepath, both, or Gaius Helen has fallen for her own hype (unlikely).

Likewise, the description of the change of the water of life is mental manipulation of the atoms themselves within the molecules. That’s a form ot telekinesis, at least a form as used in the context of most of the games that list psionics.

In chpterhouse, the sharing of memories is a quick (few minutes) exchange of NEW memories - both those of the sisters sharing, and those they acquired from sharing with other sisters. If that’s not telepathy, then its either telekinesis, or residual grey goo, shared sister to sister. And grey good is just as much BS as telepathy, if not more, because it violates theromodynamics badly. It’s a contrivance against reality for plot good.

If one can see beyond time and space, by virtue of spice induced prescience then an effect of this is to share memories with people you’ve never met before. It’s an altering of perception - in a transhumanistic way. As with space guilders who can navigate through folded space, the spice changes its recipients. Comparing this with the natural world, one has to take into account that different species perceive the world around them different to us. It’s not magical, it’s a suggestion of evolution away from being human - into something essentially superhuman - this is a major theme of the books.

What you are doing with all these examples is to try and explain them through a ‘psionics’ paradigm. The book never does this. Just because the narrative includes a lot of pyschedelic aspects, especially with the spice, it doesn’t automatically infer that psionics are at play. Indeed, as we see in the quote you’ve given, psionics explanations are actually dismissed.

If it looks like a duck, quacks, eats, swims, and flies like a duck, it is effectively a duck.

So we agree then, it’s a classic sci-fi novel. :+1:

But anyway, one of the big factors that make Dune appealing is that things - be they politics, religion or science - aren’t what they seem.

Doc smith was Lensmen, fuzzy was H Beam Piper

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LUG’s version was totally flawed, to put it mildly.

As a new RPG, I can only hope they signed a property license for =all= of the books.

I liked the ‘Butlerian Jihad’ series - it would make a good pre-Dune start.

The ‘House’ books could at the very least, be used for flavor once the main RPG is created.

My guess is that Modiphius will start with the core novel. “Dune”. Any further adaptations should and probably would come from Frank’s novels. Only after that info has been brought to light should the Brian and Kevin books start influencing the game. I would =love= to play in the “Butlerian Jihad” setting.

Bruce

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