Dune: Home Secrets and techniques is a story-driven recreation impressed by the award-winning Detective: A Fashionable Crime Board Sport. The sport makes use of the identical system to inform a fascinating story, however on the identical time, with some tweaks and rule modifications, it supplies a really completely different expertise. On this article, I want to focus on a few these modifications.
the board
Detective: A Fashionable Crime Board Sport concerned placing gamers within the sneakers of characters from procedural tv exhibits like CSI: Crime Scene Investigation. Gamers tackle the roles of legislation enforcement officers and detectives. They go to the lab to look at DNA samples, they go to courtroom and metropolis archives to analysis outdated recordsdata and circumstances, they go to Richmond police to query suspects and witnesses. The sport comes with a small board to assist manifest this straightforward construction (lab, Richmond police, courtroom): that is your terrain, that is your playground, that is your process.
Dune: Home Secrets and techniques invitations the participant characters to Tel Gezer, a small metropolis on Arrakis that they’ve by no means visited earlier than. They’re members of the resistance on a secret mission. There isn’t any construction, there’s solely ignorance, there’s solely the fog of the key warfare.
In Dune: Home Secrets and techniques, I made a decision to throw away the board as Detective gamers realize it to take away safety from identified areas. I gave them the map of Tel Gezer, an enormous paper map like within the RPG periods. I marked 26 completely different locations on it: tavern, palace, lander, gallery, market, all completely different locations: the entire huge metropolis, the town that newcomers do not find out about. As an alternative of a strong construction from the Detective, they’re given a pamphlet with issues to discover and locations to find out about.
It is a easy design change. Take away the board with 4 acquainted areas and supply a map with 26 unknown ones. Abruptly, from being a assured legislation enforcement officer, you turn into a traveler visiting a brand new place.
the sources
In Detective, initially of every recreation, characters add their talent tokens to the pool. This represents their expertise and the way they will add worth to the workforce by excelling in some areas. These tokens are then used within the recreation to delve deeper into some playing cards and study extra about sure plot parts.
One of many attribute parts of Dune is the frugality of the Fremen, their sacred take care of water and spices. They’re the exact opposite of immediately’s society by which the phrase waste accompanies every single day. I wished to point out it within the guidelines, each the shortage of sources and respect for what an individual has. The talent tokens acquired a easy adjustment. As soon as spent, they disappear. They aren’t changed initially of the following recreation.
Gamers start the marketing campaign with some useful resource tokens. That is all they’ve for the 4 mission marketing campaign. Each time they wish to spend a token they assume twice. Each time they spend sources, they debate whether or not it is time. Each time they spend sources, they really feel the gravity of the motion.
Welcome to Arrakis.
Take dangers
In Detective the gamers are legislation enforcement officers. Belief is your limitless useful resource. They will go to crime scenes, they will query witnesses, they will seek the advice of police databases, they’re answerable for the state of affairs.
In Dune: Home Secrets and techniques, you play a insurgent combating the evil Harkonnens. You act undercover, you run within the shadows, you watch each step you’re taking and every of your actions is a danger.
To characterize that with a easy mechanic, we determined so as to add a small Push Your Luck mechanic to the sport. When performing sure actions, equivalent to passing behind guards or breaking right into a Harkonnens constructing, gamers should make a danger verify and draw a Consequence token. We’ve got 2 good ones within the pool and three alerts. Whenever you draw crimson, the Penalties observe strikes, and if it ever reaches the tip level, the resisting forces are in hassle.
It is a easy mechanism added to the Detective system, however it provides this second of uncertainty, the split-second thrill while you draw a token realizing you are doing one thing very dangerous…
Epilogue
These are three small modifications, small changes to the detective system that we launched in Dune: Home Secrets and techniques that allowed us to vary the texture of the sport and assist gamers immerse themselves in Dune. They’re now not detectives. They’re rebels within the metropolis of Tel Gezer.
Within the second half, I’ll focus on how we approached the Antares web site and adjusted it to the world the place computer systems don’t exist…
