Quick Intro

Welcome to Dune. When you enter the game you receive your Faction via NB, this will have all your basic game stats and some quick notes from the Mod outlining basic advice for that faction. Once the game commences – and it may already be underway when you join – you are free to act. There’s little point in studying the rules in depth before doing anything, they should merely be skimmed for familiarity and referenced as necessary, here though are the basics.

You are competing for power inside the Landsdraad council. This is principally done by controlling as many votes and as much money as possible. Your faction has advantages and weaknesses, and these along with personal inclination will designate the route you should pursue to acquire power. Players need ensure that they are politically, economically, and militarily secure… and to do that they need to acquire property, allies, and soldiers.

Players have 4 principal types of actions they can take, political actions, military actions, entering bids, and voting. Each is discussed in detail in the rules. The game consists of multiple rounds, each representing 1 game year, and is broken into 4 phases. The Initial Phase, 2 Auction Phases (Early and Late), and the Final Phase. A Crisis is revealed at the start of the round, and players have until the end of the round to cast their vote, aye, nay, or abstain, on the Crisis. Most actions resolve at the end of the round, this is when the vote is announced, when players receive income from their various assets, and when battles take place.

The game focuses around the current Crisis, but crises do not appear out of the blue. At the End of the Auction Phases 4 Crisis Events will be posted, these are the looming crises, one of them will be the Crisis for the next round. How the players vote on a Crisis results in one of two possible outcomes which tend to have major effects on the game, and crises grow increasingly severe as the game progresses, until a player obtains a majority in the Landsdraad or an outcome of a Crisis ends the game. A that time players receive their final score and ranking.

There are many routes to victory in the game, and your faction will affect which ones are best for you. You can simply sit back, fortify your realm, and buy as many votes and property as possible, or you can attack other players. Attack vary from Raids and Assassination to full blown military assaults. You can buy and sell via the CHOAM Auctions, cut direct deals with other players, or invade and take it. Players can purchase everything from factories to entire planets, warleaders, space ports, illegal contraband, and mercenaries. You can trade and deal with other players honestly, or stab them in back and torch their capital.

Your Faction and Attributes will strongly influence what you can do. In this game their are three attributes, Diplomacy, Combat, and Intrigue. Each players begins with a score of 1-3 in each of these, and a total of 7 spread between them. They also have 1 free point to stick in whichever attribute they wish. Some things in the game combine these scores, and typicall appear as some combinaiton of D, C, and I in parentheses: (DC), (CI), etc. When they do, this number would be the sum of those values. For instance someone with a Diplomacy of 3 and a Combat of 2 has a (DC) of 3+2=5, and a (CC) of 2+2=4. There is no difference between (DC) and (CD), and complex one such as (CCC+5) can appear, in this case 2+2+2+5=11. Players typically are better at actions that involve attributes they have a higher score in.