Dune

I know we have to have some lovers of F. Herbert's Dune series. I've been contemplating an RP based off of them, but such an RP wouldn't be possible if we don't have enough willing participants with adequate knowledge. Well, not impossible, but it would require quite a bit of explanation...

So, this thread is for discussion of personal knowledge of the Dune universe and the feasibility of a Dune-based RP.

Save the first ten minutes of the movie and it made no sense, sort ofan interesting Universe, though.

My knowledge of Dune is as follows: Desert, sand worms, and the spice must flow.

My knowledge of dune:
-Giant sand worms. Like, horribly gigantic. The size of a building as big as a giant sand worm.
-Faaaaaaaaar in the future. Like the year 3000 something idk
-Very probably on another planet, but not entirely sure. During all that time Earth could've been wiped out by nukes or something.
-Also it's one giant desert. Which is even in the name.

Daynel wrote:

My knowledge of dune:
-Giant sand worms. Like, horribly gigantic. The size of a building as big as a giant sand worm.
-Faaaaaaaaar in the future. Like the year 3000 something idk
-Very probably on another planet, but not entirely sure. During all that time Earth could've been wiped out by nukes or something.
-Also it's one giant desert. Which is even in the name.

I wouldn't call the year 3000 exactly faaaaaaaaar in the future...

MercurySteam wrote:

Daynel wrote:

My knowledge of dune:
-Giant sand worms. Like, horribly gigantic. The size of a building as big as a giant sand worm.
-Faaaaaaaaar in the future. Like the year 3000 something idk
-Very probably on another planet, but not entirely sure. During all that time Earth could've been wiped out by nukes or something.
-Also it's one giant desert. Which is even in the name.

I wouldn't call the year 3000 exactly faaaaaaaaar in the future...

All right, how about faaaaar in the future?

Daynel wrote:

MercurySteam wrote:

Daynel wrote:

My knowledge of dune:
-Giant sand worms. Like, horribly gigantic. The size of a building as big as a giant sand worm.
-Faaaaaaaaar in the future. Like the year 3000 something idk
-Very probably on another planet, but not entirely sure. During all that time Earth could've been wiped out by nukes or something.
-Also it's one giant desert. Which is even in the name.

I wouldn't call the year 3000 exactly faaaaaaaaar in the future...

All right, how about faaaaar in the future?

Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar

MercurySteam wrote:

Daynel wrote:

MercurySteam wrote:

Daynel wrote:

My knowledge of dune:
-Giant sand worms. Like, horribly gigantic. The size of a building as big as a giant sand worm.
-Faaaaaaaaar in the future. Like the year 3000 something idk
-Very probably on another planet, but not entirely sure. During all that time Earth could've been wiped out by nukes or something.
-Also it's one giant desert. Which is even in the name.

I wouldn't call the year 3000 exactly faaaaaaaaar in the future...

All right, how about faaaaar in the future?

Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar

Now that would be faaaaaaaaaaaaar too far...

Knowledge of Dune-

1.) Humans are at war vs. AI's and Bio-mechs for using human slaves. AI's ruled by Omnius, the highest-level AI, at least for a while.

2.) "Fold Drive" Invented to shorten travel times, very dangerous because the ship could appear anywhere, from a black hole, to an asteroid field, to the core of a star. High-risk and High-reward system.

3.) Spice, found on Arrakhus (I think) which grants people foresight, pretty much prediction. This Spice becomes essential for fold-drive travel.

4.) A lot of the economy becomes focused on this spice and it becomes the centerpoint of conflict.

5.) Giant worms on Arrakhus that like to eat things, can only go through sand

6.) Earth destroyed by Nuclear War from the first AI-Human conflict.

7.) Basic shielding-technology, Holtzman Shields. To fire through them, shields are 'flickered'.

8.) Massive human-harvesting business for organs to give war veterans and the wounded.

9.) It's on multiple planets, lots of them.

That's what I gathered. I read one of the books- "The War of the Machines."

Robotnik wrote:

Knowledge of Dune-

1.) Humans are at war vs. AI's and Bio-mechs for using human slaves. AI's ruled by Omnius, the highest-level AI, at least for a while.

2.) "Fold Drive" Invented to shorten travel times, very dangerous because the ship could appear anywhere, from a black hole, to an asteroid field, to the core of a star. High-risk and High-reward system.

3.) Spice, found on Arrakhus (I think) which grants people foresight, pretty much prediction. This Spice becomes essential for fold-drive travel.

4.) A lot of the economy becomes focused on this spice and it becomes the centerpoint of conflict.

5.) Giant worms on Arrakhus that like to eat things, can only go through sand

6.) Earth destroyed by Nuclear War from the first AI-Human conflict.

7.) Basic shielding-technology, Holtzman Shields. To fire through them, shields are 'flickered'.

8.) Massive human-harvesting business for organs to give war veterans and the wounded.

9.) It's on multiple planets, lots of them.

That's what I gathered. I read one of the books- "The War of the Machines."

Thar be the Butlerian Jihad, which I don't know that much about. It happens a few thousand years before the first trilogy. You're right about Arrakis, shields, and such.

My knowledge of Dune:

1. ???

The movie was better.

*gets killed*

I'm kidding.

Read book, didn't like it.

The desert planet, the important one, is Arrakis, but there are lots of others. The sandworms live on Arrakis. They're absolutely massive, bigger than Star Wars's space slugs, kilometers long. They eat whatever they want to. Because of the already-mentioned man-machine war, people hate computers and stuff. Instead, they have Mentats, which are people who use a lot of training and drugs and stuff to be able to perform the same functions. The war happened a long, long time before Dune, though. They all wear personal shields that stop fast things but let slow things pass, so they usually fight with knives because bullets bounce off. Guns exist but have been made nearly useless for warfare because of shields. I don't like that, personally; I've never been a fan of melee weapons in science fiction. I don't like lightsabers, for much the same reason. I tolerate them. Halo's energy swords are dealt with a bit better; they make sense in the overall context of a culture that usually uses plasma weapons. The book didn't really do anything for me, and I have really no desire to read the sequels. It wasn't bad, but I don't understand why it consistently tops lists of the best science fiction novels of all time.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

I don't like lightsabers, for much the same reason. I tolerate them..

The plot thickens...

Keon wrote:

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

I don't like lightsabers, for much the same reason. I tolerate them..

The plot thickens...

IMO Star Wars would be better if more Force-sensitives fought primarily with the Force and didn't use lightsabers. You see that with some of the Sith lords. A Jedi with a lightsaber is powerful, yes, but the same Jedi would be way more dangerous if they carried a blaster rifle as a primary weapon and trained with it as intensely as they train with lightsabers. Some of the NJO-era Jedi use blasters more, because they were soldiers before being trained as Jedi, and it's better.

I also have my issues with blasters as a primary weapon for the series, which are the same issues everyone else has and that I think I've been over. They're not nearly as big as my issues with any science fiction series in which pointy metal tied to sticks is the most efficient way of killing large numbers of enemies, though.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Keon wrote:

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

I don't like lightsabers, for much the same reason. I tolerate them..

The plot thickens...

IMO Star Wars would be better if more Force-sensitives fought primarily with the Force and didn't use lightsabers. You see that with some of the Sith lords. A Jedi with a lightsaber is powerful, yes, but the same Jedi would be way more dangerous if they carried a blaster rifle as a primary weapon and trained with it as intensely as they train with lightsabers. Some of the NJO-era Jedi use blasters more, because they were soldiers before being trained as Jedi, and it's better.

I also have my issues with blasters as a primary weapon for the series, which are the same issues everyone else has and that I think I've been over. They're not nearly as big as my issues with any science fiction series in which pointy metal tied to sticks is the most efficient way of killing large numbers of enemies, though.

It makes sense. If you look at current trends, ranged weapons are going to be rendered more and more irrelevant as time drives by and countermeasures are thought of and used. The effective distance will grow shorter and shorter as designers attempt to balance portability and overcoming defenses until either a) the range at which they can be used becomes so small that melee is more effective, or b) they become so unreliable or temperamental that, again, a piece of 'metal tied to a stick' becomes the better option.

And it's not better, the authors just like to make former special ops commando or what have you be edgy and challenged at every turn by traditionalists despite their results. A lightsaber is much more effective than a blaster ever will be, because with the force it's like a crossbow vs a longsword, except said longsword happens to have the capability of deflecting anything sent at it with the exception of certain plot device materials.

Tiel+ wrote:

It makes sense. If you look at current trends, ranged weapons are going to be rendered more and more irrelevant as time drives by and countermeasures are thought of and used. The effective distance will grow shorter and shorter as designers attempt to balance portability and overcoming defenses until either a) the range at which they can be used becomes so small that melee is more effective, or b) they become so unreliable or temperamental that, again, a piece of 'metal tied to a stick' becomes the better option.

And it's not better, the authors just like to make former special ops commando or what have you be edgy and challenged at every turn by traditionalists despite their results. A lightsaber is much more effective than a blaster ever will be, because with the force it's like a crossbow vs a longsword, except said longsword happens to have the capability of deflecting anything sent at it with the exception of certain plot device materials.

I'm not aware of any historical trends of ranged weapons being rendered irrelevant. Rather the opposite, in fact. Wars today are fought from farther away than at any other time in history. You no longer even have to be in the same hemisphere as your opponents. Countermeasures improve, yes--1850s-era muskets would be almost useless against modern body armor--but weapons improve proportionally. We're moving towards hand weapons that fire seeker rounds to kill people from miles away, not towards the revival of the bayonet charge.

I don't understand your crossbow vs. longsword comparison. Crossbows revolutionized warfare because they gave an untrained peasant a pretty good chance of killing a fully-armored, sword-wielding knight on horseback. Ranged weaponry that could be used by anyone without years of training completely changed the way wars were fought and made melee weaponry largely useless, outside of certain very specific situations (armies do still issue knives, right? But you only need them if you find yourself in an enemy trench or something). That's pretty much the opposite of what I think you're saying, so I'm guessing that's the wrong interpretation.

Last_Jedi_Standing wrote:

Tiel+ wrote:

It makes sense. If you look at current trends, ranged weapons are going to be rendered more and more irrelevant as time drives by and countermeasures are thought of and used. The effective distance will grow shorter and shorter as designers attempt to balance portability and overcoming defenses until either a) the range at which they can be used becomes so small that melee is more effective, or b) they become so unreliable or temperamental that, again, a piece of 'metal tied to a stick' becomes the better option.

And it's not better, the authors just like to make former special ops commando or what have you be edgy and challenged at every turn by traditionalists despite their results. A lightsaber is much more effective than a blaster ever will be, because with the force it's like a crossbow vs a longsword, except said longsword happens to have the capability of deflecting anything sent at it with the exception of certain plot device materials.

I'm not aware of any historical trends of ranged weapons being rendered irrelevant. Rather the opposite, in fact. Wars today are fought from farther away than at any other time in history. You no longer even have to be in the same hemisphere as your opponents. Countermeasures improve, yes--1850s-era muskets would be almost useless against modern body armor--but weapons improve proportionally. We're moving towards hand weapons that fire seeker rounds to kill people from miles away, not towards the revival of the bayonet charge.

I don't understand your crossbow vs. longsword comparison. Crossbows revolutionized warfare because they gave an untrained peasant a pretty good chance of killing a fully-armored, sword-wielding knight on horseback. Ranged weaponry that could be used by anyone without years of training completely changed the way wars were fought and made melee weaponry largely useless, outside of certain very specific situations (armies do still issue knives, right? But you only need them if you find yourself in an enemy trench or something). That's pretty much the opposite of what I think you're saying, so I'm guessing that's the wrong interpretation.

Tiel's point, I think is that defense and offense will continue to evolve together, becoming more complex and expensive, until it is unfeasible to continue advancing. Upon this, weaponry will revert to a point at which there was never an effective defense made. This devolution could be accelerated by a breakthrough like the invention of a shield that renders high-velocity objects and projected energy harmless. In the Dune universe, the use of melee weapons is largely reinforced by general philosophy as well as the technological circumstances.

Governments span dozens or hundreds of planets and tens or hundreds of billions of people, so many that conventional government often ceases to be effective. In this case, people must be made to gain a fanatical, religious view of their leaders, which causes them to disregard the fear of bodily harm in favor of gaining honor.

As previously stated, shields render most projectile weaponry useless and react very violently with energy weapons. Where shields can't be used, like in the open desert, ballistics like maula pistols are sometimes used, however the superior group may maneuver in order to engage in hand-to-hand. City sieges also utilize ballistics, as in the Harkonnen shelling of Arrakeen.

MercurySteam wrote:

City sieges also utilize ballistics, as in the Harkonnen shelling of Arrakeen.

That was seriously abnormal. I think the quote was "Who would have thought to revive artillery in this day and age?" They used artillery there because it was so ridiculously out of date that they weren't prepared for it, but also because the defenders had taken shelter in unshielded caves rather than in the city proper.