Mandatory vs "non"-mandatory talents?

Dune: The Roleplaying Game
1

If you choose Spacing Guild agent it says:
Mandatory Talents: Guildsman

whereas if you choose Guild Engineer (from The Great Game) it just says
Talents: Cool Under Pressure (Understand), Putting Theory into Practice

Does this mean you can change those since it doesn’t say Mandatory?

2

I believe that the Faction Template is what gives the mandatory Guildsman talent, and the other talents are suggested for whichever archetype you select, ie the Guild Engineer or whatever.

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3

I think Kozferatu is correct here.
Guild Agent is the faction, equivalent to choosing Bene Gesserit for example.
So the mandatory Talent is fixed.

Guild Engineer is the archetype, like courtier or strategist from the core book.
The talents here are suggestions that fit with the archetype, but you can ignore if you have a different idea for the character.

I’ll confirm when I can grab the Great Game at home.
Regardless of the above if a talent isn’t listed as Mandatory you can ignore it at will.

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4

Thanks, I think I understand it now.

Character creation, because of how it’s structured in the rulebook is a bit confusing.
What can your concept be then if its NOT one of the Factions?

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5

I checked the books and we were correct on our interpretation of faction & archetype.

As for not using a faction you would default to your House I suppose. You don’t have access to the restricted talents (unless you can sweet talk your GM as to why i.e ex-Bene Gesserit sister) but you still end up with 3 talents that you can choose freely.

Char gen is a bit unclear on traits with regards to factions, but inhave always interpreted it that you should end up with 3 traits as well.
If you have chosen a faction then one of these should be that faction.

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6

Yup, Thalim is right on this one.

You don’t have to choose a faction, plenty of swordmasters, spies, assassins, diplomats etc are not ‘faction characters’.

Basically factions are a way of managing the weird stuff. You get access to some cool abilities, but at the cost of having some of your choices already made for you given the training each requires.
Luckily, there is so much cool stuff in the game you need not play a faction character to have a powerful or cool character :slight_smile:
It was one of the core design choices to make sure you didn’t need to play a faction character to get something interesting to play.

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