Dune: Adventures in the Imperium Wormsign Quickstart Guide

by Nathan Dowdell

"They say you can't drill in the desert--storms and sandtides destroy equipment faster than it can be installed, if the worms don't get you first."

The Dune: Adventures in the Imperium roleplaying game takes you into a far future beyond anything you have imagined, where fear is the mind killer so be sure to keep your wits about you. The Imperium is a place of deadly duels, feudal politics, and mysterious abilities, noble Houses politic constantly for power, influence, and vengeance in a universe where a blade can change the fortunes of millions.

Sent out to investigate beyond the shield wall for your House, you know deadly dangers await you on the sands of Arrakis. Can you locate the smugglers stealing your House's spice? Or will you run afoul of the mysterious and territorial Fremen who live out in the deep desert? Out here you only have yourselves to rely on, and there is no power greater than the vast worms who jealously guard the spice.

Whatever you do, remember that those that control the spice control the universe.

‘Wormsign’, the Dune: Adventures in the Imperium quickstart:
* Introduces you to the byzantine world of the Imperium, putting you in the heart of events set to change the universe.
* Offers you the basic rules you need to play, including both physical and social forms of conflict.
* A complete adventure designed specially to introduce the rules and the incredible science-fiction setting of Frank Herbert's Dune.
* 6 elite agents as pregenerated characters to let you get playing as quickly as possible.

31 pages, Unknown Binding

Published October 16, 2021

Reviews

[Meredith Katz · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Dune Quickstart has a beautiful layout and design, with gorgeous art. I appreciated the pregens they provided as well, they feel like a great array to pick up and play.

The provided adventure is very simple (and has very little tie to those characters'): they land on Dune, and have to try to survive a worm attack.

The rules are... well, Dune's rules as a whole are incredibly complicated. The quickstart does fully describe not just everything you can do but gives suggestions how to complicate it further, but could have drastically benefited by providing some examples of play.

[Taddow · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a pretty bare bones quick start ruleset for the Dune RPG. There is a short rules explanation section, which I found quite limited in scope and did not help much in understanding the rule concepts. I felt that adding some examples of how to make some checks, with the inclusion of using the various tools (both players’ and game masters’) to influence these checks would have been helpful.

There is a short railroad-ish (which I have no problem with using for an introductory adventure to showcase a game setting and its rules) adventure which is a series of encounters with some limited ability to deviate from. It then ends with some pre-generated characters.

I’m not a Dune fan (not a hater either) and my experience is pretty much limited to watching the Dune movie from 1984. With the new movies coming out (the 2nd in the new trilogy is releasing at the time of this review) and because several of my friends having been raving about the books and the new movies I decided to take a look at this. I will admit that I am intrigued to take a look at the core rulebook (and watch the new movies), maybe even try the Dune RPG out.

[GreyIC · Rating 3 out of 5]

A complete free, starter scenario for Dune: Adventures in the Imperium with a rules summary, a short scenario that should easily fit into a few hours, and six diverse pregenerated characters. The rules could have used more examples, particularly how the non-intuitive conflict system works.

Enough of a starter to get the job done.