For a start, where many other roleplaying games use some combination of raw stats and trained skills to determine the target number, this time around your characterвЂ™s drives play just as big a role as their natural abilities. So far this is all standard 2d20 stuff, but Adventures in the Imperium adds in a generous handful of twists that help the gameplay cleave closer to the feel of the universe. The handful of drives you have access to all-but force characters to constantly consider some of the core tenets of the setting. Every die that comes in under some target number counts as a success, with the amount needed depending on just how sticky the situation might be. As you may guess from its name, the running theme of the system is that whenever characters run into challenges, they need to roll a couple of 20-sided dice. The core of the game is based on ModiphiusвЂ™ 2d20 ruleset, which powers RPGs including Star Trek Adventures, Conan: Adventures in an Age Undreamed Of and about a half-dozen others beyond. While the rules have an incredibly wide range of applications, theyвЂ™re reasonably simple to handle once youвЂ™ve put in a couple of hours. Gameplay draws from the familiar 2d20 system used in Star Trek Adventures, but with some new additions such as the importance of assets and traits. Make no mistake, the scope of potential campaigns remains titanic, but these limitations at least help to make things feel somewhat manageable. Rather than dumping you in the silk slippers of any old citizen of the Imperium at some nebulous point in its 20,000-year history, the core premise of any campaign is that the party are members, supporters and employees of a noble household at roughly the same point in time as the original novel. Some of this is down to the RPGвЂ™s careful focus on what, when and where youвЂ™re likely to be playing. While this does make Dune: Adventures in the Imperium a tough meal to get started on, some smart decisions mean that once you do get started itвЂ™s not too tricky to digest. Things would certainly have been more streamlined if the designers had stuck to the standard skirmish-level combat system common to countless traditional RPGs, but expanding the rules to encompass one-on-one duels, espionage missions and full-blown warfare plays a major part in making things really feel like Dune. The same could probably be said of some of the more complex rule systems found deeper into the book. However, leaping into a session without this background information percolating through your brain kind of defeats the point of playing in the setting in the first place.ДЄdventures in the Imperium takes place at roughly the same time as Frank Herbert's doorstopper novel.

Yes, skipping explanations of exactly why everyone is so keen on securing the mysterious spice drug вЂ“ beyond the simple fact that Dune was written in 1960s California вЂ“ and the vast implications this has for the desert planet Arrakis would make things much simpler. The first major chunk of the core rulebook is a lore dump that stretches to about 70 pages, and is near-mandatory reading for everybody who isnвЂ™t already a committed fan. The universe of Dune is a wild blend of sci-fi and fantasy packed with factions, technology and laws that are utterly integral to understanding what makes the world tick. Honestly, though, itвЂ™s hard to tell whether this is a flaw with the game itself, or simply the natural consequence of trying to bring such a dense setting to the tabletop. With this, though comes a monolithic weight of interlocking game systems and lore that can easily cause newcomers to bounce right off it and go looking for something a little bit less intimidating.

As with the universe it draws from, the tabletop RPG adaptation of Dune is richly detailed and operates on a truly majestic scale, offering stories that span all the way from hardscrabble survival to galactic conquest.

Dune chronicles of the imperium