Latest / Sessions Canceled / Dune: Adventures In The Imperium | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 3: Ep. 195

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Dune: Adventures In The Imperium | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 3: Ep. 195 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Hey everybody, so the GM wasn't aware that the do not awakening
• 0:18
  servers were getting crunched down and let's just say he
• 0:22
  didn't move his stuff out in time.
• 0:24
  He's inconsolable. Those sessions cancelled.
• 0:30
  Can't believe you're spreading false information.
• 0:32
  We still have like a week as of we.
• 0:33
  Do still have a week? Yeah, I know.
• 0:36
  I mean I did it already, but we do have like a week.
• 0:38
  We do have a week, yeah, like I already moved all my shit where
• 0:40
  like I'm good, but. You didn't move anything.
• 0:43
  I moved everything. I moved shit into a personal
• 0:46
  bank account I didn't put. Shit in a box.
• 0:51
  It did move some shit into my bank.
• 0:54
  Sure. But yes, I mean, I didn't move
• 0:58
  the house or anything. That being said, by the time the
• 1:04
  episode comes out the servers will be down anyway so it's
• 1:06
  fine. It's true by the time it comes
• 1:07
  out, yes. Yeah, the servers will get out.
• 1:11
  Urged or more accurate to say, more accurate to say the lower
• 1:15
  population servers have been removed, purged, yeah.
• 1:20
  Yeah, anyway, welcome back to another episode of Sessions
• 1:25
  cancelled. It's me, I say.
• 1:26
  I'm here with Josh, and Indeed, here's hoping we can we can dust
• 1:35
  up the last bit of the Dune Adventures in the Imperium rule
• 1:38
  book. Not a whole lot of preamble on
• 1:43
  this one, so we're just going to jump right into dueling, which
• 1:47
  is the first type of conflict available in the game.
• 1:52
  Before we get into that nitty gritty, though, follow us on
• 1:55
  your podcast platform of choice and maybe click on our Kofi link
• 1:59
  in the Doobly Doo. We'd really appreciate the don't
• 2:02
  know. Thanks bud.
• 2:04
  Damn, you forgot the word description, didn't you?
• 2:06
  I did. I absolutely did at empty, no
• 2:09
  thought. Description really just that's a
• 2:13
  tough. One, you know, emergent.
• 2:16
  Leave me alone. Yeah, fair enough.
• 2:18
  You got me there. So all right, for this part I'm
• 2:23
  actually going to give it over to Josh to start because the
• 2:27
  rules are a little noodly and canoodly and I, while I
• 2:31
  generally understand them, do not think I could do a great job
• 2:34
  of explaining them. So without further ado, make it
• 2:41
  away. Cost.
• 2:43
  Yeah. I mean, all right, so we're not
• 2:44
  going to start with dueling though.
• 2:45
  We're going to, we're going to reiterate some things because I
• 2:46
  don't remember exactly what we said.
• 2:48
  And I think we need to be real clear on how the baseline
• 2:53
  conflict works to get into the specific ones.
• 2:56
  So I'm going to broadly reiterate, effectively, every
• 3:03
  conflict, every single conflict in this game all boils down to
• 3:07
  the exact same thing. You roll initiative, the
• 3:12
  conflict starts. Your GM will determine the zones
• 3:18
  of the conflict, which are mechanically speaking, you need
• 3:26
  to move your assets into zones to attack the G miss assets, and
• 3:33
  an asset cannot attack another asset unless they are within the
• 3:36
  same zone as each other. So in the varying degrees of
• 3:43
  complex or not even complexity, the varying kinds of conflicts
• 3:47
  that you will come across, what those assets and what those
• 3:50
  zones are is going to vary widely.
• 3:54
  But ultimately it is always a case of move an asset into a
• 3:58
  zone, use asset to attack other asset to attack opponent's
• 4:02
  asset. And this this ties back into the
• 4:07
  idea that your player character is kind of like a, a secret, not
• 4:12
  explained asset. Like assets are generally things
• 4:15
  your player character has, but your player character is also
• 4:18
  essentially mechanically speaking, an asset in and of
• 4:21
  itself. So if you get jumped by some
• 4:25
  dudes in an alleyway and the GM is like, cool, there's two zones
• 4:28
  in the alleyway, the eastern side of the alley and the
• 4:30
  western side of the alley alley. And the player character rolls
• 4:35
  and wins the initiative. Or actually there is no, sorry,
• 4:38
  I lied. There is no role to initiative.
• 4:40
  The GM just decides who goes first.
• 4:42
  Yeah, player goes, GM says, all right, player, what do you do?
• 4:47
  Player says I am going to move myself which is to say my player
• 4:51
  character asset into the western side of the alley.
• 4:56
  I am then going to use my knife asset to stab my opponent which
• 5:00
  is to say the G miss asset that is the NPCI am using knife asset
• 5:06
  to stab bad guy asset and I have to move into the same zone.
• 5:10
  I was on the eastern zone of the alley.
• 5:13
  I am moving to the western zone of the alley, so we are in the
• 5:16
  same zone. So I maybe commence the
• 5:18
  stabbing. That is how every single
• 5:20
  ultimately every conflict ultimately works that way.
• 5:23
  And when you boil it down to like base roots.
• 5:28
  I was just going to say there is a slight caveat to that when it
• 5:31
  comes to things like skirmishing, where range attacks
• 5:34
  can fire into a different zone at A at a lower.
• 5:38
  It's not a caveat actually, because pointing a gun into an
• 5:44
  adjacent zone is considered moving that gun into that zone,
• 5:50
  so it still follows the same rules.
• 5:51
  It it does, it's weird because Skirmish describes as you're not
• 5:55
  moving assets, you're moving yourself, but you yourself can
• 5:57
  remain in the zone even if you fire into another zone.
• 6:00
  No, it describes it as you aiming your gun into the
• 6:04
  adjacent zone is moving the gun asset.
• 6:08
  That's how it's described. So like when you take aim with
• 6:12
  said gun that is moving that asset into that zone.
• 6:17
  It is not fictionally moving, but mechanically it is moving.
• 6:22
  Are you sure? Because it says in the skirmish
• 6:23
  rules. In a skirmish, you do not move
• 6:25
  your assets individually, rather movement actions move your
• 6:28
  character around the battlefield.
• 6:30
  Yes, movement actions move your character, but you can with the
• 6:34
  guns. With any kind of guns
• 6:36
  specifically, you can move them into a zone by aiming them.
• 6:42
  Got it. So like it's a general versus
• 6:45
  specific thing. Generally when you're moving
• 6:47
  around in a skirmish, your player character asset, your
• 6:50
  player character is is moving as an asset and all of the assets
• 6:54
  on your player character are coming with them.
• 6:58
  But in the case of a gun, they have a kind of special thing
• 7:01
  where they can be moved into an adjacent zone without your
• 7:04
  character physically moving. I see.
• 7:07
  So like you still have to, if you're aiming your gun, you
• 7:12
  still have to take the move action to do the aiming.
• 7:20
  So ultimately it still becomes an asset, needs to be in the
• 7:24
  same zone as another asset to commence the attack.
• 7:29
  Like it. That's still where it ends up
• 7:30
  mechanically. So range weapons seem like they
• 7:38
  kind of break the rule, but don't actually break the rule,
• 7:42
  they just work in a slightly weirder way.
• 7:44
  I was. Going to say a little more
• 7:46
  noodly. I mean, it's not even really
• 7:48
  that noodly. It's just, it's just described a
• 7:51
  little differently because you're aiming the gun as opposed
• 7:53
  to like physically moving the gun, like moving the gun any
• 7:58
  kind of distance. You are physically moving it
• 7:59
  when you aim it. But it's, it's not, it's, it's,
• 8:03
  it is no more complicated than anything else.
• 8:05
  It's the exact same mechanical usage, you know there's, there's
• 8:11
  no added complexity to it. I get what?
• 8:17
  You're saying the. I guess it is also worth
• 8:21
  mentioning because someone, you know, you might say wait, but
• 8:26
  are there any other special rules when you're in a conflict
• 8:30
  that can do so you can do like different things.
• 8:33
  And no, because all of the things that you can do in the
• 8:36
  normal rules you can also do during a conflict.
• 8:39
  So it's the exact same kind of checks, talents, traits, assets,
• 8:44
  using your focuses, using your drives, using your drive
• 8:47
  statements. All that shit comes is used in a
• 8:51
  conflict in the exact same way. So essentially there is no
• 8:56
  mechanical difference between a conflict and a regular just
• 9:00
  making rolls other than the idea of well, I shouldn't say there's
• 9:05
  no mechanical difference, but what I'm saying is the core.
• 9:07
  The what I said that poorly, there is a mechanical difference
• 9:13
  the the there is no difference between the core rolling
• 9:15
  mechanisms between a conflict and rolling outside of a
• 9:20
  conflict. So ultimately, if you want to do
• 9:26
  something beyond just attacking a guy, you just use the same
• 9:29
  kind of rules that you would use outside of a fight in any other
• 9:33
  scenario. So that's why there isn't like
• 9:36
  D&D style bespoke list of actions you can do on a turn
• 9:39
  kind of thing. And also the way conflicts
• 9:45
  function in this game, a lot of what you're doing is jockeying
• 9:49
  your fictional position or trying to make your fictional
• 9:52
  position better in some fashion in order to make, to give
• 9:55
  yourself an advantage. It's not, it's not AD and D
• 9:59
  style. I'm trying to get a better bonus
• 10:01
  on my hit or whatever. It's more of like I'm trying to
• 10:04
  give myself a fictionally better position, which will then give
• 10:08
  me another, another die or like, you know, give me a bonus to the
• 10:14
  role because XY or Z benefit is on my side.
• 10:17
  You know, I have the high ground so I get a + 1 type of thing as
• 10:21
  opposed to having a mechanical list of things that give you
• 10:24
  bonus to hit roles or bonus to AC or anything like that.
• 10:30
  So if you basically, if you are somebody who wants the tactical
• 10:36
  grid based combat kind of board gaming shit, this game is not
• 10:40
  doing that for you at all. Not even a little bit, no.
• 10:46
  But also, I don't think anyone would expect a Dune game to do
• 10:49
  that because it would be a little weird if it did.
• 10:53
  The only thing I could I could see is, you know, to that point
• 10:59
  is you know, something along the lines of the the warfare type
• 11:03
  conflict, but like even then. Sure, you could board game up
• 11:06
  the warfare mode I suppose, yeah.
• 11:09
  Like I I think it'd be gangster if you just, you're like, you
• 11:14
  know what we're doing a warfare conflict play, do spice wars.
• 11:20
  That's that'd be a choice. Just load up your favorite RTS.
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  So all of that going over the broad strokes of the conflict,
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  like we said last time, there are five, yes, there are five
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  major types of conflict which just say dueling, skirmish,
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  espionage, warfare, intrigue. In the book, they are roughly
• 11:47
  ordered in order of size. And by size, I mean like size of
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  effect on an area, kind of like they're ordered in terms of how
• 12:03
  zoomed in or zoomed out they are in on the focus on the action.
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  So like an intrigue conflict is going to be the most zoomed out
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  in terms of who's moving and who's doing what and what action
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  is actually occurring. Whereas dueling is the most
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  minutiae. Every little movement of your
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  blade counts kind of thing. So because of that, the first
• 12:32
  conflict that is described is dueling, which is arguably the
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  most complicated conflict only because not because it adds any
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  special rules, it doesn't act it, it adds absolutely no
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  special rules at all, but it is the most concerned with the most
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  minutia, the most little movement by movement kind of
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  action. So it becomes the most
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  complicated in that regard. So when you start a duel, you're
• 13:06
  only ever gonna do the only time dueling isn't gonna be engaged.
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  If there are two characters, one versus 1 only, it's only A1V1
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  thing, and those two characters are fighting over something
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  relevant, and those characters are probably most of the time
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  gonna be fictionally relevant. So if you're just beating up
• 13:31
  some random dude in the street, that's not a duel, right?
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  A duel should be reserved for Fade versus Paul or Jamis versus
• 13:40
  Paul. If you think about it in terms
• 13:41
  of the movie, those are both duels because they are
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  fictionally, the stakes are quite high and important because
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  there's, you know, there's a lot on the line.
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  And mechanically you're, you know, you want to track that
• 13:56
  movement by movement to make it, you know, a little more exciting
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  to be like, oh, like who's going to win?
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  Who's got the upper hand? You know, that kind of vibe.
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  This the what's really cool about the dueling system.
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  Honestly, the dueling system is probably the most interesting
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  form of conflict because it really does have the potential
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  to give you that sense of like 2 guys with knives or swords
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  pointing at each other. Like faint repost counter dodge
• 14:20
  move around. Like it really does have the
• 14:22
  potential. Assuming both parties use it to
• 14:25
  its fullest, it really has the potential to do that cool thing
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  like you can make a fight that genuinely does feel like Paul
• 14:33
  versus Fade in the movie if you use this dueling system to its
• 14:37
  full potential. So the way it works, you have
• 14:44
  two, you have the 2 characters who are fighting the two.
• 14:47
  Each character has three zones, right?
• 14:51
  Because the GM always, we always have to establish zones when a
• 14:54
  conflict starts. Both characters have 3 zones,
• 14:57
  their their body zone, their actual physical body, and then
• 15:01
  their right and their left guard.
• 15:04
  Technically it doesn't have to be the right and the left guard.
• 15:06
  It could be like a high, low, or a front back or whatever, but it
• 15:08
  doesn't really matter. It's the right and left guard.
• 15:11
  That's the easiest way to put it.
• 15:14
  When you start the conflict. Let's say let's assume both
• 15:17
  characters have knives. Let's assume it's a Chris knife
• 15:20
  duel. Here you start with your knife
• 15:24
  asset in your person zone, your personal zone.
• 15:29
  Which means in order to hit your opponent, you have to move your
• 15:33
  knife into your enemy's personal zone, right?
• 15:36
  Because an asset can only hit something if it is in the same
• 15:40
  zone as the other asset. So you need to move your knife
• 15:45
  into their personal zone to be able to hit them.
• 15:49
  By default, that means you need to move your knife asset three
• 15:54
  times. So for example, you could go
• 15:57
  from your personal zone to your right guard to your opponent's
• 16:00
  left guard to your opponent's body.
• 16:02
  That would be 3 moves. There's a couple of different
• 16:05
  ways you could potentially do three moves, but that's how many
• 16:08
  moves you would need to get into their into their person.
• 16:12
  That generally means on the first turn you are not going to
• 16:16
  be able to hit your opponent because you can only generally
• 16:20
  move 2 * a turn, so you're not going to be able to reach him on
• 16:24
  your first turn. So the first turn is almost
• 16:26
  going to be almost always going to be some kind of jockey into
• 16:29
  position. There's a couple of things like
• 16:31
  burning determination where you can potentially do that, but
• 16:33
  generally, so first character, all right, I'm going to go right
• 16:40
  guard, opponent's left guard, and then they stop swaps to the
• 16:44
  other, swap to the opponent. The opponent does effectively
• 16:47
  can do effectively the same thing or they don't have to.
• 16:50
  And this is where the mind games of the dueling comes in.
• 16:53
  Cause your opponent could use their their free hand which
• 16:57
  would be you know their like their fist asset or their hand
• 17:01
  asset to smack your weapon out of your hand.
• 17:07
  They could move their hand into their left guard where your
• 17:10
  knife, your knife currently is and smack it out of your hand
• 17:14
  and then you have to go potentially get it.
• 17:16
  Or they can try and rush past your guard and get their knife
• 17:19
  into your threat zone. Or they could do something like
• 17:22
  move boldly and moving boldly lets you move your asset and
• 17:26
  then move an opponent's asset. So they could move their knife
• 17:29
  into their right guard and then if they succeed on the move
• 17:33
  boldly roll, they can push your knife, your knife out of their
• 17:38
  left guard back into your right guard.
• 17:41
  So you can essentially. So fictionally, if you want to
• 17:43
  think about this in a quick back and forth character one, let's
• 17:47
  say Paul takes his knife in his right hand and goes and goes to
• 17:51
  bring it to Fade's left. Fade then moves boldly, which is
• 17:57
  to say like moves aggressively, smacks Paul's knife away so Paul
• 18:02
  has to retreat it back a little bit, and then moves his knife in
• 18:05
  his right hand to Paul's left side.
• 18:10
  Effectively, it's a lot of that you're sort of the, the, the
• 18:13
  thing that becomes relevant when you're doing a duel is which
• 18:17
  asset is being moved into which zone.
• 18:22
  And you need to get your, your weapon of whatever nature,
• 18:25
  whatever you're dueling with needs to be into your, in your
• 18:28
  opponent's personal zone. So eventually you go back and
• 18:30
  forth, you move your assets once you get your knife into their
• 18:34
  personal zone, that is when you can then actually stab them.
• 18:39
  And because when you're doing a duel, most of the time it's
• 18:41
  going to be against 2 relevant, 2 fictionally important
• 18:45
  characters. Like we, we care enough.
• 18:48
  If you're doing a duel, you probably care enough about the
• 18:50
  fates of the characters to track the minutiae of the duel.
• 18:55
  So that means you have to do an extended test, which is the case
• 18:58
  for any time you're trying to trying to tackle anyone with
• 19:02
  like narrative importance. You need to do an extended test,
• 19:04
  which effectively becomes their health bar.
• 19:07
  You go for the stab. Let's say your opponent.
• 19:09
  You need to, you need to hit them.
• 19:12
  You need 7 successes to defeat them.
• 19:15
  You go for the stab and you get 3 successes.
• 19:17
  All right, Now you need four more.
• 19:19
  And then your opponent on their turn now has the choice.
• 19:22
  They could try to move your asset out of their personal
• 19:25
  zone. They could try and knock the
• 19:26
  knife out of your hand. They can just say fuck it and go
• 19:28
  straight for you. They can.
• 19:31
  Where it gets really where you can get really into the next
• 19:35
  level of like jockeying position and shit is you, if you have a
• 19:40
  particularly successful role, you can start to burn momentum
• 19:44
  and you could burn that momentum to create a trait where now
• 19:47
  you're like, all right, I'm gonna create a trait where I
• 19:49
  have the high ground. So you move yourself into the
• 19:53
  high ground position and then now you have a plus one on your
• 19:56
  next role because you're above your opponent, blah, blah, blah.
• 19:58
  Then you Obi Wan Kenobi them in the legs.
• 20:03
  Then the GM can spend threat in response to that.
• 20:07
  And then where things can add on to the complexity levels is you
• 20:10
  can have, you have two different, you have two hands,
• 20:13
  so you could have a knife and a sword, 2 swords, a knife and a
• 20:15
  gun. And then you can also, 'cause
• 20:17
  it's the Dune universe, you can have personal Shields, you can
• 20:21
  have partial Shields and a partial shield.
• 20:23
  You can shift from your left side to your right side.
• 20:25
  And the different kinds of weapons are going to have
• 20:27
  different kinds of traits. So if you have a big, heavy slow
• 20:30
  sword and you try and move your sword into one of your guard
• 20:35
  positions and then your opponent has a knife, they can kind of
• 20:40
  quickly move past the knife. So normally when you try and
• 20:43
  take an asset and move it into an opponent's zone, if there's a
• 20:46
  defensive asset of some kind, you basically have a -1 to your
• 20:50
  role, a -, 1 success, or you need one more success, depending
• 20:54
  on you could describe it either way.
• 20:57
  But if they have a big slow sword, then because it's slower
• 21:01
  than your knife, it doesn't count as a defensive asset.
• 21:04
  So you don't have to get that extra plus one to your
• 21:07
  difficulties. So you can move your knife past
• 21:09
  it, that kind of stuff. A lot of this is going to come
• 21:12
  down to the GM is going to tell you, all right, you as the
• 21:17
  player are going to be like, my weapon has this trait, my
• 21:19
  character has these traits, what kind of bonuses can I get?
• 21:23
  And then the GM will be like, well, you get this and not this
• 21:26
  based on the fictional situation.
• 21:29
  And then also conversely, the GM could be like, well, the NPC has
• 21:32
  this or that thing, so they get a + 1 or they get a -1 or
• 21:36
  whatever. The important thing about
• 21:40
  dueling is that when you're when you're moving, when you're doing
• 21:45
  a dueling, you're moving assets, your characters actual physical
• 21:51
  position, like where they are physically standing mechanically
• 21:55
  doesn't matter. That's not what you care about
• 21:56
  in a duel. The thing that matters is where
• 21:59
  is the asset position, which is going to be, you know, your
• 22:02
  knife or your sword or whatever or your hands.
• 22:04
  If you're fist fighting somebody, you can do a duel with
• 22:07
  fist also the also the terrain becomes irrelevant when you're
• 22:15
  dealing with a duel. Terrain is very relevant in
• 22:20
  basically every other type of conflict, but you pretty much
• 22:23
  ignore it in a duel unless there's some sort of really
• 22:26
  specific reason it might matter. Like maybe sand, right?
• 22:31
  You might say sand could be something that might matter
• 22:33
  terrain wise, but you would basically create a trait that is
• 22:37
  the grand is loose, the ground is loose and sandy and that
• 22:40
  would be the terrain relevance. That, yeah, that's pretty much
• 22:43
  what I was going to say. Any, anything.
• 22:45
  Any logistical positioning that takes place in a duels gets
• 22:50
  relegated and abstracted to traits.
• 22:53
  Yeah, it's pretty. Much a trait and you got to
• 22:56
  think about it. Including permanent injuries.
• 22:59
  Yes, including permanent injuries.
• 23:00
  And you got to think about it. If you didn't do it this way,
• 23:03
  you would need effectively a second tier of zones, Yes.
• 23:07
  And that gets, oh, baby. And there's and.
• 23:13
  And I don't really think that would be no.
• 23:17
  Well, 'cause like that would be confusion for the sake of
• 23:20
  confusion, kind of. Yeah, well, 'cause most, like,
• 23:23
  if you think about it fictionally, most duels are not
• 23:27
  the fight on Mustafar where Anakin and Obi want to run in
• 23:30
  fucking marathons while they fight.
• 23:31
  They're doing a decathlon. Like when you watch the duels in
• 23:35
  in in Dune, the only real movement is a is a a step
• 23:40
  forward, 1/2 step back, step to the side.
• 23:42
  You know, roll out of the way. Because in Dune they're they're
• 23:45
  fencing, right? Effectively, yes, that's what
• 23:49
  that's what really what this this dueling mechanic, what what
• 23:52
  it's trying to emulate is fencing right like legitimate.
• 23:58
  If you want to see what a duel looks like other than just the
• 24:01
  movies, go watch Ahima competition.
• 24:04
  That's really what we're talking about.
• 24:06
  Yeah, yeah, that or like if you want to get see some of the
• 24:09
  Wilder shit, like watch, you know, military knife fight
• 24:12
  training is what a lot of this looks like.
• 24:15
  Sorry it occurred to me, I just said watch HIMA.
• 24:17
  Not everyone's going to know that accurate.
• 24:19
  HIMA stands for historical European martial arts.
• 24:22
  It's when dudes get into like like a judo style ring and fight
• 24:26
  each other with like long swords or axes or like actual
• 24:29
  historical weapons. Yes, it's it.
• 24:32
  It works similarly to fencing, where there's a point value
• 24:35
  system. There's a point value and and
• 24:37
  you're wearing protective gear and there's rules and yeah, all
• 24:40
  that. Yeah.
• 24:43
  Yeah, that's what dueling is ultimately getting at.
• 24:46
  It's it's that fencing style. And I mean, if you watch people
• 24:48
  fence in real life, pretty, it's pretty the abstraction they have
• 24:55
  done here pretty accurately represents what you're trying to
• 24:59
  do in like a mechanical game way.
• 25:03
  You know, like the fact that you can, you can move your weapon
• 25:07
  past their guard, you could push their weapon out of your guard.
• 25:10
  The fact that you can like potentially grab their weapon or
• 25:13
  parry their weapon, like all that shit's on the table.
• 25:17
  So I think that's once I got, once I understood how it worked,
• 25:24
  I was like, damn, there's a lot of very fun potential in this
• 25:27
  dueling system. So the the thing that ultimately
• 25:31
  kind of gets me about dueling, and I think it's really cool and
• 25:34
  I would want to try it, is the length of a duel.
• 25:39
  Because the as we talked about the the point of the duel is the
• 25:43
  chess game, right? The back and forth, the weak and
• 25:45
  strong, Yeah. And I could see a situation
• 25:48
  where lucky or unlucky roles, depending on who you are, sort
• 25:53
  of causes that it, it just forces this middle line for a
• 25:58
  while. I I would kind of like to see
• 26:01
  like an actual play of this to see how quickly a duel goes.
• 26:06
  Well, I mean, a duel is extent. Is it it what?
• 26:10
  A duel is intended to take longer, right?
• 26:14
  You are intended to spend a little bit more time on it.
• 26:17
  Because again, if you think about it like a movie, we're
• 26:21
  focusing on Paul and Fade fighting each other, right?
• 26:24
  Like, that's a much more extended scene and there's a lot
• 26:28
  of emotional and narrative weight there.
• 26:30
  So it's not supposed to go fast, you know what I mean?
• 26:34
  No, I I understand that it's not supposed to go fast.
• 26:36
  I the the thing that I would worry about is the, you know,
• 26:40
  what's the the shadow run? All right, two player and GMR
• 26:43
  just going to play a separate game for a while.
• 26:45
  Yes. And ultimately that I, I think
• 26:48
  that is just going to happen with this system.
• 26:50
  But I think that's why you that's one of the reasons you're
• 26:52
  not supposed to use it a lot, right?
• 26:54
  You're only supposed to use it for specific scenarios because
• 26:59
  yes, the GM and the player who is playing the the character,
• 27:02
  they are going to be playing a separate game for 1020 minutes.
• 27:05
  That's just going to happen. There's no avoiding that.
• 27:08
  But if you want, The thing is, this is one of those
• 27:12
  compromises. If you want to have a system
• 27:15
  that feels like a a long extended chess game, mind game
• 27:20
  filled tense duel, you kind of have to make that concession a
• 27:25
  little bit, you know, like there's no other way to get
• 27:27
  around it. You're just it's just going to
• 27:29
  be that way. You do.
• 27:31
  And to the game's credit, they have done this for both physical
• 27:37
  fighting and political intrigue. So.
• 27:39
  Yes. Everyone sort of gets to do
• 27:41
  their I'm going to play the I get to go on my vision quest
• 27:45
  with Zuko for a while, everyone. Gets to play their mini game in
• 27:48
  different in different turns. Yeah.
• 27:51
  Also, you can intermingle all of the conflicts with each other
• 27:57
  because they don't use separate rules.
• 27:58
  They can all seamlessly intermingle.
• 28:00
  So you can have a situation where like I could see a scene,
• 28:07
  right, where some PCs are at a party and a bunch of a bunch of
• 28:12
  minor houses are present and, and one of the PCs slights one
• 28:17
  of the guys at the miner house and declares a duel, right.
• 28:20
  And everybody, like everybody in the party moves out of the way
• 28:22
  and everyone starts watching the duel.
• 28:25
  And then the other PCPC #2 who's playing the diplomat character,
• 28:29
  their turn in the conflict involves them going around to
• 28:33
  different people who are watching the duel and being
• 28:36
  like, oh, so I heard you had this deal with this one
• 28:39
  quadrant, Arakis and your harvesters needed a little bit
• 28:42
  of attention. I have some mechanics I could
• 28:44
  get you, right? So you could have one player is
• 28:46
  doing the duel and the other player is doing the political
• 28:49
  intrigue in the crowd watching the duel, and that'll work.
• 28:53
  Can you imagine the the stacking you got?
• 28:55
  You've got the people in the middle of the party who are
• 28:57
  fighting. You've got the the socialite
• 29:00
  doing the machinatin around the fight.
• 29:02
  In the background, someone's trying to defend from an
• 29:04
  assassination attempt, so they're skirmishing.
• 29:07
  The assassin is trying to Merc someone in the other room.
• 29:11
  Meanwhile, up in space, there's a person on another planet doing
• 29:15
  war. Going to war?
• 29:17
  Yeah. Doing war fight.
• 29:20
  How to speed run Your your your GM committing, you know.
• 29:26
  Yeah, I mean, you could effectively stack all of them on
• 29:28
  top of each other at once. I don't think the game
• 29:30
  necessarily recommends. It it.
• 29:33
  It wouldn't be. It's more work, but it's not
• 29:38
  that much more work 'cause it's all pulling from the same rules
• 29:42
  pool. It it is, But there's like you
• 29:45
  as the G, like as a player. The only thing the only zones a
• 29:48
  player has to keep track of are the only zones that are relevant
• 29:50
  to them and the nuances of the conflict type that are relevant
• 29:54
  to them. Whereas you and the GM now have
• 29:56
  to keep track of four different conflict types simultaneously.
• 30:01
  Yeah, yeah. That would be.
• 30:04
  But I think, I think if once you got comfortable with this game,
• 30:08
  I, I think it'd be pretty doable.
• 30:11
  It could be, you know, I this reading dueling for like the
• 30:15
  third time made me kind of laugh at myself because I'm I'm I'm
• 30:19
  usually the the I swing sword guy, right, like pretty known in
• 30:23
  the friend group for being the I swing sword guy.
• 30:25
  Have sword right here, literally swinging it around the room.
• 30:27
  I don't know if the mic can pick it up, but every time I'm like,
• 30:33
  Oh shit, you know, maybe I do want to play the socialite
• 30:36
  courtier and then game gives me a whole cool new way to swing
• 30:39
  sword. I'm like you're.
• 30:40
  Like damn it. Well, words are for nerds.
• 30:44
  I swing swords. Listen, you, yeah, you also
• 30:49
  haven't played that many games that really give you anything
• 30:51
  satisfying if you play the like diplomat guy, right?
• 30:54
  So. True.
• 30:56
  I I just just like swords, you know?
• 30:59
  Also that, but I think I think if you if you found the right
• 31:03
  game, you might be like, I could do a little talkie talkie.
• 31:08
  I think there's probably like it Fabio or this would probably be
• 31:11
  the game for me to do that in. And in both games I've well,
• 31:16
  that World of Darkness is pretty good for like the, the
• 31:23
  political, social intrigue stuff.
• 31:24
  There's not a lot of bespoke rules for it, but your
• 31:27
  disciplines and stuff like that help you, you know?
• 31:30
  I mean, in Dune, you could very easily have a character who is a
• 31:33
  diplomat but is also a noble who is trained in swords.
• 31:37
  Very doable because of the way the because of the way Dr.
• 31:42
  statements and focuses work in terms of right, 'cause you could
• 31:46
  have a focus that is battle swords and then you could have a
• 31:50
  focus that is, you know, communication, diplomacy and
• 31:53
  then, you know. No, it's true.
• 31:56
  And even the the, the example character or House Morley,
• 32:01
  there's a bit where they get into a duel and then there's a
• 32:03
  bit where they do some social stuff.
• 32:06
  So you you're definitely, yeah, some machinane.
• 32:09
  You're definitely not pigeonholed into one role or the
• 32:11
  other. No, same cool.
• 32:17
  I I would like to try dueling makes I make Sam so proud.
• 32:22
  Monster cool. Monster cool.
• 32:25
  No, True. Is there anything else you'd
• 32:28
  like to say on dueling before we get into the skirmish?
• 32:35
  No, although I will point out, I mean, I guess 1 little last
• 32:37
  point thing to point out is that I talked about stuff on kind of
• 32:42
  a base level, but the complexity and the things that you can do
• 32:45
  with it can stack quite quickly. As soon as you start adding in
• 32:49
  different kinds of assets, different kinds of traits,
• 32:53
  different characters like the, the, the potential is there.
• 32:58
  Because the only reason I mentioned this is because on 1st
• 33:01
  listen or first read through it might seem like, well it's
• 33:05
  pretty simple and like it kind of is on the surface, but the
• 33:10
  the potential to do more with it is pretty pretty deep.
• 33:17
  No, it it really is it it there's a a companion document
• 33:23
  that you can download that me and Josh have that talks about
• 33:27
  the different instances of a duel and how things like Shields
• 33:33
  or two weapon versus 1 weapon fighting can get really complex.
• 33:41
  Isn't the right word, but can change the mouth feel if you
• 33:48
  will. It, it changes the way the duel
• 33:50
  feels from a potentially even one-on-one to a desperate
• 33:55
  scramble to not get shipped to potentially, even if you do only
• 34:00
  have one weapon and you're just that guy, you're just, you're
• 34:03
  just go in sick up mode in the weirding way.
• 34:06
  Maybe you're overpowering them. So it gets it's it's a
• 34:12
  fascinating system and they managed to cram a lot of nuance
• 34:16
  into something that is, on paper at least, quite simple.
• 34:20
  Yeah, I mean, when you look at the initial, the initial what's
• 34:27
  the word I'm looking for? You're when you look at the
• 34:31
  conflicts page and you see that your two options are move and
• 34:34
  use asset, and that's literally it.
• 34:36
  You're like, OK, so that seems like not very much, I guess
• 34:41
  conflict not really a big thing in this game.
• 34:45
  But what you don't realize is that those two, sure,
• 34:48
  mechanically you have those two actions, but the way that they
• 34:51
  stack with all the other mechanics of the game very
• 34:54
  quickly adds to the nuance and the potential.
• 34:58
  Yeah, it is very good. And now I shall take that
• 35:06
  control. Yes, so.
• 35:10
  This is your DD battle. This is your DD battle, Yeah.
• 35:13
  The skirmishing serves as the second form of physical combat
• 35:16
  and is described as a more brutal, typically more chaotic
• 35:20
  form of fighting. Duels are elegant and
• 35:22
  controlled. Skirmishes are usually anything
• 35:26
  but. Duels are duels are, you know,
• 35:30
  distinguished battles between trained nobles.
• 35:33
  Skirmishes are some bandits in an alleyway getting shipped?
• 35:36
  Yeah, it's you getting jumped. It's #jumpjutsukaisen up in this
• 35:39
  bitch. Any form of standard combat,
• 35:42
  one-on-one included, can be a skirmish.
• 35:46
  In skirmish conflicts, zones serve as usually speaking
• 35:50
  physical areas or in locations within a larger space.
• 35:55
  The skirmish that's described in the game uses an alley, an
• 35:58
  Arakin. The zones are described as being
• 36:01
  the entrance to the alley, a fire escape towards the back of
• 36:04
  the alley, and the final dead end at the way back of the
• 36:08
  alley. During skirmishes, your main
• 36:12
  method of movement is to move yourself into the different
• 36:15
  locations so you can interact with the different aspects and
• 36:19
  traits of the zones. Now, as we talked about before,
• 36:23
  when it comes to guns, different but the same and no, not worth
• 36:30
  going back into it too much when you have a conflict scene.
• 36:35
  This is true for the other for dueling as well.
• 36:38
  It the the game describes what assets that you can bring into
• 36:43
  that kind of conflict. Each one hat does.
• 36:46
  So I'll just go over the the dueling ones quickly.
• 36:49
  Male weapons, as you can probably assume, knives, swords,
• 36:53
  Spears, whatever have you. Subtle weapons are things like
• 36:57
  assassination tools, grot wires and poison needles, stuff like
• 37:01
  that. Ranged weapons, what you can
• 37:03
  imagine, Shields, force fields, partial Shields, and then armor
• 37:08
  for skirmishes. The weapons you can take into
• 37:11
  combat are weapons, Shields, armor, and intangible assets
• 37:15
  such as knowledge of favorable positions, the ability to take
• 37:19
  cover, stuff like. That I mean, you can.
• 37:21
  You can use intangibles and dueling too.
• 37:24
  Here's the thing. All of all of the assets it
• 37:28
  mentions for each type of conflict are ultimately just
• 37:31
  suggestions. You can technically bring any
• 37:33
  asset into any situation. So if for some reason it makes
• 37:37
  sense for you to bring your tank into a skirmish, and the GM says
• 37:40
  you can, then you can't. Yeah, like I said it the the
• 37:43
  ones listed are the usuals not. They're the usuals or the
• 37:46
  recommendeds. Yeah, where was?
• 37:51
  Honestly, all of the all of the sections describing each of the
• 37:54
  conflicts gives you a list of stuff that can be in them and
• 37:58
  that you would use blah blah blah.
• 38:00
  It's all technically suggestion. Like technically the standard
• 38:06
  rules apply to every conflict. So like for example, you know
• 38:10
  the the in the skirmishing, right?
• 38:14
  It it, it has a whole section talking about how you maneuver
• 38:17
  in position or whatever. Technically just a suggestion,
• 38:23
  right? Like this is how we recommend
• 38:25
  you do it, but you don't mechanically.
• 38:27
  You don't have to do anything specifically that they prescribe
• 38:31
  or describe, not prescribe, describe.
• 38:34
  No, yeah, you're right to. In fact, the the supplement
• 38:37
  document that we were just talking about describes an
• 38:40
  intangible asset in the duel. The initial duel that they
• 38:45
  describe is the fight between Paul and Jamies, and the
• 38:48
  intangible asset is is Chani talking about Jamies's use of
• 38:52
  the knife switch where he puts the knife behind his back and
• 38:54
  switches his hands. Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 38:57
  And that is 100% intangible asset.
• 38:59
  And it, it can also get into a, a whole like like at one point
• 39:04
  in that duel, it also talks about how Jamies is using his
• 39:08
  faith to roll 'cause it's like his faith in Shai Haloud driving
• 39:12
  him to win the duel. So you can also bring in other
• 39:16
  weird things that you might not expect, as long as you can kind
• 39:18
  of explain yourself. Yeah.
• 39:25
  Again, very, I think I said this last time, but the the game is
• 39:29
  very, very fiction forward. Like pretty much exclusively.
• 39:35
  Yeah, to a fault, but not false. Not a right word to an extreme
• 39:41
  fault presumes that there's something bad, but they what
• 39:43
  we're What I'm really trying to say is they just.
• 39:45
  They push the fiction above all. They send it, Yeah, They send it
• 39:49
  to the, to the point that a lot of tabletop players are who are,
• 39:54
  you know, a little too D&D pilled are probably gonna, you
• 39:59
  know, they're gonna have some major growing pains with a game
• 40:01
  like this. Bro, can I tell you before we
• 40:04
  get into the rest of the stuff for skirmishing?
• 40:06
  I still have those growing pains.
• 40:08
  I still really struggle abstracting.
• 40:10
  Oh yeah, it happens. It's a pain in his ass.
• 40:13
  Well, because the the the thing about D&D and like it's the way
• 40:19
  D&D works is that it's so it's so culturally prolific prolific.
• 40:29
  My tongue's getting all tied up on that. 1D and D is so
• 40:32
  culturally prolific that when you read it or when someone
• 40:40
  describes it to you, even if you've never touched it a day in
• 40:43
  your life, it just kind of instantaneously makes sense
• 40:48
  because you learn D&D's rules through osmosis and so many
• 40:52
  other ways. Like if you play Final Fantasy
• 40:56
  and you're it's a turn based game and then someone describes
• 41:00
  D&D, your brain immediately starts to understand what they
• 41:03
  mean because D&D, cause Final Fantasy is pulling from D&D.
• 41:08
  If you've played any kind of Warhammer thing, D&D immediately
• 41:12
  starts to make sense. Like it's such a prolific thing
• 41:16
  in the way that it's designed and it's so culturally, because
• 41:20
  it is the most culturally relevant game.
• 41:25
  Understanding it is easier than understanding all the other
• 41:29
  games. So as soon as all the other
• 41:30
  games start to abstract away from how DND does it, or even if
• 41:35
  they don't abstract but they just kind of retool how DND does
• 41:39
  it, your brain has this immediate resistance and it
• 41:43
  takes quite a while to push beyond that.
• 41:48
  And you know, I think the only reason that for like me
• 41:54
  personally, I don't have as much of A struggle with that is just
• 41:57
  because one of the first campaigns that I ran for a long
• 42:02
  period of time and took seriously was Dungeon World.
• 42:05
  And so it's like DND couldn't infect me enough in the early
• 42:12
  stages. It really does feel like a
• 42:16
  fucking debuff when you try to leave the hyper tactical war
• 42:21
  game space. It's it's a.
• 42:23
  It's a. Well, so you know what?
• 42:26
  I can't even say that because it depends on the level of, of, of
• 42:30
  abstraction. So for something like Star Wars,
• 42:33
  the range bands, I was like, OK, this makes sense.
• 42:36
  I can deal. Like that was a, a good level of
• 42:38
  abstraction for me. And for Monster Hearts, they
• 42:44
  were just like combat is you throw a punch and combat's
• 42:46
  pretty much over because the second you throw a punch like
• 42:49
  like Monster Arch doesn't do trading blows.
• 42:52
  If you punch somebody in the mouth, they're probably not
• 42:57
  getting back up, you know what I mean?
• 42:59
  Like. But it's stuff like like blades,
• 43:04
  blades and playing in it makes sense to me.
• 43:08
  But when I have to run something like it, I struggle because I
• 43:11
  want to think about things tactically.
• 43:13
  I want to think about things like pieces on a chess board or,
• 43:16
  well, the. Tactics are still there.
• 43:18
  They're just, they're you. They're described and utilized a
• 43:23
  different way, right? Because in Blades, the tactics
• 43:25
  is all right. Fictionally, how can my
• 43:27
  character put myself in such a position that I can get a great
• 43:30
  effect on this role, right? And so you go, well, I have a
• 43:34
  gun. This character doesn't know I'm
• 43:37
  here yet, and there's a balcony right there.
• 43:40
  If I climb up to that balcony and fire down on the
• 43:43
  unsuspecting character, I could probably angle for a great
• 43:47
  effect and take him out, right? So like, the tactics are still
• 43:50
  there, it's just they're not 5 foot increments and positioning
• 43:54
  a token on a 5 by 5 grid and aiming a 2020 foot radius
• 44:00
  sphere. You know what I mean?
• 44:04
  It's like a different kind of tactic.
• 44:07
  Tactics. Different kind of tactics, yeah.
• 44:11
  I wonder if people have it worse after starting Alder's Gate is
• 44:16
  that they've literally video gamified it.
• 44:19
  Yeah, I don't know. I mean, I don't think, I don't
• 44:27
  think Baldur's Gate is anything is worse than anything like
• 44:30
  Final Fantasy Tactics or an XCOM or a Persona.
• 44:36
  Like they're all video gamifying that DND idea.
• 44:40
  And that's a lot of the reason that people are more easily
• 44:45
  accustomed to that DND mindset. Fair enough.
• 44:49
  You know, yeah. Yeah, yeah, I get you.
• 44:51
  There's a big crossover between people who play video game RPG
• 44:55
  who then play tabletop RPG. It's a big It's almost a circle,
• 45:00
  really. Yes, it is.
• 45:03
  Barely a Venn diagram. The the biggest joke ever told
• 45:05
  was that people tried to tell you that these were two
• 45:07
  different hobbies. It kinda a little bit, yeah.
• 45:12
  Unless all you play is like Madden or something, in which
• 45:14
  case, yeah, well, you're boring. I like, I know what I said, and
• 45:21
  I fucking said what I meant. I know.
• 45:22
  I know, I know. The main method of of achieving
• 45:29
  victory in a skirmish conflict is pretty much the same as
• 45:34
  dueling. You have to beat your opponent.
• 45:38
  That either means dealing the requisite damage to knock out
• 45:41
  the, you know, lowly goons or increasing the extended the
• 45:48
  extended skill check to the point where you have completed
• 45:50
  it and then the conflict ends. I do really appreciate that
• 45:59
  skirmishing does just sort of presume that when you're
• 46:04
  fighting the enemies, it's going to be a beat for beat.
• 46:08
  And to actually, to be, to be completely honest, how do you
• 46:12
  Well, when I say beat for beat, I'm it's like player shoots one
• 46:15
  guy down, other player shoots one guy down.
• 46:18
  You know what I mean? It's not.
• 46:20
  Oh. Yeah, because then you could
• 46:21
  have these really, like if you get jumped in a game like Dune,
• 46:27
  it doesn't feel like 5 E where it's like, well, we just don't
• 46:30
  have the action economy. And like, yes, that does matter
• 46:32
  a little bit. But the action economy is is a
• 46:38
  lot more weighty. It's a lot more crunchy because
• 46:42
  not only are you thinking about all of the different, you know,
• 46:45
  goobers in the fight and all the shit they can do, we got to
• 46:48
  worry about their health and their saves and all that.
• 46:50
  That shit doesn't matter in dude, right?
• 46:51
  It's like I plink that guy with a molla pistol.
• 46:54
  He's done. What I was going to say after
• 46:57
  that is something really interesting that I like about
• 47:01
  the example of skirmishing is that the extended check isn't
• 47:06
  even a win condition. It is the prerequisite for the
• 47:09
  loss condition. The players just have to knock
• 47:12
  out enough goobers before they have their clocks filled and
• 47:17
  then they lose. So that's a good way of of
• 47:22
  shifting the usual just punch them until they die narrative
• 47:26
  where it's, you know, survive 5 rounds before your five, you
• 47:32
  know, your your five tick clock goes up, something like that.
• 47:36
  Well, and the thing that's important about the extended
• 47:40
  test to, and I mean, this kind of extends the whole game.
• 47:43
  It's not even really about the extended test per SE, but the
• 47:46
  idea that you have overcome your opponent.
• 47:49
  But that doesn't mean you have to kill them or brutally injure
• 47:51
  them. It could just mean you like, you
• 47:54
  take them out at the fucking knees, they fall down, knock the
• 47:57
  wind out of them, you stick a knife in their face and like,
• 47:59
  all right, bud, fucking chill out.
• 48:01
  And then you know you've still won the conflict, and then you
• 48:03
  can go do whatever you want from there.
• 48:05
  Yes. And overcome.
• 48:07
  They use very intentionally, vaguely to mean all sorts of
• 48:11
  yeah, to mean God or whatever. Overcome can just mean
• 48:14
  surviving, getting jumped. It could mean disabling your
• 48:18
  enemies. It could just be jumping them
• 48:21
  quickly and taking them down before they have a chance to
• 48:23
  retaliate. Like, if you can knock down four
• 48:27
  guys in one round, that's all, and they give up.
• 48:32
  Exactly. Yeah.
• 48:32
  Like, that can be a win condition for the conflict.
• 48:34
  It's not always this. Reduce all enemies to zero hit
• 48:38
  points and then they die. And you know, you get the the
• 48:40
  Final Fantasy victory medley. Yeah, I mean, it's almost never
• 48:43
  that with this game. No, Yeah, it it and I like that.
• 48:48
  I I like that it, much like Sitreps, it forces you to think
• 48:51
  about it in a just completely different mindset.
• 48:54
  Yeah, well, and also, this is Dune, right?
• 48:56
  You're not expected to be getting into sword fights every
• 49:00
  other session or whatever, so when you do get into those
• 49:03
  situations, it should have a little more oh shit, something's
• 49:08
  going down to it. True, yes.
• 49:10
  I mean, given Dune fashion, physical fights should not be
• 49:14
  that common because that stuff often comes with, well, illegal,
• 49:21
  but it often comes with retaliation, right?
• 49:23
  If you get into a fight with another noble from another house
• 49:27
  and you kill their, you know, their envoy or whatever, well
• 49:32
  you know you're going to get a hunter seeker through the window
• 49:34
  in the middle of the night like. Yeah, like if you're on a
• 49:36
  rackets and you kill some people that you weren't supposed to and
• 49:39
  then all of a sudden House Harkonnen is like, hey, bud, you
• 49:43
  know, we had a deal with them. Why?
• 49:45
  Why'd you kill them? What's that all about, you know?
• 49:48
  And then all of a sudden, yeah, you're up to, you're in trouble.
• 49:53
  Yeah, you're, you're up to your neck in the sand because they
• 49:55
  threw you into the desert. And then you're going to be
• 50:00
  yeah, you're worm food and you shall not become worm boy.
• 50:06
  Truly a shame. After skirmish we get into
• 50:11
  espionage, which I would argue is the most abstract.
• 50:20
  Of them I would say you. Could argue intrigue.
• 50:25
  But I would say intrigue, because espionage can also just
• 50:28
  be like sneaking into a place. It it can be sneaking.
• 50:32
  So here's The thing is that it covers so much like intrigue is
• 50:36
  pretty what you think of it. It is some sort of social or
• 50:41
  political intrigue. You're Wheeling and dealing and
• 50:43
  whining and dining, but espionage is described as like
• 50:47
  an infiltration, an exfiltration, an assassination.
• 50:51
  Like there's so much that espionage could be and it has to
• 50:56
  cover so much space that I, I want to say that it's the most
• 50:59
  abstract. I guess in.
• 51:01
  Terms of of pure zones, I will agree with you though that
• 51:04
  intrigue is the most. I was going to say because
• 51:06
  intrigue is the one where they describe that two merchants
• 51:09
  could be having an intrigue contest across planets.
• 51:13
  They can, yeah. Yeah, I I guess it's just fair
• 51:19
  to say the social quote UN quote, the social conflicts are
• 51:23
  more abstract than the physical fights.
• 51:28
  But yeah, they are narratively. I think the the espionage is
• 51:33
  more, I don't know. If I say abstract again, it'll
• 51:38
  lose all meaning and then I'll feel terrible about it.
• 51:40
  You are starting, you are starting to cook it a little
• 51:42
  bit, yeah. I know, I know, I'm sorry.
• 51:47
  The zones in an in an espionage mission are interesting because
• 51:51
  they are typically used for not just places but also groups of
• 51:57
  people. So if you are a spice smuggler,
• 52:02
  one of your zones could be your social standing with a different
• 52:09
  like a larger smuggling operation or a group of Fremen.
• 52:11
  But it could also be a zone insofar as you're at, you know,
• 52:19
  oh God, what's the, the, the like fortress of Arakin, right?
• 52:24
  Like where the Atrades actually live on a rackets.
• 52:27
  It could be there. It could also be the hallways
• 52:30
  inside of that fortress as you're moving from one zone to
• 52:33
  the other. It's sort of purpose built to,
• 52:38
  like we said, fill a wide variety of niches.
• 52:43
  And because of that, it gets very interesting.
• 52:48
  The typical assets you're going to see in this kind of mission
• 52:51
  are spies, which are to say a tangible asset in the form of an
• 52:55
  NPC or not necessarily an NPCNPC sort of presumes that they have
• 53:00
  like a stat block or some sort of like mechanical focus, but a.
• 53:06
  I will say the one thing that the one thing with espionage in
• 53:13
  particular is I do have a hard time picturing exactly when I,
• 53:21
  as the GM, am going to make the call, OK, we're going to do an
• 53:24
  espionage conflict here. Like that is one element of
• 53:30
  espionage that I'm like, I can think of a couple scenarios
• 53:33
  where it makes sense, but then a couple other scenarios where I'm
• 53:36
  like, would that be like, am I, am I calling for initiative and
• 53:40
  calling this an espionage conflict in that scenario?
• 53:43
  And some of them I'm not entirely sure.
• 53:47
  You know, yeah, I mean, I think the the most common one you're
• 53:51
  going to see is an infiltration. You're just got to get somewhere
• 53:54
  where you're not supposed to be. Right, right, right.
• 53:55
  The Assassin's Creed one is the most obvious, but then I say OK,
• 53:59
  if a player wants to wants to walk into Arakeene and try and
• 54:09
  gather some information while also not being noticed, do I
• 54:13
  call that an espionage conflict? Or do I just kind of have them
• 54:18
  make roles here and there and move around fictionally?
• 54:21
  Hard to say. I don't know, you know.
• 54:25
  No, I don't. I get you.
• 54:26
  Little nebulous there. A bit, yeah.
• 54:29
  Yeah. Other than spies, you also have
• 54:32
  assets in the form of informants, surveillance
• 54:36
  devices, which are like, you know, cameras or, or
• 54:39
  microphones, things that you place to to gather information
• 54:42
  while you're not there, and security measures.
• 54:44
  So these are actually assets that are not going to be yours.
• 54:48
  They'll typically be on the side of the GM stuff like, you know,
• 54:51
  laser grids or cameras that you can hack into stuff that's
• 54:55
  supposed to hinder your movement and and stop you from being able
• 54:58
  to move. As far as actions go, I think
• 55:03
  this is kind of neat. I didn't really see fit to bring
• 55:06
  it up in Skirmish because it was really straightforward, but I do
• 55:10
  really like it here. They talk about some of the ways
• 55:13
  that you you use your movement stuff and your utilizing of
• 55:20
  assets. So they talk about things like
• 55:23
  security devices. When you place the asset,
• 55:26
  assuming you either created it on the spot or had it repaired,
• 55:30
  it cannot be moved. So if you place a camera on
• 55:34
  someone and that person is acting like a zone because it
• 55:38
  can, right? Like we've talked about that a
• 55:40
  person like the people can be a zone.
• 55:42
  In in this particular one, yeah. If you have, if you place a
• 55:47
  camera in a room, that camera's not moving.
• 55:50
  If you place a camera on a person, unless the camera is
• 55:53
  destroyed, which is not moving it, it's removing it, it is
• 55:57
  going to stay with those people. You will need another asset or
• 56:00
  to create another camera or what have you.
• 56:03
  When it comes to your spies, spies essentially move like like
• 56:07
  pieces on a board. You can move them to and fro,
• 56:10
  you can sort of manipulate them at your leisure.
• 56:13
  Informants you have less control over.
• 56:16
  They are more of a passive asset and as far as I know, they can't
• 56:20
  be tapped like a normal asset. You can go to them for their
• 56:22
  information and they can provide you information, but because
• 56:26
  they are less involved in the in the conflict than something like
• 56:32
  a spy would be, they are easy easier to be removed from the
• 56:36
  board. If the GM uses threat to create
• 56:39
  something like Inquisitors for example, who they are describing
• 56:43
  are going door to door and asking if they've seen this man,
• 56:45
  you know I. Ah, shit train of thought.
• 56:55
  Oh, oh, oh, yeah. I mean, the, the thing that the
• 56:58
  important thing with that whole bit that you're talking about is
• 57:04
  that cause someone might hear you say that and go, oh, OK, so
• 57:09
  is there, is there like a list of like asset types and what
• 57:15
  their capability is? And like, yeah, but not really.
• 57:19
  Ultimately you just have to follow the fictional logic of
• 57:22
  the thing. So if a player character creates
• 57:25
  an asset that is a camera, then you as a human being know well a
• 57:29
  camera can't move. So fictionally, if the camera
• 57:35
  can't move, then mechanically the player can't move it.
• 57:38
  And that's kind of just how you have to follow it.
• 57:41
  And that's what the game expects you to do.
• 57:44
  So if there's a scenario like with the informants, if there's
• 57:48
  a scenario where it's like generally informants, you can't
• 57:50
  really push them around or make them do stuff like that.
• 57:53
  But if there is some sort of fictional extenuating
• 57:57
  circumstance where for some reason this PC has a little
• 58:01
  extra sway over this informant, this informant's willing to do a
• 58:04
  little more for them, then maybe you can In that scenario, you
• 58:08
  know, it's, it's all about the what is what is logical, Follow
• 58:14
  the logic of the scene. 100%, yeah.
• 58:17
  And the setting in general. Also worth mentioning, this is a
• 58:23
  bit of a a a a shift from the way that GM assets are treated
• 58:30
  when you're dealing with security measures.
• 58:32
  You cannot destroy them explicitly because that's not
• 58:36
  really what they're there for. That's not how they're used.
• 58:39
  So if you're talking about a like the the Resident Evil slash
• 58:43
  Mission Impossible laser grid, you can't, you know, throw a
• 58:48
  grenade into the laser grid and blow it up.
• 58:52
  It's just not how the game says you're supposed to use assets
• 58:54
  like that. Rather what you're doing when it
• 58:59
  comes to those is circumventing them, right?
• 59:03
  You learn how to deactivate enemy cameras with like an EMP
• 59:08
  or if the the security measure is like a guard, you have a guy
• 59:13
  pay them off and just say don't be here at, you know, 9:00 so
• 59:17
  you guys can just walk through the front door, stuff like that.
• 59:20
  Unless of course again like I was saying before, you follow
• 59:23
  the fictional logic and you have an anti laser grid gun and then
• 59:27
  maybe you can destroy it. Maybe you can, yes, but the game
• 59:30
  suggests that you know. The game suggests that's not the
• 59:32
  general rule. It's all about that general
• 59:34
  versus specific and what makes sense in the moment kind of
• 59:36
  thing. A. 100%, yeah, yeah.
• 59:38
  But yes, I, you know, don't yes, do not try to grenade all of
• 59:44
  your G Ms. toys. That would be mean.
• 59:46
  That would be mean. And they have more threat than
• 59:49
  you have momentum. They will smite you probably,
• 59:52
  yeah. As far as victory and defeat go,
• 59:55
  it it's a pretty simple metric. If you fill up your clock during
• 1:00:01
  an espionage conflict and you get caught, or you don't make it
• 1:00:05
  to where you need to make it in the time allotted to you, you
• 1:00:08
  are defeated. If you make it to where you need
• 1:00:10
  to go and you are not caught, which is to say your clock is
• 1:00:13
  not filled out, or you make it to a specific location within an
• 1:00:16
  allotted amount of time, you're you.
• 1:00:19
  You maintain victory. So.
• 1:00:22
  It also doesn't have to be like obviously the extended test
• 1:00:28
  acting as your health bar for the scene.
• 1:00:30
  That's the most obvious way to do it.
• 1:00:31
  But you could also do something like, all right, player, you
• 1:00:34
  have four turns, you have 4 potential actions to overcome
• 1:00:39
  this situation. If you don't, you fail.
• 1:00:41
  Or it could be you have as many roles as you want, but as soon
• 1:00:46
  as you accrue two or three failures, you're cooked.
• 1:00:48
  You know, stuff like that too. There's different the.
• 1:00:53
  The important thing is that you're your player knows what
• 1:00:56
  their objective is and what their failure condition is.
• 1:01:00
  Yes. Something that conflicts do talk
• 1:01:02
  about at the very beginning is establishing what the win and
• 1:01:07
  lose conditions are and the consequences for either.
• 1:01:10
  Yeah, it's not a situation where you get into a fight but you
• 1:01:13
  don't know what happens if you lose it.
• 1:01:15
  The GM will tell you. Especially clear in this game
• 1:01:18
  because, yeah, in something like DND, everybody knows well death
• 1:01:22
  is the consequence. But in this kind, in this game,
• 1:01:25
  because death is off the table 95% of the time, then yeah, you
• 1:01:30
  need to be clear and establish like what exactly is at stake.
• 1:01:34
  I I really like this a lot. I I like that there you have to
• 1:01:37
  establish the motivations of whoever is assailing you,
• 1:01:42
  because that way you don't have things like D&D right where
• 1:01:44
  characters refuse to run or or refuse any other method of.
• 1:01:51
  Right. Yeah, because you don't know
• 1:01:52
  what else they would do. Yeah, yeah, right in D and DA
• 1:01:56
  lot of players will just eat the TPK because it's like, well,
• 1:01:59
  they were going to kill us no matter what when.
• 1:02:02
  There's no other you. As the GM were like, Oh well,
• 1:02:05
  no, they were actually just going to take you hostage.
• 1:02:07
  You didn't like actually have to fight to the last man, you know?
• 1:02:10
  Yeah. So honestly, I wish more games
• 1:02:13
  would do that. I wish, yeah.
• 1:02:14
  Honestly that's something that if you play 5 E you should take
• 1:02:16
  that shit into your games. Yeah, that's the thing, right?
• 1:02:19
  You could do it in 5E. It's just that the game doesn't
• 1:02:22
  make it that. I think the game talks about it
• 1:02:25
  a little bit in the DMG, but it doesn't make it super explicit.
• 1:02:28
  So it's like not at the front of everyone's mind.
• 1:02:30
  No, I mean it. It talks about it like it talks
• 1:02:32
  about anything else as a You could do this, but it doesn't
• 1:02:36
  give you any hard line advice unlike.
• 1:02:38
  Well, and also, you know, D&D again, that cultural suffusion,
• 1:02:42
  because everybody kind of knows what D&D is about.
• 1:02:45
  Everyone's like, ah, go in dungeon, fight monster, kill
• 1:02:48
  monster. That's what game about so that
• 1:02:49
  what do. Yeah, and and Iflu's monster
• 1:02:52
  kill me, Yeah. Iflu monster kill me or maybe
• 1:02:54
  capture me but probably kill me. Probably kill me, unless you get
• 1:02:59
  a particularly Randy dragon, in which case I don't know if
• 1:03:02
  that's what the bards there for. Do your job.
• 1:03:04
  You know, but, but whereas in Dune, actually, your character
• 1:03:09
  being killed is pretty unlikely because there's quite heavy
• 1:03:13
  consequences, especially because your characters are described as
• 1:03:16
  being explicitly important to whatever house they're related
• 1:03:19
  to. Yeah, if the like, if you're the
• 1:03:23
  Duke of a planet or the Duke son of a planet, you're probably
• 1:03:28
  gonna be at least famous by recognition if they see you
• 1:03:33
  like, Oh no, that's Paula Tradies.
• 1:03:35
  If you want something, you're not going to kill Paula Tradies
• 1:03:39
  because then Lato is going to glass your plant.
• 1:03:42
  You're going to capture Paula Tradies and use them as ransom?
• 1:03:45
  Exactly. Obviously.
• 1:03:47
  Now, if you're the Harkonnens, yeah, you're going to stab that
• 1:03:52
  baby boy. But you know, Jim, the homeless
• 1:03:57
  bandit on Eric Heeden probably doesn't have that level of
• 1:04:02
  ambition. That man is just looking for his
• 1:04:05
  spice, spice, spice. I hate that we had the same
• 1:04:13
  fucking brains. Maya Ruckus, Mardun.
• 1:04:26
  I hate it every time you do. It I'm getting better at, I'm
• 1:04:28
  getting better. At it.
• 1:04:29
  I know it's getting more consistent.
• 1:04:31
  Yeah, I'm picking up on that. Just makes you think about
• 1:04:35
  Nightmare and Soul Calibur 6. I dude I kind of miss nightmares
• 1:04:41
  old VA from 2. Just that really.
• 1:04:43
  Edge boy rasp. That's fair.
• 1:04:45
  Sorry, sell them unto me. Yeah.
• 1:04:49
  Just so, so dastardly. He, he was a little, he was a
• 1:04:53
  little virtually, honestly. A little bit, yeah.
• 1:04:56
  I kind of loved him, though. Moving on from espionage, we get
• 1:05:03
  into the big guns because we're talking about warfare.
• 1:05:08
  Warfare is a really cool conflict type because it's much
• 1:05:12
  like skirmishing. Yeah, you are moving assets into
• 1:05:16
  zones, but it feels a lot like a board game.
• 1:05:23
  It it has this vibe of like you're playing a grand game of
• 1:05:27
  chess and your opponent is another skilled master of chess.
• 1:05:32
  It's got a pretty sick vibe. It also is the only conflict
• 1:05:35
  that explicitly states that vehicles are probably going to
• 1:05:39
  be pretty common here. Things like ornithopters to do
• 1:05:43
  bombing runs or tanks or are like floating artillery guns and
• 1:05:49
  stuff like that. In fact, the general assets that
• 1:05:55
  you're going to be using are infantry, ground vehicles,
• 1:05:59
  tanks, etcetera, aircraft, ornithopters, etcetera, and
• 1:06:03
  fortifications such as, you know, fortresses, hill boxes,
• 1:06:09
  you know, dug in entrenchments, stuff like that.
• 1:06:13
  As far as I'm aware, this is the only one where you like, you can
• 1:06:21
  engage in a warfare scene as your NPC, but you will probably
• 1:06:26
  be the only one. And you're essentially like what
• 1:06:34
  you're doing as a a character in the warfare scene, participating
• 1:06:39
  in the warfare scene is you're almost acting like an asset
• 1:06:42
  yourself to the warfare, if that makes sense.
• 1:06:46
  Yeah, if your PC, if you're directly involving your PC, then
• 1:06:49
  yes, you're kind of treating yourself like the asset.
• 1:06:53
  Basically, if your character, like if you have a sword platoon
• 1:06:57
  and your character is part of the sword platoon, then yeah,
• 1:07:00
  when you're moving that platoon of swordsmen, it's assumed that
• 1:07:04
  your character is fighting with them.
• 1:07:05
  So all roles that are resolving for that platoon are also
• 1:07:09
  resolving, you know, something related to your character.
• 1:07:14
  You essentially it, it's cool. The way the game describes it is
• 1:07:16
  that for all roles that matter because you're treating yourself
• 1:07:21
  like an asset. If you are attached to, you
• 1:07:25
  know, a tank division, the tank division asset rolls with a
• 1:07:29
  higher number. Yeah, they might inversely
• 1:07:32
  benefit from your traits and stuff like that.
• 1:07:35
  Yes. Inversely, if you are not in the
• 1:07:37
  conflict and one of your assets are field scouts right to to
• 1:07:42
  take stock of what's going on in the situation and feed you that
• 1:07:46
  data live, you then use the asset for the bonus like you
• 1:07:50
  typically would. So it's got, it's got an
• 1:07:52
  interesting and fun interplay. Yeah.
• 1:07:56
  The one thing that I am a little unclear on with warfare, because
• 1:08:02
  for all of the other conflicts, it's, it's pretty fair to assume
• 1:08:07
  that the PCs are going to bring in the assets that are on their
• 1:08:12
  character sheet and then they can create assets during the
• 1:08:15
  conflict. Or, you know, fictionally assets
• 1:08:19
  might come about because of something that happened or
• 1:08:23
  fictionally, you know, maybe maybe their house provides them
• 1:08:27
  a couple of things to help them out with warfare.
• 1:08:33
  How are you establishing what assets the PC should be have?
• 1:08:39
  I feel like that is a little unclear to me.
• 1:08:43
  Like, are you just kind of saying as the GM like, OK, well
• 1:08:48
  their house would probably have access to this, that and this
• 1:08:51
  and that's what you get? Or is it intended that the
• 1:08:54
  players can buy some sort of warfare assets to back them?
• 1:08:59
  But like, it's a little unclear as to where your worst warfare
• 1:09:02
  assets are coming from. I.
• 1:09:07
  I think they talk about this somewhere in the book where they
• 1:09:10
  reference the forces of your house based on house size.
• 1:09:17
  So like it's it's they talk about it early on, but I think
• 1:09:20
  they talk about it somewhere later where it's like if you're
• 1:09:22
  a minor house, it's presumed you have, you know, one or two tank
• 1:09:27
  assets, one or two ornithopter assets, a main stronghold and
• 1:09:33
  like a couple infantry. I think I, I, yeah, I mean, that
• 1:09:38
  makes sense. And that's, that's kind of what
• 1:09:41
  I was assuming. It's just, you know, there's a
• 1:09:46
  little, there's just some ambiguity there that I wasn't.
• 1:09:50
  There is, yeah, I know that that that's fair.
• 1:09:52
  It it, it can get a little like, well, you know.
• 1:09:56
  What should I reasonably give them?
• 1:09:58
  Yeah, or, you know, especially if it's like, oh, well, you
• 1:10:01
  know, one of our houses assets. We are.
• 1:10:05
  Oh, God. I, I was going to make a
• 1:10:06
  reference to the show Yorman Ganda, but I can't remember what
• 1:10:09
  with Coco's crew is called. I don't remember.
• 1:10:12
  Shit. If you're like arms dealers, you
• 1:10:14
  might have, generally speaking, more assets in a warfare
• 1:10:18
  conflict. And in fact, you might push
• 1:10:20
  yourselves to the warfare conflict more often than not.
• 1:10:23
  Sure. Yeah, so it could defend,
• 1:10:27
  defend. It could depend on stuff like,
• 1:10:31
  yeah, what else was there to talk about on warfare?
• 1:10:40
  Oh, Oh yes. So zones in a warfare conflict
• 1:10:46
  are typically locations. They can also kind of be assets
• 1:10:51
  as well because they talk about how a stronghold is a
• 1:10:56
  fortification asset but is also a zone.
• 1:10:59
  Yeah, it's both. So you know your your zone fits
• 1:11:04
  the bill for what you need it to be in is additionally you have
• 1:11:10
  effectively fronts in you have you know you have a theater of
• 1:11:13
  where you have a front, you have a western, a northern, a
• 1:11:17
  eastern, and then you have air. Yeah, it makes sense that the,
• 1:11:27
  the the Fort itself would be an asset and a zone, right?
• 1:11:30
  Because it's a location that troops can be in, but it is also
• 1:11:34
  a location that probably has like gun emplacements or other
• 1:11:38
  troops to defend it, you know, or trap.
• 1:11:40
  So like the idea of it being used as both does make sense.
• 1:11:44
  And really all it means is as long as you are in that zone,
• 1:11:48
  you are also subject to that asset no matter what.
• 1:11:50
  And that's really all it comes down to. 100%.
• 1:11:54
  So it it, it feels weird, but when you think about it, it's
• 1:11:56
  actually not it. It checks out.
• 1:11:59
  Yeah, yeah. Worth mentioning, you know,
• 1:12:02
  stuff they talk about if you have an aircraft like an
• 1:12:05
  ornithopter, if a an enemy doesn't have a means to access
• 1:12:10
  that zone, then you cannot destroy that ornithopter.
• 1:12:15
  So something like a tank would fire into the air and in that
• 1:12:19
  instance you are moving the tank to the air zone.
• 1:12:22
  But like an infantry doesn't really have a way to take down
• 1:12:24
  an ornithopter. So you're probably not going to
• 1:12:27
  take down an ornithopter with infantry unless you give them a
• 1:12:30
  separate asset for like or if you give them a trait of like
• 1:12:33
  rocket launchers or something. Right.
• 1:12:36
  Yeah. I do really like that they talk
• 1:12:39
  about how if if your Ornithopter is shielded, it is extremely
• 1:12:50
  difficult to actually destroy. As in you lose the asset, like
• 1:12:54
  it might get taken out of, taken out of the fight, maybe it
• 1:12:58
  incurs some damage and they're like, all right, we we're flying
• 1:13:00
  off. But if the ornithopter itself
• 1:13:03
  has a shield, it says it is extremely difficult to destroy.
• 1:13:07
  Yeah. It is far less likely to.
• 1:13:09
  Yeah. The ornithopter has little to No
• 1:13:12
  Fear as when when it comes time to to take on or disgorge
• 1:13:18
  passengers, yeah, it makes sense.
• 1:13:20
  It says something other else along lines of like almost
• 1:13:22
  impossible to destroy. So that's pretty cool.
• 1:13:28
  Winning and or losing in warfare is.
• 1:13:33
  This one you you really got to set up the objective for this
• 1:13:36
  one. Yeah, essentially I was going to
• 1:13:38
  say it was pretty straightforward.
• 1:13:40
  The GM establishes some sort of fixed point or objective.
• 1:13:45
  This effectively. The GM says this is the wind
• 1:13:48
  condition. Yes.
• 1:13:49
  And the players and the GM take turns moving their assets into
• 1:13:56
  the zone in an attempt to keep the zone.
• 1:13:59
  And obviously as we've talked about, when you move boldly, you
• 1:14:02
  can force movement. So in situation where if the GM
• 1:14:07
  has an asset of infantry in some sort of objective point, if you
• 1:14:14
  move your tanks in boldly and force the the infantry to
• 1:14:18
  retreat because they're tanks, you now control that zone and
• 1:14:22
  the GM might engage ornithopters to bomb your your tanks to force
• 1:14:28
  them out so the infantry can move back in.
• 1:14:32
  You really are just kind of playing at RTS.
• 1:14:34
  It's it's kind of fun. Also, warfare is the conflict
• 1:14:39
  type where the whole overcoming and obstacle rules are probably
• 1:14:42
  going to come in the most because the the idea of the
• 1:14:45
  terrain being an obstacle is going to be the most common when
• 1:14:49
  you're talking about warfare. Yes, they they actually pay
• 1:14:52
  special attention to I can't talk today.
• 1:14:56
  They pay special attention to communication during battle like
• 1:15:02
  that. Communication itself,
• 1:15:04
  information is a massive asset in a warfare situation.
• 1:15:10
  And I like that a lot because like we were saying before,
• 1:15:14
  maybe your character isn't a warfare specialist.
• 1:15:18
  But if your character is, for example, a mentat, their skills
• 1:15:22
  are highly applicable to war, right?
• 1:15:24
  You're a human calculator. That's really cool.
• 1:15:30
  Yeah, I don't really know else who's going with that.
• 1:15:32
  It's just really cool. Yeah, it's cool, Yes.
• 1:15:36
  Moving on from warfare, the final conflict type in the game
• 1:15:40
  is intrigue, and oh baby, this one is a doozy.
• 1:15:47
  So before we talk about anything else, we need to talk about
• 1:15:53
  disposition and desire. During an intrigue conflict,
• 1:16:01
  NPCS, which are to say an asset in of themselves, each will come
• 1:16:06
  with a disposition, which is how they feel about your character
• 1:16:09
  or their attached faction, and a desire, which is to say
• 1:16:14
  something that you can play towards that they want.
• 1:16:17
  I think they talk about this in the Daggerheart where they talk
• 1:16:22
  about like the political aspect of the game where when you're
• 1:16:24
  trying to or no, no, it's not Daggerheart, it's draw steel.
• 1:16:29
  The whole the whole social engagement aspect where the
• 1:16:33
  negotiations, yes, when you can negotiate for someone and you
• 1:16:36
  know what they want, you have a higher chance of increasing or
• 1:16:41
  if you don't do it right, potentially decreasing their
• 1:16:42
  disposition. Active.
• 1:16:45
  Yeah, there are there are active rules for this.
• 1:16:48
  The disposition types are Allied, friendly, neutral,
• 1:16:53
  unfriendly, and opposed with either.
• 1:16:56
  With with any of those, you receive a specific floating
• 1:17:02
  modifier that will shift to the difficulty of a role.
• 1:17:05
  So if they are allied, any roles you make against them have -2
• 1:17:09
  difficulty to a minimum of 0 difficulty.
• 1:17:12
  If they're friendly, you have a -1 to difficulty Neutral, no
• 1:17:15
  effect unfriendly, plus one difficulty opposed +2
• 1:17:18
  difficulty. Desire is much more abstract in
• 1:17:24
  what they might want. It could be they want an asset
• 1:17:28
  in of themselves, which again can take the place of
• 1:17:30
  information or you know, money or or spice or allies, whatever
• 1:17:35
  have you. It could also be the promise of
• 1:17:40
  an allegiance. It it could be pretty much
• 1:17:41
  anything that a person could want in a situation such as
• 1:17:44
  this. The assets that you're going to
• 1:17:48
  be taking into the conflict with you typically are.
• 1:17:56
  Well, yeah, I was, yeah. I was going to say typically
• 1:17:57
  these are going to be intangible in nature unless you have
• 1:18:01
  something like communication devices or maybe a hidden weapon
• 1:18:05
  to, you know, to to do some sense talking.
• 1:18:08
  You bring the sense talking stick or just straight up goods.
• 1:18:13
  Intangibles are going to be the most common, I would say with
• 1:18:17
  intrigue, so. Yes, the the two biggest ones
• 1:18:20
  they they talk about are knowledge and rumors and lies.
• 1:18:25
  So just bringing in something that's going to give you that
• 1:18:27
  social advantage over the other courtiers or socialites or
• 1:18:32
  movers and shakers like we talked about in the previous
• 1:18:36
  episode, zones in this conflict are it can be locations, but.
• 1:18:44
  There can be a lot of weird shit.
• 1:18:46
  Yeah, what you're going to be working with a lot is social
• 1:18:50
  groups. It is almost dispositions can be
• 1:18:55
  a zone in in of themselves, right.
• 1:18:57
  In the last episode we talked about if you're some sort of
• 1:19:01
  smooth talker, you might enter a zone to gain some level of of
• 1:19:08
  favor with the Spacing Guild. And when you're in that zone,
• 1:19:13
  you are typically speaking neutral doubt.
• 1:19:15
  You know, you have no extra difficulty, but potentially no
• 1:19:19
  bonuses to talking with them. And you therefore you just be
• 1:19:22
  relying specifically on the disposition itself.
• 1:19:24
  But the second you leave that zone, any checks referring to
• 1:19:28
  the individuals within that zone are now at a -, 1.
• 1:19:32
  And that's describing not only your distance from them.
• 1:19:35
  You know, you, you could be talking about them from across
• 1:19:38
  the hall. It's kind of harder for them to
• 1:19:40
  back up what you're saying if they're 20 feet away, but it
• 1:19:43
  could also be, Oh well, they wanted your attention.
• 1:19:46
  Proximity. Yeah, but you have now left
• 1:19:49
  their attention to talk to somebody else, and they might
• 1:19:52
  not love that. They understand, right?
• 1:19:55
  The people are in these situations are rarely spiteful,
• 1:19:58
  but they are aware that you are choosing to spend time with
• 1:20:01
  someone else as opposed to them, and that will affect you
• 1:20:03
  negatively. Zones.
• 1:20:06
  Could, that being said, also just be spots?
• 1:20:10
  Yeah. Are you on the dance floor?
• 1:20:11
  The punch bowl. Yeah, in the tiny party
• 1:20:14
  situation, they're just kind of physical locations generally.
• 1:20:17
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, you kill.
• 1:20:18
  I was going to say, are you the the the punch bowl, the dance
• 1:20:20
  floor or behind the curtain? Were the awards being done doing
• 1:20:23
  the do what? What?
• 1:20:28
  You got someone, I was going to say clap cheeks at the, at the,
• 1:20:31
  the social standing parties, you know.
• 1:20:33
  Behind actually that would be look, that's it is footage.
• 1:20:39
  I don't want to hear that from you.
• 1:20:41
  Mr. I have a sex analogy for everything.
• 1:20:48
  The one time I do it, I'm getting judged.
• 1:20:50
  I can't believe you've done this.
• 1:20:56
  It wasn't really an analogy, you're just talking about
• 1:20:58
  somebody fucking behind the curtains.
• 1:21:01
  The analogy is the zone. You can treat it like a zone.
• 1:21:03
  I I I guess anyway. For fear of making it sound any
• 1:21:11
  more pointless, Josh is correct in in the level of abstraction
• 1:21:18
  of this conflict because it truly can be anything that fits
• 1:21:21
  the narrative. You could be people who are
• 1:21:26
  winning and dining at a party. It could be a heated political
• 1:21:30
  debate in the Senate, it could just be the briefing room and
• 1:21:35
  maybe the NPCS and the players are are arguing about which
• 1:21:39
  strategy to take into the warfare scene.
• 1:21:41
  It can be practically anything as long as information is being
• 1:21:45
  traded and there is a social gain to be had.
• 1:21:49
  And in that aspect it is really cool.
• 1:21:52
  But figuring out how I would want to do this constantly or,
• 1:22:00
  or I'd like to rephrase. I don't know how often I would
• 1:22:03
  want to use intrigues because I would just feel like I would get
• 1:22:05
  really lost in the weeds between the zone types.
• 1:22:09
  You know what I mean? Yeah, I, I mean, I think it's
• 1:22:15
  just a case of getting used to it, right?
• 1:22:17
  Like it feels weird until you play with it a few times and
• 1:22:21
  then eventually you get to the point where you're like ah now I
• 1:22:24
  have some ideas for how I could use this.
• 1:22:28
  Yeah, that's true. Yeah.
• 1:22:30
  I mean, familiarity definitely will be doing the lion's share
• 1:22:32
  of the work there. Because because what happens is
• 1:22:34
  you'll, you'll, you'll say to yourself, OK, I'm going to only
• 1:22:38
  use the most basic version of every kind of conflict.
• 1:22:41
  So I'm going to do a very simple skirmish in a contained area.
• 1:22:45
  I'm going to do an intrigue seat.
• 1:22:47
  That's a party. I'm going to do a warfare scene
• 1:22:50
  that's only like a couple of infantry units.
• 1:22:54
  You know, I'll do a duel where every there where the only thing
• 1:22:57
  that characters have is a knife, right?
• 1:22:58
  You'll do the most. I'll do an espionage where
• 1:23:00
  somebody's breaking in. You'll do the most simple
• 1:23:02
  version of all of them. And if you do that a few times,
• 1:23:05
  you'll be like, all right, well, now I'm getting bored because
• 1:23:07
  I've done this a bunch of times. How do I start making this more
• 1:23:09
  complicated or more interesting? And that's where you start
• 1:23:11
  adding in, you know, zones are people, or you start drastically
• 1:23:16
  dilating the time and space between characters, or you start
• 1:23:21
  doing the espionage thing where it's somebody trying to like
• 1:23:24
  clandestinely move around a city over a long period of time.
• 1:23:28
  I think that's the other thing that kind of occurred to me
• 1:23:31
  talking about intrigue. I I thought about it in relation
• 1:23:34
  to intrigue, but it could definitely, I think apply to
• 1:23:37
  pretty much all of the other conflicts except dueling.
• 1:23:40
  Really. The book doesn't mention it, but
• 1:23:42
  you could really play with time dilation.
• 1:23:46
  It's not time dilation, but you could play with the time between
• 1:23:49
  events quite drastically with the system because there's no a
• 1:23:54
  turn does not account for any amount of time, right?
• 1:23:56
  So you could have an intrigue conflict that in game time lasts
• 1:24:04
  a week. And what that intrigue conflict
• 1:24:07
  is, is your diplomat player going from this one party that
• 1:24:12
  this one house is having and chatting people up and then
• 1:24:15
  moving to another party and chatting people up and then
• 1:24:18
  moving to a marketplace a a bazaar and having a chat with a
• 1:24:22
  couple of merchants and figuring out what they learned from
• 1:24:24
  there. And oh, do you know this guy?
• 1:24:26
  I was just talking to him a couple days ago at a party.
• 1:24:29
  And like, you could dilate it over, you know, a week's worth
• 1:24:32
  of time, but it's one conflict because there's nothing, there's
• 1:24:38
  nothing saying it all has to take place in the same, in the
• 1:24:41
  same day or same short span of time, right?
• 1:24:43
  Or like espionage could be several days of a person like
• 1:24:49
  living on, you know, let's say they're living in Harko Village
• 1:24:54
  for like 4 days. And what they're doing is trying
• 1:24:57
  to clandestinely move around Harko Village, looking for
• 1:25:01
  specific people and trying to not be seen by the local guards
• 1:25:06
  and the local security and stuff like that, right?
• 1:25:08
  And so that, that idea of moving, moving the time scale in
• 1:25:16
  and out, I think can also help with the weirdness 'cause if you
• 1:25:20
  think about it, if you think about an intrigue scene that
• 1:25:23
  takes a week, right? And the player goes, all right,
• 1:25:26
  well, on the first day, I move to the Tradies Party zone.
• 1:25:31
  On the second day, I'm gonna go to the house Mulanetzi zone and
• 1:25:37
  deal with them. On the third day, I'm gonna go
• 1:25:39
  back to the Atrade zone and do this right.
• 1:25:42
  And fictionally, the character's bouncing around to different
• 1:25:47
  groups and hanging out with different people over a week.
• 1:25:50
  Mechanically, you're moving. Around in zones that would be
• 1:25:54
  really complex now yeah I I I get it I and I could see that
• 1:25:58
  being super interesting but. Here's the thing, mechanically
• 1:26:01
  it's, it's I have, I have added no complexity at all.
• 1:26:04
  It's just fictionally, we're just saying this takes place
• 1:26:06
  over a very long span of time. Right.
• 1:26:10
  I mean, would you not run into a situation where you go, OK,
• 1:26:12
  well, you, you know, like, all right, so I'm spending this day
• 1:26:16
  with, you know, House Morley. You can't.
• 1:26:20
  Assuming you're taking time into account, you can't shift back if
• 1:26:23
  you've already assigned to the full day of time, you know what
• 1:26:27
  I mean? Like I could see that.
• 1:26:28
  Getting you, you can if you just say that the the zone is the
• 1:26:35
  people, then you can oh, I'm going to hang out with House
• 1:26:38
  Morley for the day. 2 days go by, which is to say two turns on
• 1:26:43
  turn #4 which is the 4th day of the week.
• 1:26:45
  I'm going to go back to the House Morley zone, which is me
• 1:26:49
  just going back to those people and they might the, the house
• 1:26:53
  Morley zone, the people might not be in the same physical
• 1:26:57
  location. You might have talked to them on
• 1:26:59
  Arakeene one day and then you're meeting them out on the spice
• 1:27:02
  fields and Arakis another day. But the thing that the zone is
• 1:27:05
  is the, is the people. It's the house, right?
• 1:27:07
  It's not the physical location. So the physical location can
• 1:27:09
  fictionally move, but the mechanic is still the mechanic
• 1:27:15
  is the zone. The zone the the mechanical
• 1:27:19
  thing has not changed because the zone we just the the zone
• 1:27:23
  the GM established is the house. Right.
• 1:27:30
  So I think that's, I'm actually, now that I'm thinking about it
• 1:27:32
  more, I think that's probably where I would really start to
• 1:27:35
  use intrigue stuff is that idea of covering a wide span of time,
• 1:27:40
  like a kind of extended mission of trying to talk to lots of
• 1:27:44
  different people and move around and wheel and deal a whole
• 1:27:46
  bunch. I mean, honestly, if you think
• 1:27:49
  about their example of two merchants on different planets,
• 1:27:53
  if you think about those two merchants are juking and jiving
• 1:27:57
  each other over the course of a month, then that idea of the the
• 1:28:02
  zones being the two different planets makes a lot more sense,
• 1:28:05
  right? It's true.
• 1:28:06
  It would I so I, I kind of answered my own question.
• 1:28:08
  I think I would use intrigue a lot, not necessarily for
• 1:28:14
  external social situations, but almost like a a codification of
• 1:28:19
  internal conflicts. Maybe you're having an intrigue
• 1:28:22
  within the house. Maybe the mentat wants to
• 1:28:25
  assassinate a member of Al Sarkonian.
• 1:28:28
  But the war the the, the war masters like no, don't do that
• 1:28:32
  because we don't have the resources for that.
• 1:28:34
  And you can have some fun interplay between.
• 1:28:36
  The zones become bouncing between the people who disagree
• 1:28:39
  with each other. Yeah, I could see that being
• 1:28:41
  kind of cool if you bring it. I like, I like the idea of
• 1:28:44
  bringing it to a smaller scale, smaller scale being kind of
• 1:28:47
  relative here. But you know what?
• 1:28:48
  I. Mean, yes.
• 1:28:49
  Well, yeah, I mean, it's well, but the thing that's The thing
• 1:28:52
  is you can zoom in and you can zoom in and out like infinitely
• 1:28:57
  basically. Yeah, you can.
• 1:29:00
  Right. There's no limit to the how to
• 1:29:02
  how much you zoom in and out, and there's no limit to how
• 1:29:04
  often you zoom in and out. Also true.
• 1:29:08
  So yeah, it's actually weird. Now that I'm thinking about it,
• 1:29:13
  it's kind of odd that they never brought up playing with time,
• 1:29:21
  right? Like they don't mention that
• 1:29:22
  anywhere in the conflict thing I don't think.
• 1:29:24
  No, they don't. But they, well, they referenced
• 1:29:27
  that it could be a thing happening with the example of
• 1:29:29
  you could be doing something on another planet where it presumes
• 1:29:33
  that things are happening kind of at the same time, but not
• 1:29:36
  really. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:29:41
  I just, yeah. I, I'm, they.
• 1:29:43
  I feel like that could have been helpful information for them to
• 1:29:46
  be like, by the way, a conflict doesn't all have to happen
• 1:29:49
  within a day, 'cause if you think about their example going
• 1:29:53
  back to the merchants on two different planets, if you think
• 1:29:55
  about that as something that has to happen in a singular day,
• 1:29:58
  you're like, well, how does that make sense?
• 1:30:01
  But if you think about it over something that happens over the
• 1:30:03
  the length of a month, you're like, oh, well, I can see how
• 1:30:07
  that would work, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 1:30:13
  I mean, the more honestly, the the more we talk about it, the
• 1:30:17
  more I think about it, the more, the more potential I more
• 1:30:20
  potential ideas I'm concocting. So which is good.
• 1:30:24
  That's what you want out of a rule set.
• 1:30:28
  It's true. The the more you could, the more
• 1:30:30
  you ponder upon it, the more things that come to you.
• 1:30:32
  That's what you want. Don't say ponder, because I'm
• 1:30:35
  just going to think about pondering my.
• 1:30:36
  Ponder the orb. Oh my God, have you seen that
• 1:30:40
  that one YouTube? He does like reels and tik toks
• 1:30:44
  where he's like the the the dude with the long curly hair and
• 1:30:47
  he's always doing the Oh, he ghost that guy.
• 1:30:51
  Yes, he's like the one where he's like, oh man, why don't you
• 1:30:55
  want to go out? Like it's like, oh, because I'm
• 1:30:56
  here upon him. Look at me and he just every
• 1:30:57
  time he like holds his hand down, he's like he's like I'm
• 1:31:00
  like every singer in a new new metal album and he does it.
• 1:31:03
  It's like Limp Bizkit plays. He does like worse lightning
• 1:31:06
  hands in front of an orb. So good.
• 1:31:09
  I'll try to find that clip. OK, moving on from conflicts, we
• 1:31:14
  talk about head of the last real noteworthy chapter in the book,
• 1:31:18
  which is Chapter 7 assets. We've talked a bunch about
• 1:31:22
  assets and what they can be and how they work, and I just wanted
• 1:31:27
  to pay a little lip service to the chapter itself.
• 1:31:30
  Yeah, I mean, I'm gonna be honest, I there's not a lot to
• 1:31:34
  say with the asset chapter because unless you are actively
• 1:31:38
  playing the game, you're not going to give that much of A
• 1:31:43
  shit what's in there. No, you're not.
• 1:31:45
  And and something I do want to actually talk about just that
• 1:31:48
  does have a level of value is like quality and stuff like
• 1:31:51
  that. So I figured we might.
• 1:31:52
  As well. Yeah, there's a couple of
• 1:31:52
  things. Quality and and the
• 1:31:54
  determination stuff a little bit.
• 1:31:57
  Yeah, keywords. There's a couple of things.
• 1:31:59
  Yeah. So as we've talked about before,
• 1:32:04
  well actually before we get into that, if you like the equipment
• 1:32:12
  system in something like Fantasy Flight in, in the way that we've
• 1:32:14
  talked about in previous episodes where you know, the the
• 1:32:19
  equipment system provides you a general understanding of what it
• 1:32:22
  does and it maybe provides a little mechanical backing, but
• 1:32:25
  it just sort of leaves you to your own devices as to how you
• 1:32:30
  use the item, you will like this.
• 1:32:34
  I'm gonna be so for real. I don't know why you're bringing
• 1:32:36
  up Fantasy Flight, cause Fantasy Flight mechanic equipment has
• 1:32:39
  much more mechanical concreteness to it.
• 1:32:43
  This is much more like Blade's equipment.
• 1:32:47
  True, but we've also this is. Very blades in the dark.
• 1:32:50
  It it it is, yes, but we have also.
• 1:32:53
  Inflated isn't the right word, but we've praised Blade's
• 1:32:56
  ability to be specific when it needs to be in, vague when it
• 1:32:59
  needs to be, in the same way that Fantasy Flight does the
• 1:33:02
  same thing. Yeah, but like in Fantasy Flight
• 1:33:06
  weapons have like to hit bonuses and like boost die attached to
• 1:33:10
  them and damage mounts and qualities like critical hits and
• 1:33:13
  vicious strike and all that crap.
• 1:33:15
  This this game does not have those things.
• 1:33:18
  No, they don't. But you know, we have, what was
• 1:33:20
  that thing? I had the the the like binocular
• 1:33:24
  things that they give you a bunch of different spectrums
• 1:33:27
  that you can see through. Sure, and you're talking about
• 1:33:30
  the the non weapon non armor stuff.
• 1:33:32
  I guess there's a little more of that.
• 1:33:34
  I I I still think blades is the better comparison here though,
• 1:33:37
  because blades is the same idea of generally describe the thing.
• 1:33:42
  How does it help your dice pool out?
• 1:33:43
  That's what the weapon does or the equipment does.
• 1:33:47
  True enough, there are designated categories for the
• 1:33:52
  assets within the game. That's pretty much our con.
• 1:33:57
  Yeah, they don't mean much. They are concrete, right?
• 1:33:59
  A mellow weapon is a mellow weapon.
• 1:34:00
  It's not you. You can't argue that you're
• 1:34:02
  going to ride on your fucking molla pistol like a motorcycle.
• 1:34:05
  But they are listed as ranged in melee weapons, armor, personal
• 1:34:10
  devices, vehicles, aerial and land information assets such as
• 1:34:15
  communicators, drugs, poisons, social assets such as favors,
• 1:34:21
  blackmail, lies, and relationships, as well as a
• 1:34:23
  whole host of personnel, soldiers, advisors, assassins,
• 1:34:28
  spies, merchants, courtiers, hostages, etcetera.
• 1:34:34
  I really like how kind of like what we were saying in the
• 1:34:39
  Blades aspect. Depending on how creative you
• 1:34:42
  are and how well you can swing a situation, you can bring any
• 1:34:46
  kind of asset to pretty much any kind of conflict, you know, For
• 1:34:50
  example, you could bring a rocket launcher to an intrigue
• 1:34:55
  conflict if you're clever enough, and you could make the
• 1:34:56
  right argument just like the same way you.
• 1:34:59
  Could think of reason, Think up a reason why?
• 1:35:01
  Yeah, just like in the same way blackmail could be extremely
• 1:35:05
  useful for a duel under the right circumstances, like in the
• 1:35:09
  latter example, because that's a little easier to explain.
• 1:35:12
  You could pull the like Azula from Avatar and and say, oh, I
• 1:35:16
  have blackmail on this person. I know that they, you know, had
• 1:35:20
  a leg injury in a recent battle and they are weaker on their
• 1:35:24
  right side. And that would be totally valid.
• 1:35:28
  You know, it would just turn into you could use it to create
• 1:35:31
  a trait that would just say weak on right side.
• 1:35:35
  So that's kind. Of yeah or well, it would be
• 1:35:37
  yeah, it'd be like bad leg and. Then yeah, bad leg or or.
• 1:35:41
  And then anytime. What am I trying to say?
• 1:35:46
  Anytime bad leg would be relevant.
• 1:35:49
  Boom bang boom. Yeah.
• 1:35:51
  Oh, God, Can you imagine if you hit him?
• 1:35:52
  But there's one of The Dirty, like, it's like, I'm going to
• 1:35:54
  create a trait. What trait are you going to
• 1:35:56
  give, You know, Gurney Halleck, I give him sciatica.
• 1:36:01
  Oh, no, not cyanic. And then the GM uses threat to
• 1:36:07
  counter your threat or uses their threat to counter your
• 1:36:10
  trait by saying Gurney took his ibuprofen this morning.
• 1:36:16
  Cardi's good, he has the Naproxen.
• 1:36:18
  Oh God, that'd be awesome. As a part of this, each asset
• 1:36:23
  come along with its name comes with a series of keywords that
• 1:36:27
  explain how it can apply potentially not exclusively.
• 1:36:32
  The Great Game describes that assets in this way are
• 1:36:35
  effectively just more complex traits and the keywords assist
• 1:36:40
  in how you know when and where they can shift the difficulty or
• 1:36:46
  possibility in or out of your favor.
• 1:36:48
  So to give a quick example, let me just go to the assets section
• 1:36:53
  of the book and we will scrolling, scrolling, scrolling,
• 1:36:57
  scrolling. So if we look at the still suit,
• 1:37:04
  the steel suit says these full body suits essentially are
• 1:37:07
  essential for survival on a rakis outside the city's.
• 1:37:09
  Their primary function is to preserve the body's moisture of
• 1:37:12
  by absorbing sweat, urine and other bodily fluids as an asset.
• 1:37:16
  An operable steel suit allows the wearer to function for weeks
• 1:37:19
  in the desert by collecting water as it is lost by the body.
• 1:37:22
  Each steel suit is finally crafted yadda yadda keywords a
• 1:37:26
  rakis fremin and survival. So if you are on a rakis, the
• 1:37:32
  steel suit will probably assist you in some way shape or form.
• 1:37:35
  Even as something as simple as knowing how to put your steel
• 1:37:39
  suit on might ingratiate you a little bit too from in society.
• 1:37:43
  Because they you know they won't see you as a tourist for lack of
• 1:37:47
  a better phrase. But it could also be super
• 1:37:50
  helpful to you in a survival situation, assuming you get
• 1:37:53
  dumped in the middle of the deep desert and now you have to go on
• 1:37:56
  a little adventure like Paul did in the books.
• 1:38:02
  This is kind of what I was talking about when I, when I
• 1:38:03
  brought up the Star Wars thing, like that specific stuff, it
• 1:38:07
  does give you like a a real mechanical advantage and then
• 1:38:11
  you can sort of play with it with the keywords.
• 1:38:14
  Yeah, but I mean Blades does that too.
• 1:38:17
  Does it? Yeah, been a while since I read
• 1:38:20
  Blades You give. Me an example like an example
• 1:38:25
  like the steel suit. Like the keywords, I mean, does
• 1:38:28
  it give you like Fantasy Flight doesn't do keywords, but it it
• 1:38:31
  has a similar sort of way to use the, the gear in a way that is
• 1:38:37
  kind of multifaceted. I mean, I don't if you're
• 1:38:42
  fishing for the multifaceted part specifically, maybe not,
• 1:38:45
  but I mean blades, I, I don't think that they do.
• 1:38:48
  They don't phrase them as keywords, but like you will get
• 1:38:55
  a description of what the item is and that will inform you as
• 1:39:01
  to what you can do with it specifically.
• 1:39:04
  Like, you know, in blades, if you have my brains.
• 1:39:12
  Really. The only thing I can think of
• 1:39:14
  for blades is is the Hunter 1 where it's like you have a
• 1:39:17
  finely crafted rifle where it's like, oh, maybe I can make a
• 1:39:20
  shot I might not be able to otherwise because it's finely
• 1:39:22
  crafted, you know what I mean? Well, the finely crafted thing
• 1:39:24
  is like the quality in this game, it's sort of up.
• 1:39:27
  It can up your die pool or increase your effect in blades.
• 1:39:32
  And also there's the tears thing.
• 1:39:33
  So finely crafted, if a if a weapon is tier 0, but it's
• 1:39:38
  finely crafted, then it becomes Tier 1.
• 1:39:41
  So you automatically get another.
• 1:39:44
  I think that stages up your effect if somebody is tiered
• 1:39:47
  below you. But there's also there is also.
• 1:39:53
  I'm trying I'm trying to find the the bit I'm talking about in
• 1:39:57
  the PDF as I'm talking and I cannot of course I can't fucking
• 1:40:01
  find it, but like. The the equipment, because you
• 1:40:05
  remember the way it is in blades is that the equipment is on the
• 1:40:11
  character sheet and you know, you pull up hold on, hold on I'm
• 1:40:20
  gonna try and get to a specific why is my oh, that's why I had
• 1:40:25
  my numb locked off. I was like, why is my numpad not
• 1:40:27
  working? OK, so like, you know, if I pull
• 1:40:31
  up the cutter, right, the cutter has a list of items, right?
• 1:40:34
  Find hand weapons, find heavy weapons, scary tool or whatever.
• 1:40:38
  And so the scary weapon or tool and then the description says a
• 1:40:43
  scary looking hand weapon or tool.
• 1:40:44
  This item grants increased in effect when you intimidate, not
• 1:40:48
  increased harm in combat, right? So it's describing it as like a
• 1:40:53
  horrifying weapon or tool and it says you get a better effect.
• 1:40:56
  Which effect in blades is a very specific mechanical thing.
• 1:40:59
  You get a better effect when you try to intimidate somebody.
• 1:41:03
  Same kind of idea. Got it.
• 1:41:06
  So yes, it's it's not phrased exactly the same way as the
• 1:41:11
  keywords in this game are, but it is getting at the same kind
• 1:41:16
  of idea. Right.
• 1:41:17
  OK, I see what you mean. And the thing about the, the,
• 1:41:22
  the reason I keep saying I don't think the Fantasy Flight is a
• 1:41:25
  good example is because Fantasy Flight, like particularly when
• 1:41:29
  you're talking about combat and stuff, right?
• 1:41:31
  The Fantasy Flight Star Wars game have stuff like to hit
• 1:41:35
  bonuses and weapon qualities which increase your crit range
• 1:41:38
  or increase the amount of damage you do when you get a wound, or
• 1:41:42
  like armor piercing which gives you like, you know, you ignore a
• 1:41:45
  certain amount of the opponent's soak.
• 1:41:47
  Like all of that stuff is on the equipment in the Star Wars
• 1:41:51
  games, which is very much not on in this game.
• 1:41:58
  That is true, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:41:59
  No, I guess. What I'm saying?
• 1:42:00
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. To your point of having, you
• 1:42:10
  know, bespoke qualities, we've kind of talked about this in the
• 1:42:13
  previous episode. Every asset in the game comes
• 1:42:17
  with its own innate quality level, which starts at 0 and
• 1:42:21
  increase to a maximum of four. Quality in the tangible asset
• 1:42:27
  sense describes how well crafted or maintained an item is.
• 1:42:31
  A hand forged sword will probably perform better than one
• 1:42:34
  that's coming from an assembly belt in the same way that a A in
• 1:42:39
  the intangible sense, a quality for Master of assassins will
• 1:42:42
  simply just have better training and perform better than a
• 1:42:45
  quality one Spy. Oh actually that's right.
• 1:42:49
  That's still a tangible asset for intangible assets.
• 1:42:52
  Higher quality typically demote denotes more accurate
• 1:42:55
  information or more damning blackmail or more specific
• 1:42:59
  evidence. Even a Bay like better
• 1:43:02
  formulated lie that has more bits of truth in it to make it
• 1:43:05
  harder to to disprove that will affect the the quality of the
• 1:43:10
  item. As an asset increases in
• 1:43:13
  quality. It does provide some real
• 1:43:15
  mechanical benefits in the game. Not always.
• 1:43:20
  It's a little odd. A good amount of it can be left
• 1:43:24
  up to GM discretion, which is something I don't love.
• 1:43:26
  But what they do describe is higher quality gear can generate
• 1:43:33
  more momentum per success, up to GM discretion.
• 1:43:37
  Its usual use however is providing more more ticks on an
• 1:43:42
  elongated task your successes. Yeah.
• 1:43:45
  So a quality 3 Chris knife, if you Shiv someone with it during
• 1:43:49
  duelling will provide you more successes which will in theory
• 1:43:53
  end the fight quicker. Yeah, you can take them out.
• 1:43:57
  In the same way that if you were got better quality ornithopters,
• 1:44:01
  maybe they can move better, which will give you a bonus to
• 1:44:04
  put them into a a a zone that you need to to capture a points.
• 1:44:09
  You can sort of see where this pattern is following to increase
• 1:44:15
  a the quality of an assignment you have to either.
• 1:44:23
  Oh shit, did I really leave this part out?
• 1:44:26
  I did during. What is it during?
• 1:44:31
  Oh no. Gosh, save me.
• 1:44:33
  Save me please. What?
• 1:44:34
  What I don't what? Save me.
• 1:44:37
  I forgot the different ways to increase.
• 1:44:38
  I didn't have them into my notes.
• 1:44:39
  I'm a fool. I'm a fool to.
• 1:44:40
  Increase what to increase what quality?
• 1:44:42
  Quality. Oh, it's mostly just through
• 1:44:45
  character advancement if I remember correctly.
• 1:44:48
  It's but it's character advancement.
• 1:44:50
  I know you can do it in between missions in a way that's not it,
• 1:44:55
  but does that have to be character investment or is it
• 1:45:01
  huh. There's using determination to
• 1:45:03
  get a quality one item. Yep, character advancement is
• 1:45:07
  there. I feel like there's something.
• 1:45:10
  I'm missing. I don't remember anything you're
• 1:45:15
  missing. Huh.
• 1:45:19
  I don't think so, yeah. All right, Well, it's fine.
• 1:45:24
  Advancement is the main method that I'm aware of.
• 1:45:28
  I could have swore there was a third thing.
• 1:45:31
  Either way, it's OK. I mean fictionally upgrading
• 1:45:33
  your shit like your house makes your knife better type of thing.
• 1:45:38
  I but they didn't. That's not like a bespoke thing.
• 1:45:40
  I thought there was a bespoke thing.
• 1:45:44
  It's fine, but. I don't think so.
• 1:45:48
  To cap off the assets chapter, it's worth mentioning that at
• 1:45:51
  any given time, each character can only have 5 total permanent
• 1:45:56
  assets on their character. If you come to a point where you
• 1:46:01
  have more than that, you will either have to abandon one of
• 1:46:04
  your assets, which is to say, you know.
• 1:46:07
  If you have to leave your gun behind because you just got a
• 1:46:11
  new ornithopter and it can't fit, then it is what it is.
• 1:46:15
  After an adventure, you can choose to get rid of a certain
• 1:46:18
  number of your assets to make room for new ones, but you don't
• 1:46:23
  necessarily need to. I think you spend momentum for
• 1:46:25
  that though, right? Spend momentum for what?
• 1:46:29
  To keep your assets when you create them?
• 1:46:35
  Yeah, so you can. You spend, you spend 2 to keep
• 1:46:39
  it right. Yeah.
• 1:46:41
  Yeah. OK yeah, yeah.
• 1:46:42
  All right. After that we hit the final
• 1:46:48
  chapter which is game mastering and.
• 1:46:51
  Damn, just not even going to mention that there is like an
• 1:46:53
  asset list. It's crazy.
• 1:46:55
  Oh yeah, that's fair. I mean, not that we need to read
• 1:46:58
  the specifics of it, but. No, I mean yes, there there is a
• 1:47:01
  full asset list ranging from all of the categories I talked about
• 1:47:05
  previously, range weapons, melee weapons, armor, communication
• 1:47:09
  devices, tools, stuff like that. The.
• 1:47:11
  Important thing being that it goes through some of your common
• 1:47:14
  famous Doom specific equipment. Yeah, you know, your still suit,
• 1:47:20
  your Holtzman Shields, your film book Fram kits, your Hunter
• 1:47:25
  secret drones, all that fun stuff.
• 1:47:28
  Although it only lists 2 range weapons, which a little weird.
• 1:47:33
  Yeah, a little weird considering there's definitely more than
• 1:47:36
  that. Yeah, just a a cubic ass load of
• 1:47:39
  them, especially if you look at do an Awakening the game that
• 1:47:42
  this game shouts out and it's advertising, which is kind of
• 1:47:46
  funny. Yeah, so weird that there's no
• 1:47:49
  spit dart or, or the scatter gun, the dart shot or the drill
• 1:47:58
  shot. Sorry.
• 1:48:00
  Yeah, it's a little strange after the big list of of assets
• 1:48:06
  we have game mastering, which is the last.
• 1:48:09
  It's not actually the last chapter.
• 1:48:11
  There is a 9th chapter that just gives you a a list of NPCS in
• 1:48:15
  the game from all the important houses.
• 1:48:18
  Yeah. And then chapter 10.
• 1:48:19
  I mean, it does. It has it.
• 1:48:21
  It doesn't just have famous characters though.
• 1:48:23
  It does also have generic step blocks too.
• 1:48:25
  It does also have generics, yes. Which are probably the more
• 1:48:27
  useful ones. Yeah, Chapter 10 is a mini
• 1:48:31
  adventure, so we're not really going to talk about that.
• 1:48:34
  But yeah, the last thing that we're going to talk about really
• 1:48:37
  quick is the game mastering section, which.
• 1:48:40
  Did you read the mini adventure? I did not.
• 1:48:42
  I'm going to be honest. It's all right.
• 1:48:45
  It's, it's, it's kinda it, it gave me an idea of what they
• 1:48:51
  kind of expect from the game. And it, it seems like, I mean,
• 1:48:58
  obviously it's not the only thing you can do, but it, it
• 1:49:00
  seems like they almost expect you to play this game a little
• 1:49:04
  bit like a cyberpunk game in that you work for your house and
• 1:49:09
  your house will give you missions.
• 1:49:11
  And then you as the players go out on the important missions
• 1:49:14
  and like do things in the name of your house.
• 1:49:18
  It seems like that's kind of the main flow that they want you to
• 1:49:21
  do. So the sample adventure is
• 1:49:23
  basically your house has rights to harvesting some spice on a
• 1:49:27
  rakis and somebody's been, you've been having issues with
• 1:49:32
  your harvesters, so you need to figure out who's sabotaging
• 1:49:35
  them. So you get sent in there as
• 1:49:38
  house agents to deal with it. I'm honestly not surprised that
• 1:49:43
  they would send you to a Rakis as a.
• 1:49:45
  Yeah, well, I thought, I thought the game kind of wanted you to
• 1:49:48
  not go to Iraq us a lot, Iraq US a lot based on some other
• 1:49:51
  things. But now I'm thinking maybe they
• 1:49:54
  do want you to play on on Iraqus.
• 1:49:55
  I don't know. I don't think that that they
• 1:49:58
  want the games to focus on Iraqus.
• 1:50:00
  It's probably they probably just use that in a sample adventure
• 1:50:02
  because it is a memorable spot that most people will have
• 1:50:05
  probably heard about, at least in passing.
• 1:50:07
  You know, I guess. Back to the GM ING section.
• 1:50:14
  I'm going to be honest, I'm a little disappointed here.
• 1:50:18
  It's meh. Yeah, it's meh.
• 1:50:19
  I it doesn't really provide you any, any real assistance if you
• 1:50:29
  have already ran an RPG. There's a little bit of stuff
• 1:50:33
  on, you know, setting up your first scene and how players are
• 1:50:37
  expected to use drives, but it's nothing that hasn't been
• 1:50:40
  explained already somewhere in the book, yeah.
• 1:50:44
  It's a, it's, it's a pretty generic game mastering section.
• 1:50:51
  And when I say generic, I mean that it it delivers generic
• 1:50:54
  general advice about how to GM, it doesn't give a lot of advice
• 1:50:59
  about how to GM this game specifically.
• 1:51:03
  And that's really what I was looking for here.
• 1:51:06
  That's also what I was looking for.
• 1:51:08
  In fact, I actually in, in this day and age, I think that having
• 1:51:18
  your GM section cover like generic GM advice is kind of
• 1:51:26
  pointless because we have the Internet, you know, like.
• 1:51:34
  Yeah. Like a game, like an RPG in and
• 1:51:39
  of itself doesn't really need you need to teach you how to run
• 1:51:44
  in general anymore because you can watch YouTube videos, you
• 1:51:49
  can read blogs, you can watch actual plays and get an idea.
• 1:51:53
  Like there's so many other outside sources that people are
• 1:51:58
  going to go to. Like if I want GM advice, I
• 1:52:02
  don't read the book. If I want generic GM advice, I
• 1:52:06
  don't read the book of the game I'm playing.
• 1:52:08
  I'm going to look elsewhere. Like I'll look for a YouTube
• 1:52:12
  video or I'll look for like a Reddit post or a blog post or
• 1:52:15
  something like that. So I I just think that this game
• 1:52:20
  has a very generic GM section and because you can only put so
• 1:52:26
  many pages in your damn book, they kind of miss out on having
• 1:52:29
  very how to deal with the specific problems of this game
• 1:52:33
  kind of sections. My my only thought as to why a
• 1:52:38
  lot of specific information is missing is that it feels like in
• 1:52:43
  a lot of places they front loaded that you know.
• 1:52:47
  Yeah, but I but here's the thing.
• 1:52:50
  Problems. Problems on the GM side of the
• 1:52:53
  table are always going to be a little different, and how you
• 1:52:56
  tackle them are always going to be a little different.
• 1:52:57
  So even if you have an understanding of the problems
• 1:53:01
  that the game is going to have reading through the rules, still
• 1:53:06
  having AGM section be like this is how you should adjudicate it
• 1:53:10
  as the GM specifically, I think it's still useful.
• 1:53:15
  I agree with you. I I think it is.
• 1:53:17
  It's better to have it than not to have it.
• 1:53:21
  I'm just sort of explaining what I think the the reasoning could
• 1:53:24
  be. Yeah, I mean, yeah, you're,
• 1:53:28
  you're probably not wrong in terms of what they were
• 1:53:29
  thinking. I honestly I feel like at this
• 1:53:34
  point the only game in the tabletop space that really
• 1:53:41
  should bother with generic GM advice.
• 1:53:44
  Is D&D. Is D&D yeah, yeah, and only
• 1:53:48
  because of its weird unique position in the hobby I.
• 1:53:52
  Completely agree with you, yeah. Like video games don't give you
• 1:53:57
  generic advice on how a video game works, right?
• 1:54:03
  So yeah, not since the 90s, not since pressed the action
• 1:54:06
  buttons. Yeah.
• 1:54:08
  Well, and even then that wasn't even necessarily that generic of
• 1:54:11
  like, it's still, I mean, you're right that tutorials have
• 1:54:14
  changed, but it still wasn't even that generic.
• 1:54:16
  It wasn't like they tell you what the R3 button is, you know?
• 1:54:20
  True. And so, yeah, I think D&D is
• 1:54:23
  really the only game that should do that.
• 1:54:25
  And so, yeah, the GM section feels ultimately superfluous in
• 1:54:30
  this game. Extremely, which is annoying.
• 1:54:34
  Although the the if you count, I will say if you count the
• 1:54:38
  bestiary section, the allies and adversaries, if you count that
• 1:54:41
  as part of the GM section, that section is useful.
• 1:54:45
  It is I, I I don't just because it's its own chapter.
• 1:54:48
  Sure. Yeah, it does.
• 1:54:50
  Also also the Allies and Adversary sections talks about
• 1:54:53
  how to design rival houses and different kinds of rival houses,
• 1:54:58
  which is also very useful because that's an important
• 1:55:00
  element to the game. Yeah, I mean, I'm sure.
• 1:55:05
  I don't think there was. I literally don't remember
• 1:55:08
  anything in the GM section that I was like, oh, that's good to
• 1:55:11
  know. Like, I mean, they even tell you
• 1:55:15
  like some of the stuff in the GM section is like how to schedule
• 1:55:19
  your game. What the difference between a
• 1:55:21
  long and a short term campaign is like, like really baseline
• 1:55:28
  shit. And then even in the adventure,
• 1:55:32
  when it talks about creating adventure, I was like, oh, OK,
• 1:55:35
  the creating adventure section's gonna be really helpful 'cause
• 1:55:37
  it's gonna say, what kind of adventures do we expect you to
• 1:55:41
  run in this game? And like, no, it just kind of
• 1:55:44
  gives you very broad general advice on how to create an
• 1:55:47
  adventure that you could apply to pretty much any game.
• 1:55:53
  Like nothing about the creating adventure section is
• 1:55:55
  specifically adventures in this game.
• 1:55:58
  It's just the idea of adventures in general, right?
• 1:56:03
  I mean there I literally in the section called just to give you
• 1:56:08
  just to give you all listen to an idea here in the section that
• 1:56:12
  says setting up a game. There's a there's a part of that
• 1:56:16
  first section that says finding a group to play with.
• 1:56:22
  And then it says real life friends, online friendly local
• 1:56:25
  game store, Dune fans, and it's literally telling you how to
• 1:56:27
  find people who want to play the game.
• 1:56:30
  That which is like. That what made me a little mad.
• 1:56:33
  Dude, it that was so pointless. It's useless information.
• 1:56:37
  It's useless. It's completely fucking like.
• 1:56:40
  I Yeah. And then there's.
• 1:56:41
  A whole section for incompatibility.
• 1:56:43
  Incompatibility. Between players.
• 1:56:45
  You're like what the fuck? It's very generic level.
• 1:56:48
  It's very high level advice. It's very non specific and like
• 1:56:54
  you said, there's the bit with the drives and there's a little
• 1:56:57
  bit of like how to handle the first scene.
• 1:57:00
  Not bad using this rule system section.
• 1:57:04
  There's a little bit of like when to do the different kinds
• 1:57:07
  of tests. All right, sure, yeah.
• 1:57:12
  And, and I think it gave yeah. And it, and it gives, it gives
• 1:57:18
  some, it gives some examples of where the, the different like
• 1:57:22
  simple tests versus contested tests versus extended.
• 1:57:25
  It gives some examples of how those kind of come in.
• 1:57:29
  But again, it never gets like it never gets specific enough to be
• 1:57:35
  super helpful. Like it, it gives you like a
• 1:57:39
  good start and then it doesn't go deep enough.
• 1:57:43
  So yeah. Yeah, no.
• 1:57:47
  Oh yeah, managing personalities tells you like how to deal with
• 1:57:50
  your different players having different personalities, which
• 1:57:53
  is such AI was like, why is this?
• 1:57:55
  You're not a therapist. Yeah, dude, I love integrating
• 1:58:00
  motors. Yeah, I was like this is weird.
• 1:58:02
  I don't why is this the only? Thing I, I'm like, I don't
• 1:58:06
  really have a complaint about is, you know, it's the safety
• 1:58:08
  tool stuff. It's stuff that's pretty common
• 1:58:10
  across all TGS. Now that's just kind of the only
• 1:58:13
  one that I'm like, yeah, this is all right.
• 1:58:17
  Yeah, or like the section that's called creating games in the
• 1:58:20
  Dune universe. I expected to be really useful
• 1:58:23
  and. Oh, actually, no, no, sorry.
• 1:58:26
  There, there is one section. There's, there's one section.
• 1:58:28
  It's not super useful, but something that I do like is the
• 1:58:31
  IT starts on page 2 to 233 where it talks about like how to how
• 1:58:40
  to interweave the ideas of faith into the game and technology.
• 1:58:44
  And yeah, the that's what I was talking about, creating games in
• 1:58:47
  the Dune universe. I bet they talk about stuff
• 1:58:51
  like, you know, your characters are human, don't give them like
• 1:58:55
  genuine superhuman feats unless they're like a Mentat or Benny
• 1:58:58
  Jesserate, you know, president. Don't use it, because there's no
• 1:59:04
  real effective way to do it in a way that feels fair.
• 1:59:09
  Yeah, I mean, that section again is good, but it's still it still
• 1:59:13
  doesn't give me like concrete like it still feels a little too
• 1:59:17
  surface level you. Know I agree, you guys, yeah.
• 1:59:21
  Like I just want more and also that's the last section in the
• 1:59:23
  GM Inc section. It is the last two pages.
• 1:59:26
  Yeah, so. Yeah.
• 1:59:33
  But also, here's the thing. And be so for real.
• 1:59:38
  For real. A lot of games have bad GM ink
• 1:59:40
  sections so they. Do they?
• 1:59:42
  Look, the rules for this game for the most part were yeah, far
• 1:59:49
  exceeded my expectations. So I sort of expected this to do
• 1:59:53
  the same. I was disappointed to find out
• 1:59:56
  it did not. That being said, I mean.
• 1:59:58
  Listen, even games I like a lot have questionable GM sections.
• 2:00:02
  I think the GM section and Fabula could do some work.
• 2:00:07
  So you know. Fair enough.
• 2:00:11
  Now that we've got the rules out of the way, final thoughts?
• 2:00:17
  I mean, I, I, I, I think I glazed this game the last two
• 2:00:20
  episodes enough. Like, yeah, I mean, I like this
• 2:00:23
  game a lot, so I like a lot of the shit it's doing.
• 2:00:27
  And it pleasantly surprised me because I kind of expected it to
• 2:00:30
  be generic, kind of D&D esque. You expected it to be Dark
• 2:00:37
  Souls? The role play?
• 2:00:38
  The tabletop role-playing game? Not quite that bad, but like in
• 2:00:42
  that direction I expected it to feel mostly very D&D esque and I
• 2:00:45
  was going to have to move my Paula Tradies guy in 10 foot
• 2:00:48
  squares and yadda yadda. But it did not do any of that.
• 2:00:52
  So I was pleasantly surprised. I.
• 2:00:56
  Agree and I I think the conflict.
• 2:00:58
  The conflict sections. The conflict mechanics the
• 2:01:02
  conflict system has a ton of potential and use cases that I
• 2:01:06
  can think of, so that was the part that got me the most
• 2:01:10
  excited I. Had a little bit more faith in
• 2:01:12
  this game. I'm happy to see that my faith
• 2:01:14
  was placed correctly. I would be really willing to
• 2:01:17
  play this game, less so willing to run this game.
• 2:01:22
  And won't be so for real dog. You're the only person in our
• 2:01:25
  friend group who anyone would expect to run this game.
• 2:01:27
  I know, I know. It's just like fucking Lancer.
• 2:01:31
  Nobody, nobody, nobody else is deep enough on the dune sauce to
• 2:01:35
  be ready to run this. Ardell could do.
• 2:01:39
  He could, I guess, yeah. Actually, I I have been slowly
• 2:01:44
  stocking Sam's intrigue and do and maybe I can just gaslight
• 2:01:48
  Sam into doing it. Into running a Dune game.
• 2:01:51
  That's fine, I think I could do it.
• 2:01:54
  It's possible. That and the next time I go to
• 2:01:58
  New York, I'll just sit Paladin down and make him watch all of
• 2:02:00
  the Dune media. It'll be like The Clockwork
• 2:02:04
  Orange, just going to hold his eyes open.
• 2:02:06
  Including the David Lynch movie. Absolutely David Lynch movie I
• 2:02:13
  how could I not have have him watch camera the actor's name
• 2:02:18
  saying weird funny words into his mouth microphone or his neck
• 2:02:21
  microphone and blowing shit up with his brain because because
• 2:02:25
  desert Kung Fu is stupid. Yeah, Desert Kung Fu is stupid.
• 2:02:28
  Voice voice laser gun is cool. Yeah, yeah, or something.
• 2:02:33
  Lynch. I honestly feel like he did that
• 2:02:38
  because he just didn't want to have to try and explain or
• 2:02:41
  depict the weirding way because it's so odd.
• 2:02:45
  I agree that probably is what it is because every depiction of
• 2:02:48
  the weirding way in in media is really funny.
• 2:02:53
  You should watch the Dune miniseries.
• 2:02:56
  I mean The History Channel villain who didn't even try dog.
• 2:03:00
  No, no, they were like weirding way.
• 2:03:02
  Some cool backflips. That's it.
• 2:03:03
  Yeah, we're not even going to make an attempt.
• 2:03:07
  Yeah, I I like that. Still, guys like, ah, you know,
• 2:03:09
  the weirding way you're a weirding woman.
• 2:03:12
  Yeah, no explanation as to what That.
• 2:03:13
  What the fuck that actually? Is that's it?
• 2:03:15
  That's all he's got to say on it.
• 2:03:17
  Yeah, just two sentences on it. Nice job, Denise.
• 2:03:23
  Thanks, bud. Yeah, that's that's us around.
• 2:03:27
  Next time, for whatever the fuck we decide to talk about, please
• 2:03:31
  God don't make me read anything else for a little while.
• 2:03:34
  What if I make you read something a little short and
• 2:03:36
  quick? What were you thinking?
• 2:03:42
  I want to spoil it. When you thought, all right, OK,
• 2:03:48
  fine. That's been US's sessions
• 2:03:51
  cancelled. Follow us on your social media
• 2:03:53
  fucking platform of choice. We'll catch you later.
• 2:03:55
  Also, donate to the coffee. Brett needs a new bed for the
• 2:03:58
  game of Dungeon. Bye.