Dune: Intrigue in the Imperium

 

Image by Modiphius Entertainment

[8 min read]

I finished a mini-campaign playing Dune: Adventures in the Imperium tabletop RPG. Below are my impressions but the TLDR is: we had a great time in the world of Dune, in spite of the game's mechanics which we never truly grasped.

My play experience

Our group of 6 played around 8 four hour sessions over a few months. When we were too few to play, we stayed immersed in the world with the Dune Imperium board game (see my impressions here - I love this game!).

Back to the TTRPG - the adventure premise was incredibly cool: we were a group of five important characters in a Major House, whose heir (one of the players) had just been handed the responsibility of being Judge of the Change by the Emperor. The ruling needed was to settle a mining dispute between two Minor Houses, with a hard time limit of 14 in-game days. 

I played a pre-generated character that was a Bene Gesserit sister and spymaster for the house. I certainly had my work cut out for me during the sessions - there was intrigue to be had at every turn. Ultimately the group saw a satisfying conclusion to the adventure, but not without consequences, including civilian casualties...

What I liked

Tone, setting, characters

The scenario we played through felt amazingly Dune-like! High stakes, wide scope, and a lot of resources at the disposal of the characters. Our GM introduced loads of Houses, NPCs, and interrupted our deliberations with live events happening in the galaxy that could change our course of action. The intrigue and faction-heavy story, along with the really nicely done pre-generated characters, allowed us to be fully immersed in the emblematic sci-fi world of Dune.

I played Alice Dominica (on the left), spymaster for House Nagara
Image by Modiphius Entertainment

The core conflict resolution mechanic

Success is determined by rolling two 20-sided dice under a target number generated by the combination of your character's Drive and Skill that best relate to the task.  If you have a focus that is applicable to the task, rolling under that Skill counts as a critical (two successes). Which you might need since the number of required successes can be set up to 5. You can spend Momentum (a meta-currency) to buy extra dice, and if you have a relevant trait (such as Swift, or Persuasive) it can reduce or increase the number of successes needed as a help or a hindrance. 

At its core, this system is not too difficult to grasp, even if it took us a few sessions to nail it down since we didn't really roll that frequently. There are nuances which I will dig into later, but I really liked how your character's Drives play a big role in determining the outcome, and the critical success system.

A simple character sheet, but Drive Statements and Traits add more meat to the character's identity
Image by Modiphius Entertainment

The scale

The setting of Dune provides a scope unlike any I have experienced in other RPG systems. Being part of a ruling House, you could play as an heir, a spymaster, a sword master or another potentially universe-influencing figure (which the Dune books are known for) - or - you could play as a servant or soldier or spy working for the house. The game accounts for conflicts from a duel, to a skirmish, to all-out warfare, and also considers espionage (physical stealth and deception) and intrigue (social or political conflict) with adapted rules to resolve these.

Image by Modiphius Entertainment

The worldbuilding

One of the main reasons why I bought the physical core rulebook was the amazing art and worldbuilding that Modiphius provides. There are almost 50 pages outlining the known universe including; a timeline of events to the Imperium today, the various factions and important houses, faith and religion and overviews of a few key planets. This expands the glossary from the books themselves to flesh out the universe in a straight-forward way, something I was excited to take advantage of. And the art is just incredibly evocative of the setting!

Image by Modiphius Entertainment

Concerns I had

The identity of the system 

We played this mini-campaign over a few months, and at the end of several of the sessions, we as fellow GMs, tried to puzzle out this system's identity. Is it a narrative game? The heavy focus on Drives and the open-ended statements that relate to them seemed to suggest so. Is it a crunchy game? It seems to add a lot of complexity to the narrative, allowing for free-form Traits and Drive statements written by the players, but also attaching some very specific rules around using, adding, amending, erasing these and linking them to meta-currencies. 

Ultimately we couldn't decide where this was on the spectrum, so we tended to omit a lot of the complexity and just focus on the narrative elements of the game. It suited our group, and we had a lot of fun (which is the main thing), but I can't help feeling like we didn't fully understand and experience what the developers intended with all these rules (see below).

The challenging rules

Let me just preface this feedback with two caveats; (1) we were a group of experienced role-players, and have a lot of game mastering experience between us, but (2) since this was a mini-campaign, we didn't make a serious, concerted effort to learn and use all the rules presented to us. I did read the core rules over a few times though in an effort to grasp them - I just didn't succeed.

Because while the core resolution mechanic was straight forward and compelling enough, the rules surrounding them had us baffled at times, to the point where we didn't use them. Examples include: the association of Traits to scenes (a very abstract concept); the addition of three different meta-currencies - Momentum, Determination and Threat; the four different ways to spend Momentum (we only really understood two).

Included for an expanded illustration is an excerpt on Determination from the core rulebook (copyright Modiphius Entertainment):

When you attempt a skill test, and the drive you are

using has a drive statement, both you and the gamemaster

should consider whether the statement and the

action you’re attempting align. If the statement supports

the action—that is, if the statement would be an

advantage to the action being attempted—then you can

use that drive freely for that action, and you may spend

a point of Determination to gain one of the following

benefits. Some talents or other character abilities may

grant them additional ways to use Determination.

- Automatic 1: Before rolling, choose one of the

d20s in your dice pool: that die is considered to

have rolled a 1, and does not need to be rolled. It

thus scores a critical success automatically.

- Re-roll: After rolling, re-roll any number of d20s in

your dice pool.

- Declaration: Before or after rolling, create a new

trait, or change or remove an existing one; this

must relate to your character, but it may represent

something which was always true, but which has

only now been revealed or become important. You

may retroactively describe how this trait came to be.

- Extra Action: In a conflict, immediately take an

additional action after this one, even if you have

already kept the initiative.

However, if the statement would conflict with the

action—it may impair your character’s judgment, make

them biased, blind them to possibilities, or it may be

that the action goes against your character’s morals,

spiritual drives, or sense of honor—then the gamemaster

can offer you a point of Determination to give you a

choice: comply or challenge.

- If you comply with your drive, then you immediately

suffer a complication (which may often make the

action harder or prevent you from even attempting the

action). The character’s drives are too strong to allow

them to carry out this action freely, causing a problem.

- If you challenge your drive, then you may act freely,

but you must cross out that drive statement, and you

may not use that drive score again until it has been

recovered (see below). The character’s need to act

has outweighed their strongly held drives, and in the

process, their worldview has been shaken.

You may refuse to accept the offered Determination

to avoid making the choice, but if you do so, you must

choose a different drive to use for the skill test. You may

also suggest to the gamemaster moments where your

drives may conflict with your actions, though both you

and the gamemaster must agree for this to happen.

Few dice rolls

Playing this system made me realise how much I love rolling dice! My character was probably called into action the most of the players, and I would have been hard pressed to have rolled more than once or twice in each of the four hour sessions. While this creates dramatic tension where the stakes are high and every dice roll counts, I couldn't help but miss being frequently called upon to use my character's abilities as you do in the system I grew up playing - D&D. Based on the feedback from the group, I think this is more of a reflection of my preferences than the group's overall.

Image by Modiphius Entertainment

What I would bring to other systems

The scale of the universe and the different systems of conflict actually makes me think about how to adapt D&D 5E rules for high-level play. A different setting, for sure, but the D&D characters above 13th level are really messianic, god-like, universe-altering figures like the protagonists in the Dune books, and I could see myself taking inspiration from the scales of conflict from this RPG to such a campaign.

I also really enjoyed the explicit connection of the player's motivations to the rules through Drives, and the 'negotiation' with the GM on whether it fits. This feels similar to Blades in the Dark (see my experience here) where you petition the GM as to how your character's skills apply to resolving the situation but ultimately you both need to agree on the required roll. That doesn't really happen in more traditional RPGs where the GM just sets the skill and difficulty, and I really like the back and forth between player and GM. I will adapt the idea of granting advantage on high stakes checks in D&D if the player can provide a really thoughtful way of linking the check to the motivations of their character. 

In summary

Dune RPG was high on my list to try, and I am so glad my group wanted to play it. This was our longest campaign to date, a testament to the fun we were all having immersed in the world. Our GM put the group into challenging situations which required some amazing discussions to resolve. If you love the Dune IP, hopefully these impressions about the ruleset don't put you off from trying it - you can always play more on the surface like we did and still have a ton of fun. And if you are willing to put the time in to really use all the mechanics, perhaps you'll discover a level of depth and nuance that is worthy of the books themselves!

Image by Modiphius Entertainment