Dune The Right Thing

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This is my favorite author on TheWillBe.games.

Andrew recommended Jonathan to us and his “audition” was a longer version of this article. He really went for broke on this one and I was duly impressed- this is the kind of writer I really like to promote because it elevates the whole of games writing.

He says he has more smarty pants articles for us...

This is an incredible feature, dense in the analysis and symbolism that eludes almost all games writing beyond a surface scrape.

But it actually goes deeper still, tying that analysis and symbolism directly into an almost-review of the game and making one neat, coherent and impossibly rich package.

Wow.

I don't think Dune - the game or the book - is "impossibly good" but I'm not going to rehearse that tired argument in the face of such eloquence. Rather, I'm fascinated by the view that the things I find tiresome and difficult - the mental exhaustion and stress that play engenders and the sexism inherent in what appears to be a male power-fantasy - can be cast as positives.

In Jonathan's argument, the grueling nature of the game is part of the message it offers the players. I have argued myself before that a "true" horror game is one that no-one would play because it would almost certainly entail deliberate spite. This analysis suggests that I am wrong and, indeed, that a niche of games that go out of their way to discomfit the players might actually prove to become valuable long-term cult titles.

I noticed the pun when I first started the article and then forgot about it until I read the whole thing and went to reply here... well done.

Dune is one of those great games that I'm not sure I'll ever play. Unfortunately the people in one of my local clubs most likely to have it aren't the ones I usually play games with, even on one of the all-day affairs.

Great article. Playing Dune is a singular experience because it is such a bold design that really brings the setting to life. Due to the moving storm and the space transport, the board state is very dynamic. The alliances can be powerful but so transient. The combat system is a brutal meat grinder.

I would play more often, but Dune is difficult to get on the table as a casual choice. The rules are brief, but novel and loaded with exceptions that make teaching it a challenge. So I try to schedule a game in advance, with invitations and scans of the rules, but it's tough to get a firm commitment from exactly six players. I think the game is still great with five, but six is the goal.

MattDP wrote: This is an incredible feature, dense in the analysis and symbolism that eludes almost all games writing beyond a surface scrape.

Yeah, but where's the section on component quality?

Fantastic debut. It's always a good sign when you read something and wish you had written it. Look forward to more articles!

That was a fantastic read, except for one thing...one thing so wrong-headed and utterly inaccurate that I hereby demand a retraction is issued: Blade Runner 2049 was good.

I assume he meant that BR2049 was not a financial windfall. Because, Blade Runner was the best movie I saw in 2017.

I really enjoyed this article. I have never played Dune, nor have I read the book. I did see the movie. I'd love to try the game. I played Rex once, and really enjoyed it. I've seen that Rex is a pale imitator with broken factions, which is a shame since it's probably a lot easier to obtain a copy.

That's what I meant--a "disappointment" financially. Don't mean to fire shots on my first article, but I like 2049 more than the Ridley Scott original, which I don't actually love. Blade Runner 2019 has always left me cold, outside of Hauer's performance, the music, and the production design. In any case, Denis Villeneuve has me excited all over again for Dune--casting the Reverend Mother Charlotte Rampling as the Reverend Mother Mohiam is cosmically right.

JonathanVolk wrote: That's what I meant--a "disappointment" financially. Don't mean to fire shots on my first article, but I like 2049 more than the Ridley Scott original, which I don't actually love. Blade Runner 2019 has always left me cold, outside of Hauer's performance, the music, and the production design. In any case, Denis Villeneuve has me excited all over again for Dune--casting the Reverend Mother Charlotte Rampling as the Reverend Mother Mohiam is cosmically right.

Normally I think it's just a matter of individual preference and opinion when comparing two movies. But the first Blade Runner movie is clearly a flawed classic, given that there have been a total of seven different versions released. The second Blade Runner movie got it right on the first try. Sadly, both movies bombed at the box office, but I see that more as a failing of film-goers than an indictment of the movies.

Very nice article about a great game. I'm very surprised the majority of games you played never finished, I don't think I've ever played a game of Dune and not finished it.

To me one of the most astonishing things about the game, that gets overlooked a lot (other than the battle system which is shockingly not implemented in many other games), is that the rules that really make it a home run in both themes true to the book and the great asymmetric style of play were not designed by the design team. I would love to hear in-depth who had the balls and the insight to take that rule set and say, "Now we are adding this." Without all that it'd still be good, but nowhere near where it is with them. If anyone knows more about how that went down I'm all ears.

Also, the expansions suck. I think that reinforces how extraordinary those bonus rules are because the other new rules bolted on resulted in a mess.

Jonathan, you go ahead and write well or write poorly--just keep bringing Papa those blue-chip puns so he can get the evil juice he needs to float up to the ceiling, pulling everyone's blood-plugs out on the way up.

I await the analysis of the Blade Runner game we all apparently wish existed.