Dune: Rise to Power | Lead Your House to Greatness

Creating your character

Character creation in Dune: Adventures in the Imperium is a highly-collaborative experience, as the first character you are expected to create is the Noble House to which your characters either belong or owe their loyalties. This House is created together with the mutual consent and design philosophy of every player at the table, before any other player characters are made. The House will be created during the Session 0. Player characters will be created during Session 0 (if there is time) or during a followup Session 0.5, so as to make character creation a collaborative process involving buy-in from all players at the table. For those familiar with Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, the player house will be a Nascent or Minor House (by popular vote) and the Great Game supplement book will be in use.

Preparing for the session

Players should be prepared to join my GMing discord server where I provide all the useful information I can think of, as well as have the actual voice communications for the game. Foundry is the virtual tabletop I use, and it does not require players to have anything other than an internet browser and the link I provide to each game session. Be prepared to use Edge in the event that your chosen internet browser experiences technical difficulties with Foundry. I do expect my players to familiarise themselves at least in part with the fiction of the game universe and the basic mechanics of the game rules. For Dune: Adventures in the Imperium, this means becoming familiar with the Modiphius 2D20 dice resolution system and watching some lore primers on Dune so you know what to expect from the game universe.

What Roy brings to the table

First and foremost, I provide a living, breathing world that reacts and adapts to the players' decisions. There are no rails to follow; this is a sandbox where your actions matter and can change the fate of the universe. There are no throwaway or "silly" characters who exist just to serve a humorous bit; every character is brought up in the fiction of the game universe. Players that join my games can expect the rules as written to be followed, setting a clear baseline for how everyone's player characters can interact with their world. Over and above that baseline, they can expect me to try my best to fairly interpret the mechanics or consequences of any imaginative action they can think to attempt--just because there's no rules for swinging on a chandelier doesn't mean you can't try! I'll do my best to ensure my players have the best experience possible. I provide voices for all my characters and draw on my long gaming history to sample appropriate immersive background music for my games (in this case, the Dune 2000 soundtrack is particularly apt). In Dune: AITI, combat will be just as narrative-driven as social interaction, and there will be an expectation for players to be comprehensive in describing their actions. Since this is not an area of expertise for many, I don't mind helping out whenever a player is stuck with how to describe how they want their character to act--I can draw on my keen interest in historical martial arts to describe blows or provide the reasoning behind a manoeuvre.

Homebrew rules

Dune: Adventures in the Imperium is a rules-lite system without much in the way of need for homebrew. However, I foresee needing to make on-the-spot changes to some of the House-building mechanics, as well as the inclusion of custom content with its own rules. Additionally, I will make appropriate changes to ensure players can realise their character concepts without feeling bound or constricting by the existing ruleset.

How Roy creates a safe table

My players will receive links to safety tools, in particular a consent checklist. I will review these checklists before a session 0, and then discuss how the content in the game might relate to or be altered by the consent of the players. Furthermore, session 0 will begin with a general consent check for players to indicate anything they forgot to mention or wanted to ask other players. In the case of safety tools, I will encourage my players to message me privately (using a whisper in chat or a discord message) in order to indicate when they are uncomfortable. When this occurs, I will alert the group that I need to take a quick break to handle a consent check, then private message with the uncomfortable player (I will do this without asking anyone to leave the group call, so as not to single out anyone).