Dune: Adventures in the Imperium (2021)
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Tabletop Roleplaying Games
Dune: Adventures in the Imperium (2021)
Dune: Adventures in the Imperium is a tabletop roleplaying game of political intrigue, feudal warfare, and desert survival set in Frank Herbert's Dune universe, published by Modiphius Entertainment with lead designer Nathan Dowdell heading a large credited design team. It released in 2021, timed alongside Denis Villeneuve's Dune film, running on a version of Modiphius's house 2d20 System adapted specifically for the setting's politics-first, duel-heavy tone.
The system is a setting-specific adaptation of Modiphius's 2d20 System, the same engine family behind Star Trek Adventures and Fallout: The Roleplaying Game.
Description
Players build elite agents in service to a noble House - Mentats, Swordmasters, Bene Gesserit Sisters, Spies, devious Advisors, or Fremen of the deep desert - and, before a single character is even built, the whole table designs that House together in a dedicated House-creation mini-game, deliberately keeping play away from the canon Houses Atreides or Harkonnen.
The Game Master runs missions where combat is only one of several ways a scene can go wrong: duels, skirmishes, open warfare, espionage, and courtly intrigue all resolve through the same underlying system, and a table can just as easily spend a session at a negotiating table as on a battlefield. The game leans hard into its source material's core promise - that plans, loyalty, and leverage usually matter more than a blade - and asks players to think as much about their House's long game as their character's next roll.