As a Game Master (GM) on StartPlaying Games I’ve had the fortune to run a number of systems and games.  Dune Adventures in the Imperium was one of my favorites for its immersive character creation and narrative game play.

Far in the Future in a Far Away Place

You step out of the ornithopter. The sun immediately warms your face. Sand lightly pelts your skin on any areas not covered. You could be here for any reason: A member of house Atreides (a family of well meaning strong proud folk) , an emissary from House Harkonnen (fighters and scoundrels), a spy from an unknown House, a representative of the Bene Gesserit (seers). Your reasons are yours. Your skills have not let you down. You pat your trusty knife and turn silently to your comrades. With small nods and skills of their own you head toward the metal city of Arrakeen ready to meet your destiny.

Dune Adventures in Imperium takes place on the world’s spelled out in Frank Herbert’s lasting sci fi space epic Dune. Famed locations and families from the books and movies like Arrakis, Atreides, and the Harkonnens feature prominently: For even more info on the game and to read some reviews from GM’s with proven track records check out this page.‍

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Mechanics and Rolls

Dune Adventures in the Imperium uses Modiphius’s 2D20 system. The GM and the character add together the characters skills and drives (described in steps 3 and 4) to create a number and the player has to roll under that number using two 20 sided die. Any 1’s are a critical success and count as 2 successes. Any 20’s count as a possible failure and the GM can deliver a consequence or a complication. Drive Statements, Focuses, Assets, Determination, Ambition, and Talents can assist with rolling. As does accessing things from the House Sheet when appropriate.

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Create a House

Character creation begins with you and your friends choosing a House to belong to. House Creation is outside the scope of this How to: I have provided one below. You belong to a minor house under the Atreides banner. You’re known for creating Large land Vehicles and protect yourselves from Industrial Espionage. The following sheet describes this information as well as the superiors of the House. These are the people you work for.

Define Your Role and Background

You will want to choose your character type at this point. There are factions that provide additional benefits, but we chose A Scion of the House: Your character tries to meet the demands of the House and increase your role there. You get to choose the Core Fantasy you want your character to fulfill. Dune does a nice job in making this simple without a lot of extra complications. We will be creating an Infiltrator for the purposes of this Character creation follow along.

Complete the Background information on the character sheet. Your Character’s name, the house they belong to, their role and the faction if it applies. Followed by Personality Traits and your Ambition. Defining your personality traits: one is your role and the other is a core fantasy choice. What are two words that define your Character’s sense of self. We’re creating Swift Taylor an Infiltrator.  He will have Cunning and Compulsive as his personality traits. Swift is a seeker of truth. Ambition is tied to the highest Drive. What is most important for Swift to grow. His ambition: Speak Truth to Power!

Assign Skills

Characters in Dune have access to 6 skills: Battle, Communicate, Discipline, Move, and Understand. These are relatively self explanatory. You will choose a primary skill and a secondary skill. The primary skill starts with a base score of 6 and the secondary skill receives a base score of 5. Your other skills have a base of 4. There are archetype suggestions available in the core rules. However, if you have another plan, work with your GM on making changes. The infiltrator has a recommendation of Discipline as the primary and Move as the secondary. You could easily make a case for Understand as a primary or secondary skill. For now we will go with the recommendations. 

After deciding on your skills you can distribute 5 additional points to any of the skills with the only rule being you should not exceed a total of 8. Swift will try to stay out of a Battle and keep it at 4. We’ll increase Communicte, Discipline, and Move by 1 point. Then add 2 points to Understand.

Focuses allow characters to critically succeed by hitting or lower on a target number. Add a focus to the primary and secondary focuses. A focus is a statement or a word that when appropriate and when the player and GM agree on their use. You can pick 2 more focuses and add to your sheet. Swift will use the Discipline focus Infiltration and the Move focus Precision. Additionally, we’ll add Stealth to Move and pick up an Understand focus called Deductive Reasoning (this allows Swift quickly deduce things).

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Assign Drives

Drives are the force by which the character is motivated. The 5 Drives are Duty, Faith, Justice, Power, and Truth. Assign a number from 4 to 8 for each of the drives. Swift will choose Truth as his 8 and Duty as the 7. Power will be 6. Swift values these things over Justice at 5 and Faith at 4. Drives as motivations really bring home the open endedness of Core Fantasy. Most of the time you will be choosing your highest Drives, but every once in a while the GM may make an argument for a non ideal Drive.

Drive statements allow the use of determination on the roll. If there is no roll with an appropriate statement there is no benefit; the Drive is only added to the roll. If the Drive statement is in conflict with the action the player can use it and take a consequence, or cross out the drive statement and roll. Drive statements are designed to assist with defining the core fantasy of the character. Drives with 6, 7, and 8 get a statement. Swift will use “What one wishes were true is seldom so” for Truth. Duty will be “Duty is a sharp blade”. Power will be “All Power Invites Challenge”. All of these statements fit the theme or archetype for our disciplined infiltrator and seeker of truth tying it to his Ambition.  There are a great deal of suggested statements in the core rule book in Chapter 4, but you can work with the GM to make your own. 

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Assign Talents and Assets

Talents are things your character is good at. You can choose 3 talents for your character that can be used. Using a prescribed archetype comes with one talent. The Infiltrator as stated gets the Subtle Step Talent which assists with move rolls. Additionally, Swift is good at gathering information and may ask the GM for a piece of information at the beginning of a scene with Passive Scrutiny. And Swift’s talents will round with Unquestionable Talent giving an extra point of determination that can be used for a roll affecting House business. Chapter 4 has a list of Talents.

Assets are tools You cannot battle with a knife if you do not have one. Assets are tangible: they are things the character can use and has on their person or has access to. Some assets are intangible. They are temporary and can be added to a scene when the time and circumstance allow for them. Swift was given a wrist sheathed knife called a Bodkin in case an infiltration goes wrong. Swift also deals in Intelligence and can often find someone to trade secrets with. An Old friend is often where he is and they can offer information, help spying on someone, or offer a place to hideout if needed. Chapter 7 has a long list of suggested assets. 

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Finally: Play

Character creation in Dune is fairly simple, and it is pretty swift. The fun is in the playing and putting your skills to use. I highly recommend the quickstart rules as a place to see how different archetypes look as that comes with some pregenerated characters.It also explains the rules in more detail I highly recommend looking up one of the GM’s running Dune Adventures in the Imperium on StartPlaying Games and Use Dune in the search. Or you can use this link here to get directly connected to games of Dune with Open seats immediately.

*The house sheet and character sheet are the free ones available on Modiphius's Website 

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Adam McDivitt is a father of 3 boys, professional GM, and a full time therapist.  His love of D&D was reignited when his son asked him to help with a game 3 years ago.  Since then He has learned a number of new systems and fell in love with TTRPG systems outside of 5e. Follow him on bluesky gmadam.bsky.social  he posts there sometimes.