"DUNE" vs "DUNGEONS & DRAGONS"

Dune is a strategy board game set in Frank Herbert's Dune universe, published by Avalon Hill in 1979. The game was designed by Bill Eberle, Jack Kittredge and Peter Olotka. After many years out of print, the game was reissued by Gale Force 9 in 2019 in advance of the 2021 Dune film remake. The game was originally designed with a Roman Empire theme, with the name Tribute. Avalon Hill had acquired the license to produce a Dune game, and contacted Eberle, Kittredge and Olotka when their own design proved unusable. Elements suitable for the Dune universe were added to the game, particularly from their earlier game, Cosmic Encounter. In 1984, to tie in with the Dune film, Avalon Hill published a second edition of the game as well as two expansions, Spice Harvest and The Duel. The Spice Harvest expansion changes the initial setup of the standard game by adding a pre-game in which the factions lobby for control of the inter-world Spice market in order to purchase a more advantageous initial position for the start of the main game (control for the planet of Arrakis). The Duel adds "leader tokens" representing the primary leaders of each faction and a secondary board representing a circular arena for one-on-one combat. Leaders may fight individual combat using a special deck of cards for movement and attacks. Both supplements included additional Treachery Cards. Both supplements are also incorporated into the French edition published by Jeux Descartes. In addition, Avalon Hill's strategy magazines, The General and Heroes, published counters and rules for three additional factions: the Bene Tleilax, the Ixians, and the Landsraad, factions/organizations appearing in Frank Herbert's original novels. The game received good reviews and due to the popularity of the Dune setting, coupled with the lack of new edition since 1984, became a sought-after item among board game collectors, with prices on secondary market reaching hundreds of dollars. A fan-made print-and-play version was also made available online around 2010. The game was reprinted by Fantasy Flight Games in 2012 as Rex: Final Days of an Empire. Fantasy Flight was able to acquire the rights to the system used in Dune (known as the “Simultaneous Dial Based Order System”), but were not able to get the license for the Dune setting. As a result, the game's setting was switched to Fantasy Flight's Twilight Imperium universe.

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Dungeons & Dragons (commonly abbreviated as D&D or DnD) is a fantasy tabletop role-playing game (RPG) originally designed by Gary Gygax and Dave Arneson. It was first published in 1974 by Tactical Studies Rules, Inc. (TSR). It has been published by Wizards of the Coast (now a subsidiary of Hasbro) since 1997. The game was derived from miniature wargames, with a variation of the 1971 game Chainmail serving as the initial rule system. D&D's publication is commonly recognized as the beginning of modern role-playing games and the role-playing game industry. D&D departs from traditional wargaming by allowing each player to create their own character to play instead of a military formation. These characters embark upon imaginary adventures within a fantasy setting. A Dungeon Master (DM) serves as the game's referee and storyteller, while maintaining the setting in which the adventures occur, and playing the role of the inhabitants of the game world. The characters form a party and they interact with the setting's inhabitants and each other. Together they solve dilemmas, engage in battles, explore, and gather treasure and knowledge. In the process, the characters earn experience points (XP) in order to rise in levels, and become increasingly powerful over a series of separate gaming sessions. The early success of D&D led to a proliferation of similar game systems. Despite the competition, D&D has remained the market leader in the role-playing game industry. In 1977, the game was split into two branches: the relatively rules-light game system of basic Dungeons & Dragons, and the more structured, rules-heavy game system of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons (abbreviated as AD&D). AD&D 2nd Edition was published in 1989. In 2000, a new system was released as D&D 3rd edition, continuing the edition numbering from AD&D; a revised version 3.5 was released in June 2003. These 3rd edition rules formed the basis of the d20 System, which is available under the Open Game License (OGL) for use by other publishers. D&D 4th edition was released in June 2008. The 5th edition of D&D, the most recent, was released during the second half of 2014. In 2004, D&D remained the best-known, and best-selling, role-playing game in the US, with an estimated 20 million people having played the game, and more than US$1 billion in book and equipment sales worldwide. The year 2017 had "the most number of players in its history—12 million to 15 million in North America alone". D&D 5th edition sales "were up 41 percent in 2017 from the year before, and soared another 52 percent in 2018, the game's biggest sales year yet". The game has been supplemented by many pre-made adventures, as well as commercial campaign settings suitable for use by regular gaming groups. D&D is known beyond the game itself for other D&D-branded products, references in popular culture, and some of the controversies that have surrounded it, particularly a moral panic in the 1980s falsely linking it to Satanism and suicide. The game has won multiple awards and has been translated into many languages.

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