Pendragon and Dune

[B.Caven]

I've always wanted to run a long term campaign set before and after Dune that follows the novel's themes on historical legacies. It's one of the more interesting elements of the book series that rarely gets explored - how 5,000 years later people are speculating if Paul Atredies was even real, or if he was just a Fremen folk story or tribal leader. There's some nice parallels with King Arthur there. I think it would be fun to have players see their actions fade into historic myth, or witness how the legacy Paul's Jihad changes the universe through the eyes of different characters.

Would Pendragon be a good system for that with it's idea of lineage? I imagine I'd need to swap "Honour" out with something like "Legacy" or similar.

Anyone have any advice for such an adaptation?

[Darius West]

Generational campaigns are a very ambitious undertaking, and hard to do at all, let alone well.  I have revved up to create settings that would last potentially multiple generations, but I've never had a campaign that went past two generations.  For that reason, I'd suggest that you make each character really only have one big adventure, sort of like a mini-campaign over several sessions before they retire, if you want to make the generational aspect an important part of play.  I'd also make sure that the players understand that the generational aspect of the game is the big selling point, as players often get pretty involved with their characters and their progression, and will forget about the whole "generational" thing in favor of one more adventure with "Sir X the Unknown".

Edited November 13, 2022 by Darius West

[Morien]

Yes, what Darius said.

That was my experience when I was trying to do a generational Middle-Earth campaign stretching the whole of the Third Age. I got bogged down with trying to cover the whole lifespan of these long-lived Numenoreans. While I tried to rush things forward with decade-long sessions, it kinda was the worst option: it was too high-level to allow for much RP, while still taking up time with trying to make sure that things were happening. The campaign would have been better if I would have just focused on a couple of adventures and done bigger timeskips in between them, rather than spending sessions basically on Winter phases and solos.

I came out of that GMing experience convinced that it would have been better to focus on a single grand, pivotal adventure or a mini-campaign (of 10 years or so, like the Kin-strife) per generation, and then just fast-forward through the 'routine bits' to the next major event.

[Questbird]

19 hours ago, Darius West said:

  I'd also make sure that the players understand that the generational aspect of the game is the big selling point, as players often get pretty involved with their characters and their progression, and will forget about the whole "generational" thing in favor of one more adventure with "Sir X the Unknown".

 

I've not played it, but the old post-apocalyptic military science-fiction game Living Steel had a 'karma' mechanic which I've not seen in RPGs before, which allows improvement points to be passed on to a player's next character after the first one dies. Since you can earn karma by being true to your noble warrior's path, even sacrificing yourself for the cause can be a sensible role-playing option. A mechanic like that could be used to encourage players to 'move on' to the next lifetime/generation, or at least not be so sad when Sir X the Unknown ends his final mission.

[Morien]

6 minutes ago, Questbird said:

Since you can earn karma by being true to your noble warrior's path, even sacrificing yourself for the cause can be a sensible role-playing option.

What Darius and I spoke about earlier also gets this effect: Since you are effectively playing a one-shot (or a mini campaign), it doesn't matter so much if the character survives. You are going to fast-forward to the next generation anyway. So it is better to go out heroically if the opportunity presents itself, than survive as a coward. Which is the story you'd rather have told of your previous character in the next generation, after all?

I made a con-adventure that was pretty explicitly about that. Where the right choice was to embrace that sacrifice and die heroically so that others might live. Worked very well, IMHO.

[Questbird]

40 minutes ago, Morien said:

What Darius and I spoke about earlier also gets this effect: Since you are effectively playing a one-shot (or a mini campaign), it doesn't matter so much if the character survives. You are going to fast-forward to the next generation anyway. So it is better to go out heroically if the opportunity presents itself, than survive as a coward. Which is the story you'd rather have told of your previous character in the next generation, after all?

I made a con-adventure that was pretty explicitly about that. Where the right choice was to embrace that sacrifice and die heroically so that others might live. Worked very well, IMHO.

 

I would think that an aspect which distinguishes a generational campaign (though I've never run one or even attempted it) might be some way that the actions of your descendants or past lives/adventures could materially influence the present game/campaign.

There was a Call of Cthulhu adventure a bit like that, with three adventures spread across time Ripples from Carcosa. In that one you play a group of investigators in each era, and you could get flashes of memory about your past lives to know what to do in the present.

[Hzark10]

Most of my campaigns have not made it into multiple generations, but one thing I did was to have the characters develop their sons/daughters as soon as they were of fostering age (age 7). And on occasion, I had a "flashback" mini-scenario where the players played their younger selves to gather information about the current situation. These would range from a single die roll (using the page/maid or squire/maiden character sheet) to see what they remember, to an adventure.

[Darius West]

I actually have rules for conception and genetic inheritance.  I also have rules as to how to manage attribute changes as characters grow from babies to children to spotty delinquents to adults.  This can be used for all games, not just Pendragon, but is powerful magic, and should not be used lightly.

Conception:

from unprotected sex is 1 on 1d8. (I checked the stats and this is pretty accurate, you may apply a bonus for mothers having high or low CON, by using a 1d6 for healthy mothers and 1d10 for unhealthy mothers, potions might further modify the dice). 

Genetic Inheritance:

Rather than rolling up stats, you employ the stats of the parents and use the following table:

Genetic inheritance rules are Roll 1d10.  1-4= Same sex parent's stat, 5-7= Opposite sex parent's stat, 8=Average of both parent's stat, 9-0= Take after grandparent (Roll random stat).

Obviously same sex parent stat means if your character is a girl, she takes after her mother, while opposite sex in this instance would mean taking after her father.

Growing Up:

As to aging... Divide each stat by 15+1d6.  The result of the 15+1d6 indicates when the character will stop growing.  The fractional result is applied each year the character grows, but only to physical stats...  Intelligence is present from birth. Appearance is apparent from a young age, and should only be divided by 7.  The GM may also optionally give each character a single stat that is only divided by 10, which they improve in rapidly.

Charisma and Social stats however are another matter.  First divide Charisma by 2.  Then divide that halved product by the age of legal majority in the culture.  The character will only develop up to half their Charisma, and then will get the rest of it when they achieve legal majority or soon thereafter, as before then they are just kids and nobody much listens to them.  Obviously this doesn't apply to Pendragon though. 

Remember also that in the first years of your characters life, they are engaged in the rigorous training exercises of learning mobility, speech, not wearing one's food but putting it in one's mouth, and appropriate social performance of bodily functions.  It is a blistering program, and the fact that characters are able to discover syntax with minimal prompting is super unrealistic imo.

Edited November 15, 2022 by Darius West

[Ali the Helering]

10 minutes ago, Darius West said:

I actually have rules for conception and genetic inheritance.  I also have rules as to how to manage attribute changes as characters grow from babies to children to spotty delinquents to adults.  This can be used for all games, not just Pendragon, but is powerful magic, and should not be used lightly.

Conception:

from unprotected sex is 1 on 1d8. (I checked the stats and this is pretty accurate, you may apply a bonus for mothers having high or low CON, by using a 1d6 for healthy mothers and 1d10 for unhealthy mothers, potions might further modify the dice). 

Genetic Inheritance:

Rather than rolling up stats, you employ the stats of the parents and use the following table:

Genetic inheritance rules are Roll 1d10.  1-4= Same sex parent's stat, 5-7= Opposite sex parent's stat, 8=Average of both parent's stat, 9-0= Take after grandparent (Roll random stat).

Obviously same sex parent stat means if your character is a girl, she takes after her mother, while opposite sex in this instance would mean taking after her father.

Growing Up:

As to aging... Divide each stat by 15+1d6.  The result of the 15+1d6 indicates when the character will stop growing.  The fractional result is applied each year the character grows, but only to physical stats...  Intelligence is present from birth. Appearance is apparent from a young age, and should only be divided by 7.  The GM may also optionally give each character a single stat that is only divided by 10, which they improve in rapidly.

Charisma and Social stats however are another matter.  First divide Charisma by 2.  Then divide that halved product by the age of legal majority in the culture.  The character will only develop up to half their Charisma, and then will get the rest of it when they achieve legal majority or soon thereafter, as before then they are just kids and nobody much listens to them.  Obviously this doesn't apply to Pendragon though. 

Remember also that in the first years of your characters life, they are engaged in the rigorous training exercises of learning mobility, speech, not wearing one's food but putting it in one's mouth, and appropriate social performance of bodily functions.  It is a blistering program, and the fact that characters are able to discover syntax with minimal prompting is super unrealistic imo.

I know we have had massive differences in the past Darius, but this is brilliant! 

[Darius West]

16 hours ago, Ali the Helering said:

I know we have had massive differences in the past Darius, but this is brilliant! 

Have we 🤔?  I seldom take things personally or much to heart, and I certainly never felt that way about you Ali.  Glad you liked this tidbit however, I've been using this  over multiple games since 1994, as the need arises.

I also had a system for creating a Cyberpunk character background much like the RQG rules pages 29-45, but where you learn skills each year based on your age and your parent's background, but it generated a large back-story that players could then embroider a bit.  My players liked it so much they would sit there rolling up character after character, noting down the back stories, and it was frustratingly hard to get them to actually start playing.  One of my players took the system home and generated a 4 generational family tree with all the family members over the course of 80-100 years written up as a 50 page novella.  It was then I realized I had created a monster... I mean, I'm a GM and I regularly create monsters but... a character creation system that gets the players addicted to it was not something I anticipated.  I could easily produce a version of it for RQG, Pendragon, or CoC, if there was some interest.

Edited November 15, 2022 by Darius West

[Ali the Helering]

1 hour ago, Darius West said:

Have we 🤔?  I seldom take things personally or much to heart, and I certainly never felt that way about you Ali. 

The past remains in the past.  We look to the future.🙂

[1d8+DB]

So there's an  indie game of  'colloborative' story-telling and narrative role-playing called 'Microscope'.  You can play  and create epic arcs ('The Five Thousand Reign of the God Emperor'), zeroing in on specific periods ('The Trade Wars') and key figures ('Lady Rhaya Mhazil of the Ardara Counting House'). I thought I would like to try it to create a back-ground/history for use in a more conventional TTRPG.  You could also use it to to create a narrative frame-work that you could then slot your  PD/BRP 'mini-campaigns' into for a generational/supra-historical game.

 

 

Edited November 16, 2022 by 1d8+DB

[Darius West]

30 minutes ago, 1d8+DB said:

So there's an  indie game of  'colloborative' story-telling and narrative role-playing called 'Microscope'.  You can play  and create epic arcs ('The Five Thousand Reign of the God Emperor'), zeroing in on specific periods ('The Trade Wars') and key figures ('Lady Rhaya Mhazil of the Ardara Counting House'). I thought I would like to try it to create a back-ground/history for use in a more conventional TTRPG.  You could also use it to to create a narrative frame-work that you could then slot your  PD/BRP 'mini-campaigns' into for a generational/supra-historical game.

Yeah, microscope is interesting as a method of world development, and could potentially be used for a generational game.  Good suggestion 1d8+DB.

[Ali the Helering]

Tindalos and I used Microscope to 'fill in' the details of a Sartarite tribe.  It worked very well, and was a great deal of fun.

[B.Caven]

On 11/15/2022 at 11:08 AM, Ali the Helering said:

The past remains in the past.  We look to the future.🙂

Well I'm glad my little post was able to reunite such good friends!

[B.Caven]

On 11/16/2022 at 3:44 AM, 1d8+DB said:

So there's an  indie game of  'colloborative' story-telling and narrative role-playing called 'Microscope'.  You can play  and create epic arcs ('The Five Thousand Reign of the God Emperor'), zeroing in on specific periods ('The Trade Wars') and key figures ('Lady Rhaya Mhazil of the Ardara Counting House'). I thought I would like to try it to create a back-ground/history for use in a more conventional TTRPG.  You could also use it to to create a narrative frame-work that you could then slot your  PD/BRP 'mini-campaigns' into for a generational/supra-historical game.

 

 

That's a very good shout, especially for the periods between times when not much happens historically 

[Morien]

On 11/16/2022 at 4:44 AM, 1d8+DB said:

You could also use it to to create a narrative frame-work that you could then slot your  PD/BRP 'mini-campaigns' into for a generational/supra-historical game.

Interesting. I might have to take a look at that, just out of curiosity.

[SaxBasilisk]

Microscope is a fun way to set up a campaign. I think it might need a little more structure and world-building knowledge among the players for a typical Chaosium game with a previously detailed backstory - but it's worth looking into.

[whitelaughter]

I'd suggest splicing Pendragon with the Dynasties book from Traveller - Pendragon handles the characters, Dynasties gives you the overview and is designed for a similar setting.

[Mugen]

When I read "Pendragon and Dune", I immediately think of Fading Suns.

FS is a Science-Fiction game which uses a d20 "roll-under blackjack" and has a background that has often been compared with Dune, as it features an intergalactic feodal society. It also has a system of paired personality traits, but very different from Pendragon's, and with very few traits.

Its main flaw, IMHO, is that it uses pools of d6s for damage and armor, but not like in Pendragon : there are much more dice to roll, and it's a "success counting" mechanism, where only 5s and 6s are counted.

It's also an "attribute +skill" system, as your d20 must be under the sum of an attribute and a skill. It's a perfectly fine idea, but I think the maximum values are not well chosen. The maximum possible attribute+skill value is 18, which means a lot of seasoned characters have between 14 and 16. As someone with experience with Pendragon, I think this is way too low.