Dune: the awful movie (but great novels!)

[Elbows]

I think I'll pick up the first one and go from there.  I'm pretty picky when it comes to books, so we'll see.

[Cherno]

[...]
Should you care enough to want to try the computer games, Dune 2 is the granddaddy of the "modern RTS" game genre, and a direct predecessor of the Command & Conquer series. This was later followed by Dune 2000 (which was okay), and finally by Emperor: Battle for Dune (which I actually rather liked and played a lot of).

The games are not especially canonical (indeed, a third House -Ordos- is totally invented for the games), but they do seem to "understand" the conflicts based on the planet Dune and it's precious Spice Melange rather better than the films and modern novel sequels seem to.

Oh, but you omit the first Dune game by Cryo! In my opinion, it is something of a classic and a masterpiece, capturing the story of the movie as well as having great sound & graphics for the time, and the mix of global strategy, resource management and adventure/RPG was genius and actualy worked. It's one game I'd love to see a faithful remake of.

[Major_Gilbear]

Oh, but you omit the first Dune game by Cryo! In my opinion, it is something of a classic and a masterpiece, capturing the story of the movie as well as having great sound & graphics for the time, and the mix of global strategy, resource management and adventure/RPG was genius and actualy worked. It's one game I'd love to see a faithful remake of.

I frankly found it harder to get into; it's more of... an acquired taste compared to the others. I don't mean that in a disrespectful way either, that's just my view. <shrug>

BTW, Cryo managed to release one more Dune game before they went under Frank Herbert's Dune... It flopped though, which can't have helped Cryo.


Aaanyway, back to the original post - I think if you really wanted to make more of a wargame, you would probably not do too badly by picking through the Dune RTS computer games for some ideas. Not particularly canon, but I think you could get a tangibly decent result from doing so.

[Juan]

The saga "Dune" from Frank Herbert is a fantastic reading and it is possible to understand and find more information with every reading. The movie... was not bad, but I think it could be possible to film another one better now!!!

I´m working in a "Dune" project in 28mm, an small skirmish game perhaps using "Five Core Skirmish Game" because I would like to use not too many models.

Some of the figures I have painted painting:





I´m preparing an scenario in which a party of Imperial biologists and their Fremen attendants are attacked by a group of crazy Harkonnen with Rabban in command...

The models from Akula are also very good!

[Connectamabob]

Growing up, as I did, in a decently geeky environment I remember everyone speaking of Dune and praising it etc.  I finally tried to watch the movie a few years ago and absolutely could not stand it.  Are the books actually worth the read?

How many are there, and which ones should I avoid (I can only assume there have been knock offs and ill-fated sequels?)

The original book series by Frank Herbert are masterworks of worldbuilding. All of them are great in this respect.

They are:
1) Dune (story of Paul's rise to emperor/massiahhood)
2) Dune Messiah (short, and pretty much just a prologue/setup to CoD)
3) Children of Dune (story of Paul's kids, and them finding their own path)
3) God Emperor of Dune (story of the eventual fall of Paul's son's empire)
4) Heretics of Dune (first of a two parter about the destabilization/fulfillment of Paul's son's legacy)
5) Chapterhouse Dune (second part of the above)

The reason why you see disagreement on the quality of the original books after the first is because the first has that world building as the supporting framework for a solid, self-contained "hero's journey" type story (though it's debatable as to whether there are any real "heroes", in much a similar way as in A Song of Ice an Fire/Game of Thrones: there're definitely protagonists, but they're not always nice or relatable), while the sequels increasingly tend to be more about the drama being a supporting framework for the worldbuilding. If you're not as interested in the world or the philosophical musings, then they get less interesting as the core human stories become... soupier... less dramatically powerful or cohesive.

Children of Dune (the third book) comes closest to being like the first.

Frank Herbert's son Brian Herbert started cranking out his own additions to the series about ten years ago. His imagination and prose lacks the depth and skill of his father's, so while some people like them, this is contingent on... not asking/expecting much. He's about on the level of an "airport thriller" writer: serviceable popcorn entertainment if he were writing his own stuff, but the fact that he's trying to fill his father's shoes makes for a bad contrast. Imagine if someone hired, say, James Rollins to write Tolkien prequels/sequels, and you'll get the idea.