Dune, Not quite gaming related but its eatting my post on shadow run. Options

[Dumori]

So I begining a hunt for the dune books as I have been recommended them a good few times. This post shall be for the discustipn of Dune the book movies games ect. But use spoiler tags for all plot and before that refer to what books, movie games the spoiler is about. So I can read it later when I have read, watched or played it.

[Particle_Beam]

You will have to speak mostly about the Dune-games, as all that other stuff is rather not appropriate for the gaming forum. The mods don't like it if a topic has nothing to do with gaming in general.

[Dumori]

well its about dune full stop. But ATM I'm STOL a hunting for cheap dune stuff.

[Wounded Ronin]

Play the first Dune video game. It's purty.

Dune 2 is like the great grandfather of the real time strategy genre. It's a fun enough game but it really has little to do with Frank Herbert's creation.

[Adarael]

The Last Unicorn Games Dune RPG is actually pretty awesome, but you really want to read Dune and probably Dune Messiah before you try to run it. You could easily run a game without having done so, but you'll be missing out on certain social group/politics subtleties.

[Drogos]

The movies are chock full of spicy intrigue (as I've heard so are the books). Get the Sci Fi channel ones if you can because the first one SUCKED. I never gotten my hands on the books, but they are supposed to be classics of SciFi (not a big scifi reader though). I think Children of Dune is a better inspiration than the original, but without watching the original, Children will not make ANY sense. As for the games...I'd try and run it in the SR system, simply because I know it far better than some other one. I mean, what's the hardest thing to port over? Probably star travel, but the majority of that can be handwaived. I'm not sure on the books, but I don't remember the movies having any battles in space, so it's all in atmo battles. Fairly easy to replicate. Of course, there is Star Hero and GURPS, but that's just if you like those systems.

[nezumi]

I must be the only one who wasn't really hot on Dune... I mean it was good for the time, but it felt like watching those old movies from the 50s; slow, done better by other people since, and full of overused themes. Again, I'm just saying, it's aging. I prefered David Brin's Uplift Wars for the whole guerilla combat and George R.R. Martin for the politics. I did enjoy the sort of nomadic Arab cultural touches, that isn't done nearly often enough, but beyond that... Nothing really struck me.

[Wesley Street]

I must be the only one who wasn't really hot on Dune... I mean it was good for the time, but it felt like watching those old movies from the 50s; slow, done better by other people since, and full of overused themes. Again, I'm just saying, it's aging. I prefered David Brin's Uplift Wars for the whole guerilla combat and George R.R. Martin for the politics. I did enjoy the sort of nomadic Arab cultural touches, that isn't done nearly often enough, but beyond that... Nothing really struck me.

David Lynch movies are never snappy in their pace. I like a lot of the sets in his version but the Sci-Fi Channel original mini-series was more true to the books (and though I do enjoy Lynch body horror flicks, it wasn't appropriate for the film). While it touched on those themes, Dune was never primarily about warfare or politics. It was about ecology and how it effects us all. There were a large crop of science-fiction writers who were wrestling with themes of ecological disaster during the late 1960s and 1970s, which spawned movies like Silent Running. Just like the cyberpunk movement of the mid-1980s kicked off the Matrix/Virtual Reality films of the '90s.

[Wounded Ronin]

Get the Sci Fi channel ones if you can because the first one SUCKED.

You're a god-damned heretic! Saudukar=death ravers = t3h pwn!

[paws2sky]

I like the original movie, as well as the SciFi channel offerings.

Never played any of the video games. I seem to recall there was a short-lived Dune CCG. I can't recall how far into the books I got - I burned out on them sometime around the fourth (or third) book.

And speaking of teh pwn, her name is Chani. Also, Barbora Kodetová, the actress who played Chani in SciFi's Dune, is teh hotness. pic


-paws

[Wesley Street]

She's also teh nekidness if you've seen it on DVD.

[paws2sky]

Indeed, I have. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[Adarael]

I must be the only one who wasn't really hot on Dune... I mean it was good for the time, but it felt like watching those old movies from the 50s; slow, done better by other people since, and full of overused themes. Again, I'm just saying, it's aging. I prefered David Brin's Uplift Wars for the whole guerilla combat and George R.R. Martin for the politics. I did enjoy the sort of nomadic Arab cultural touches, that isn't done nearly often enough, but beyond that... Nothing really struck me.

I like the aesthetic of Dune, really. And I'm a huge sucker for the middle east.

What I'm not telling you is that I like the Uplift War better, though. Dune was good. Dune Messiah was average. Everything else sucked huge balls. Brin is consitently genius, though.

I'd comment on the Martin politics, but it'd be like apples and oranges. They're two separate beasts, I think.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

Yes, that first game was awesome. I can't remember why, though, because it's been so long. Damn old age.

And 4 hours is a lot to slog through, but I can't knock a convergence of David Lynch, science fiction, and Sting. I have a friend whose first SR character was a conjurer named Feyd. Anyway, if the movie's not your cup of tea, just grit your teeth and pretend Paul is Agent Cooper.

The books are hard to talk about as a series, because they definitely change in tone after the first one. I know a crap ton of people that absolutely adore the first book. It's good adventure. Dune Messiah gets a little more religious in tone (not in a preachy sort of way, just a bang-you-over-the-head-about-how-important-the-main-characters-are deal), and then the rest get incredibly melodramatic and political. I like politics. But it was a LOT of books to get through. I did that when I was younger. Since college, I've been of the opinion that if a book doesn't grab you in the first few pages, you should walk away from it. There's too much good stuff out there to waste your time on stuff you MIGHT like.

[Wounded Ronin]

Everything else sucked huge balls.

Well there was a great deal more sex. But I don't think Herbert was ever that explicit.

[ludomastro]

Dune was great. Dune Messiah was OK - if a little heavy on the religion; however, it set up Children of Dune which was good in it's own way. I would recommend that unless you are truly committed to SF, then stop here. I went on to read God Emperor of Dune and it was, just ... weird. The change of pacing and language made me quit reading the series.

[Wounded Ronin]

I went on to read God Emperor of Dune and it was, just ... weird.

I still remember the "monster penis" line.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

I don't. I must have repressed it.

[chromedog]

I suggest you stop at "Chapter House" - the last one that Frank Herbert actually wrote (#6).

The prequels all suck the proverbial canine bollocks. I picked up one and after the first chapter, my thoughts were that it couldn't get any worse - it did. And then it kept going. [shudder].

I've still got a cd copy of Dune 2000. My brother-in-law is still playing it. Yes, he doesn't get out much.

The Dune movie by Lynch was very big on visual style - and some of the casting choices weren't his. I like the look and sound of this movie - and can deal with sting in flying y-fronts.

The first SciFi miniseries was bollocks. Yes, it might have captured the essence of the book better, but it was boring as.
Children of Dune is much better. It's also a combined "Dune:Messiah and Children of Dune. Yes, chani was hot. Alia was also hot in a psycho-b*tch kinda way.

[ludomastro]

I don't. I must have repressed it.

Same here.

[Dumori]

Well I now have a copy of dune just got on to book 2 after the house is all but destroyed . Found the start a bit slow but the tension waiting for the betray was really well pulled off.

[Floyd]

I am a bit Frank Herbert fan, and thusly a huge Dune fan, and I completely agree with the fact that non-Herbert Dune bites toads.

I own the Last Unicorn Dune RPG, and successfully ran a 10 session game. The game was almost all politics and many of my players found it boring. I have to admit, looking back, it ranked low on the thrill-o-meter. But, Oh the politics. The system for the game did not promote team work, and focused on great actions (ventures) that involved....well, no one, really. I tried to emulate the style of the books, Herbert's writting, and found it really pulled the players away from the action. The characters are a tad too lofty to get their hands dirty doing anything, but the stats of the game are low enough to give the players room to grow. But that makes the peons practically invalid, by way of system.

I would like to run a "Savage Worlds" campaign, using the Dune RPG as a guide and sourcebook. I also recomend the Dune Encyclopedia as a sourcebook. Where the history presented here is different than the history of the non-Herbert prequils, at least Frank endorsed the Encyclopedia in a letter at it's begining. The campaign would feature a entourage member as the NPC leader, with the players as high subordinates of the said NPC.

I enjoyed all efforts made to make Dune a film, with disregaurd to wierding moduals in the first version and a lack of Mentats in the second version. I often profess to want to show the first half of the first film, up to after leto's death; then lay the rest of the second version right afterward. Dammit, where are my mentats.

I like the video games, but don't play them enough to rate them.

I read all of Herbert's Dune books (Dune,Messiah,Children,God-Emperor, Heritics,Chapterhouse), and loved them all. The unifying theme through out them all was the Golden Path. Tried to read the prequels and found them to be, at their best, Dune-lite. No one, and I mean no one, chrunches words like Frank Herbert. I have also read (by F. Herbert): The Heaven Makers, The White Plague, Whipping Star, Destination Void, and started such as The Dosadi Experiment and The Jesus Incident but put them down somewhere and promptly lost them.

I would like to consider myself a Frank Herbert, and by extention, a Frank Herbert's Dune expert; or at least an authority. I read a pretty good cross section of his work and I feel I have his philosophy down.

Jesus, what the hell was I writing for....oh, well.