Agents of Dune Questions

Dune: The Roleplaying Game
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Hello all
This is my first new topic so please be gentle. I’ve had a good read through the Agents of Dune box-set and am really hyped about running the game. I’ve run into a few issues in my prep (I’m very into prepping as much as I can before an RPG campaign) which I hoped perhaps you guys may have an answer to

I appreciate that some of the below may have no answer at this time, I just don’t want to contradict things that are going to happen in the Masters of Dune book when it comes out as my plans are to run that as the follow up to the box-set

Okay so my questions (there may be some mild spoilers here so if you’re going to be a player for Agents of Dune you may wish to skip)

  1. Countess Nagara is the head of House Nagara. There’s no mention of a husband/partner and the kids are named as heirs. What happened to their dad / other parent? Is it relevant to the plot?
  2. I assume as the Harkonen’s are in the game, as is Baron Harkonen, that Emperor Shaddam IV is Emperor?
  3. Are House Atreidis still a factor in the game universe? I’d plan not to use them to avoid treading the same path as the novels but was curious
  4. I’ve got a 6th player keen to join us for the Agents of Dune campaign box so I’ve said we’ll generate a new character. I thought perhaps a courtier or a Suk doctor. Anyone got any ideas what may make for a good option?
    Do you forsee major balance issues or does the added threat take care of that?

I think that’s all for now. I will try to do an AAR / write up once we get going!
Thanks for reading and, hopefully, responses!
‘Shields’

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Welcome aboard. We’ll help where we can, though some things are just left up to your own table.

  1. Nothing is known about the Countess’ partner, either in Agents or Masters. They aren’t relevant to the plot but given what happens to the Countess it is probably best for them to be pre-deceased before the start of the game.
  2. Yes, Emperor Shaddam IV is the current Emperor. This is gone into more detail in the following adventure Masters of Dune.
  3. The Atreides don’t make an appearance other than as a throwaway line that they may be behind some of the troubles on Geidi Prime. After all, they are a known enemy of the Harkonnens and so can’t be trusted.
  4. Having read the set and run the Agents playtest I don’t think there will be any balance issues with adding a 6th player. For extra characters the two that jump to my mind are Suk doctor or a Servant. Courtier may overlap with Jiro a bit.
    -The Suk is a classic position in the Dune universe and would make perfect sense for them to be around.
    -The Servant is one for the sneakier players. As they aren’t an important member of the entourage they can slip away and do things that the other characters can’t. In the campaign I ran the character ‘Bastion’ did this a lot. You do need to be careful here if you aren’t an experienced GM as it does involve splitting the party at times.

Would love to see how you get on with it. I’m hoping to run it for some newbies at my local church so advice on how it has run ‘in the wild’ would be great.

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That’s brilliant thank you! Really appreciate the quick support here

Will share how we get on with the campaign and am hugely looking forward to Masters of Dune

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Oh forgive I have one more question!

When House Nagara take over as Governor’s of Arrakis, are they taking over it as their fief? Or do they keep their old homeworld? So are they doing an Atreidis?

Thanks!

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They keep their original homeworld and take on Arrakis as an additional Fief.

Depending on how well or badly the players do at the end of the scenario this can change…

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Thank you very much, that’s really helpful

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Yup, Thalim has the right answers there.
For House Atreides you might introduce them yourself. Maybe they are the Emperor’s back up plan or they arn’t as popular as they think.
Your House is effectively replacing them in the story but there is no reason you can’t bring them in.

I think you have the right idea for a 6th player.
You’ll notice the 5 player characters are all very carefully balanced with someone being best and worst at each skill and drive.
But rather than that meaning a 6th player will throw everything out it really means they can take any option or ability as there is no empty hole they need to fill.
Just try and make sure that they don’t take too many similar focuses and talents as other characters so they have a chance to shine.

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Hello,

New forumer here. Nice to meet you all.
The modiphius forum rules are not very user friendly (not having an informal thread to say hello or not being able to create a topic…), so I do apologize if I am a bit out of the scope of this thread.

(English not being my first language I am waiting for the translation of the books mentioned below)

I have three questions:

  • is agents of dune scenario directly linked to the masters of dune campaign?
  • what are your opinion of the agents of dune scenario?
  • I haven’t found a review of the masters of dune campaign yet. Had someone the chance/time here to read (and review it) ?

Thanks a lot and remember : the sleeper must awaken! :blush:

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Welcome.
I’d agree that the forum could do with a sticky thread at the top for introductions. I think it hasn’t due to the silo nature of the sections for each game line.
Now you have posted you should be at trust level 1 so will be able to create threads. They restrict it to stop the bots I think.

For the questions:

  • Masters of Dune follows on directly from Agents, though it is able to be run totally separately if wanted.
  • Agents of Dune is designed for players new to Roleplay or the 2D20 system. As such it is fairly linear and restricted. There are a lot of good things, but the first 2 chapters definitely have training wheels. The 3rd chapter gives a lot more freedom.
  • I’ve not seen a review of Masters yet, but we are still in the pre-order phase so only the pdf is out. I must admit I have only skimmed it myself. Hopefully we will see more reviews soon.

Feel free to ask any more questions. Lot of good posters and the Dev staff here. :smile:

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I can expand on those a bit
1 - Masters is the second part of Agent, but you can play it on its own. You can also play other adventures between the two of them. You can even just break Masters down into nine adventures you can use separately in a different campaign.
2 - Obviously we think Agents is awesome :slight_smile:
3 - Masters is only out to preorder customers at the moment so you won’t see many reviews. Hopefully we’ll see some reviews once it goes out on general release.

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Thanks to both of you for this precious feedback.
I will wait for the reviews and especially for the French translation.

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If you are looking for support in France then @Aant may be able to help.
I believe there is a French group that share resources and similar for Dune.

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Yeap, I am already on the same discord server. I have even produced a help sheet in French for the dice rolling!

Dune_-Aide_de_jeu-_Tests_de_competence-1.pdf|attachment (323.7 KB)

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So as promised, here’s a very brief AAR of our first session playing Agents of Dune

Our players:
Seb as Zaffir Kallas (Swordmaster for House Nagara)
Lauren as Alice Dominica (BG Agent)
Ben D as Jiro Nagara (2nd heir)
John as Shizu Nagara (1st heir)
Ben R as Natalia Khan (Mentat)
Alex as Shamil Baqih (Spy/pilot)

I’m an experienced GM but this is my first time GM’ing Dune:2D20. Four of the above players play 2D20 with Star Trek but I warned them that the Dune RPG is quite different.

The players begun on the crashing shuttle, the scenario making it clear that it’s a training sim. The players split the party then split the party again, sending Shamil to the shuttles engines. Shamil ends up in the first battle, despite not being the best fighter in the group. Eventually help arrives but Shamil has taken care of it

The players divide up to fix the shuttle and make some rather odd choices and as time starts to run out, Natalia insists that one of the heirs be taken to an evacuation pod so that “one of them survives”.
In the end the players fix the shuttle just in time

Then they meet the Harkonens and my players are deeply dubious of them from the start. I point out that House Harkonen are not ancient enemies of House Nagara and that there’s a big power disparity between the two anyway. The players settle into the next training scenario, with Natalia doing well in memorizing the map

The players manage to sneak in and to get to the micro-film. Shamil is hit with a real poison dart, which confused the players a bit and Natalia is nearly skewered by the assassin hiding as a part of the exercise.

The players regroup and head to the low market. They make a total hash of trying to fit in but at least they don’t split the party again. They find their contact in the low market and have some truly terrible attempts at trying to connect with him, with Shamil managing to roll a complication which sees Uquan draw a weapon. Luckily he’s talked down by Alice who has disarmed him

Uquan gives them what information he has and the players now believe that House Vernius is working against them.

This is the end of our first session and the players have really enjoyed themselves! They got off topic a fair few times, standard for my bunch, but I think everyone has bought into the setting and the characters.

Player of the session: Ben R as Natalia had the most impact I think

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How did your experienced players find the very structured training approach of Chapter 1?

I can see that they were already going off piste even in the first scenario with splitting the party twice. :rofl:

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Yeah the players enjoyed it. Two of them were new to 2D20 and some of them were a bit vague on the Dune setting so a nice simple first session was welcome.

Having said that, I did let them go off-piste fairly early on. I also let them pick drives from the first scene.

Really looking forward to chapters 2 & 3

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So received my copy of Masters of Dune today and had a read through, though I think it’ll take more than one to really take it all in.

Really interesting stuff and a lot more open ended, I think my players will take to it really well.

I did notice, with a bit of disappointment, a number of editing errors. There are references to “see XX” which were clearly page references that were never replaced. A bit annoying but not the end of the world.

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Yup, as noted in another thread, sadly a versioning error saw the pXX version (the last layer of proofing) go to print. But we will be adding an errata and most of the references should be reasonably clear from the text (some we even removed as they ended up on the same page).

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(Apologies if necro but this seems to be the place for Agents of Dune Questions?)

Any advice on running Agents of Dune with a smaller player party (2-3?)? The source material seems to heavily lean towards needing the ‘heirs’ in the party to take control of the house; and so not sure how to run if both my players want to pick non-heir folios? Should the other characters just be treated as replacement heirs to the house like distant relative mentat-heir/ bene-gesserit cousin taking control? Or should the heirs still exist as DM characters? Is there like a priority of which characters need to be played? Any advice would be appreciated.

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As you suggest you have 2 options.

  • Run an heir as an NPC, so they are present, but don’t really make any decisions.
  • Assign their heir element to one or both of the characters that are being played. (“A Mentat Duke would be formidable indeed”)

I would be more inclined to the second option. Possibly to the point of literally lifting the position as the children to the Countess and giving it to the two player characters.
That way you can keep most of the dialogue and similar intact as well as the impact of the event at the end of the 2nd act.

A bigger issue may be to ensure your game is still balanced with only the 2 characters. If you have the BG & the Mentat you have most bases covered except for Battle. So you may need to downgrade some of the fights.

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