01-19-2020, 12:00 PM | #21 | |
Join Date: Nov 2004
Location: Moscow, Russia
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Re: GURPS Dune
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01-19-2020, 02:47 PM | #22 | ||||||||||||
Join Date: Nov 2011
Location: Frederick, MD
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Re: GURPS Dune
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Last edited by beetle496; 01-19-2020 at 03:06 PM. Reason: added a couple more replies |
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01-19-2020, 03:07 PM | #23 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: GURPS Dune
Just to nitpick, as I recall it, the Guild didn't put up the satellites, but you had to have their permission to do it. Which they withheld because of the bribes.
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01-19-2020, 03:43 PM | #24 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: The Great White North
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Re: GURPS Dune
I can't remember all the details but it was the bribe of spice that stop the satellites. No other planet had spice, so they all had satellites.
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01-19-2020, 04:13 PM | #25 | |
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Thomaston, GA
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Re: GURPS Dune
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Imagine how bad things would get if a nation were to be basically blackballed by all the other nations on Earth. Blockaded so no ships can dock with the blackballed nations ports. Any aircraft that attempts to enter shot down by the blockading forces. Oh sure you'd have smugglers, but the cost of goods smuggled would be very high. None of the leaders of that nation want that for themselves. |
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01-19-2020, 07:10 PM | #26 |
Join Date: Feb 2016
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Re: GURPS Dune
Interstellar trade is highly unlikely to be a major fraction of an economy unless governments enforce dependency to make rebellion less likely to succeed (The Imperium of Man from Warhammer 40K comes to mind). Interplanetary trade might be necessary for efficiency purposes (it is vastly cheaper to mine precious metals on asteroids than on the Earth if you have suitable transport infrastructure), but a TL8 society with less than 2 billion people could probably survive forever without any offworld trade. Of course, a monopoly on FTL travel would likely make interstellar trade even less important, as it would likely increase transportation costs.
Dune just isn't the type of setting that allows for anything other than planetary romance stories. Star Trek, Star Wars, Warhammer 40K, etc. are all examples of better settings for gaming, as they allow more flexibility. Of course, it helps that they each have hundreds of associated books, multiple media properties, and assorted RPG lines that fleshed out the settings. Of course, nothing is stopping a GM from fleshing out Dune to make it a better gaming setting. For example, perhaps FTL travel is possible without Navigators, just much slower and much less safe outside of explored routes. Captains would have foldspace routes that they could navigate slowly and carefully without a Navigator, though the trip would take 10x as long, meaning that nobles would prefer using Navigators. It would allow for a lot more flexibility in the setting. |
01-19-2020, 07:22 PM | #27 | |
Join Date: Apr 2012
Location: Thomaston, GA
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Re: GURPS Dune
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Unless we've moved to a more generic setting, which means the thread has veered off topic a bit. |
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01-19-2020, 08:45 PM | #28 |
Join Date: Jul 2007
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Re: GURPS Dune
There is a semi-official non-canon book The Dune Encyclopedia which has a lot interesting details of the setting.
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01-19-2020, 11:02 PM | #29 | |||
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: GURPS Dune
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It's navigation that's the issue.
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01-19-2020, 11:09 PM | #30 | |
Join Date: Feb 2007
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Re: GURPS Dune
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There are lots of ways different kinds of groups can come together. Remember, we see only the tip of the societal iceberg in the stories, the nobles and senior members of their groups. But the groups are huge, galaxy-spanning organizations with things going on all over the place. There are hundreds of Great Houses, and at least thousands of Houses Minor. There noble families employ millions of people in various business and military activities. There are other businesses that interlock with those. The BG has agents on most worlds, Mentats work everywhere. There are probably billions of BG all told, likewise the other big outfits. There are also lots and lots of plain old rich commoners. The are CHOAM business agents, accountants, explorers, lawyers, secret agents, assassins, it's got everything going on that any SFnal megacorp can have going on, except for AI and some forms of cyborgization. Most of what can happen in any other galaxy-spanning SF setting can happen in the Dune galaxy. The galaxy at the time of Dune is not low-tech! That's a common misconception. Certain specific areas of technology are forbidden, esp. computers and human alteration, and they don't advance much because of various restrictions, but the average tech level is higher than that of modern-day Earth, all over the galaxy. There are heavily industrialized worlds, there's a sophisticated STL space infrastructure, in some ways their miniaturization is ahead of ours. It's not a medieval-tech agrarian galaxy. That comes much later, in the later centuries of Leto II's reign.
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Tags |
discworld, dune |
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