Latest / Sessions Canceled / Dune: Adventures In The Imperium | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 1: Ep. 193

Transcript

Dune: Adventures In The Imperium | Tabletop Shout-Out Part. 1: Ep. 193 · Sessions Canceled

• 0:15
  Hey everybody. So we recommended that the GM
• 0:17
  watch Geneva News Dune over the weekend, not really thinking
• 0:21
  anything of it. And yeah, he came in speaking
• 0:27
  only in Jacobsa and doing the sand walk everywhere.
• 0:31
  And it's just really weirded everyone out, and half the
• 0:33
  party's already gone home. He's in the corner.
• 0:36
  He's right there. Yeah.
• 0:37
  Hey, I'm talking about you. Yeah.
• 0:39
  OK. Anyway, sessions cancelled.
• 0:42
  I can't believe you didn't go for the obvious overdose Spice
• 0:46
  turned into worm boy joke. How did you not do that one?
• 0:51
  That's a good, it's, it's fair, that's fair.
• 0:53
  Will be. That'll be the one for next.
• 0:55
  Time. GM overdosed on Spice and turned
• 1:01
  into a navigator too. Yeah, yeah, exactly.
• 1:05
  And then he looked at his girlfriend.
• 1:06
  Was like, would you still love me if I were a worm?
• 1:09
  Would you love me if I was a Fishman?
• 1:12
  By the way, Paula Trady's answer to that, no, no I would not.
• 1:20
  Yeah, I know, with your weird vestigial arms.
• 1:25
  He laid out the second. Vestigial wiggly.
• 1:27
  Oh, your little double lease. Oh.
• 1:31
  God, I yeah, his his vestigial arms with his long fingers and
• 1:37
  limber thanks to his Benny jester and hand exercise.
• 1:41
  Sexy finger. Oh God, his limber, beautiful
• 1:47
  finger. I really.
• 1:50
  If nobody knows what you're talking about, I want you to
• 1:51
  take a moment if, unless you're driving, in which case don't.
• 1:54
  But when you get a chance, take a moment and just look up Duke
• 1:57
  later, the second in the Dude franchise, and just just do a
• 2:00
  little reading about him. Yeah, just read about.
• 2:02
  Worm boy. Worm boy, Yes, if he live, he's
• 2:06
  if he looks like a worm, that's you got the right guy.
• 2:10
  Oh baby. Isn't with his.
• 2:13
  Nasty fucking ability to like schwarp his head and arms into
• 2:18
  the disgusting worm body. I forgot to put that part.
• 2:21
  Just. Not the.
• 2:23
  Slurping that can also for some for some reason, fit a fully
• 2:28
  grown adult woman if she like, squeezes into a ball.
• 2:32
  Yeah, in the fetal. Oh my.
• 2:34
  God, oh this stupid levitating baby care this.
• 2:39
  He's got fucked up atrophied flipper legs.
• 2:42
  Stop. Stop reminding me.
• 2:46
  Oh my God, I dude, I don't think I don't think we're getting that
• 2:50
  I I don't think we're getting that movie.
• 2:52
  I just I can't see it. I.
• 2:53
  Well, no, with the the movie's ending with the movie is isn't,
• 3:00
  it's not going up to God Emperor.
• 3:03
  It's. It's not stopping at children.
• 3:07
  I think it's, I think it's stopping at Messiah, yeah.
• 3:10
  Oh, thank God. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's just
• 3:12
  stopping at Messiah of Doom. So Dune.
• 3:16
  So like, yeah, yeah. For those who have only seen the
• 3:18
  movies, you're like, what the fuck are you talking about?
• 3:20
  A worm, man. Yeah, the books go wild places.
• 3:23
  Oh they go it's nuts. I did I ever tell you so?
• 3:25
  I had AI, had a Co worker when I was working at the warehouse in
• 3:28
  New York. It was Irish dude and found out
• 3:32
  he was really into books. So I, I started reading dude and
• 3:35
  he was like, oh, you're ready to do it, That's awesome.
• 3:38
  And I was like, yeah, I'm, I'm like, the first one's amazing.
• 3:40
  I've I've heard not great things about the second and then
• 3:45
  nothing good about everything after that.
• 3:47
  And he was like, yeah, well, the first one's amazing.
• 3:51
  And the second one is it's all right.
• 3:55
  And then everything else like that is a bit shit in it, a
• 4:02
  terrible Irish accent notwithstanding.
• 4:04
  Wow. It was great.
• 4:06
  It was so funny. It was like it was kind of shit,
• 4:09
  to be honest. That's awesome.
• 4:14
  That's I can't. OK, damn cooked.
• 4:19
  I even even Moogie's boyfriend who I know is he like really
• 4:28
  into Dune and like hates anything that isn't the original
• 4:30
  book is like Nah. Yeah, I mean, listen, it's not
• 4:35
  quite the same scenario, but I tell you what, the for me
• 4:38
  personally and for my girlfriend, the the the Black
• 4:42
  Company books really drop off too.
• 4:44
  So like. Oh, no, Do they?
• 4:47
  Yeah. After, for me, I mean the first
• 4:52
  three very strong. And then once you hit four and
• 4:56
  five, I was kind of like, I don't know, boss.
• 4:58
  And then yeah, I just wasn't invested in what was going on
• 5:01
  anymore after that. And I'm on like book 8, by the
• 5:05
  way, and I, I'm like halfway through.
• 5:07
  I have not finished. Wait, so it dropped off at four
• 5:10
  or five and you're still on book?
• 5:12
  You're on book 8 now? Or is it still but you're on
• 5:14
  book? Eight, yeah, like so well, so
• 5:17
  book 6 is kind of a Side Story and I actually really liked book
• 5:21
  6 'cause it was like it was totally, it was basically a
• 5:23
  little like it wasn't, it wasn't quite a short story, but it was
• 5:26
  like a shorter no novel. And it was like a side bit about
• 5:29
  some other characters that got introduced and then, you know,
• 5:33
  we're done in that book. And it was about like just
• 5:37
  events going on in a slightly different place.
• 5:39
  And so I really liked that book. So I was like, all right, so
• 5:41
  I'll, I'll give seven and eight a shot because six really picked
• 5:44
  it back up for me. But yeah, I just.
• 5:48
  And, and the other thing too is where four and five or mostly
• 5:51
  where 5 ends. I was like, all right, I'm not
• 5:55
  that invested, but there's like potential, like I can kind of
• 5:58
  see where we might be going with this.
• 6:00
  And now by 7:00 and 8:00, I'm like, we are just, we're taking
• 6:02
  too God damn long to do anything.
• 6:05
  There's too many characters doing machinations and I only
• 6:08
  care about like a third of them. It's frustrating.
• 6:14
  Yeah, that's how a lot of people feel about the like three
• 6:17
  quarter part of the Horus Heresy books.
• 6:20
  Or it's like, well, everybody I cared about is dead.
• 6:22
  Is dead or or. Corrupted by chaos and now they
• 6:25
  suck and they're just really boring as fuck.
• 6:28
  Makes sense. And then fucking Erebus is just
• 6:31
  killing every character that I even remotely like, and the joke
• 6:33
  about him never being killed is getting kind of annoying.
• 6:37
  Right, right. I will say actually, another
• 6:40
  fucking kind of funny comparison.
• 6:41
  The Witcher books, not that I've had a a specific book that I
• 6:46
  have disliked, I've pretty much liked all the way.
• 6:49
  Yeah, I've liked all the Witcher books so far.
• 6:51
  But there have definitely been with the short stories.
• 6:55
  There was a couple of short stories where I was like, get
• 6:57
  this dog shit out of here. And then with the the novels,
• 7:02
  there's been a couple of like sections, like arcs where I'm
• 7:06
  like, come on, let's move on. I don't, I just don't care what
• 7:09
  they're doing. Come on, let's you know what I
• 7:11
  mean. Yeah, no, for sure.
• 7:14
  There was one particular short story that oh fucking I saw a
• 7:19
  post on Reddit of someone being like, it's one of my or no
• 7:22
  sorry. The the the the post was I
• 7:26
  really didn't like this short story.
• 7:28
  Is it just me or was this one kind of bad?
• 7:30
  And I was like, Nah, I feel you brother.
• 7:32
  That short story's ass. And then I saw a couple people
• 7:34
  reply it's my favorite 1 and I'm like who hurt you?
• 7:37
  Did your eyes not work? Is it the the Yennefer playing
• 7:41
  games with Geraldton's SO? No, I actually really like the
• 7:44
  Yennefer playing cup game story. Really.
• 7:48
  No, I hate Yennefer, but that's a great short story.
• 7:50
  It just isn't because of just how fucking outrageous it gets.
• 7:53
  Pretty much, yeah. No, Yeah.
• 7:55
  The way it ends is amazing. No, it's the short story about
• 7:59
  the mermaid. You know, the movie that they
• 8:00
  adapt to Sirens of the Deep. It is the short story that that
• 8:03
  movie is very, very loosely based on.
• 8:08
  Like, very loosely. Because that short story ain't
• 8:13
  it, chief. Dog shit.
• 8:17
  Yeah, yeah, kinda. What's wrong with?
• 8:19
  It though, I it's just the main plot is goofy and it doesn't
• 8:24
  really get resolved. Like it doesn't get resolved in
• 8:29
  any kind of really satisfying way.
• 8:30
  And then the main love interest character that gets introduced
• 8:34
  SE her and Geralt like fuck under a tree.
• 8:38
  And then there's like a little epilogue bit where dandelions
• 8:41
  like and then Essie went off to live alone and she died alone of
• 8:46
  smallpox. You're like, oh, oh, cool.
• 8:51
  OK. Yeah she literally just gets a
• 8:54
  disease and dies like a couple years after her and girl fuck.
• 8:59
  What the fuck? Yeah, it was a weird.
• 9:01
  It was. Yeah.
• 9:02
  And the whole bit of the mermaid and, and the, the Duke banging
• 9:08
  was just, they just made it better because like in the short
• 9:12
  story, the Duke is the guy banging the mermaid.
• 9:15
  And in the movie they made it, the Duke's son is banging the
• 9:18
  mermaid. So the Duke is an asshole and
• 9:21
  his son is the, is the like the nice pretty boy who's trying to
• 9:24
  like bring the mermaids and the humans together for his
• 9:27
  girlfriend. Whereas in the story, the Duke
• 9:29
  is an asshole, but he's also the guy banging the mermaid.
• 9:32
  So you're like, why does she like him?
• 9:34
  He's a piece of shit. Yeah, got it.
• 9:37
  Yeah. Anyway.
• 9:41
  So so. Weird.
• 9:43
  It's a weird. Annie, who's in?
• 9:45
  Annie, who's in? Annie who's in so.
• 9:47
  Talking about dude. We're talking about Dude A.
• 9:52
  Condensed bit shite. No, never.
• 9:55
  No, actually. OK, so today we're talking about
• 9:59
  Dune Adventures in the Imperium on a little tabletop.
• 10:01
  Shout out and. It's funny, I don't like that
• 10:05
  sub. That subtitle?
• 10:06
  I don't either. I don't like it.
• 10:07
  Either Adventures in the Uperium.
• 10:09
  No, I yeah, no, unironically something like Spice Wars would
• 10:13
  have been better. And I know there's already a
• 10:14
  game called Spice Wars but like, I don't know, fuck it.
• 10:17
  Something more like that. Yeah, or what's that?
• 10:21
  What's that one thing for the Awakening Water wars could have
• 10:24
  been that too. There've been a million things,
• 10:26
  you know, funny times happening in the lands.
• 10:29
  Rad What what if what if? The tagline is What the fuck is
• 10:34
  a Chome Tom Wars? I would love that.
• 10:42
  God I hate the acronym CHOME. Chome.
• 10:44
  I can't remember what the fuck it stands for, but yeah, it's
• 10:46
  pretty. Bad.
• 10:46
  I don't remember either. I might look it up actually.
• 10:49
  But yeah, we're talking about doing adventure to the appear.
• 10:52
  As you can probably assume, it's a tabletop role-playing game
• 10:54
  that takes place within the universe of Frank Herbert's Dune
• 10:58
  series. Into this game, you can play as
• 11:01
  agents or potentially even the leaders of one of the houses of
• 11:05
  the lands. Rad.
• 11:06
  If you don't know what that is, essentially the like, techno
• 11:10
  feudalistic nobility of the setting as you wheel, deal, wage
• 11:14
  war, politics, yeah, and politic your way into the upper echelons
• 11:19
  of the high Society of the known universe.
• 11:21
  What's that? What does Tony stand for?
• 11:23
  Combine Hanet over Advancer Mercantiles.
• 11:29
  Yeah, I don't I. Don't even know what that means.
• 11:32
  Well, so they are both like space Walmart and also the the
• 11:35
  space Wall Street. So they're kind of makes sense
• 11:39
  as a weird mash together merger name.
• 11:42
  But like, I mean, the combined haunted Ober, I guess haunted
• 11:44
  Ober are names Probably, yeah. I don't know.
• 11:50
  Yeah, I don't know either. What the fuck is a chum?
• 11:53
  What the fuck is a chum? Yeah, the game itself was
• 11:58
  created and designed by the studio Mofidius Entertainment,
• 12:03
  and as far as I know is a completely original system that
• 12:07
  it again seems like it takes heavy inspiration from systems
• 12:11
  like Blades in the Dark and Fantasy Flights.
• 12:13
  Genesis system. All right, well, two things.
• 12:16
  One you you completely said their name wrong and spelled it
• 12:20
  wrong. Mofidius.
• 12:21
  It's Modifius ODIFHIUS, and yes, the the Modifius 2D20 system is
• 12:35
  their own proprietary core system that they apply to many
• 12:41
  of their game. Pretty much all their games as
• 12:43
  far as I'm aware. Oh they don't.
• 12:46
  They also are all their role-playing games.
• 12:48
  I'm pretty sure they use mainly the actually.
• 12:51
  Wait, maybe not. Maybe I'm wrong.
• 12:52
  I'm not sure. Don't come out of that.
• 12:54
  But the two D20 system is definitely their thing.
• 12:59
  On their website, they have a Cthulhu game, They have Dune,
• 13:01
  They have Fallout, Star Trek, another Cthulhu game,
• 13:05
  Dishonored, Homeworld Infinity, and John Carter on Mars.
• 13:10
  They have a Dishonored tabletop game.
• 13:12
  Wait a God damn minute. Wait, that might fuck.
• 13:14
  Hold on, that might fuck. OK, but we can't get distracted.
• 13:17
  But that might. Right?
• 13:18
  Right. Right.
• 13:18
  No, no, we have. Way too much to talk about today
• 13:20
  to get distracted more than we already have.
• 13:22
  But yes, so Modifius games, they're they're a pretty big
• 13:26
  publisher. They also do board games and war
• 13:28
  games and shit. They're quite a big publisher
• 13:31
  and they're their main shtick is they're known for doing what's
• 13:38
  the word brain tie in no license games.
• 13:46
  That's what I was trying to think of.
• 13:47
  Their big thing is they do license games.
• 13:49
  Like they publish the Alien RPG also and the Blade Runner RPG
• 13:55
  and Mutant Year Zero and fucking some Cthulhu shit.
• 13:59
  So like, yeah, they their big thing is licensed games.
• 14:02
  They do a lot of like licensed universes copy.
• 14:06
  So yeah, fair enough. Yeah, the go on.
• 14:12
  Well, well, actually, we'll we'll get to it in a minute, so
• 14:16
  keep going. One of the things that drew me
• 14:19
  to this game, other than the fact that I have an unhealthy
• 14:21
  obsession with doing this setting, is the fact that you
• 14:24
  get to create your own house, which, like Blades, informs the
• 14:28
  kind of story that you're going to tell.
• 14:30
  I was so skeptical of that system when I first heard about
• 14:35
  it, I tell you what. Making your own house.
• 14:38
  Yeah, we'll, we'll get to it in a SEC, but yeah.
• 14:40
  OK, a campaign where you're like, House's primary export is
• 14:46
  fashion designers from military uniforms will be vastly
• 14:49
  different than the one where your arms manufacturers trying
• 14:51
  to come up in an environment that is highly saturated with
• 14:55
  all sorts of fun ways to kill people in Minecraft.
• 14:59
  In Minecraft? Tell me.
• 15:00
  General thoughts on the book overall?
• 15:02
  I really like the the vibe that the book has while reading the
• 15:06
  material feels like you're reading something straight out
• 15:08
  of the universe of Dune, which is really fun.
• 15:11
  The language is like flowery, almost poetic.
• 15:13
  The text shows a clear appreciation for the intricacies
• 15:16
  of the factions and the, you know, crazy planned within
• 15:20
  planned conflicts with Erin. It's impressive visually.
• 15:24
  And where I do feel like the book suffers is the clarity
• 15:31
  information, the general layout of the text.
• 15:36
  Simply put, the rules are wordy and can be confusing.
• 15:39
  And there are several instances where I needed to read and
• 15:46
  reread and carefully go over the example text to fully understand
• 15:49
  what was going on. I do think a little bit in the
• 15:52
  games defence, the word, the rules are wordy kind of by
• 15:57
  necessity because the system uses such heavy abstraction that
• 16:04
  you have to over explain it a little bit to get the point all
• 16:10
  the way home, you know? You're definitely not wrong
• 16:12
  there. That being said, you know it's
• 16:17
  it's yes the the wordiness. I can forgive the the general,
• 16:21
  in my opinion, kind of poor layout of the information,
• 16:25
  specifically in something like the character creation section.
• 16:27
  I don't think the information is poorly laid out.
• 16:30
  Oh I do I I got really confused in the character traitor bit.
• 16:38
  OK, I'm a little surprised that you didn't, to be honest,
• 16:41
  because like, no, we'll get into it later.
• 16:43
  But they, the way the character creator starts is it it explains
• 16:48
  to you a couple of key features of the of the character creation
• 16:52
  system, but doesn't explain how to put those in context.
• 16:58
  And you have to look later on to see what that means or how to
• 17:01
  find the numbers for some of the things.
• 17:03
  If you're just talking about the game committing the cardinal sin
• 17:06
  of not explaining the rules before character creation, yes,
• 17:08
  it definitely does that. Yes.
• 17:10
  I mean, yeah, it definitely does that.
• 17:12
  And I fucking hate that. But I hate that in every game
• 17:15
  that's not a unique to this one. True, yeah.
• 17:18
  I think I I that's like an old school RPG thing to do character
• 17:22
  creation before rules and I just never understood what the point
• 17:25
  of that is because how am I supposed to create a character
• 17:28
  effectively without any context for how it works in rules?
• 17:31
  Agreed. I I almost reorganized my notes
• 17:35
  to put the rules first, but that was just going to get more
• 17:41
  confusing than it was worth, so I decided to do it
• 17:43
  chronologically as the information is given to you.
• 17:45
  But I mean, I'm a I'm not particularly bothered by the
• 17:50
  layout. I think the layout, I mean,
• 17:52
  again, except for that, that core thing.
• 17:54
  But like, I'm fine with the layout.
• 17:57
  Honestly, this game I wouldn't have been on.
• 18:00
  I went on a little bit of a journey with this game because
• 18:06
  you're like, I want to read the Dune book.
• 18:08
  And I was kind of like, all right, the Modifius Dune book.
• 18:12
  OK, yeah, all right. And I didn't really want to
• 18:15
  because I knew, I knew about Modifius games.
• 18:19
  I had heard about their stuff before.
• 18:22
  And I was like, it's a big or it's like a relative, you know,
• 18:27
  big in the RPG scene. They're not a big company in
• 18:30
  comparison to, you know, other companies.
• 18:34
  Well, they're, they're like in the RPG scene, they are a decent
• 18:37
  size even in comparison to Wizards, but they operate in the
• 18:40
  board game and tabletop space, which is much smaller than like
• 18:43
  video games, for example. But you know, I was like,
• 18:47
  they're a big RPG company. I've heard about their stuff.
• 18:51
  They make a lot of games. So like, that's probably kind
• 18:54
  of, you know, to me sometimes that's a little bit of like a
• 18:58
  red flag when you make a ton of different shit.
• 19:00
  And I had heard people talk about the their 2D20 system and
• 19:04
  I was like, all right, whatever, 2 D 20s.
• 19:06
  Like some games will use the look at our funny dice thing as
• 19:12
  like a gimmick and then the rest of the game doesn't actually do
• 19:16
  anything exciting with the gimmick, right?
• 19:18
  It's like, oh, we use, we use 4D eights and 6D sevens for our
• 19:23
  game. And you're like, OK, do you do
• 19:25
  anything different from D&D? No, it's mostly AD and D clone.
• 19:28
  You just roll funny dice and you're like, OK, well, that's I
• 19:31
  don't care, you know what I mean?
• 19:32
  Like there's a lot of games that do shit like that.
• 19:34
  So it's kind of like whatever the 2D20 thing, it's probably a
• 19:37
  gimmick, blah, blah, blah. And I started reading the book
• 19:41
  and I was, I was expecting it to be not like AD and D clone, but
• 19:46
  I was expecting it to still be relatively D&D esque in its
• 19:51
  rules where it's like, you know, it's got rules for combat and
• 19:54
  turns and it's got rules for your usual equipment and like
• 19:58
  it's kind of a reskinned. DND esque Dune thing, which is
• 20:03
  going to be weird because how are you going to justify
• 20:05
  fighting lots of big monsters in Dune that does That's going to
• 20:08
  not make any sense, but they'll make some shit up or whatever
• 20:11
  and there's going to be a sandworm stat block blah blah
• 20:14
  blah. Yeah none of that shit's in this
• 20:15
  game. I was completely wrong.
• 20:18
  I was not even remotely authorized, so I.
• 20:21
  Know, I was in a similar vein. I kind of was expecting a much
• 20:26
  crunchier game. I was so ready to see a shy
• 20:30
  halud step block with 500HP and 36 AC or some shit, you know
• 20:34
  what I mean. I was so.
• 20:36
  Ready for that? Yeah, no, that's not a thing.
• 20:40
  There's actually, there's basically not step blocks at
• 20:42
  all, really. Kind of.
• 20:45
  And then I was like, all right. And I started reading and I was
• 20:48
  like, OK, that's interesting. Oh, we're using some, OK, we're
• 20:52
  using some interesting terms. You know what, let me flip to
• 20:55
  the combat section. And I actually jumped over to
• 20:57
  the combat section to be like, how does the combat work 'cause
• 21:01
  I feel like this is going to tell me a lot because Dune is
• 21:04
  not a dungeon fucking monster smacking game or monster
• 21:08
  smacking setting, obviously, right?
• 21:10
  Like, it's not really about fighting things and killing
• 21:14
  them, right? It's about like the political
• 21:16
  drama and the warfare stuff and the plans within plans and the
• 21:19
  espionage. So I was like, what are we doing
• 21:21
  here? So I start reading the combat
• 21:22
  rules and I was like, oh, oh, wait, these are really fire.
• 21:27
  Wait, no, this is fucking, oh, we're cooking.
• 21:29
  Hey, yo, we cooking. Because the combat in this game
• 21:33
  is fucking genius in a lot of ways.
• 21:35
  We will. We'll get into it later, but
• 21:37
  they managed to create a sort of the.
• 21:42
  The phrase is not system generic, but you kind of get
• 21:45
  what I mean a a catch all system.
• 21:48
  A a conflict system that is abstracted in such a fashion
• 21:52
  that it can cover all of the kinds of bases you would expect
• 21:54
  from something like. Dude, exactly.
• 21:56
  Yeah, so that got me really excited.
• 22:00
  And then I went and read the core elements of the rules.
• 22:02
  And so I was going to say I I was on an emotional roller
• 22:06
  coaster with this game, but roller coaster implies that
• 22:09
  there were down bits. I was on an emotional hike with
• 22:11
  this game. It just kept getting better as I
• 22:13
  kept. Reading I was on I was on war
• 22:17
  for roller coaster. There were there were some
• 22:18
  things that I didn't love design wise and there are things that I
• 22:22
  really like design wise so. I, I, I don't, I have very few
• 22:28
  complaints. I have some things I'm confused
• 22:29
  about, but that's not necessarily complaints about how
• 22:32
  they're designed. That's just I'm not necessarily
• 22:33
  getting it, and that doesn't necessarily mean it doesn't.
• 22:37
  Work true well, so that that's that's the couple of things for
• 22:40
  me is that they confuse me and it's one of those situations
• 22:43
  where I don't know it's almost like a good and bad for me.
• 22:51
  I've brought this up a couple times in my notes, but this is
• 22:53
  one of the only games where I feel like you need to read the
• 22:56
  example text to really know what's going on.
• 23:00
  When you read about things like how much goes into like a basic
• 23:06
  role, it seems really daunting. It's it's not that bad actually,
• 23:11
  and it is kind of straightforward, but when you're
• 23:14
  just reading it in a a sort of sterile rules focused way, it
• 23:19
  feels like a lot. And then they the the example
• 23:21
  text puts it into context and it makes it much better though.
• 23:26
  Well, I would make the argument that a book that you read and do
• 23:35
  not grasp 100% on that initial read through, that doesn't
• 23:40
  necessarily mean the game doesn't work.
• 23:42
  It might mean that the system is designed in such a fashion that
• 23:45
  it requires a little bit of active active happening in front
• 23:49
  of you to to lock in, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work.
• 23:52
  You know what I mean? No.
• 23:53
  Absolutely and and to be clear, I'm not saying that none of it
• 23:55
  doesn't work, it is just a what works well for my ADHD.
• 24:00
  Add all the brain, the comprehend and ease of reading,
• 24:05
  so to speak. Sure, but reading and the
• 24:08
  initial read and the the initial read through comprehend is only
• 24:12
  half the battle. 1/3 of the battle, you know.
• 24:14
  Yeah. So like I, I like if I'm reading
• 24:20
  a game and I don't immediately get it or I don't immediately
• 24:22
  get elements of it, but I can see the potential.
• 24:26
  Like I can see there is a matrix to be unlocked, then I'm OK with
• 24:29
  like having some struggle reading it.
• 24:32
  If if the if the journey's worth it.
• 24:36
  I, I think, yeah, I generally I'd say the journey is worth it.
• 24:38
  I do want to play this game to see how it works.
• 24:40
  I'm fascinated. I don't think I could run it
• 24:43
  but. I think I would be interested in
• 24:45
  running this game if I felt like I had any fucking clue what I
• 24:49
  would actually do with it. I have no clue what I would do
• 24:53
  with it, but I think it's be fun to run.
• 24:58
  I it's funny, I know what I if I did run this game, I'd know what
• 25:01
  I'd want to do, but I don't know that I want to run, you know?
• 25:04
  What makes you not want to run it?
• 25:07
  I I, I think despite how much I know about Dune as a setting, I
• 25:13
  don't think I have the DM ING chops to pull this off.
• 25:18
  Because of the system. Yes.
• 25:21
  Oh please get the fuck out of here.
• 25:22
  Just do it. I'm serious.
• 25:25
  I I don't think I I. Don't even start with me.
• 25:28
  Get out of here. What?
• 25:29
  That's a that's a nonsense statement, Sir.
• 25:33
  What the fuck are you talking about?
• 25:34
  That's a nonsense. Statement you're fine.
• 25:35
  I don't think I could do the system justice.
• 25:37
  You could absolutely do it. Get the fuck out of here.
• 25:40
  All right, fucking guess anyway. Yes, trust me, you're way,
• 25:45
  you're way overestimating. You're just doing the thing
• 25:47
  where somebody looks at the game and they're like, it doesn't
• 25:49
  have initiative. What do I do?
• 25:50
  It's it's fine. You'd figure it out.
• 25:54
  It's the zones brother. The zones confuse me.
• 25:57
  The zones. Are easy for most of it.
• 26:00
  They're just places where you move.
• 26:04
  There's places that you move to and or or interact with in the
• 26:08
  case of like a a in in intrigue battle.
• 26:11
  Yeah, that I'm having trouble with that.
• 26:13
  Anyway, Chapter 1. They're like targets.
• 26:17
  Think of them like targets. I guess I I think I should have
• 26:21
  preferred range bands. They are range bands.
• 26:23
  They're just abstracted range bands.
• 26:25
  Well, yes, they're right. They're abstracted range bands
• 26:26
  and then there's multiple of them and they are.
• 26:29
  Well, there's multiple range bands in most games.
• 26:32
  Well, yes, there's multiple range bands, but you can sort of
• 26:34
  treat them like a big target board.
• 26:37
  We're we're getting off topic. We have too much brother.
• 26:41
  Starting with chapter 1, As you can probably assume, this
• 26:46
  chapter of the book is just an introduction, and it is as it
• 26:49
  describes snippets of introductory text that explains
• 26:52
  some of the history of Dune as an IP and what an RPG is in the
• 26:57
  tabletop sense. It gets into some pretty surface
• 27:00
  level lore of the setting as well as a basic timeline shown
• 27:04
  in the distinct eras of Dune's lore that starting with the but
• 27:09
  Larry and Jihad and then going all the way up to the age of the
• 27:11
  enemy. As a fun snippet, it also lists
• 27:15
  which of the written books to date go into which part of the
• 27:19
  timeline, which is fun. And there's there's a lot there.
• 27:22
  There's a lot of those. And hold on, let me count real
• 27:28
  quick as it's a it's it is a goofy number of books.
• 27:33
  There are 1234567891011121314151617181920212223
• 27:48
  23 books. Only 5 written by Frank.
• 27:53
  Yes, only 5 written by Frank Herbert.
• 27:55
  The rest are written by his son and someone named Kevin J
• 27:58
  Anderson. O'Brien, what have you done?
• 28:05
  Why have you done this? That being said, Frankie boy did
• 28:09
  write Worm Boy, so I it did. It's true.
• 28:12
  That was that was a Frankie special.
• 28:19
  Yeah, finally, it gives a page long snippet of example text
• 28:24
  describing a gameplay scene using the example characters
• 28:28
  provided later on the book, that being Kara Morley and her ally
• 28:32
  Nasir. Kind of fun.
• 28:33
  You can sort of see how these characters were built in the
• 28:36
  character Traitor, and through the example text you see more
• 28:40
  snippets of this unfold. It's kind of fun.
• 28:42
  It's like reading kind of like a story in the text.
• 28:44
  I I I missed? Yeah, I I noticed that the seer
• 28:48
  was the other repeated character and I was like, when did he show
• 28:50
  up? Completely missed.
• 28:54
  They describe yeah, they describe him early on in the
• 28:57
  character creation where it's it's yeah.
• 28:59
  They go into the the character Kara, but Kara's like out of
• 29:04
  game player. Claire's friend plays Nasir and
• 29:08
  he's. AI guess I missed that.
• 29:10
  Yeah, I think he's like a diplomat spy character where
• 29:14
  Cara's like the assassin heir to House Morley.
• 29:18
  Yeah, a side note the the range of potential characters in this
• 29:22
  game is. Oh, it's insane.
• 29:24
  Good shit. It's it's one of the few games
• 29:27
  where you know, you know, a game will will be like, you don't
• 29:29
  have to play a combat character at all.
• 29:32
  And then the game doesn't actually hold up to that
• 29:34
  promise. Yeah, no, this game holds up to
• 29:38
  that promise. Yeah, no, you can absolutely
• 29:41
  play fucking talk, MC guy. You could play, you could find
• 29:46
  the shit farmer and live and have a perfectly good game.
• 29:49
  You can basically play diplomat talkie guy and you have your own
• 29:53
  combat system for your diplomat talkie time.
• 29:59
  And you can do it arguably at the same time as people who are
• 30:02
  straight up throwing hands, and it wouldn't feel out of touch.
• 30:07
  It wouldn't feel, like, weird. Pretty seamless, actually.
• 30:09
  Pretty seamless. Yeah.
• 30:11
  Like impressively, after chapter 2 we have sorry, after chapter
• 30:16
  one we have chapter 2, the known universe.
• 30:20
  So for the sake of time, we're going to be skipping Chapter 2
• 30:26
  completely. It's the Dune universe.
• 30:29
  It's it is a nearly 100 page long lore primer describing the
• 30:36
  setting, factions, great houses, use of the spacers Guild, Chome
• 30:41
  as a concept, technology levels, and the reasons for the ban on
• 30:44
  HI and the multiple faith systems of known universe.
• 30:49
  It's all super interesting shit and and I would 100% recommend
• 30:52
  checking it out. There's plenty of stuff to to
• 30:55
  just be like oh I didn't know that.
• 30:57
  That's really cool. Even like even me as a wiki
• 31:00
  diver was like oh that's pretty neat, I didn't know that.
• 31:02
  Yeah, I mean in terms of how thorough Modifius games in
• 31:05
  general is about their lore shit.
• 31:08
  Very. The answer is very extremely.
• 31:12
  Pretty much everything they publish as far as I've heard is
• 31:15
  like if it's a license game. They have gone deep on the lore
• 31:20
  and the license like they are. It's kind of their thing to make
• 31:27
  a license game that is very thorough to the setting of the
• 31:32
  said license. And in fact, using Dune as an
• 31:36
  example here, this game kind of doesn't work unless you know the
• 31:43
  setting. Like some of the rules literally
• 31:49
  call because the game is so fiction for a pretty much almost
• 31:55
  fiction only in its mechanical focuses.
• 31:58
  Like, it's so fiction first that you need to understand how the
• 32:03
  lore of the various elements of the world interact to understand
• 32:09
  what the fictional implication will do for the mechanical
• 32:12
  implication. So like the fact that the
• 32:15
  Holtzman Shields in the Dune universe block all bullets.
• 32:19
  The game assumes you know that and like part of the combat
• 32:24
  system works based on knowing that Yes to.
• 32:29
  To the point that it's kind of difficult to get a hold of guns.
• 32:33
  And there's several situations where you'd be like, well,
• 32:35
  wouldn't a gun just work? And then you have to go, well,
• 32:37
  no, they have Shields. No, 'cause Shields.
• 32:39
  And yeah, So like the game is, is mechanically kind of kind of
• 32:45
  like Blades in the Dark. The game is heavily tied between
• 32:49
  the mechanics and the setting, and you cannot really decouple
• 32:52
  them very easily, which some people might not like, some
• 32:57
  people might like, you know, mileage may vary on that one,
• 32:59
  but that's how it works. I, I feel like if you're, yeah,
• 33:05
  I mean, some people definitely might not like it, but I feel
• 33:07
  like if you're reading this book, you're not reading it
• 33:09
  randomly, you're reading it because you really like Dune and
• 33:11
  you found out there's an RPG, so it's.
• 33:13
  I think that's what they assume most of the time for sure.
• 33:16
  That or your DMS press ganging you into playing it because it's
• 33:18
  the only game he's going to run and you're so desperate for
• 33:21
  tabletop games that should play anything.
• 33:23
  That does happen. That does happen.
• 33:25
  Hi. Hello.
• 33:26
  It's me. I'm Ned G I'm making my players
• 33:29
  learn Lancer. Hell yeah.
• 33:31
  Yep, that's yeah. I know I said we can't get
• 33:35
  distracted, but I do have to bring up because I think it's
• 33:37
  really funny I the fact that I offered, I offered my players we
• 33:41
  could do Lancer or monster hearts and they chose Lancer
• 33:49
  because they didn't want, they didn't want monster hearts to
• 33:51
  get weird. But we were on an extended break
• 33:54
  from Lancer and I was like, well, I'm running Monster Hearts
• 33:56
  and now everybody, every one of my players at one point other
• 34:00
  has been like, so when are we going back to Monster Hearts?
• 34:03
  Oh my God. You mother fuckers, all of you.
• 34:08
  That's pretty funny, actually. Every.
• 34:10
  Time. Every fucking time.
• 34:12
  Yeah, yeah. Lord, but yeah, Annie Husson
• 34:18
  Chapter 3 House Creation. This is where we get into the
• 34:21
  fun stuff. The house creation system is,
• 34:25
  is, I think, really elegantly done because it provides you a
• 34:31
  good sort of lore. Primer is not the word a, a a
• 34:37
  step through the door of what you're going to expect from the
• 34:40
  game. It's not a situation kind of
• 34:42
  like Blades where you know you're making guys, you're
• 34:46
  making it in Blades case, you're making gangsters.
• 34:49
  But there are a bunch of different types of organized
• 34:52
  crime that you can do. And in a game like D&D, right?
• 34:56
  You build your your characters, you build your adventures, and
• 34:59
  you can get a general like Loridoc from your GM.
• 35:04
  Net will inform you about what the general vibe of the game
• 35:06
  will be, but you don't really know 100%.
• 35:10
  You know, I so I, I want to just say a quick thing on the House
• 35:14
  system, because I said before I was like, I was a little
• 35:17
  skeptical of the house thing, right?
• 35:20
  I thought the house creation was going to be every single player
• 35:25
  makes their own, how their own like, minor house.
• 35:29
  And I was like, that's going to make the game really messy.
• 35:33
  How are you going to have a campaign where every player is
• 35:36
  just gunning for each other at all times?
• 35:38
  You know what I mean? Like, 'cause if they all serve a
• 35:41
  separate house, they're going to kind of be at each other, at
• 35:44
  each other's throats all like all the time, no matter what.
• 35:48
  It would be very difficult to run the game with that.
• 35:50
  Yeah, but that's not actually what it is.
• 35:53
  It's the Blade's gang sheet is what it is.
• 35:55
  Yes. And once I realized that, I was
• 35:58
  like, oh, I went from being quite against this to this is
• 36:02
  fucking hype, actually. Yeah.
• 36:04
  So big fan, Big fan of the house situation, the house creation.
• 36:09
  To finish the point, because you as players are designing your
• 36:13
  house, you are informing the GM of what kind of missions, what
• 36:16
  kind of you want to go on. Yeah, not the other way around.
• 36:20
  And to that end, I like it a lot and.
• 36:23
  You. Further.
• 36:24
  Clarify what kind of game you want to play by, what kind of
• 36:30
  like your house dictates kind of the broad net.
• 36:34
  And then the characters you create dictate the very specific
• 36:38
  moment by moment shit that you're going to want to be
• 36:39
  doing. You know, because if you have a
• 36:44
  game where one player makes a trooper, two players make a
• 36:48
  sword master, and then one player makes like a Mentat
• 36:51
  assassin, you're going to look at that group and be like, these
• 36:54
  motherfuckers want to kill people you.
• 36:56
  Know what I mean? You're for violence.
• 36:58
  They're. For some violence.
• 36:59
  Whereas if you have like 2 diplomats and a Benny Jesserin
• 37:02
  and a Souk Dr., you're going to be like all right, we're going
• 37:05
  to be doing some conniving shit. We're.
• 37:07
  Going to be Game of Thrones. We out here straight machinating
• 37:10
  in this bitch. We're.
• 37:11
  Machinating like crazy. So yeah, it's a combination of
• 37:16
  the house driving that direction and then the characters further
• 37:18
  driving. It's like the house dictates the
• 37:20
  campaign arc and then the characters will dictate like the
• 37:23
  adventure or session by session arcs.
• 37:26
  Yes. It it provides an extremely
• 37:28
  tailored experience which. I like a lot.
• 37:30
  Of course this is already true of every RPG to a point.
• 37:34
  It's just that some games it's way more important than others,
• 37:38
  right? Like you could make the argument
• 37:40
  that in D&D, if you have two paladins and a cleric in your
• 37:43
  group, then like, yeah, they probably want to fight like
• 37:46
  demons and undead and shit. So like, it's true to every
• 37:50
  game, but in a game like this, it's especially true.
• 37:55
  Yeah, you know, it's. Really hammers at home.
• 37:57
  Fabulous. Kind of like that too, actually.
• 37:59
  It is, yeah, 'cause if you have two merchants and an O rater,
• 38:02
  you're like, OK, so. Or if you or if you have an
• 38:07
  arcanist, it immediately changes the vibe.
• 38:10
  Or if you have no magicky guys, that's going to change the, you
• 38:13
  know, like, but yeah, Dune, Dune, it's like, it's arguably
• 38:19
  even further than what Blades does.
• 38:22
  Cause the Blade's gang sheet will tell you the kind of jobs
• 38:27
  that your players want to do. But Blade's characters are
• 38:31
  pretty broad in the kind of situations they can handle,
• 38:36
  right? Whereas this game, if you make
• 38:40
  like a diplomat character, you're going to have a really
• 38:42
  hard time getting into fights. And it's not just because you're
• 38:46
  like your battle stat is low or whatever, or battle skill, it's
• 38:50
  also because your drives and your focus are probably not
• 38:54
  going to reflect. And if you do something in this
• 38:57
  game that is against your character's like beliefs.
• 39:02
  You're penalizing yourself, yes, you're going to have a hard time
• 39:07
  a accomplishing your goal. If you do accomplish the goal,
• 39:10
  you're going to have your characters going to be a little
• 39:14
  unsure of themself after that. It's it's pretty hype.
• 39:20
  I, I don't really know how to put it.
• 39:21
  It's pretty. Yeah, it's quite smart design in
• 39:24
  terms of having a, in terms of designing, designing a tone into
• 39:31
  the character creation. Yes, something else that that's
• 39:35
  kind of fun is it It does provide a a sort of mechanical
• 39:38
  boon in so far as depending on what your house's major and
• 39:43
  minor exports are, you can actually gain benefits on rolls
• 39:47
  and checks, as well as providing the GM with threat, which is
• 39:51
  sort of a ammo that allows them to alter the game in interesting
• 39:55
  ways. All of the Dark Side points
• 39:57
  slash Ultima points systems from Star Wars and Fabulot,
• 40:00
  respectively. Or the thing it reminded me the
• 40:03
  most of was the fat was the Daggerheart fear dice.
• 40:07
  Yes, the fear dice would probably be the best version of
• 40:09
  that, yeah. Yeah, 'cause you have your
• 40:11
  momentum, which is like player side currency, and your threat,
• 40:14
  which is like GM side currency, and they bounce back and forth
• 40:17
  constantly. You can also give yourself
• 40:21
  traits based on your house too, which is a big deal for a lot of
• 40:27
  reasons. It is, yeah.
• 40:29
  We'll we'll get into traits later because there's, there's a
• 40:32
  lot to talk about. They have a lot of things they
• 40:34
  can potentially do. Now starting off with your
• 40:39
  house, you begin with the size and strength of the house in
• 40:43
  question. To do that you have 4 categories
• 40:47
  of house type that you can begin with.
• 40:49
  Those are nation house, minor house, major house, and great
• 40:54
  house. They're pretty much what they
• 40:59
  say on the tin. As a nation house, you have just
• 41:03
  established yourself in the in the houses of the lands Rad.
• 41:06
  You don't have any enemies, but you also don't have any allies.
• 41:09
  You're kind of fighting to get by.
• 41:10
  You don't even have a primary export.
• 41:13
  You just have something that you can do.
• 41:15
  And of course, if it's not something you own a monopoly on,
• 41:18
  it's something that someone could easily take from you.
• 41:22
  So a lot of what you're going to be doing for nation houses is is
• 41:24
  just fighting for any level of notoriety you can get,
• 41:29
  consequences sort of be damned. After that, you have the miner
• 41:33
  house where you you've been established as a house for a
• 41:36
  while. You have a major export.
• 41:38
  You have a singular monopoly on on something that needs to be
• 41:41
  traded or sold or a service that needs to be conveyed in the
• 41:44
  Landsrad. And you've probably made a
• 41:48
  couple allies, a couple enemies at this point.
• 41:50
  And you're in a a bit of attention, a tense time where
• 41:55
  all of you, all of the minor houses, all of these vassal
• 41:58
  states want to become a major house and you're going to have
• 42:01
  to climb over people to get there.
• 42:04
  I just this is a dumb goof I'm fully admitting right now but I
• 42:08
  just had the thought of making a house that's called house dosa
• 42:13
  and your main export is basa mod is basti rice.
• 42:23
  I also don't get that goof. Dosa is an is an Indian style.
• 42:29
  It's kind of like a crepe and basti rice if you eat it, or
• 42:33
  bassamati rice. Sorry, Basmati rice, that's
• 42:35
  what's called basmati rice, is the rice that you always get
• 42:38
  with Curry. Yes, I I mean I I feel like
• 42:44
  worth mentioning and something that a lot of people didn't know
• 42:46
  I didn't know is the main House of Dune A tradies?
• 42:50
  Your primary export is fucking rice.
• 42:53
  Yes, that. That's what made me think of the
• 42:55
  joke of making house dosa with the bassamati rice.
• 42:59
  That's fucking hilarious. They're like, oh, yes, they've
• 43:02
  got this powerful army and like the the grandfathers were were
• 43:05
  bull fighters. What do they actually do,
• 43:08
  though? How did they actually make
• 43:09
  money? Oh, rice.
• 43:10
  Yeah, they just sold, say they just sold stable foods that you
• 43:13
  can grow anywhere. Rice Well, you know what's crazy
• 43:15
  though about it? Like, that's one of those things
• 43:19
  that really sets Dune apart as a, as a a truly more hard sci-fi
• 43:25
  setting where the idea that a major house, the thing that
• 43:32
  makes them money is an incredibly mundane but very
• 43:35
  staple product is very realistic to how it would probably happen
• 43:40
  if humanity expanded into space, right?
• 43:43
  You would just take, you know, you would just take the culture
• 43:47
  of your country and go to the planet and bring that culture.
• 43:51
  And like, what are we known for? We're known for this.
• 43:54
  So we do that, you know, like it's very realistic in a very,
• 43:58
  in a funny way. No, yeah, it is.
• 44:00
  It it, it grounds things in a really interesting way, because
• 44:03
  underneath all of the crazy bullshit and magic drugs made of
• 44:08
  fucking worm poop, you're like, Oh no, wait, the actual empire
• 44:13
  is held up by a fucking stock market.
• 44:16
  Yeah, I mean, like, let's be, let's be real here.
• 44:19
  If humanity goes out into space and we go to Planet Mexico, you
• 44:23
  think we're not getting tacos at Planet Mexico?
• 44:26
  You know what I mean? Like.
• 44:28
  Planet America or you make a trip over to Planet Mexico,
• 44:31
  'cause that's where you get the bomb has tacos and you get all
• 44:33
  our tortillas from over there. Like, you know what I mean?
• 44:35
  Like that's exactly how it would go down.
• 44:38
  What would what would planet America even sell?
• 44:40
  What is this primary fucking export?
• 44:42
  Reality TV and guns. I mean, if we're talking the
• 44:45
  whole country, the actual answer, yeah, cultural export
• 44:48
  would be the actual answer. Yeah, it'd just be reality TV
• 44:52
  and honest 45ACP. Well, it'd be like, you know,
• 44:56
  reality TV and music and, you know, fucking art and, you know,
• 45:00
  that kind of shit. That's music, and movies in
• 45:05
  particular is like a big cultural export of America.
• 45:10
  It would be well, you know, at that point you'd have you to be
• 45:12
  sort of great house status and you'd have, you know, two or
• 45:15
  three primary exports and like 4 or 5 secondary exports.
• 45:19
  I mean, I guess a wheat would probably also be on our list.
• 45:23
  We I I think you're really downplaying the amount of arms
• 45:26
  manufacture we have here in the US.
• 45:28
  I, I I don't know how true that still is.
• 45:30
  So like, maybe, yeah, I don't know.
• 45:32
  We still, I mean we still got Lockheed and Martin there, true,
• 45:35
  true. And Raytheon and DARPA, you
• 45:38
  know, we got, we got a lot. You got me there.
• 45:42
  I just made myself mad. I'm going to move on after a
• 45:47
  minor house. You have a major house.
• 45:49
  At this point you are starting to play with the superpowers of
• 45:52
  the lands. Rad.
• 45:53
  You are big man on campus. Not biggest man on campus, but
• 45:57
  big man on campus. House of Tradies is a major
• 46:00
  house, not necessarily one of the great houses.
• 46:03
  The thing that really establishes those are are the
• 46:07
  people who have just genuine strangleholds over a crazy
• 46:10
  levels of market like the Harkonnen's with spice.
• 46:13
  Yes, House of Tradies is a major house, main export being rice.
• 46:18
  They have military exports and and a couple other cultural
• 46:21
  things. And then finally you have the
• 46:25
  great house. Any games where you're playing
• 46:28
  as a great house or you know you're making, you are the mover
• 46:32
  and shaker. You are the the faction that is
• 46:35
  actively gunning for the Emperor's seat.
• 46:38
  And with that, there are enemies around every fucking.
• 46:42
  So the the scale that you're going to be dealing with will
• 46:45
  just be insane. Based on what we've read, it
• 46:49
  feels like the game wants you to start at the at least as a minor
• 46:52
  house and work your way up. If you really want to tell low,
• 46:57
  low, low level stories, start as a nation house.
• 47:02
  But it that doesn't seem to be the vibe just because of how
• 47:06
  little you get from it and and. Yeah, I mean nascent house.
• 47:12
  I think if anything, the intention of starting with a
• 47:15
  nascent house is maybe if you just want to try, try and get a
• 47:20
  little comfortable at the early level.
• 47:22
  So you start as a nascent house because you don't have any
• 47:25
  enemies actively coming after you.
• 47:27
  Do you have a little more like wiggle room, you know?
• 47:32
  Yeah, yeah, something like that. I could also maybe see it as
• 47:35
  like an interlude, right? Like or or like a prelude.
• 47:38
  You know, just. Like a a mission where you start
• 47:40
  as the nation house and then introductory chapters.
• 47:43
  Yeah, and then after a session or two you just automatically
• 47:46
  level up into a minor house. One thing I did forget to
• 47:50
  mention is that each house or each level of house comes with a
• 47:56
  level of or or with a domain, which again is your major export
• 48:00
  and a level of threat that you gain per character.
• 48:04
  With a nation house, you start at 0 starting threat per
• 48:07
  character and have one secondary domain.
• 48:09
  A secondary domain compared to a primary domain is something that
• 48:13
  you have control over, but not total control over.
• 48:16
  It is something that someone else has a level of stake in the
• 48:20
  same market on and they can with enough machinatin push you out
• 48:25
  of that market. So yes, again with the Nathan.
• 48:29
  With enough macadamia. With enough macadamia I keep
• 48:32
  almost saying macadamia which is not the right word, but
• 48:34
  macadamia no. As a nation house you have 0
• 48:38
  starting threat nascent I've heard nationed my whole life.
• 48:43
  That's not a word nascent. With a nascent house, you have 0
• 48:49
  starting threat per character and one secondary domain.
• 48:52
  At minor you have one threat per character and two domains, one
• 48:55
  primary, 1 secondary. At major you have two starting
• 48:59
  threat per player, 3 domains, one primary, 2 secondary, and at
• 49:02
  a great you have three threat per starting, three starting
• 49:06
  threat per player, and five domains, 2 primary, 5 secondary.
• 49:12
  After your house type, you have the domains themselves.
• 49:15
  I just explained what those are. Don't really have to do that
• 49:17
  again. Of the domains listed in the
• 49:20
  game, there are 9 domains with five areas of expertise or
• 49:24
  domain. Each one of the domains has one
• 49:26
  of these expertise and they are as follows.
• 49:29
  You have artistic, espionage, farming, industrial and Lee,
• 49:35
  military, political, religion and science.
• 49:41
  You still with me to give you an example of what I'm talking
• 49:48
  about when I say there are areas of expertise.
• 49:52
  Well, to to explain what that what that is in the 1st place,
• 49:55
  the areas of expertise are going to be the actual thing that your
• 50:00
  house produces, right? An artistic house doesn't just
• 50:03
  create all art. If you will focus on produce and
• 50:07
  art, right? You are actually creating art.
• 50:10
  Plays, poems, novels, comedy sketches, musical pieces.
• 50:16
  If your main output is workers under the artistic domain,
• 50:23
  you're producing actors, stage crew, musicians, speakers,
• 50:27
  travelling companies, stuff like that.
• 50:31
  And virtually, if you were part of Canley, which is Canley is
• 50:34
  sort of the phrase, it is the the code of conduct for
• 50:38
  assassination in Dune. And it is like a contract that
• 50:41
  both sides basically have to sign for fair play.
• 50:45
  Your produce for Canley would be poisons, not just the ones to
• 50:49
  kill people, but ones to, you know, knock people unconscious
• 50:53
  or disable them. Your workers would be assassins,
• 50:57
  thugs, infiltration specialists. And your machinery in this case
• 51:02
  would be actual weapons for assassination.
• 51:05
  You know, the hunter seeker drones and mines and bombs and
• 51:10
  all types of poisoned weaponry, stuff like that.
• 51:17
  Like we were saying before, it provides an extremely tailored
• 51:20
  experience that allows you to focus in on exactly what you
• 51:24
  want the conflicts of your setting to be on.
• 51:27
  Like we were saying before, if you have a secondary, A
• 51:32
  secondary domain with military right and your faction creates
• 51:38
  melee weapons on mass, or tanks, or shield technology, artillery
• 51:43
  weaponry, well there could be another house in the general
• 51:47
  area in the game that also produces military tech.
• 51:52
  And now you 2 are fighting for dominance in an incredibly
• 51:55
  saturated market to see who gets to be the guy on top and you can
• 51:58
  spawn entire adventures off of that itself.
• 52:05
  Any thoughts? No, I mean this is mostly like
• 52:10
  lore said. I, I mean, the, the thing about
• 52:14
  the thing about the house stuff is that they, it comes across as
• 52:24
  it comes across at when you're first reading through, you're
• 52:26
  like, this seems like all like fictional only stuff.
• 52:29
  Can I just skip over the house thing?
• 52:30
  But it does have mechanical implications.
• 52:33
  So you do have to go through it. The mechanical implications just
• 52:36
  might not be immediately clear from the outset.
• 52:40
  Yes they are. They are far more back end than
• 52:42
  they are front end to be fair. Fair enough.
• 52:47
  But other than that, like, no, I mean, yeah, pick a house, figure
• 52:50
  out your domain, what's your export, what's your thing,
• 52:53
  figure out your threats, what size, blah, blah, blah, Yeah.
• 52:57
  Following domains you have straightforward it is.
• 52:59
  Yeah. Following domains, you have
• 53:01
  general information on the ecology and civilization of your
• 53:05
  planet, as well as some house specific traits.
• 53:09
  This is a primary game mechanic, we'll come back to that later.
• 53:11
  That being houses and house specific traits.
• 53:14
  The traits are game mechanic, the defining your planet that is
• 53:17
  actually flavour fluff stuff. No, yeah, that that's all
• 53:19
  flavour and fluff. You know, it doesn't really
• 53:21
  matter what the weather on your planet is like or what you know
• 53:25
  the the flag of your planet is like.
• 53:27
  Oh, that is something that you guys can design your banner and
• 53:29
  coat of arms, which is kind of fun.
• 53:33
  Yes, the true mechanics come in with the house traits, which
• 53:35
  again are are they are essentially how deep do you want
• 53:42
  to get in the weeds. Right now, I mean they're traits
• 53:44
  are are bonuses that you get in scenes and the house traits are
• 53:50
  essentially group wide bonuses. So whatever trait your house
• 53:54
  might have is going to apply to every player.
• 53:57
  Yes, and they they basically act as modifiers to any given role
• 54:01
  or scenario that can make things.
• 54:03
  They can, they can be a bonus, like if your house has, you
• 54:07
  know. Excuse me, what's the exam?
• 54:17
  Oh, secretive. That's right.
• 54:18
  I was trying to find the example.
• 54:19
  Sorry, if your house has the secretive trait, then when any
• 54:25
  of the players try and sneak around to do some assassination
• 54:30
  shit, then the secretive trait could potentially give them a
• 54:32
  bonus to their roles. Or if they're trying to wheel
• 54:35
  and deal and they're trying to be deceptive and withhold
• 54:39
  information, they could potentially have a bonus from
• 54:41
  that secretive trait because their house is known to be
• 54:43
  secretive. Now granted, it can also work
• 54:45
  against you because if your house is known to be secretive
• 54:48
  then everyone might immediately assume that you're up to some
• 54:51
  shit. So you know it's it can go both
• 54:54
  ways. I think it hit the nail on the
• 54:59
  head that that is also be the most interesting part is that it
• 55:01
  does go both ways and it and. It goes both ways and it applies
• 55:05
  to every character, every every player character and supporting
• 55:09
  characters. Well, against that too.
• 55:11
  That's arguably the most interesting mechanic for me for
• 55:14
  the game. Yeah, I know.
• 55:16
  I love that. Now at this point, house
• 55:19
  creation is effectively done as far as players are concerned.
• 55:23
  Once you've created your your coat of arms and all that shit,
• 55:26
  there's not much else you have to do, but there is some stuff
• 55:29
  that you should keep waiting on. Firstly is a list of roles that
• 55:34
  are typically seen within the infrastructure of a house's
• 55:37
  employee registry. Why did I say it's a word?
• 55:41
  The roles that you will see within the house.
• 55:43
  The at the highest level of things, you know who are the the
• 55:47
  bosses. The book provides small snippets
• 55:50
  of what each role is and how they perform within the
• 55:53
  hierarchy of things in the house.
• 55:55
  They also give you a list of your rights in that role as well
• 56:00
  of your responsibilities in that role.
• 56:04
  The players themselves may make up some of the roles in this
• 56:07
  house, but it's not always a guarantee.
• 56:10
  For example, there could be entire parties where no
• 56:13
  particular player is the ruler or concert or heir of the house,
• 56:17
  nor do they have the ability to reach that position, and that's
• 56:20
  perfectly fine. The list is as follows.
• 56:25
  Ruler, consort, advisor, chief physician, counselor, scholar,
• 56:30
  spy, master, sword master, treasurer, and war master.
• 56:35
  Keep in mind that depending on the size of the house, those
• 56:38
  roles could be the only option or they could be something that
• 56:43
  you're trying to achieve. If you're playing as a nascent
• 56:46
  house, you just might not have the staff to have multiple
• 56:50
  doctors, You just are the chief physician.
• 56:53
  But if you're. I mean, the important thing is,
• 56:55
  even if you are a big house, though, the game makes a very
• 56:59
  explicit point that the player characters are, even if they're
• 57:04
  not the sword master, you might be the sword master's main guy,
• 57:10
  right? Like the player, characters are
• 57:12
  important. They are not relevant to.
• 57:14
  The house, you are relevant agents, you are known agents,
• 57:17
  you are skilled, all that shit you know.
• 57:20
  So sure, you're not the Sword Master, but you're the Sword
• 57:23
  master's right hand guy who he sends on missions all the time.
• 57:26
  Yes, exactly. And you might not be the spy
• 57:29
  master, but you are a high ranked spy that you're very.
• 57:32
  Important. Yeah, you report to the spy
• 57:34
  master all the time. Exactly.
• 57:38
  The final section in Chapter 3 is the enemy section.
• 57:41
  Now, this is kind of relevant for players.
• 57:44
  I mean, it is no, I can't say kind of it is relevant players
• 57:47
  because the players and the GM create your enemies together.
• 57:53
  The game mentioned specifically that you have two tables that
• 57:58
  allow you to roll on the level of hatred that any enemy house
• 58:03
  you have As for you. And then there's another table
• 58:07
  that describes the reason for why they hate you.
• 58:09
  Little fun fact on a 19 or 20 the reason is just no reason.
• 58:13
  You just have crashed out haters for the they.
• 58:16
  Just fucking hate your ass. They just hate you.
• 58:18
  Yeah, just you are ready to see your downfall.
• 58:21
  In particular. Yeah, they just do nefarious
• 58:24
  deeds against you for the love of the game.
• 58:28
  It's also fun because the game does mention that you are not
• 58:32
  are the the other house is not always the aggressor in this
• 58:35
  instance, and it can be fun to play around with the idea that
• 58:39
  you screwed someone over to get a little higher in the food
• 58:43
  chain and now they're coming for you for it.
• 58:45
  Yeah, the other house is not exclusively the piece of shit.
• 58:48
  You guys are also the piece of shit.
• 58:50
  Yes, you could absolutely be the pieces of shit.
• 58:52
  Everyone the pieces of shit. It's kind of hard to be the good
• 58:56
  guys in Dune. Like even House of Tradies who
• 58:58
  are some of the goodest guys were not that great in the grand
• 59:05
  scheme of a lot of things. The number of enemies that you
• 59:09
  have does change based on the size of your house.
• 59:11
  So at Nascent you have 0 minor, one major, 1 main house minor,
• 59:18
  you have one minor house who's an enemy, Major you have one
• 59:20
  major house who's an enemy, and 1 minor house that serves the
• 59:23
  major house. And at Great House you have
• 59:27
  another great house or two major houses or one faction such as
• 59:32
  the Benny Jesuit or the Imperial Court, and a host of minor
• 59:35
  houses owe allegiance to one of your several enemies at that
• 59:39
  point. After chapter 3 we have chapter
• 59:46
  4. Crazy how math works and
• 59:50
  counting. I know crazy.
• 59:52
  We have the character creation section which is dog thick to
• 59:58
  say the least. It's a big boy when creating
• 1:00:03
  characters in Dune. The game separates them into two
• 1:00:06
  primary categories. You have main characters and
• 1:00:09
  supporting characters. That phrase coming up again.
• 1:00:12
  A main character is just that. You are a primary PC and the
• 1:00:16
  character that will take up most of your personal screen time
• 1:00:19
  over the course of the campaign. They have the most detailed
• 1:00:23
  character sheets and are, generally speaking, tougher and
• 1:00:25
  more complex than a supporting character.
• 1:00:29
  Supporting characters are members of your house's lower
• 1:00:32
  staff. Usually serving is like everyday
• 1:00:35
  soldiers or general subordinates to the organization.
• 1:00:38
  Their character sheets are often simpler in design, and you can
• 1:00:42
  even create them on the spot to accomplish specific tasks by
• 1:00:45
  spending momentum. We'll talk about that.
• 1:00:47
  Later. In fact, you're supposed to do
• 1:00:48
  that. You, yes, you are supposed to do
• 1:00:50
  that. We'll talk more about supporting
• 1:00:53
  characters later, but they themselves are split into two
• 1:00:56
  categories, being notable and minor supporting characters.
• 1:01:00
  Moving on from them though, main character creation follows an
• 1:01:04
  archetypal concept system where you create a broad idea and you
• 1:01:08
  narrow it down by taking specific skills, folk eye
• 1:01:12
  traits, and talents to exemplify what the character is and what
• 1:01:17
  they excel in. The game is for all intents and
• 1:01:20
  purposes A classless system and follows something a little bit
• 1:01:24
  closer to Fantasy Flights. What are they called?
• 1:01:27
  The Fantasy Flight specializations.
• 1:01:31
  I wouldn't even say that it's it's even more loose than that.
• 1:01:34
  It you're, you're ultimately you're setting up a stat line
• 1:01:41
  and then picking Focus's first said stat line and then picking
• 1:01:44
  an archetype to get a talent. Like it's even less class
• 1:01:49
  focused than Star Wars or Fabulous.
• 1:01:52
  That's true. That is very true, you know.
• 1:01:54
  Like your archetype dictate, the archetype selection you make
• 1:01:57
  dictates only a tiny little thing.
• 1:01:59
  It really comes down to that stat layout and your drives and
• 1:02:02
  focuses. So yeah, it is.
• 1:02:07
  It is definitely totally classless system.
• 1:02:10
  Yeah, completely classy to to birds.
• 1:02:16
  When you are creating your character, the game offers you
• 1:02:18
  two options for creation, which we'll go over in a little.
• 1:02:22
  You have planned character creation and creation in play.
• 1:02:27
  The former is more of a standard character creation system.
• 1:02:30
  The creation and play thing, I'm a, I'm a be for real.
• 1:02:34
  For real. I kind of looked at that and I
• 1:02:35
  was like, yeah, but why though? I no OK look I I agree because I
• 1:02:42
  think it muddied up the character creation.
• 1:02:45
  Like the layout of the chapter, it muddies it up really hard.
• 1:02:48
  Maybe if you put it at the back end as like a little optional
• 1:02:51
  thing. I just don't think you need it.
• 1:02:53
  I just don't. Think, I don't think you do
• 1:02:54
  either. I don't going to use that
• 1:02:56
  complex to to yeah. I just don't understand who
• 1:03:00
  would use it. It doesn't make sense to me.
• 1:03:03
  Well, So what it does say is if your players aren't super versed
• 1:03:07
  in the setting, it's good to use because you can just jump in and
• 1:03:11
  start playing and then you can kind of figure out who that
• 1:03:13
  character is with things like context clues.
• 1:03:18
  I don't know, I say just let the players wing it a little bit
• 1:03:21
  anyway and then just let them rework stuff a little bit later
• 1:03:24
  if you want, you know, like. I completely agree.
• 1:03:26
  Yeah, for sure. It's it's definitely one of
• 1:03:31
  those things where I, I would, I think it's just better if the
• 1:03:33
  players flounder a little bit because they.
• 1:03:35
  Flounder a little in character, Yeah.
• 1:03:37
  I mean, I, I don't know, I we're talking, I guess we're really
• 1:03:40
  just getting into like noodly preference things.
• 1:03:42
  I suppose so, yeah. Yeah, I mean, both seem like
• 1:03:46
  valid ways of playing the game, but yeah, preferentially
• 1:03:50
  speaking, I just don't really see a reason to do the second
• 1:03:52
  one. Especially, although at the same
• 1:03:54
  time it is kind of funny because I feel like, like you said,
• 1:03:56
  who's who's playing this game without some sort of passing
• 1:04:00
  interest in the setting, you know what I mean?
• 1:04:04
  Yeah, the the the strong arming must be a a pretty very.
• 1:04:08
  Strong. Yeah, like.
• 1:04:09
  To get someone to just like. Imagine right, even if, even if
• 1:04:13
  we convince Lita to play this game, like sure, she's not
• 1:04:16
  deeply invested in Dune, but she'd she'd be, she knows enough
• 1:04:19
  to like have a concept of a character.
• 1:04:21
  You know what I mean? Like I, I have, I feel like I'd
• 1:04:25
  have a hard time trying to get someone to play it who has
• 1:04:27
  absolutely nothing to go on. I, you know, it's funny you say
• 1:04:32
  that because shout out to Paladin, who had no
• 1:04:34
  understanding nor fucks to give about Dune until I stayed over
• 1:04:38
  in December. And at like 3:00 in the morning,
• 1:04:43
  we were both up and exhausted. And I was like, I'm going to put
• 1:04:46
  on Dune, like Part 2 and just like fall to bed, fall asleep
• 1:04:50
  watching it. And he ended up getting really
• 1:04:52
  immersed in the second movie and stayed up to like 6.
• 1:04:56
  And yeah. I mean here's the thing, I Part
• 1:05:00
  2 is so much better than Part 1 in my opinion.
• 1:05:03
  Here's The funny thing. He's never seen Part 1.
• 1:05:06
  Yeah, I mean, that's honestly I don't even blame him.
• 1:05:10
  Like it really Part 1 is tough one to get through.
• 1:05:14
  It takes like an hour before it gets to the point where 45
• 1:05:18
  minutes before it gets to the point where I'm like actually
• 1:05:20
  giving a shit. Part 1 man, pacing wise is
• 1:05:24
  fucking rough, I ain't even going to lie.
• 1:05:27
  We've talked about the problem. The problem is those two movies
• 1:05:30
  aren't actually 2 separate movies, it's one long movie.
• 1:05:33
  It is one long movie. Yeah, that's the problem.
• 1:05:35
  It's two parts of 1 long movie because there exists somewhere a
• 1:05:39
  nine hour cut of Dune Part 1 and no one.
• 1:05:44
  I know you're not listening, but if De Nevo knew, if you're
• 1:05:46
  listening, I'll watch that movie.
• 1:05:48
  I'll pay money. I will pay 3 movie tickets to
• 1:05:52
  watch that movie. I.
• 1:05:54
  Could you imagine an all day dune I dog?
• 1:05:59
  Well, it's the same thing as the people who who do the the movie
• 1:06:01
  theater events where it's the entire Lord of the Rings
• 1:06:03
  extended trilogy. Well, but those weren't in a day
• 1:06:06
  though. Those were over 3 days.
• 1:06:09
  True, they are over three. I don't know.
• 1:06:11
  I'd still do it in a day. Give me 9 hours, let me take
• 1:06:13
  breaks. I was going to say if you give
• 1:06:15
  me breaks I'll do it, but God damn dude.
• 1:06:17
  No, I I need breaks. You know, you can't do one after
• 1:06:19
  the other. Like you got to have got every
• 1:06:21
  two hours or something. Yeah, like every every three
• 1:06:24
  hours. Give it like an hour break.
• 1:06:26
  It'd be a 12 hour experience. It's going to be all day, baby.
• 1:06:29
  But I would be dude, I'd pay so much money for that.
• 1:06:32
  It's got to be a fucking it's going to be like one of those
• 1:06:35
  five course meals at a crazy expensive restaurant where they,
• 1:06:38
  like, curate the entire event for you.
• 1:06:40
  They make you fucking Dune Dune themed drinks and shit.
• 1:06:44
  They make you spice melange food and crap.
• 1:06:46
  Oh. My God it'd be so sick bro.
• 1:06:48
  Yeah, wait, now I'm liking this the more I'm talking about it.
• 1:06:52
  Wait a minute, it. Could be sick it could be hype
• 1:06:57
  it. Could be kind of fired.
• 1:07:00
  Yeah, Anyway, where was I? I lost my pay.
• 1:07:04
  No. All right.
• 1:07:05
  Like planned creation, Your standard way of creating a a
• 1:07:10
  character. Yeah, you.
• 1:07:12
  Here's the thing here we don't even really.
• 1:07:14
  There's nothing to even say about the in in the in the the
• 1:07:17
  in play character creation. It's literally just you do half
• 1:07:21
  of the regular character creation and then just fill in
• 1:07:23
  your stats later. That's what the other one is.
• 1:07:25
  Less than half like almost nothing.
• 1:07:27
  Almost nothing. Yeah.
• 1:07:28
  Yeah. Less than that's true.
• 1:07:28
  Less than half, yeah. Almost.
• 1:07:30
  You get your stats, your drives and two traits and then you just
• 1:07:36
  run with it, which is like nothing.
• 1:07:39
  Do you even establish drives? I don't even think you'd
• 1:07:41
  establish. You do.
• 1:07:42
  No, no you don't. You don't.
• 1:07:43
  Establish statements, right? I think no, no, you're right,
• 1:07:48
  it's only skills. It's it's you get 2 skills and
• 1:07:50
  two traits. That's it.
• 1:07:51
  Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's like nothing.
• 1:07:54
  It's like nothing, Yeah. Anyway, anyway, yeah, we can
• 1:07:58
  skip that part a little bit. Yeah.
• 1:08:00
  Character creation in Dune begins with broadly
• 1:08:02
  understanding traits. That word coming up again.
• 1:08:07
  In this context, you get 2 separate traits, 1 describing in
• 1:08:12
  either a single word or a short phrase, your character's role
• 1:08:16
  and the house that they serve. So for example, game provides
• 1:08:20
  your first trait being House of Tradies, Master of Assassins.
• 1:08:25
  You are the Master of Assassins for House of Tradies.
• 1:08:27
  That is 1 trait. Your second trait should detail
• 1:08:32
  how you as a character are viewed by others and the
• 1:08:35
  reputation that that they hold or that you hold.
• 1:08:37
  Sorry. So your second trait could be
• 1:08:40
  something like callous and ruthless as described in the
• 1:08:42
  book. These traits make up the
• 1:08:44
  backbone of your character and it is these traits that should
• 1:08:48
  inform pretty much every other decision going forward
• 1:08:51
  narratively as a decide. Like I said before, I do kind of
• 1:08:56
  wish this chapter was organized a little bit differently.
• 1:08:59
  I feel like, like we just said, because character creation in
• 1:09:02
  play is kind of wonky, they front load this section with
• 1:09:06
  some weirdness and then go back over it in the character
• 1:09:10
  creation at play like planned character creation section.
• 1:09:13
  So I'm going to bring up those things now as I just did and
• 1:09:16
  then skip over them later. You cool with that?
• 1:09:20
  Cool. No, fuck you.
• 1:09:23
  Yeah, after this you have to understand the purpose of skills
• 1:09:28
  and foci that you as a player get to assign values.
• 1:09:32
  What do I mean? Like this?
• 1:09:34
  Yoon is AD 20 dice pool system that measures successes by
• 1:09:37
  rolling at least 2D20 and attempting to roll lower than a
• 1:09:41
  number reached by adding together the total number of
• 1:09:44
  your skill value and your drive value.
• 1:09:48
  Yeah, it's a, it's a slightly funny thing.
• 1:09:49
  So they call it a 2D20 system because baseline you roll 2 D
• 1:09:53
  20s, it's actually a dice pool of D 20s.
• 1:09:56
  It's just that without spending resources, you start always at
• 1:10:00
  2D20. So like, but they, they refer to
• 1:10:05
  it as they, they, the Modifius games calls it their 2D20
• 1:10:09
  system. Yes.
• 1:10:11
  But yeah, it is a dice pool thing.
• 1:10:13
  Ultimately it's a dice pool like a shadow run or a blades or
• 1:10:17
  fucking World of Darkness. You know, same kind of idea.
• 1:10:22
  It is more, it is more interesting than those examples
• 1:10:24
  though. Well, maybe not more interesting
• 1:10:26
  than Blades actually, I liked it, Blades dice pool system.
• 1:10:28
  But you know what I'm saying? There is more to it than just a
• 1:10:30
  dice pool. Hilariously it is actually
• 1:10:32
  closer to the World of Darkness system.
• 1:10:35
  Cause with World of Darkness you use your at least in vampire
• 1:10:38
  right? Like you take your skills and
• 1:10:39
  then you mix them with the like the the dots you have in that
• 1:10:42
  skill and then the dots you have in a discipline to get your
• 1:10:46
  total number of dice. It's.
• 1:10:47
  Closer, but they do some more interesting like between the the
• 1:10:53
  momentum and the complications and stuff like that.
• 1:10:57
  If the modifier stuff makes it more interesting.
• 1:10:59
  True. That's fair.
• 1:11:02
  Every player has a the same list of five skills that vary in
• 1:11:06
  assignable values ranging 4 to 8.
• 1:11:09
  It's higher values equating to higher proficiency, as you can
• 1:11:12
  assume. It took me a minute to
• 1:11:15
  understand why it started at 4 minimum.
• 1:11:18
  Yes I was like why is it 4? And I realized it's because
• 1:11:21
  that's the lowest thing you can roll without rolling 2 ones,
• 1:11:24
  which would be critical successes.
• 1:11:26
  Yes. Because the lowest you could do
• 1:11:29
  on 2D20 would be two twos, which would be 4.
• 1:11:31
  And I was like, oh, OK, yeah, that makes sense.
• 1:11:35
  The skills in question are battle, communicate, discipline,
• 1:11:38
  move and understanding. Pretty self-explanatory, don't
• 1:11:42
  think I have to go into those too much.
• 1:11:44
  Did you also have a moment though where you looked at move
• 1:11:47
  and were like move is a skill? Yes.
• 1:11:51
  And it it makes sense when they describe it in conflict.
• 1:11:55
  Yes, yes, in conflict it makes. Sense it, it did give me pause.
• 1:11:59
  There was a moment where I was like, what?
• 1:12:01
  Well, so at first I didn't think about it too much because it was
• 1:12:04
  like I was like, oh, that's like an athletics check.
• 1:12:06
  But no move is is really just your ability to get from one
• 1:12:10
  place to the other. Yeah.
• 1:12:12
  That's really it's, it's not the only thing it does, but that is
• 1:12:16
  like it's it's main core purpose, Yeah.
• 1:12:18
  I mean, it is the only thing it does, but it's, you know, it's
• 1:12:21
  your ability to move somewhere stealthily or aggressively or.
• 1:12:25
  Well, what what I'm saying it's not.
• 1:12:27
  The only thing it does is because this game always leaves
• 1:12:30
  the window open to using unconventional skills in weird
• 1:12:34
  situations. You know what I mean?
• 1:12:36
  Like, like the game says in the conflict section a whole bunch
• 1:12:39
  of times, it's like you're probably going to use battle,
• 1:12:41
  but you could use something else if it makes sense in this
• 1:12:44
  scenario. You know what I mean?
• 1:12:44
  Like that kind of thing, right, right.
• 1:12:47
  So like every, every skill and drive combination has the
• 1:12:51
  potential to shift into weirder scenarios.
• 1:12:55
  But yes, like core rules move is literally how you move.
• 1:13:01
  Just get your ass somewhere and get.
• 1:13:03
  Yeah, get your ass somewhere, yeah.
• 1:13:07
  So the the values that are assigned to your skills are not
• 1:13:11
  picked right. You don't have a 87654 that you
• 1:13:15
  get to freely pick with skills specifically.
• 1:13:19
  Differently for drives, but with skills specifically it runs off
• 1:13:22
  of a point by system. Wait what?
• 1:13:26
  Yes, it's goofy as fuck. I guess I didn't like this
• 1:13:32
  because it's the only thing that makes you do point by stuff.
• 1:13:35
  They talk about it in at first on page 109.
• 1:13:39
  They don't bring this up at any point before that.
• 1:13:42
  The way it works is that you pick your best stat, which is A
• 1:13:47
  rated at a A6, your second best stat is rated at a four, and
• 1:13:52
  then the rest of your stats are rated at 4 each.
• 1:13:55
  So you have 16153 fours. You are then given five points
• 1:14:01
  to allocate as you. See the extra points?
• 1:14:03
  Yes, Yeah, yeah, yeah. And again, knowing that your
• 1:14:07
  skill cannot get any better than 8.
• 1:14:10
  Yes, yes, you cap out at 8:00. I I, I almost wrote that, that
• 1:14:16
  there's a little snippet on that page, one O at one O 9.
• 1:14:18
  And I thought it was the only place where that point by comes
• 1:14:20
  up and I was going to get tilted.
• 1:14:23
  I was wrong. It does show up later on, but I
• 1:14:27
  was like, dog, you got to be fucked up.
• 1:14:29
  Yes, yes, that's right. Yeah, it's not strictly a point
• 1:14:32
  by 'cause you do have that initial array, but it's like you
• 1:14:35
  do the array set up and then you have free Floating Points after.
• 1:14:39
  Yeah. Yeah, I, I did.
• 1:14:42
  I yeah, I forgot about that, but it's not that bad.
• 1:14:46
  No it's not that bad, it's just annoying that drives doesn't do
• 1:14:49
  that. Yes, it ultimately comes to the
• 1:14:52
  same it's. Just an array, yeah, yes.
• 1:14:55
  And the numbers come out to the same thing either way.
• 1:14:59
  Yeah, you get 8 through 4. Yeah.
• 1:15:08
  Why is that like that? I don't know, I was working it
• 1:15:12
  out today. It comes out to the same numbers
• 1:15:13
  no matter what, so why not just make 2 arrays?
• 1:15:19
  Maybe because you can distribute your skills a little more evenly
• 1:15:22
  with those five leftover points. Maybe I mean so assuming you
• 1:15:29
  take two points for the six to make it an 8 and you would have.
• 1:15:34
  Well, you could do one point for the six, for example.
• 1:15:37
  Oh, true. Yeah.
• 1:15:38
  So I guess you could have, you know, you wouldn't go up to 8,
• 1:15:41
  but one of your skills you'd have two fives, I guess.
• 1:15:44
  Yeah, you could have like a slightly more even spread.
• 1:15:48
  Yeah, I I suppose. I don't know if that Yeah, I is
• 1:15:57
  that is that a little bit more wiggle room worth it?
• 1:16:01
  Yeah, I don't know. We'd have to play it to see.
• 1:16:05
  Yeah, that doesn't. Yeah, that that, that that would
• 1:16:07
  only really add up in context. Yeah, now with your skills,
• 1:16:12
  which are pretty bare, you can actually select focuses which
• 1:16:18
  act kind of like skill triggers in Lancer.
• 1:16:21
  They are a specific trigger able extra ability you have folded
• 1:16:27
  into your skill. That gives you.
• 1:16:30
  It's a phrase attached to the skill that makes the skill
• 1:16:35
  better. It yes, it makes it better, kind
• 1:16:38
  of like proficiency, but it doesn't do what proficiency
• 1:16:40
  does. No, it does not because your
• 1:16:42
  folk eye doesn't actually give you floating modifiers to your
• 1:16:46
  role. Well, OK, it doesn't really give
• 1:16:51
  you a floating modifier. What it does is that it, it's,
• 1:16:56
  it gets a little noodly. So when, when something needs to
• 1:16:59
  be rolled in game, the GM will ask you for a skill check.
• 1:17:03
  They will choose what skill it is.
• 1:17:06
  So let's say in this case you have a skill like they ask you
• 1:17:09
  for a battle test. So you go, OK, well, I'm getting
• 1:17:13
  into a knife fight with somebody.
• 1:17:15
  I'm playing a sword master. I have a focus in knife fighting
• 1:17:19
  GM. Can I use my knife fighting
• 1:17:20
  focus on the skill check? GM says yes.
• 1:17:24
  You could add your knife fighting skill in focus.
• 1:17:27
  So your knife fighting focus in the skill.
• 1:17:30
  What that does is it adds the number that your focus is which
• 1:17:36
  is your skill +2 and adds that to the critical hit range of the
• 1:17:44
  role. So it gives you a higher chance
• 1:17:47
  of rolling a crit. The way the game works is that
• 1:17:49
  if you roll a natural one, not a natural 20.
• 1:17:51
  Yes, I know if you roll a natural one that counts AS2
• 1:17:55
  successes. Yeah, I mean you, you should
• 1:17:58
  point out, yes, you want to the the reason it's a natural, the
• 1:18:01
  reason it's a one is because when you combine your skill and
• 1:18:05
  your drive, you get a target number that you want to roll
• 1:18:07
  below to succeed. Yes, it's a roll under system.
• 1:18:13
  It is roll under system, yeah. And when you have a higher crit
• 1:18:16
  range, the higher chance you have to roll within that crit
• 1:18:19
  range and then anything you roll in that range counts as a
• 1:18:22
  critical hit, which again is 2 successes.
• 1:18:26
  So in the situation where you need 3 successes to succeed, if
• 1:18:31
  I as this sword master roll A1 and A5 because 5 would be within
• 1:18:37
  my crit range after adding my focus, I get 3 successes or I
• 1:18:41
  get 4 successes. Sorry if that doesn't make
• 1:18:45
  sense, I don't know what to tell you.
• 1:18:52
  You get 4 starting foci per character, and at least one
• 1:18:57
  focus must to be assigned assigned to a skill in which you
• 1:19:02
  have the highest value. The final keyword that you need
• 1:19:08
  to know before we get into the real nitty gritty of character
• 1:19:11
  creation are drives. Drives serve as a second series
• 1:19:15
  of five not exactly skills. They are your beliefs in what
• 1:19:20
  you are doing and there are five of them.
• 1:19:23
  Much like there are skills and are also assigned the same
• 1:19:28
  number array of of attributes ranging from 4:00 to 8:00.
• 1:19:34
  The drives are in question. The drives I can't talk today.
• 1:19:37
  The drives in question are as follows.
• 1:19:39
  Duty, faith, justice, power and Truth Rives act like the why to
• 1:19:47
  your skills. How?
• 1:19:50
  Whenever you make any action in Dune, you have to cross
• 1:19:52
  reference your ability to do something with your character's
• 1:19:57
  desire and motivation to do the same thing.
• 1:20:02
  And in this sense, mechanically speaking, what you do is you add
• 1:20:06
  the the number value of your skills.
• 1:20:09
  To the number of value of your drives and that becomes the DC
• 1:20:14
  that you need to roll under to get it success.
• 1:20:20
  Yeah. Yeah, OK.
• 1:20:24
  I mean the drive skill thing, the focus and statements is when
• 1:20:27
  it gets spicier. It does, yes.
• 1:20:31
  To that point, talking about drive statements in any skill or
• 1:20:37
  in and sorry, in any drive in which you have above a six, you
• 1:20:41
  get to assign your top three. Your top three.
• 1:20:43
  You get to assign a drive statement which acts as a 5A5,
• 1:20:50
  which is a short phrase in the form of some sort of tenet or
• 1:20:53
  belief that describes just what your character feels about a
• 1:20:56
  drive. What this means is if your
• 1:21:03
  character's highest drive is power, but their drive statement
• 1:21:09
  is power is something that can't be used ambitiously, which would
• 1:21:16
  be opposite to what you might think about your highest
• 1:21:18
  motivation being power. When you make a check that
• 1:21:24
  agrees with your drive, you get to add 1 momentum to a roll if
• 1:21:30
  it conflicts with your drive. Now you have an interesting
• 1:21:34
  situation. You have to either not use that,
• 1:21:41
  not use that drive in question, because you can choose what
• 1:21:44
  drive you want to roll with. But if you still choose to roll
• 1:21:47
  with it, your character loses that drive statement and they
• 1:21:52
  have to create a new one that reflects their new world view
• 1:21:55
  now that they've compromised on their principle.
• 1:21:59
  And I think that's sick as fuck. I mean you can keep your old one
• 1:22:06
  if you because you reduce the drive and if it doesn't, if it
• 1:22:09
  doesn't right when you recover the crossed out statement, you
• 1:22:14
  can keep it if the reduction in the drive does not bring it
• 1:22:18
  below 6. Right.
• 1:22:21
  Oh, I'm I did for. Can you explain that?
• 1:22:23
  Because I I actually missed that in my notes.
• 1:22:25
  You don't, so you OK? Hold on, hold on, hold on.
• 1:22:32
  I had to reread this one a couple times because I had to
• 1:22:36
  like, make sense of it. So when you fuck now I got to
• 1:22:41
  find where the hell it is. Apologies, friend.
• 1:22:45
  So it's like when you roll, is it complicate?
• 1:22:50
  No, it's not that one. Here we go.
• 1:22:52
  So that's the wrong page too. God damn it.
• 1:22:58
  So it's basically when you roll, so you roll, you pick a skill
• 1:23:05
  which the focus may or not be relevant.
• 1:23:08
  And then when you pick a drive you always want to, you always
• 1:23:11
  have to try and pick a drive where the statement is relevant,
• 1:23:16
  right? And if you don't have a drive
• 1:23:19
  where the statement fits, then you can pick one of your other
• 1:23:21
  ones. But you always have to
• 1:23:22
  prioritise the statement drives. If you're doing an action which
• 1:23:26
  is counter to your drive or counter to your drive statement,
• 1:23:31
  sorry, specifically the statement, then you can go
• 1:23:35
  against it. And then that will limit you in
• 1:23:42
  some other ways, like you don't get access to your determination
• 1:23:45
  and shit. Once you go to recover said
• 1:23:49
  drive, you modify the score of the drive so it is reduced by 1.
• 1:23:53
  So if your drive was at 7, you cross out the statement, your
• 1:23:57
  drive goes down to six, and then you take your next lowest score
• 1:24:01
  and increase that one by plus one.
• 1:24:04
  If it goes from 7:00 to 6:00, you can keep your drive.
• 1:24:09
  You can keep your drive statement as is.
• 1:24:11
  If it goes from 6:00 to 5:00 gone, you have to then make a
• 1:24:17
  new one with a different statement and with a sorry you
• 1:24:21
  have to make a new statement with a different drive.
• 1:24:24
  Right. OK.
• 1:24:24
  So I I missed the bit where you have to, I actually think I
• 1:24:27
  don't, I think I missed that whole section where you have to,
• 1:24:30
  it's under choose a new drive to give a statement.
• 1:24:33
  Yeah, it's under recovering drives.
• 1:24:36
  Covering. Which is?
• 1:24:38
  It's under the bit about determination.
• 1:24:41
  Oh, is that later on in the book?
• 1:24:43
  It's in the skill test, it's in the skill or it's in like like
• 1:24:46
  the main rule section, Yeah. Got it.
• 1:24:51
  Where am I? Nope, no no, no no.
• 1:24:58
  Oh, I scrolled down for some reason.
• 1:25:00
  I don't know why I did. That yes, the point is that
• 1:25:04
  working against your drive, working for or against your
• 1:25:08
  drive statements. Again, your statement can be
• 1:25:13
  good or bad it it swings in both directions.
• 1:25:16
  It does, yes. OK, Actually, hilariously, we're
• 1:25:21
  in the actual Make your character section.
• 1:25:25
  Now we can get into the real meat and potatoes of the planned
• 1:25:28
  character creation bit. Now that you have your skills,
• 1:25:32
  traits, and drives assigned, you get to choose your concept.
• 1:25:37
  Your concept essentially is a a series of not pre generated but
• 1:25:43
  pre established faction characters that you can create,
• 1:25:51
  no? That's not the concept, that's
• 1:25:53
  that's different. Concept is just like your what's
• 1:25:57
  your idea for your character? What you're talking about are
• 1:25:59
  the. Are the the faction character
• 1:26:01
  that was right? Yes, sorry.
• 1:26:01
  Faction characters, yes, yes, faction specific characters,
• 1:26:05
  which are a slightly separate thing.
• 1:26:08
  Yeah, sorry, your concept is a a very general idea of the kind of
• 1:26:12
  character you. Want like a statement like I
• 1:26:13
  want to play a diplomat guy is. Yeah, a diplomat, a spy, an
• 1:26:18
  assassin, noble, stuff like that.
• 1:26:22
  After you come up with your basic concept, you go over the
• 1:26:25
  faction characters and templates.
• 1:26:28
  The reason why this is relevant is because the the world of Dune
• 1:26:34
  is full of extremely well established, very popular
• 1:26:38
  factions that wheel and deal and partner with the great houses,
• 1:26:43
  and a lot of these factions essentially either freely
• 1:26:48
  provide or sell their services to a house for one reason or
• 1:26:52
  another. These services might be, you
• 1:26:54
  know, a sister of the Benny Jesserits or a men tat, which
• 1:26:58
  are the human calculators because most machines are
• 1:27:03
  outlawed and Dune A spacing Guild agent, which is your you
• 1:27:07
  know, economist slash, you know, courtier slash spy or strategist
• 1:27:14
  character, someone who works directly with the spacers Guild
• 1:27:17
  and is a powerful economic and political ally to keep.
• 1:27:24
  And then of course after that you have your Suk Dr., which is
• 1:27:27
  a a surgeon slash doctor from the Souk school, which are
• 1:27:31
  essentially the best doctors in the known universe and are
• 1:27:35
  forced to undergo crazy mental conditioning to never harm their
• 1:27:40
  noble house that they're assigned to.
• 1:27:41
  And when you choose these, not that you have to, but you can
• 1:27:46
  choose them, they provide you with a series of additional
• 1:27:50
  traits, suggested archetypes, and mandatory talents that you
• 1:27:54
  need to take in order to have them.
• 1:27:56
  There are some other stipulations, like for example
• 1:27:58
  you cannot play a Fremin when you're playing on a rackets
• 1:28:01
  because Fremin will always have fealty to their own planet over
• 1:28:04
  any house. But they they provide you with a
• 1:28:08
  level of increased skill and talent for the trade off of a
• 1:28:14
  slightly less customizability. The important thing being
• 1:28:18
  though, you don't. Have to take them.
• 1:28:20
  You don't have to take them, no. But yes, any of the any factions
• 1:28:25
  that would be outside of the purview of a House are the
• 1:28:28
  special faction characters. Yes.
• 1:28:32
  Now assuming you have done this or you haven't, you move on to
• 1:28:36
  Step 2, which is your archetype. It sort of is what it says on
• 1:28:40
  the tin. Your archetype is a general
• 1:28:43
  statement that covers a broad range of concepts and
• 1:28:48
  realistically speaking, within the confines of the 20 some odd
• 1:28:53
  archetypes that the game provides you, you can create
• 1:28:57
  almost any character you can think of.
• 1:28:59
  If you want to be a Duncan Idaho or sword slinging badass who you
• 1:29:04
  know can match blades with the Fremen, you can do that.
• 1:29:06
  If you want to be a, you know, crazy super spy who seals
• 1:29:11
  themselves in a wall with some crazy assassination tech for
• 1:29:14
  weeks, you can do that. If you want to play this super
• 1:29:17
  genius, you know, analyst character, you can do that.
• 1:29:20
  If you want to play the pilot, you can do that.
• 1:29:23
  And it's done through the use of the archetypes.
• 1:29:26
  When you select an archetype, it provides you with a skill that
• 1:29:30
  it recommends as your primary and one that it recommends as a
• 1:29:34
  secondary. Those skills are not mandatory.
• 1:29:38
  You can choose other ones, but there is a, you know, an amount
• 1:29:42
  of design philosophy in mind when it provides you them.
• 1:29:45
  So if your skills don't align with an archetype, align with an
• 1:29:49
  archetype that you want to grab, feel free to change them or just
• 1:29:53
  keep running with it. Up to you, really.
• 1:29:57
  After they don't after like archetypes are kind of
• 1:30:03
  suggestions anyway. They are suggestions, and it
• 1:30:06
  does say that if an archetype doesn't 100% align with what you
• 1:30:09
  want, you can pretty simply just change the name of the
• 1:30:12
  archetype. Yeah, you can do the shit
• 1:30:14
  around. It is worth mentioning that they
• 1:30:18
  do go hand in hand with the factions in the example text.
• 1:30:23
  The character the player Claire chooses to be a Benny Jesserate,
• 1:30:27
  but also chooses to play the Commander archetype so you can
• 1:30:31
  mix and match them. Again, because this is a class
• 1:30:33
  list, you're not really forced into one option or the other.
• 1:30:37
  Well the the the faction characters are almost like
• 1:30:41
  separate backgrounds, so you have to even if you do pick pick
• 1:30:45
  a faction, you still also have to pick an archetype no matter
• 1:30:48
  what. You do?
• 1:30:49
  Yeah. Because the the faction
• 1:30:51
  background, really the faction background just gives you a
• 1:30:54
  talent, a talent and a trait. Talent and a trait, yeah.
• 1:30:59
  Yeah. The archetypes are broken up
• 1:31:03
  into categories. That was being war master,
• 1:31:06
  socialite, disciple, adept, and academic.
• 1:31:11
  Within those you have war masters, duelist, Sergeant,
• 1:31:15
  tactician, and war master or socialite.
• 1:31:18
  You have commander, courtier, envoy, and steward.
• 1:31:22
  For disciple you have analyst, Harold, infiltrator and
• 1:31:25
  protector, adept, athlete, messenger, scout, and smuggler.
• 1:31:29
  And then finally for academics you have empath, scholar, spy,
• 1:31:33
  or strategist. There's a lot of these.
• 1:31:36
  I'm not going to go into all of them, but for the one that I
• 1:31:40
  cared about arguing the most will go into duelist.
• 1:31:43
  When you choose duelist, you get the the trait duelist.
• 1:31:47
  You get the primary skilled battle or primary suggested
• 1:31:50
  skilled battle, primary secondary suggested skill move.
• 1:31:54
  You gain foci in dueling and short blades.
• 1:31:56
  You have a talent called the Sorry.
• 1:31:58
  You can get a talent called the slow blade and your drives.
• 1:32:02
  Duelist, particularly those who work as champions and
• 1:32:04
  bodyguards, are often believers in might makes right, believing
• 1:32:08
  that justice is enacted by their blades.
• 1:32:10
  Others rely on faith in their prowess, in their tools, or in a
• 1:32:14
  higher power to keep them alive in their deadly profession.
• 1:32:17
  So they're all sort of listed like that.
• 1:32:23
  See, after this, the game talks about skills and foci.
• 1:32:27
  Like I said, we've covered this already.
• 1:32:28
  So if after the decisions you've made so far, you're kind of like
• 1:32:33
  maybe I think I should change some things around, now is the
• 1:32:35
  time to do it. I think I said before I don't
• 1:32:40
  remember, but you get 4 foci. One of them has to be in your
• 1:32:42
  primary skill, the others can be anywhere you want.
• 1:32:44
  You could have 4 foci in your primary skill, or one in your
• 1:32:48
  primary and three in any other skill you want.
• 1:32:52
  It's actually probably not a bad idea to.
• 1:32:54
  What's up? What?
• 1:32:58
  What'd you disabled? Sorry, what?
• 1:33:00
  You can only have one foci per one focus per skill.
• 1:33:04
  I don't think so. Yeah, because the focus is a
• 1:33:09
  statement and it's it's once the focus is the the focus works the
• 1:33:15
  same as the drive statements. It only slots in.
• 1:33:20
  Well, maybe it doesn't. Wait a minute.
• 1:33:21
  Yeah, I know. I'm I'm pretty sure in the
• 1:33:22
  example text they you they let you use two or they had two foci
• 1:33:27
  and one skill. Hey, you got me all confused,
• 1:33:32
  motherfucker. Well, I'm I'm wait now, wait now
• 1:33:35
  I'm not sure I might have misread the how the focus is
• 1:33:38
  slot in shit now I can't seems to focus.
• 1:33:47
  This is primary or secondary skill.
• 1:33:52
  This is for these are provided she don't.
• 1:33:55
  Oh yeah, I thought so. Yeah, She takes the the
• 1:33:58
  character the player Claire takes inspiration for
• 1:34:01
  communicate as well as diplomacy.
• 1:34:04
  Oh. Yeah, OK, I knew I wasn't
• 1:34:06
  bugging. Oh so you can slot OK so one
• 1:34:11
  statement per drive, but you can slot multiple focuses to a skill
• 1:34:15
  potentially. Is there a?
• 1:34:16
  Is there a cap to it? I don't believe so, no.
• 1:34:21
  I think the only the the only stipulation is that you need to
• 1:34:24
  have one focus in your highest rated skill.
• 1:34:30
  OK I seem to have. I would have to re read that now
• 1:34:35
  because I seem to have completely messed that one up
• 1:34:39
  all. Right.
• 1:34:39
  I'm going to high 5 myself because it's the first time this
• 1:34:41
  has ever happened for me where I got the ruling right.
• 1:34:45
  Fair enough. All right.
• 1:34:46
  Yeah. Oh, it never happens.
• 1:34:48
  It feels so. Sweet.
• 1:34:50
  Delicious. All right, delicious.
• 1:34:54
  Miraculous. Oh no, not the heart Conan
• 1:34:58
  voice. I fucking love Hart Conan's
• 1:35:06
  voice actually. Dude, awesome.
• 1:35:08
  So curse. You mean his actor?
• 1:35:10
  You mean you mean fucking Bill scars or no?
• 1:35:13
  No, no, I mean, I mean the voice actor in the audio book, the one
• 1:35:16
  with the jowls. Right, right, right, right,
• 1:35:18
  right. Fair enough.
• 1:35:21
  I know why you would say that, but yeah, yeah.
• 1:35:24
  Who the fuck plays Vladimir Conan again?
• 1:35:27
  1. Of the Scars guard.
• 1:35:29
  I think it's Bill Skarsgard. Yeah.
• 1:35:30
  Is it? There's like 4 of them.
• 1:35:33
  No, it's Stellan, I think. I.
• 1:35:35
  Don't. No, it's the.
• 1:35:36
  It's the dead. Stellan.
• 1:35:38
  Yeah. Stellan Scarsgard.
• 1:35:40
  Is that stellan? That's Stellan, yeah.
• 1:35:43
  God, these motherfuckers. Oh yeah, Stellan.
• 1:35:46
  Yeah, right. You have to really put your
• 1:35:50
  lower jaw as far forward as you can and then you need basically
• 1:35:54
  your lower lip to cover your top lip.
• 1:35:59
  That's cursed. I don't like, I don't like
• 1:36:01
  making that face. I.
• 1:36:04
  Hate that. Oh God.
• 1:36:06
  All right after focus, you get your talents at the start of the
• 1:36:10
  game. You have access to three talents
• 1:36:12
  representing your, you know, special abilities or, or
• 1:36:14
  techniques or whatever. And they, they essentially allow
• 1:36:22
  you to to do a couple of things. You can either add additional
• 1:36:26
  numbers to increase your DC and give you a higher chance of
• 1:36:30
  success. It can increase your crit range.
• 1:36:33
  It can allow you to roll re roll dice.
• 1:36:35
  It can allow you to spend momentum to ignore things like
• 1:36:38
  character assets. You've got a lot of variety in
• 1:36:42
  there and there's well over 50 talents.
• 1:36:44
  I'm not going to go over them. Yeah, but they.
• 1:36:48
  Are like you're. They're kind of like AD and D
• 1:36:51
  class ability. Yeah, class ability or feet?
• 1:36:55
  Although you get way less of them, they're they're not quite
• 1:36:58
  feet level because I I feel like they're not as impactful as a
• 1:37:02
  feat is in terms of like character loadout.
• 1:37:08
  Yeah, true. I mean yes, especially with the
• 1:37:11
  with the 5.5. I can say that now the 5.5 feats
• 1:37:14
  definitely not but like the older ones where it was like ah
• 1:37:17
  yes culinary and you can heal a little bit when you cook food
• 1:37:21
  like. Well I would argue the feats
• 1:37:23
  have gotten less impactful because they've been spread out
• 1:37:26
  more now in 5.5. They they've been spread out
• 1:37:31
  more, but what they can do has gotten, generally speaking,
• 1:37:33
  stronger. Tell that's a great weapon
• 1:37:37
  master, no? I don't like talking about that
• 1:37:41
  one. And Sharpshooter I.
• 1:37:44
  Don't like to talk about that one either.
• 1:37:47
  Point being, the talents are like special abilities you get
• 1:37:50
  in your character. They're like class style
• 1:37:51
  abilities and that's the only place you can get them pretty
• 1:37:56
  much. And I don't.
• 1:38:01
  I I don't remember. Oh yeah, you can buy talents
• 1:38:11
  through character advancement. They are expansive.
• 1:38:13
  They can be quite expensive, yeah.
• 1:38:17
  They cost three times the number of advancement points, and you
• 1:38:21
  have talents. So if you want to get a fourth
• 1:38:24
  talent, that'll cost you 12 advancement points.
• 1:38:27
  Yeah, which is, which is kind of a lot.
• 1:38:30
  I mean, on average I think you're going to get like maybe
• 1:38:34
  3. Advanced one to three?
• 1:38:36
  Yeah one to three a session. Unless you are absolutely
• 1:38:41
  fucking it up. Unless you are just playing like
• 1:38:44
  your your roles are dog shit, yeah, you're really only going
• 1:38:48
  to get one to three of them per session.
• 1:38:51
  So I mean, if you want if you want to save up for a talent,
• 1:38:55
  run it because they can do some pretty cool shit.
• 1:38:57
  But I true there are things you could spend stuff on that I
• 1:39:00
  would argue is more effective. I didn't actually look that
• 1:39:05
  closely at all the talents because as soon as I saw what
• 1:39:07
  they were, I was like, I get the vibe is the voice in there?
• 1:39:10
  Can you just voice a bitch? The voice.
• 1:39:12
  You know what's funny? There it is.
• 1:39:15
  The one that I like a lot is the slow blade.
• 1:39:19
  The slow blade penetrates the shield.
• 1:39:20
  The one most. One of the most fucking
• 1:39:22
  important lines in Dune that no one ever actually says outside
• 1:39:26
  of the fucking movies. Buy one or more dice by spending
• 1:39:30
  momentum. You may choose one of the
• 1:39:31
  enemies asset and same zone as your attack.
• 1:39:33
  You can ignore the asset during your attack.
• 1:39:37
  Got it. That is so that's that ability
• 1:39:39
  is very effective because it allows you to completely ignore
• 1:39:42
  armor. Ignore armor and shield.
• 1:39:44
  Yeah, which? As you can probably presume,
• 1:39:48
  quite important to the world of Dune, but everyone is using
• 1:39:51
  knives that is trying to shake the shit out of each other than
• 1:39:53
  to give a damn. It's got Shields and swords and
• 1:39:56
  shit, yeah. Yeah.
• 1:39:59
  So those of you who don't know a shield, it does not literally
• 1:40:01
  mean a shield that you hold in your hand horse field.
• 1:40:04
  It's a force field apparatus that you attach to a belt or
• 1:40:07
  your hand or a ring. You know, creates a force field
• 1:40:11
  around you that you cannot penetrate with pretty much
• 1:40:13
  anything unless you slowly push through it.
• 1:40:17
  Got a slow Shank a bitch. So you feel their blood run down
• 1:40:20
  your hand and you hear their screams.
• 1:40:25
  Delicious. Our Conan's a big fan.
• 1:40:29
  Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, actually, what does the
• 1:40:34
  Voice do? You're trained to modulate your
• 1:40:36
  voice to influence the subconscious minds of others.
• 1:40:39
  With the skill, you can subtly manipulate others, alter
• 1:40:42
  motivations and moods, or even compel action from the
• 1:40:45
  unwilling. You may use Voice whenever you
• 1:40:47
  speak to someone else, so you must be able to observe them for
• 1:40:50
  a short while beforehand. They must be able to hear you
• 1:40:53
  speak, and when you use the Voice, you may add 1 two or
• 1:40:56
  three points of threat Score the same number of automatic
• 1:41:00
  successes on any Communicate test made to influence your
• 1:41:04
  target. The greater the number of
• 1:41:06
  automatic successes, the more overt your use of the voice,
• 1:41:09
  which others may notice. Your training also allows you to
• 1:41:12
  buy those automatic successes on any test made to resist the
• 1:41:15
  effects of the voice. Oh that's cool as fuck.
• 1:41:18
  I like that it's. The command spell, but.
• 1:41:22
  Way better. It's like closer to GEOS because
• 1:41:25
  you can get them to pretty much agree to anything.
• 1:41:30
  You cannot. So it's funny in the lore, you
• 1:41:32
  cannot compel someone to hurt themselves unless you were
• 1:41:35
  incredibly strong at the voice. It's one of those things where
• 1:41:38
  it's like it's not possible and then and.
• 1:41:42
  Then Jessica does it. Not Jessica.
• 1:41:46
  I think Paul does it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure Paul tells
• 1:41:51
  a dude to like, no, no, I'm thinking of something else.
• 1:41:55
  There's a whole thing at the very beginning of the book where
• 1:41:57
  Liet, the ecologist guy, his dad is giving, like, a lecture to
• 1:42:00
  the Fremen children about water. And then a Fremen's like, I
• 1:42:04
  don't know this man, he's a foreigner, and he's teaching our
• 1:42:06
  children evil things. I'm going to kill him.
• 1:42:09
  And he, like, goes up to assassinate Liet's dad.
• 1:42:16
  And his dad basically says, like, remove yourself.
• 1:42:20
  But he means like, get out of my classroom and the guy gets like
• 1:42:24
  so overwhelmed with what he sees and like, he's basically giving
• 1:42:28
  the kids our lecture on how to bring back life to Iraqis that
• 1:42:32
  he, like, he just straight up kills himself.
• 1:42:35
  Oh, like, he's like this guy, this guy is one of our saviours.
• 1:42:40
  I got to go and he just yams himself with a Chris knife.
• 1:42:43
  That's OK. Yeah, don't worry, because
• 1:42:46
  Leah's dad was like, what the. Lance Dad was like, do I have
• 1:42:51
  the voice? Wait a minute, did I do that?
• 1:42:56
  He really? He literally stands there just
• 1:42:58
  in awe like what the fuck just happened?
• 1:43:00
  Why did the guy just slit his own throat?
• 1:43:01
  What? Whoops.
• 1:43:03
  Did I do that? Am I in trouble?
• 1:43:05
  Am I going to die? Apparently not.
• 1:43:08
  No. He does become kind of a not
• 1:43:11
  messianic figure, but like a leader of sorts to the front.
• 1:43:15
  And Annie Husson, not that we're going to go on a fucking lower
• 1:43:19
  rant right now, although I could.
• 1:43:22
  We also covered drive statements previously, so we're not really
• 1:43:26
  going to cover them again. But like everything else we've
• 1:43:29
  said, worth double checking the final.
• 1:43:32
  Step the the important thing is that the drive statement are are
• 1:43:39
  fictional statements about your characters, like literally your
• 1:43:43
  character's drives in life, and you can use them for advantage
• 1:43:48
  or disadvantage with the with the intention that you should.
• 1:43:54
  You're always with the intention that you always have to try and
• 1:43:57
  prioritize drives that have a statement attached because like
• 1:44:03
  also. But here's the thing, you're
• 1:44:04
  also encouraged to do so because your drives that have the
• 1:44:07
  statements are also your three highest drives.
• 1:44:11
  They are, yeah. They're your three highest,
• 1:44:12
  Yeah. You're kind of going to want it
• 1:44:14
  anyway. Just make sure you're not
• 1:44:17
  shattering your principles with them, and even if you give them
• 1:44:20
  a lot, a. Lot of the game is about that
• 1:44:22
  back and forth of like the emotional struggle that your
• 1:44:26
  character has and what they believe in and all that.
• 1:44:28
  There's a lot of that baked into the mechanics.
• 1:44:30
  You know, it's kind of fun. You can play a just repugnantly
• 1:44:34
  evil piece of shit, but you can't really play a hypocrite.
• 1:44:39
  No, like even Baron Harkonnen, which this does not show in the
• 1:44:44
  movies, but in the books, Harkonnen never killed anybody
• 1:44:47
  himself ever. He was like, I hate I I detest
• 1:44:52
  blood. I detest violence.
• 1:44:54
  I got people for that. I got dudes.
• 1:44:56
  For that, I detest doing it myself.
• 1:44:59
  Yes, it's it's a little dumb because in the first movie he
• 1:45:01
  obviously he cuts off Doctor UA's head with a butter with a
• 1:45:05
  steak knife does not do that. Pyter just gives him the spine
• 1:45:11
  like a gangster. So yeah, can't really play
• 1:45:15
  hypocrite. The final step in planned
• 1:45:18
  character creation are your assets.
• 1:45:20
  Assets serve as both equipment and social connections in the
• 1:45:24
  game and consist of two main types, tangible and intangible.
• 1:45:29
  Tangible assets are gear, equipment, vehicles.
• 1:45:34
  Any physical piece of kit that your character could reasonably
• 1:45:38
  have at their disposal is viable to be called an asset now.
• 1:45:45
  But also non physical equipment. Yes, but non physical equipment
• 1:45:48
  as well. Keep in mind tangible assets
• 1:45:51
  should not be normal gear. You work for one of the richest
• 1:45:55
  organizations in the Galaxy. Any normal gear that you need
• 1:46:00
  you can reasonably get. Assets should be something that
• 1:46:04
  have extreme importance to your character.
• 1:46:08
  For example, it says in the book anyone in the known universe has
• 1:46:11
  access to a knife, but your character might have access to a
• 1:46:15
  Chris knife, one of the sacred weapons of the Fremen.
• 1:46:19
  The distinctions for this matter for narrative reasons with
• 1:46:23
  interactions and traits. The example given in the book
• 1:46:25
  says that using a Chris knife shows that.
• 1:46:29
  Or, sorry, owning a Chris knife shows that you have the very
• 1:46:33
  rarely offered trust of the Fremen and you should be treated
• 1:46:37
  as somewhat important in any situations regarding them.
• 1:46:41
  Your words to the Fremen have meaning because the only way to
• 1:46:44
  get a Chris knife is for it to be gifted to you by a Fremen.
• 1:46:49
  Intangible assets like Josh was just saying, is everything else
• 1:46:55
  they can be favors, blackmail, security codes, patrol routes,
• 1:47:00
  etcetera. Just knowledge about shit.
• 1:47:04
  Yes, any form or of social or narrative edge or boon can be an
• 1:47:09
  intangible asset, and they rarely need to be specific.
• 1:47:13
  Very, very explicitly intangible.
• 1:47:16
  Intangible, yeah. Like not a not a physical thing.
• 1:47:22
  The example the game gives is if you have the blackmail asset,
• 1:47:26
  that does not necessarily mean that you need to know what that
• 1:47:29
  blackmail is about when you decide to have the the asset.
• 1:47:33
  What it means is that when you feel like the the blackmail
• 1:47:37
  could be relevant, you turn that generic blackmail asset into a
• 1:47:41
  blackmail on X for Y and then you use it and the asset is
• 1:47:46
  expended and now it's gone. At character creation you are
• 1:47:49
  allotted 3 assets, one tangible and the other two are up to the
• 1:47:54
  players discretion. And with all of that done, all
• 1:48:00
  that's really left are your the finishing touches, your
• 1:48:02
  character's name, gender, their ambitions.
• 1:48:05
  Oh actually no ambitions, I did forget about this.
• 1:48:09
  The game does not treat it like it's super important, but it is.
• 1:48:13
  It's it's not super important in like the moment to moment play,
• 1:48:17
  but the main thing it's relevant for is XP so yes.
• 1:48:22
  Your ambition, as you can assume, is your character's long
• 1:48:25
  term goals. You should always be thinking
• 1:48:28
  about any decision your character makes, not in just the
• 1:48:32
  short term, I want this, but the long term.
• 1:48:35
  How does this get me to where I need to be?
• 1:48:37
  If you're a spy and you want to be the spy master, how does
• 1:48:41
  every decision get you closer to usurping your boss?
• 1:48:45
  Yeah, it's doing. You got to be a little.
• 1:48:47
  Conniving. Yeah, Even if you love your
• 1:48:48
  boss, you still. Got to take his job at some
• 1:48:54
  point, yeah. And if you don't want to kill
• 1:48:56
  him, maybe you can assist in his passing of this mortal coil.
• 1:49:00
  Maybe you just put a little bit extra salt in all of his meals
• 1:49:03
  so he goes into cardiac arrest. Yeah, You know, 10 years early,
• 1:49:06
  a little high. Weird.
• 1:49:08
  Yeah. You're just like eventually the
• 1:49:11
  kidney stone that he passed will destroy his urinary tract and
• 1:49:14
  kill him and then your teammates look at you like what the fuck
• 1:49:20
  is wrong with you bro that would be awesome.
• 1:49:26
  That's a very mean way to kill somebody.
• 1:49:29
  That would be that. That would be dastardly.
• 1:49:31
  I'm not going to lie, if I was a Duke and I found out you did
• 1:49:34
  that to the old spymaster, I'd be like, no, motherfucker, you
• 1:49:36
  cannot work for me. Yeah.
• 1:49:38
  Damn. No, you too fucked up back.
• 1:49:39
  Get the fuck out of here. Absolutely not, because you know
• 1:49:42
  all our secrets. You can't work for anybody else,
• 1:49:44
  so you got to know buddy. Yeah, that's true.
• 1:49:47
  Actually. You got to go.
• 1:49:49
  Yeah, you got to go. We will your ass to the worm
• 1:49:52
  you're. Shy Hulu We will briefly touch
• 1:49:56
  on creation and play because it is worth mentioning despite how
• 1:50:01
  not very relevant we believe it to be.
• 1:50:05
  But creation play, as described previously, is a style in which
• 1:50:09
  you take the basics. From the start of the chapter
• 1:50:11
  that we covered, you know your skills, drives, ETC.
• 1:50:15
  And that's all you take into session 1.
• 1:50:19
  During the first session, or a set number of sessions given by
• 1:50:23
  the GM, your traits, your foci talents, your drives, all that
• 1:50:30
  stuff will become clear as the game progresses.
• 1:50:36
  If you come to a situation where you're offered power or or you
• 1:50:42
  make a distinct power play, maybe you choose that power is
• 1:50:46
  your highest drive. And if power is your highest
• 1:50:49
  drive, maybe you assign a drive statement to it to make your
• 1:50:52
  results even better. Maybe you're willing to go for
• 1:50:55
  power at any cost. You didn't know that about your
• 1:50:57
  character. You do now.
• 1:51:00
  And as the session goes on, it is presumed that you will sort
• 1:51:04
  of drip feed yourself these things.
• 1:51:06
  But it does warn you to watch out for long term, sorry, short
• 1:51:11
  term gain over long term goals. Because if you're not careful,
• 1:51:15
  you can turn your PC into like a woefully I'll equipped platform
• 1:51:21
  character who's not really able to perform many tasks out of the
• 1:51:25
  side by like really specific niches you built first.
• 1:51:28
  Yeah, you can't, because you can't just assign the best
• 1:51:31
  number to everything you do got to pick and choose a little.
• 1:51:34
  Yeah, you also sorry. Yeah, if in the situation where
• 1:51:42
  you don't set all of your abilities during the first
• 1:51:49
  session or first few sessions, the game recommends that you
• 1:51:52
  just take your sheet out of session and fill it in before
• 1:51:55
  the next session. The game does say you cannot
• 1:51:59
  take any advancements until your sheet is filled, so you do want
• 1:52:04
  to get it done as soon as possible.
• 1:52:09
  Realistically it it I don't see it not happening in the first
• 1:52:13
  session or two because there just isn't enough skills that
• 1:52:18
  you need right? Like every role you make
• 1:52:21
  requires one drive and one skill.
• 1:52:24
  Yeah, one drive, Yeah, you always have to have a drive
• 1:52:26
  skill combo. So realistically you're making
• 1:52:29
  what, five roles where you need to make that decision?
• 1:52:33
  Unless every single role uses one of the pre established ones,
• 1:52:36
  which it almost certainly won't. After this doing the it's
• 1:52:44
  pissing me off. After this we get into supported
• 1:52:46
  characters, my favorite part of the character creation system.
• 1:52:52
  Supporting characters are just that, they are.
• 1:52:57
  Elevated NPCS Is not necessarily the right way to describe them,
• 1:53:01
  but it does work a bit. You essentially create
• 1:53:05
  characters that are not main characters who have their own
• 1:53:10
  agency and drive, both mechanically and narratively,
• 1:53:15
  and you can use them as PCs to fulfill objectives that your
• 1:53:21
  characters couldn't otherwise fulfill.
• 1:53:24
  So think about it this way. One character is the Master of
• 1:53:29
  Assassination and assigns one of his guys to execute a target if
• 1:53:36
  the GM decides that that is important enough to to put the
• 1:53:42
  spotlight on to be a mission. Yeah.
• 1:53:44
  Or a session. You as players will create
• 1:53:48
  supporting characters who will go on that mission with the PC
• 1:53:52
  who got sent, and your sheets will be simpler.
• 1:53:57
  They won't be as complex, but they will allow you to play the
• 1:54:01
  game to the fullest extent even if you're not playing your
• 1:54:05
  character, because it's always happening.
• 1:54:08
  Yeah, it's the idea that, you know, you're going to have a
• 1:54:11
  group where you might have a sword master, a mentat diplomat
• 1:54:16
  and a spy master. And the mentat diplomat diplomat
• 1:54:22
  is going to a party where he's going to wine and dine with some
• 1:54:26
  fellow merchants to get some sick trade deals for your house.
• 1:54:29
  And it's like the sword master and the spy master probably
• 1:54:33
  aren't going to want to be there and don't need to be there, but
• 1:54:36
  the other players have to do something.
• 1:54:39
  So the other players create supporting characters who are
• 1:54:43
  other, you know, backups to the men tat, you know, whatever
• 1:54:47
  scholars or whatever that go to the party with him.
• 1:54:50
  And so you as a player are still interacting, but the notable PC
• 1:54:55
  character is the main character for this for this scene or this
• 1:54:59
  mission or whatever it it's, you know, it's like, well, now I'm
• 1:55:07
  trying to think of a good show example.
• 1:55:09
  And now, of course, I can't think of anything off the top of
• 1:55:10
  my fucking head, but yeah, it's, it's, you know, it's the idea
• 1:55:16
  that the, the, the notable PC, the main character PC is.
• 1:55:21
  Oh, I got it. I got it.
• 1:55:23
  So in, in in Star Wars, the cloners, right?
• 1:55:25
  You have episodes where it's just Anakin and the clones Now,
• 1:55:31
  usually right in Star Wars or Clone Wars, the Jedi are the
• 1:55:34
  main characters. Yeah, but if Anakin has to take
• 1:55:37
  the 501st to go do a thing right, then the the narrative
• 1:55:41
  focus shifts to. Anakin and the Bulls.
• 1:55:45
  Heavy O 9 All of those guys who you care about, you know almost
• 1:55:50
  as much as the main characters, but are not main characters
• 1:55:52
  themselves, and unlike the main characters, are a little bit
• 1:55:57
  easier to kill, narratively speaking.
• 1:55:59
  Yeah, yeah. I mean, look, they're called
• 1:56:01
  supporting characters in this game because they are supporting
• 1:56:04
  the primary character, right? So yes, if you're playing a
• 1:56:06
  supporting character in the scene, you are going to be not
• 1:56:10
  as good as the primary mentat diplomat at the party.
• 1:56:13
  But it's OK because when you need to go have a six sword
• 1:56:17
  fight with an, you know, with an enemy sword master from the
• 1:56:20
  other house, you get to be the main character.
• 1:56:22
  The Mentat diplomat takes the backseat.
• 1:56:24
  Yes, and ultimately even if your supporting character is less
• 1:56:29
  effective than they are than the mentat, they are more than
• 1:56:33
  likely leagues more effective than your diplomat would be at
• 1:56:37
  the same task. Wait, what?
• 1:56:42
  Or not the mentat. Like if you're playing a
• 1:56:43
  diplomat who cannot fight and you have to go on like an
• 1:56:45
  assassination mission, the supporting characters can be way
• 1:56:49
  more effective. At the assassinating.
• 1:56:51
  Yeah, yeah. So you will have a better time
• 1:56:54
  because your character will succeed more often and you have
• 1:56:58
  more abilities that are relevant to the thing that you need to
• 1:57:00
  do. Yeah, you're basically making a
• 1:57:02
  little temporary character for you to play.
• 1:57:04
  And sometimes you'll have major supporting characters which are
• 1:57:08
  temporary characters that repeat and show up multiple times.
• 1:57:11
  And then sometimes you have minor supporting characters
• 1:57:13
  which are like one off characters like random soldier
• 1:57:16
  B. Yeah, Between them, they, the
• 1:57:21
  minor characters are typically lower ranking, right?
• 1:57:24
  They are just standard subordinates.
• 1:57:26
  They're soldiers. They're spies.
• 1:57:28
  They have one trait, generally describing their roller job.
• 1:57:32
  They have a single drive with a score of 4 to 8.
• 1:57:35
  You can change that based on how much momentum you spend when you
• 1:57:38
  make them. They have zero drive statements,
• 1:57:40
  one skill at ranked six usually related to their job, one focus,
• 1:57:45
  and any talents or bonuses given to them by their house, if any.
• 1:57:48
  Usually they don't have any, but at later levels you can get
• 1:57:51
  stuff that applies to them. Notable supporting characters on
• 1:57:55
  the other hand are higher ranked, usually named characters
• 1:57:59
  that are specialists in their fields.
• 1:58:01
  They're not as cool as the MCS, but think of them as like
• 1:58:05
  sergeants or officers rather than being a spy.
• 1:58:09
  Maybe they're the commander of a team of spies.
• 1:58:13
  You know, they're the they're not Amanda Waller, they're the
• 1:58:16
  Ric flag to the Suicide Squad. Yeah, yeah.
• 1:58:20
  They generally have one trait describing their job enroll,
• 1:58:24
  plus one additional trait every time you spend momentum. 5
• 1:58:27
  drives with scores of seven, six, and three fives.
• 1:58:33
  One or two drive statements, again depending on momentum.
• 1:58:37
  One skill at rank 7 related to their job. 3 or 4 foci, again
• 1:58:42
  depending on momentum, and then one or two talents depending on
• 1:58:46
  momentum. Only 5 notable supporting
• 1:58:49
  characters can be made per adventure.
• 1:58:53
  This also counts for characters that you bring back from another
• 1:58:57
  adventure. So if you know one of your
• 1:59:00
  notable characters is Duncan Idaho, doesn't matter how old
• 1:59:05
  Duncan Idaho is the second you bring him into the current
• 1:59:07
  scene, you can only use four of them per adventure.
• 1:59:10
  Now, adventure is is is described as a mission.
• 1:59:16
  It's not an overarching campaign.
• 1:59:18
  It could be that one assassination thing that we
• 1:59:21
  talked about before is 1 adventure, in which case you'd
• 1:59:24
  probably use all five of the notable characters to give you
• 1:59:28
  the best odds, but don't always need.
• 1:59:30
  Yeah, I I find it a little weird they limited it, I'm not going
• 1:59:34
  to lie. I, I, I don't disagree with you
• 1:59:38
  because they are kind of limited based on momentum anyway, and
• 1:59:42
  you're not going to be using momentum just to drop NPCS on
• 1:59:45
  people. Like you're going to need that
• 1:59:46
  for your own roles. Yeah.
• 1:59:50
  So I, yeah, I agree. I don't necessarily know why
• 1:59:52
  they did that, but I guess they could.
• 1:59:54
  They, they, they had some reason.
• 1:59:56
  Maybe it came up in play. Also worth noting is if your
• 2:00:02
  MPs, if you're supporting characters, occupy the same
• 2:00:05
  stage as your main characters. Maybe you have like a coming
• 2:00:07
  together where one group meets up with the other.
• 2:00:10
  You cannot play both of them as yeah as characters.
• 2:00:16
  The supporting characters basically get turned into really
• 2:00:19
  simple NPCS who cannot use their talents or foci, but what they
• 2:00:27
  can do is fulfill very specific orders for the players and
• 2:00:32
  essentially assist them with roles.
• 2:00:34
  Little meat shield puppets. Yes, and that is literal.
• 2:00:38
  You can use them to die for you. So they called sacrifice.
• 2:00:41
  It's it's pretty funny, I'm not going to lie.
• 2:00:44
  Yeah, I mean the thing that's really great about this mechanic
• 2:00:48
  in particular, it it like it is sick.
• 2:00:53
  Like I'm, I'm not selling it mostly just because tired.
• 2:00:57
  But the thing that's sick about it is it really solves the the
• 2:01:04
  cyberpunk hacker problem, right? Where, Oh, we have two troopers
• 2:01:11
  and a sword master in the group. And then one guy wants to play a
• 2:01:14
  diplomat. So anytime the diplomat, like
• 2:01:17
  anytime he has to do his Wheeling and dealing scenes, the
• 2:01:20
  other three players are just gonna sit there with their thumb
• 2:01:22
  up their ass. It solves that problem by being
• 2:01:25
  like, no, no, you'll make side characters that will assist him
• 2:01:28
  in doing that thing. So so it's like you can kind of
• 2:01:32
  imagine a system in a cyberpunk game where the hacker goes on
• 2:01:36
  their hacker mission and the other player characters play
• 2:01:39
  like programs in his cyber deck or something like that.
• 2:01:44
  That would be cool. They just play fucking Digimon.
• 2:01:46
  Yeah, yeah, Little Digimon care, right?
• 2:01:47
  Exactly. Or they play like they're
• 2:01:49
  fucking Mista 6 Bullets. You know, they're just little
• 2:01:53
  sentient Bros, little buddies. So yeah, it just, it solves that
• 2:02:00
  problem because you're definitely going to have that
• 2:02:02
  situation in Dune where, yeah, every PC is probably going to be
• 2:02:09
  quite different from each other because it doesn't, it would be
• 2:02:17
  very odd if every P like you played four sword masters, you
• 2:02:20
  know, like that just wouldn't work really.
• 2:02:25
  No. Yeah, like unless you are just,
• 2:02:30
  you're just fucking the doing equivalent of ODSTS, you're just
• 2:02:33
  dropping in. Like if you're just playing
• 2:02:35
  start a car basically and you drop in to show up just to Merc
• 2:02:39
  people and then dip, you could but I feel like your missions
• 2:02:42
  would get real boring real quick, you know?
• 2:02:44
  Yeah, and you are missing out on a lot of the system I feel.
• 2:02:49
  Like arguably the more interesting parts in the system.
• 2:02:52
  I know combat is not actually the most interesting and
• 2:02:55
  one-on-one fights. Talk about it next time.
• 2:02:58
  Well, the one-on-one fights are interesting.
• 2:03:00
  They're just a little confusing. A.
• 2:03:01
  Little confusing. Yeah, a little noodly.
• 2:03:03
  I think they're cool once we once you get them figured out.
• 2:03:08
  I think you're going to have to help me explain it because I I,
• 2:03:09
  I. Don't know that I totally get it
• 2:03:11
  either, but I think I see the vision, you know what I mean?
• 2:03:14
  Yeah, yeah. All right.
• 2:03:18
  Well, the last thing we will talk about for Chapter 4 is
• 2:03:23
  character advancement. There are several things fucking
• 2:03:27
  we. Love the XP rules of this game.
• 2:03:29
  And they're pretty dope. There's a number of things you
• 2:03:31
  can do to gain XP. Can I just sorry, I just need to
• 2:03:36
  take a moment. I I've been feeling frustrated
• 2:03:39
  about the XP thing because I don't like the way Fabula does
• 2:03:42
  it, and I feel like that's been a fucking albatross around my
• 2:03:45
  neck. So when I looked at the
• 2:03:46
  advancement rules for this, I was like, hell yeah, dude there.
• 2:03:50
  So yeah. There are several things you can
• 2:03:54
  do to achieve what are called advancement points.
• 2:03:56
  Basically XP and generally speaking the type of
• 2:04:00
  advancements that you can buy vary in price depending on what
• 2:04:04
  you want. The ways to accrue points are as
• 2:04:08
  follows. Adversity.
• 2:04:10
  You can gain advancement points from facing difficult
• 2:04:12
  situations, making mistakes, and suffering the consequences.
• 2:04:15
  It says failure is a harsh teacher.
• 2:04:19
  You gain Advancement points whenever you are defeated during
• 2:04:21
  conflict. Failure.
• 2:04:24
  You gain 1 Advancement point whenever you fail a test that is
• 2:04:26
  a difficulty of three or higher Error.
• 2:04:30
  You gain 1 Advancement point whenever a Game Master spends 4
• 2:04:33
  or more points of threat at once, which is rare, but it will
• 2:04:37
  happen. Ambition.
• 2:04:39
  You gain advancement points whenever you succeed on an
• 2:04:41
  action that supports your ambition.
• 2:04:43
  This does not require a skill test, but if the action involved
• 2:04:48
  the skill test, the test must be successful.
• 2:04:52
  You receive 1 advancement point if the action made minor
• 2:04:54
  contributions to your ambition, or three if it made major ones.
• 2:04:59
  Then you have impressing the group.
• 2:05:02
  If the group wants to award especially good plans, role play
• 2:05:07
  well, role played scenes, or other specific noteworthy
• 2:05:10
  contributions, players in question may give an extra
• 2:05:13
  advancement point. Such rewards should be
• 2:05:15
  restricted to 1 per session for any player.
• 2:05:19
  Everyone can get one in theory per session.
• 2:05:24
  With your advancing points, you can spend them on a + 1 to one
• 2:05:28
  of your skills. Each skill can only be advanced
• 2:05:32
  once, and no skill can be advanced beyond eight.
• 2:05:38
  This costs 10 points per skill, plus one for each previous skill
• 2:05:43
  advancement purchase, so up to a Max of 15.
• 2:05:48
  Focus. If you can buy an additional
• 2:05:50
  focus for any skill which is rated 6 or higher, this costs
• 2:05:54
  advancement points equal to the number of focuses you already
• 2:05:57
  have. Like we said, talents.
• 2:06:01
  You can purchase an additional talent from those available to
• 2:06:03
  you. There are some that you cannot
• 2:06:05
  get because you didn't take like a faction for example, or you
• 2:06:07
  don't have enough points in it to get it.
• 2:06:10
  The advancement number equals three times the number of
• 2:06:13
  talents you already have. As we said, assets.
• 2:06:18
  You can select an asset other than which already only existed
• 2:06:21
  for a single scene, because you can't effectively create assets
• 2:06:24
  like one off assets when you need them, and you can make
• 2:06:27
  those assets permanent. This costs three advancement
• 2:06:30
  points. Alternatively, you can improve
• 2:06:33
  one of your existing assets by adding plus one to its quality,
• 2:06:37
  spending advancement points equal to twice the assets new
• 2:06:40
  quality. So a + 1 would be worth 2 + 2 is
• 2:06:44
  +436. Go on and so forth.
• 2:06:48
  You also have the option to retrain, allowing one ability to
• 2:06:52
  atrophy or diminish with disuse while developing another.
• 2:06:55
  Retraining this way costs half the number of advancement points
• 2:06:59
  required rounded up, but comes at a cost.
• 2:07:02
  If you retrain a skill, and one skill is also reduced by 1 to a
• 2:07:06
  minimum of four, this does not count as one advancement allowed
• 2:07:10
  for that skill. If you retrain a focus, then you
• 2:07:13
  must remove a single focus that you already possess, and if you
• 2:07:16
  retrain a talent, you must remove a talent that you
• 2:07:19
  already. And that is all of it.
• 2:07:25
  Yeah, I mean I I fucking I love that the the 1st 4 main
• 2:07:30
  advancement methods are just the GM is bullying your shit right?
• 2:07:36
  Like the first four advancements are bad thing happens to you,
• 2:07:40
  you get your ass beat, you fail a role, the GM spends threat
• 2:07:46
  against you. Like all four of them are just
• 2:07:48
  the GM is being real fucking mean.
• 2:07:51
  Love that. And then but then you also have
• 2:07:53
  the additional going after a character drive.
• 2:07:56
  You know, I I always like in games like blades in the dark
• 2:07:59
  does this right where your character has like a specific
• 2:08:02
  thing they're trying to accomplish every session and you
• 2:08:04
  get rewarded for the XP of it. I love shit like that.
• 2:08:07
  So the two of these combined of GM bullying you, but also I have
• 2:08:11
  a like a a a goal I'm trying to get after.
• 2:08:15
  It's a beautiful, it's a beautiful marriage.
• 2:08:18
  Love everything about the fucking advancement shit.
• 2:08:22
  Happy it exists. It is extremely nice because
• 2:08:26
  because you actively reward your players for being a little mean
• 2:08:29
  to them, you are encouraged to be a little meaner a little.
• 2:08:33
  Mean to them? Yeah, yeah, yeah.
• 2:08:34
  You got to be mean to them. How else are they going to get
• 2:08:36
  XP if you don't beat the shit out of them?
• 2:08:38
  Yeah, and it it does plateau out, right?
• 2:08:43
  You will get to a point where it's kind of hard to bully the
• 2:08:46
  players because difficulty only goes up to five.
• 2:08:50
  And assuming that they've got a high skill and a focus, their
• 2:08:55
  crit range could go up to A10. So they have a 5050% chance of
• 2:09:00
  just doubling their gains, which makes it, as you can probably
• 2:09:05
  assume, quite difficult to fail even difficult checks later on.
• 2:09:13
  Granted, you could just absolutely fucking biff it like
• 2:09:16
  that one time that Sam rolled 3 ones to pick a lock in Blades of
• 2:09:20
  the Dark. Oh baby, that was rough. 3 ones
• 2:09:22
  multiple times. Multiple times.
• 2:09:25
  But statistically highly improbable.
• 2:09:31
  It can't happen. It can't happen.
• 2:09:34
  It's the chance is never 0. Never 0, but yeah for fear of
• 2:09:45
  this getting too long. Sorry, a two hours meeting XP
• 2:09:47
  system. Yeah, very good.
• 2:09:50
  Fear is going too long but too intact.
• 2:09:52
  Mother fucker. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.
• 2:09:54
  I just, I can't let it go. I just, I fucking, I love it
• 2:09:56
  when it gave us an XP system. I fuck with because I feel like
• 2:09:59
  it's one of those places that a lot of games they like design
• 2:10:02
  their whole system and then they get the XP system and they're
• 2:10:05
  like, I don't know, you just get XP for stuff and things, who
• 2:10:07
  cares? And I'm like, oh.
• 2:10:10
  I don't know. As a as a player, I kind of like
• 2:10:13
  it in Fabulous. No.
• 2:10:15
  Because here's the thing, in Fabula, I think it works, and I
• 2:10:19
  think it works for you even if you don't think about it.
• 2:10:22
  Because we get level UPS regularly enough and we are drip
• 2:10:27
  fed advancement enough where we're not constantly fucking
• 2:10:30
  asking you for magic items which makes sure life easier.
• 2:10:34
  But you could. There's other ways that you
• 2:10:36
  could do it other than just. You get 5 XP for having a pulse
• 2:10:39
  and showing up. There are, but I think for what
• 2:10:45
  it is, it works and it's something that I would be happy
• 2:10:50
  about because like I said, I wouldn't have to think about
• 2:10:53
  constantly, constantly be like, oh God, I got it.
• 2:10:59
  What, what, what, what loot am I going to give them?
• 2:11:01
  Oh God is are they going to be OK with just money?
• 2:11:04
  Like Dune does that, this game does that too, because the end,
• 2:11:07
  the advancement is going to come from you just antagonizing them.
• 2:11:10
  What you're already doing I. So.
• 2:11:13
  It ends up being the same deal deal, right?
• 2:11:16
  Like, but it's a more interesting way of doing it.
• 2:11:21
  The the the fabulous way is is boring.
• 2:11:24
  That's kind of the problem. I don't know, I would call it
• 2:11:29
  boring it it is decoupled from you being mean to them, I think
• 2:11:33
  because the game is not and the game is less interested with
• 2:11:37
  you. It's not completely decoupled
• 2:11:39
  because Ultima points do convert into XP.
• 2:11:42
  So like there is that, but I'm saying it's boring in Fabula
• 2:11:46
  because there's no thought or drive or there's nothing that
• 2:11:50
  the players need to specifically do to earn that level up.
• 2:11:54
  So there's no, there's no thought behind the interaction.
• 2:11:59
  It just is, you know what I mean?
• 2:12:04
  Like it just happens no matter what.
• 2:12:05
  I I mean, technically the game says like, oh, if they didn't,
• 2:12:09
  you know, they should, they should always be working towards
• 2:12:13
  a goal or whatever. But it's so vague that you're
• 2:12:14
  like, sure, I guess you know what I mean.
• 2:12:18
  Yeah. This is a me thing.
• 2:12:22
  I this is the XP systems I have. I have I I'm a fucking stickler
• 2:12:28
  about this is a me problem. Yes, this is true.
• 2:12:30
  I am aware that most people don't give a shit and that
• 2:12:32
  bothers me a lot. That's why DND is the way it is.
• 2:12:39
  That's why people. That's why people say XP systems
• 2:12:42
  are bad, because games are lazy about it and then DND 5E is lazy
• 2:12:46
  about it. So people just assume XP systems
• 2:12:49
  are bad, not realizing that actually if you design a good XP
• 2:12:52
  system it could be really fun and add to the whole experience.
• 2:12:58
  It can, yeah. I see you're, you're, you're not
• 2:13:02
  taking the bid on this one. No, not really rude, but OK.
• 2:13:09
  All right, you motherfucker. Oh, I forgot to say this.
• 2:13:13
  Follow up. Subscribe, Move on.
• 2:13:15
  Yeah. And then, you know, maybe shoot
• 2:13:17
  us a donut over at our coffee so we can pay Brett.
• 2:13:19
  Really appreciate it. And that is us.
• 2:13:25
  I'm back next week for more Dune.
• 2:13:27
  Yes, more tune indeed. I Hulu.
• 2:13:33
  At least I don't know you, my Dune, my raucous my.
• 2:13:35
  Dune. There you go.