GURPS Dune

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by beetle496

My impression is that building a foldspace ship would not be impossible for one of the great houses. Finding a pilot was the bottleneck!

Well there's your adventure, right there!

Either PCs are agents of the house, which has built a ship and is looking for a navigator. Or they need to smuggle some vital parts in, onboard a Guild ship, somehow. Or Guild investigators are snooping around and the PCs have to put them off the track.

Or, the PCs are the Guild investigators tracking rumours of ship parts going missing. Maybe a Guild ship was destroyed by the house and made to look like an accident, for the house to get just one vital part from its salvage.

[Johnny1A.2]

Canonically, the Fremen were harvesting melange and had secret dealings with the Guild themselves, there was a flow of melange off Arrakis into the galactic black market. The black market would have members all over the galaxy and would deal in other products as well.

A PC could be a smuggler working to get various products onto and off of 'legal' ships. Such a PC would likely have contacts in local law enforcement and business. The smuggling organization would likely employ Mentats, too.

If he makes a lot of money at his illegal activities, his kids might attend BG run private schools, he probably has a 'legit' business front, and he might even harbor dreams of marrying off a daughter to the local minor noble (or even a Great Duke).

There are other criminal niches as well.

[AlexanderHowl]

An alternative would be to allow synthetic spice, created by forbidden technology. It would be less effective than natural spice, but it would be sufficient to allow for slower travel through foldspace and to prevent the lethal withdrawal. If such a thing existed, it would likely be used to cut natural spice on the black market, meaning that the effectiveness of black market spice would be variable.

[beetle496]

So, what the most fertile time period to set the players? I am thinking about 100 years before the first book.

Originally Posted by AllenOwen

We are not part of an interstellar society.

Right, and our economy does fine!
Merchants in a city can generate considerable wealth just by trading within the single city. If they can trade with another city, all the better. If the continent they are on does not have any trade with other continents, their own profit does not decrease just because other countries are benefiting from inter-kingdom commerce!

Imagine how bad things would get if a nation were to be basically blackballed by all the other nations on Earth…

None of that matters if the nation has strong natural resources. Hermit kingdoms can do just fine, and, historically some have.

But there is a problem for my minor house scenario. Would those nobles really be motivated to give up their land and castles just to have true independence? I think it would be more comfortable to be third-rate royalty over first-rate pirates!

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

An alternative would be to allow synthetic spice…

What that not a minor plot line in the books?

[AllenOwen]

Originally Posted by beetle496

Right, and our economy does fine!
Merchants in a city can generate considerable wealth just by trading within the single city. If they can trade with another city, all the better. If the continent they are on does not have any trade with other continents, their own profit does not decrease just because other countries are benefiting from inter-kingdom commerce!

None of that matters if the nation has strong natural resources. Hermit kingdoms can do just fine, and, historically some have.

But there is a problem for my minor house scenario. Would those nobles really be motivated to give up their land and castles just to have true independence? I think it would be more comfortable to be third-rate royalty over first-rate pirates!


What that not a minor plot line in the books?

You misunderstand completely! Did you not read the analogy? How long do you think any nation on Earth, now, would last if every other nation, and every shipping company blackballed a nation. No trade of any kind. No imports, no exports. None. Not long, given how interconnected we care now. Same for the Dune setting. Everyone is interconnected, everyone depends on interstellar trade. Caladan does not have individual nations; it is run by a House Atreides in a semi feudal arrangement. They make money off exporting and importing goods from other star systems. Can't do that if the Spacing Guild has decided not to ever ship their goods. They may have needs they can't produce on Caladan, for example. And if it every happened, the great house ruling would find itself deposed by a ****** off populace, so interstellar trade can resume. Hermit Kingdoms don't do so well, despite North Korea's propaganda.

[Anders]

Well, yes, but the larger the economic area, the better it will handle not trading with outsiders. The U.S. could do better than Sweden, which would do better than San Marino, which would do better than a city quarter, etc. If you can still trade within a solar system you'll do pretty well.

[Daigoro]

Originally Posted by Anders

Well, yes, but the larger the economic area, the better it will handle not trading with outsiders.

True, but it also depends on how resource-rich they are. Saudi Arabia isn't doing well because they have oil, it's because they can sell oil to other countries then buy all the other things they don't have. Some places might be able to achieve resource independence, others might not, despite their size.

But an embargoed system also sounds like a good setting, particularly for breeding villains who are seething about being trapped on some dustball planet.

[Celjabba]

Rogue systems in Dune could certainly survive being left alone, except for some with truly hostile planetary environments.
There are exemples in the extended corpus, iirc.
2 possible problem (that can be avoided with nice gaming scenarios opportunities)
- some great house may decide it would be more profitable if that rogue system joined the fold under their guidance. Without the protection the great game status quo offer, the rogue state would be quite disarmed against an opponent with space superiority.
-lack of official access to mentat, BG, ... training may tempt a rogue state into violating some tech prohibition... and get smashed down for it.

However a rogue planet is very unlikely because if you don't follow the rules and play the game... no spice.
No spice, no extended lifespan and vitality.
Peoples would get unhappy fast.
How long would a modern state exist if they closed all borders and they lacked a basic necessity such as fresh water with no means of producing it ?
The spice must flow.

[AllenOwen]

Also, no spice, slowly go barking insane and then die.

[Anders]

I know very little about the Dune universe, but could you kidnap a guilder and force him to work in exchange for spice?