Creating an asset

Dune: The Roleplaying Game
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Page 152 describes creating an asset as being like creating a trait, which

must relate to the action you’ve just attempted.

So I imagine something like:

I attempt to intimidate the thugs who’ve cornered us. [Rolls dice] Oh look: 2 extra successes. Well, in that case, I drawl “that’s not a knoife, this is a knoife”, and pull a large bowie knife from my boot. I’m creating an asset using the 2 extra successes.

Note that as I spend the momentum (or potentially determination), I know that I’m going to create the asset (in this example, a quality 0 knife) successfully.

On page 168, we are told that (in a conflict) creating an asset is again like creating a trait, and that one must

…attempt a skill test with Difficulty of 2. If you pass, then you’ve managed to create the desired trait.

In the following example, we are told

Kara’s player spends Momentum and makes a test to create a new intangible asset of ‘security access’.

So presumably, in a conflict, one still has to pay Momentum or Determination, but now also has to pass a test.

What happens if the test fails? Does the Momentum/Determination still get spent? If it gets spent, then this is a very different treatment to outside of conflict, where (if my example of the knife creation is correct), there’s no risk of wasting Momentum/Determination when I go to create an asset.

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Good questions.
If you are just creating an asset as part of a skill test or even at the end of the scene to use for later it just needs the Momentum cost.
When you do it as part of a conflict you are under more pressure so there is a Momentum cost and a test.
Technically you spend Momentum to make the roll but that seems very unfair. So I’d rule that the test is to see if you can spend Momentum and then you create the asset, meaning if you fail the test the momentum isn’t spent.

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I think that makes sense to me - roll, if you succeed, spend the momentum, otherwise, you fail and nothing happens/suffer the consequences.

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Sounds good to me too. Thanks @Andy-Modiphius.

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What’s the story with recovering an asset? On page 168, under targeting assets:

A tangible asset is set aside, unable to be used by their [sic] owner, but continuing to exist; that asset can be recovered as an action, or at the end of the scene.

I read that to mean you could recover an asset without making a roll. However, this makes disarming someone in a duel a bit of a weak strategy: you spend an action disarming me, I spend an action picking up my knife, and we’re back at square 1.

Page 173, discussing duels specifically, says

Assets which [sic] represent weapons can be knocked from their owner’s hands, allowing you to disarm your foe. They can attempt to retrieve weapons lost in this way but doing so requires an action.

Making it a task of some sort seems more sensible. Having been disarmed, it now becomes a gamble to try and recover your weapon. But what should the difficulty of the task be? My guess is D2, since that’s the difficulty for creating an asset. And presumably one wouldn’t charge momentum for this, since it’s not creating an asset?

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I think this is one of those many ‘GM’s call’ things depending on the circumstance.
Mainly as the circumstances and assets can be very varied.
Whether a roll is required and how difficult it is, is up to the GM at the time.
Knife fight in a training room, maybe no roll as everyone is playing nice.
Knife fight in a duel, a roll as no one is giving quarter
Knife fight on a cliff edge, maybe no chance of getting it back at all if the GM rules it went over the edge!

But there is also a tactical part to the use of the rules that comes into play here.
If you keep the initiative after successfully defeating an asset you are then getting a new strike against a possibly undefended target.

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@Andy-Modiphius Thanks for that. That all makes sense, including the part about keeping the initiative. That said, if you just straight up attacked (without eliminating the asset), you’d avoid the +1 penalty for acting after having kept the initiative, which is about the same as if the defensive asset was there…

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That is a fair point, although once the asset is off the table the next turn everything is much easier.
Its effectively a delayed gratification for getting rid of a defence.
As a GM you could decide to wave the +1 Difficulty, but that does shift the balance of the fight towards more aggressive attackers.

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@Andy-Modiphius That makes sense. One last question about this: do you have to pay momentum/threat/determination to eliminate a trait/asset? My read from the earlier part of the book (talking about spending momentum) is that you would. For example, I make a great communication roll and decide to spend momentum on eliminating the trait “hostile audience”. But then if I apply this reasoning to conflict (particularly warfare, which is all about eliminating assets), this seems to mean that someone who’s short of momentum/threat/determination has trouble getting anything done.

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Hello, my first game will be in quite a week, but I am GMing and my approach to momentum will be - in case of doubt, give more and take less. It seems to be one of the core mechanics that puts agency to players and pretty vital to a roleplay-oriented game of dice as players can drag stuff into scenes what they feel fits the situation and their narrative. So momentum enables players to shape the game narrative one level above sitting in their sandbox steering their character - which is what I as a GM extremely enjoy.

So to give a clear opinion on OPs question: give the momentum back into the pool when things don’t work out.

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Sorry for OT but I cannot start any threads: How do you handle temporarily hidden assets like Blackmail or Dangerous Secrets? If a player has such an assets the rules state it can be revealed as what suits the plan of the player best. But what thereafter? Will the asset vanish after use like a ‘fire and forget missile’, will the asset change upon reveal or will it just stay the same and could be a completely different secret oder blackmail material in the next scene?

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You’ll get the ability to create new topics when you reach basic membership, which should be tomorrow since you have posted. :wink:

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As for the asset question, if it is one of their permanent assets then it will stick around. The target is clearly too embarrassed to admit it and so it can get used again repeatedly. At GM discretion it could be altered as appropriate so it continues to make narrative sense.

If it is an asset that has been created through momentum then it dissappears at the end of the scene. The target has hardened themselves against it or has admitted it to their masters and so neutralised it.