This document is a description of how the basic mechanics of TWURPS have been adapted to model the Dune universe. Amongst other things it describes how characters are generated, how the technology works and what type of vehicles and weapons are available.

1 Characters

1.1 Statistics

Most characters can be generated as normal humans. For Guild Steersmen, use the stats for mermaids from the Bestiary. Steersmen are adapted to microgravity conditions. Planetside they survive in mobile transparent plasteel tanks filled with gaseous melange and supported by suspensors. Steersman should not suffer from Acrophobia or Agoraphobia. If these phobias are generated, use Claustrophobia instead. A Face Dancers base stats (and corresponding life span) can be designed using the standard rules on bioengineering, using an average human as a base.

1.2 Skin/Eye/Hair Colour

Most characters can be generated without modifiers for colouring. Fremen have a -3 modifier for skin colour. Fremen and Steersmen always have blue eyes due to their exposure to spice. Due to the availability of spice in the Spacing Guild, many Guild Agents are also addicted to melange, though they often wear contact lenses to hide their blue eyes.

1.3 Common Skills

The base percentage for Literacy is 60 + Intellect.

The common language skill for Fremen is Fremen. For everyone else it is Galach.

Freman have no Swimming skill. Replace this with Hostile Environment (Desert), which at its simplest teaches the correct way to wear a stillsuit.

The common weapon skill for everyone is knife.

1.4 Ageing

Training for all the serious professions starts early in the Dune universe. Childhood education starts at age 12 and lasts 1d3 years, after which the characters leaves home. The average life span is 80. Ageing starts at 45. There are no modifiers for Parental Health.

1.5 Professions

The Magician, Mystic and Psionic professions are not available. When these results are rolled on the Family Background table, ignore them and roll again. There is no Computing skill. The player can choose between Electronics or Communications when this skill is generated.

House troopers (such as Sardaukar) and Ginaz scholars can be generated using the Security table. Suk school graduates can be generated using the Medical profession. Face dancers can be generated using any profession, but the most common are Underworld and Entertainers.

Fremen

Fremen can be generated using the Wilderness profession as a base. Most Freman will have an emphasis on combat skills, with either cross-training in the Security profession (for warriors) or a lot of Study time in combat skills. Ranks within the Fremen are informal, mainly just denoting the pecking order within a Sietch. Rank 6 is Naib, denoting the head of a Sietch. Higher ranks denote a Naib of more than one Sietch. It is a good idea if a Fremen character spends at least some Study time on Galach.

Noble

This profession is only open to Gentry. The player of a noble character should choose their House. The GM may choose to restrict this choice. The position of a noble character within their House is determined by their Parental Health and Siblings. A noble characters Rank is a measure of their personal political influence. Compare the characters rank with the Landsraad vote table on page 273 of the Dune Encyclopaedia for a measure of their influence.

* Requires Professional level Transmutation skill.

** A Martial Art.

The Spacing Guild

Guild Agents can be generated using the Transportation, Commerce or Technical professions, depending on their specialisation.

2 Magic

The only Magic skills available are the following Psionics skills; Hypnotism, Prediction, Clairvoyance and Shield, plus the new skills Other Memory and Dune Tarot.

Clairvoyance

Characters with this skill will be extremely rare. They will probably be Innate Talents as the result of generations of breeding programs. Such individuals are so rare that the GM may choose not to allow their random generation. This skill allows far more precise visions than the Prediction skill.

Other Memory

The ability to access the memories of the character's ancestors. This skill can only be improved through Study as is only available to Bene Gesserit of rank Reverend Mother or above. A successful roll gives a positive modifier equal to the margin by which the character makes the roll, to be applied to the next skill roll that the characters attempts. E.g. if the characters Other Memory skill is 50% and the player rolls 30%, then there is a +20% modifier on their next skill roll. This modifier can be applied to any skill, even one that the character does not normally have. A critical result doubles or triples the positive modifier. A fumble result will result in an attempt by one of the ancestral personalities to possess the character. This is resolved by an opposed Willpower roll. Use of Other Memory costs one Fatigue level. According to Bene Gesserit doctrine, the punishment for succumbing to possession is death.

Prediction

This skill provides a limited form of psionic prediction of the future. This skill is generally only available to Guild Steersman, who specialise in predicting a safe path for a Heighliner in flight. Attempts to predict other events should be made at half the characters skill percentage and will tend to be vague, e.g. they may have some presentiment of a impending crisis or of a particular place or person who will be important (a "nexus" of timelines). As with Clairvoyance, the characters Intuition stat acts as a positive modifier to the success roll. Addiction to Melange is a prerequisite for the use of Prediction.

Shield

The Shield skill can be used to mask a character from the Clairvoyance skill. To determine if the shield is successful, make an opposed roll of Shield versus Clairvoyance. The shield includes events, people and places immediate adjacent to the shielded character.

Dune Tarot

This skill is only available after Muad'Dib comes to power. The character must have a pack of Dune tarot cards available to them in order to use this skill.

When a character uses the tarot, the GM should give the player the names of two cards from the deck and the table below can be used by the player to read the meaning of the cards and thus infer something of likely future events or the wider current situation. If there is a player character in the game that has the Dune Tarot skill it is recommended that for each major scene or stage of the game the GM note beforehand the card pairs that may appear as the result of a successful tarot roll. Determing the result of a unsuccessful tarot roll is simplier; roll two cards randomly on the table below and tell the player the result. In all cases the GM should make the skill roll for the player, and make two subsequent rolls even if the the first was successful, to avoid the player knowing whether in this case the cards can be relied on or not.

Another tarot roll should not be made until the following day in game-time, or until the GM determines that circumstances have changed sufficiently to allow it (i.e. play has moved on to a new stage for which the GM has previously decided a card pairing). The character can of course continue to cast the cards, but the results will not be significantly different until the GM allows that a new roll can be made.

A side-effect of the tarot is that its use clouds Clairvoyance in a similar way to the Shield skill. The effect lasts the remainder of the day.

The meaning of the tarot cards can be read from the table below. For example, a die roll of 36 on percentile dice gives the Eight of Ships, which represents regeneration, and depending on the context of the situation or the question being asked, indicates the heart, merchants or air. A die roll of 81 results in Desolate Sand, which indicates a great mystery or ultimate test.

Click here to see a table of the Dune Tarot

3 Technology

Simple exposure to the open desert of Arrakis causes fatigue loss equivalent to medium effort (see the standard rules on fatigue). Any additional activity will increase the rate of fatigue loss to strenuous. A commercially manufactured stillsuit, such as those sold on the streets of Arrakeen and Carthag, will reduce the base fatigue loss to the equivalent of light effort. A stillsuit of Freman manufacture requires no fatigue loss other than that normally required for effort in any environment.

A stillsuit has an armour value of 3 and an average weight of 5 kilos and covers everything except the hands, nose and eyes. A cloak or robe can be worn over the top, giving an additional armour value of 1.

Medical Technology

The are several specific drugs described below which replace much of the excepted technology. The following technology exists but is likely to only be available to the Bene Tleilaxu; Cloning, Hybridisation, Organic covering, Genetic engineering, Cryogenic hibernation, Cell repair.

Elacca Drug

The residue produced from burning the blood-grained elacca wood of Ecaz. The drug results in a total disregard for personal safely. For the most part, the effects must be role-played, but in mechanics terms all rolls on the Shock Table are ignored. The drug produces a characteristic orange-red flush on the skin of the recipient. The drugs effects last 1d6 hours.

Melange

For an average person, a dose of Melange amounts to 2 grams or more in a single day.

Regular doses of at least one dose per week reduce the chance of any given ageing roll taking effect to 20%. A dose of Melange doubles a characters Intuition. This effect last for the remainder of that day. Addiction factor 30%. Addicted characters develop blue-within-blue eyes.

Sapho

Sapho is an energising liquid extracted from Ecaz plants. It is a trap to which Mentats both in training and in the field are most susceptible. Although Sapho amplifies speculation and extrapolation, it subjects its user to unpredictable outbursts of emotion or long periods of passivity. The Mentat-addict's lethargy leads him to neglect the constant updating of information upon which his accuracy depends.

Sapho comes in a liquid form which will gradually stains the lips of the user a deep, permanent red. It take approximately 10 minutes to take effect after ingestion. It is provided to Mentats training at school, and can be found with little difficulty on the open market.

Sapho doubles the characters Logic stat. It lasts one hour, at the end of which the Logic stat returns to normal, the Willpower stat is halved for the next six hours and the character loses 1d6 fatigue levels, up to a maximum effect of Exhausted. Addiction factor 20%.

Semuta

A highly addictive narcotic derived, by crystal extraction, from elacca drug. The drug is either taken in capsule form or dissolved in wine, and produces a feeling of "timeless ecstasy," of separation from all pain and trouble. Accentuating this overpowering sense of well-being is the "semuta music"; rhythmic, atonal vibrations composed to affect the sympathetic nervous system that accompanies the drug experience. Most often a single dose suffices to cause severe physiological addiction. Addicts are prone to fits of depression between doses, and are incapacitated when under the effect of the drug. Semuta is expensive. Each dose lasts one hour and takes approximately 15 minutes to take effect after ingestion. A dose of Semuta delivers an effective loss of 1d6 fatigue levels, up to a maximum effect of Exhausted. Addiction factor 100%.

Verite

Treat as per Truth Drug.

Poisons

Chaumas is a general term for poison administered in food and Chaumurky the equivalent for poison administered via drink. There are several poisons described in the standard TWURPS rules that fall into theses categories. In addition some specific poisons are shown in the table.

A Face Dancer has the ability to vary their stats, as described below. Height can be increased by up to 2 points above the character's normal stat, or reduced by 1 below the normal stat. A change in height can be maintained for some hours, though not indefinitely. Even the strongest need to relax the back muscles several times a day. The Build, Beauty and Voice stats can be set to any value between 10 and 20. Skin, hair and eye colour can be set to any value. The apparent sex of the character can be varied at will. Face Dancers are always sterile. These changes require only a minute to take place. A Face Dancer needs to see a person for only a minute to produce a rough similarity. Several hours of observation results in a likeness which can fool casual acquaintances of the victim. Given an opportunity to study the victim for several days, the subject's likeness is undetectable (for short periods of time) even by the closest of associates.

A ghola is a regenerated corpse. Only the Bene Tleilaxu possess the technology to create gholas. The stats and physical appearance of a ghola are identical to the original character, except that a ghola has multifaceted metal eyes. At the time of the original Dune novel, no specific memories can be carried over from the original. After Dune Messiah, The Tleilaxu gain the ability to restore a ghola's original memories. This involves bringing the ghola to an emotional crisis connected to their death. This procedure will only be carried out on very important gholas, and will be different for each individual. It should preferably be played out as part of a game rather than simply provided as part as the character's background. At the GM's discretion, the ghola may retain some skills from it's original or the skills may be partly or wholly regenerated. Some gholas may have entirely different careers from their originals. The creation of a ghola requires the cryogenic preservation of the corpse before decay starts to set in. A ghola is not a simple clone; it is the actual regenerated flesh of the original. By contrast, a clone will retain the DNA of the original, but no skills will be retained. However a clone can be made from much smaller samples of tissue, often long after death.

Military Technology

For Lasguns, use the standard stats for lasers. Particle beams and plasma weapons are likely to have the same effect on a Holtzmann shield as a laser, and consequently have never been developed. Crysknives and Shigawire garrottes take the place of monoweapons.

Shields

Both personal and vehicle shields have the armour value of a basic force field (Armour Value 70), but behave more like an energy shield, in that melee weapons ignore them. A high energy weapon (lasgun) impinging on a shield results in thermonuclear fusion. Dart (maula) pistols, flame-throwers and operator-guided weapons such as hunter-seekers and space missiles (see below) are capable of ignoring a shield.

Personal Combat

Possession of lasguns is controlled and usually restricted to the military. Within the military, they are largely ceremonial weapons. The use of shields dictates that most real combat is hand-to-hand using melee weapons. However lasguns still have a role as shock-and-awe weapons against the general (unshielded) population. Maula pistols ignore shields. They are treated as dart pistols from the armoury, with some modifications as shown below. Flame throwers ignore shields but are not generally used because hand-to-hand combat is so common. A typical foot soldier is armed with knife and maula pistol and wears a shield. He may be issued with a lasgun depending on the mission. Harkonnen troops wear biohazard suits for most military operations.

Stoneburners

The detonation of a stoneburner results in an intense pillar of fire that will automatically destroy anything within a 5m radius and inflict intense fire damage on any target within a 10m radius. It will also cause blindness for anyone within 100m radius as a result of J-radiation. This is effectively a Destroy damage result to the eyes. Reduce the Eyesight stat for affected characters to 0. Armour has no effect against J-rays.

Stoneburners are of two types; large and small. A small stoneburner weighs 10Kg and can be fitted as an alternative warhead to a small solid propellant missile. A large stoneburner weighs 100Kg and can be fitted as an alternative warhead to a large solid propellant missile. In addition to the effects described above, when a large stoneburner is used on the surface of a large or medium terrestrial world, it will melt down through the crust to the molten core of the planet, causing catastrophic cascading volcanic activity resulting in the destruction of the planet within days.

Stoneburners are atomic devices and as such there use against human targets is prohibited under the Great Convention.

Pseudoshields

A Pseudoshield mimics some of the effects of a shield without actually creating an effective force field. They are used on Arrakis as sabotage weapons. When activated in the open desert, a pseudoshields simulation of a shield will drive nearby sandworms into a frenzy. A worm will attack anything in the vicinity of a pseudoshield within minutes of it being activated. A pseudoshield has the same weight as a normal shield but is much cheaper and simpler to manufacture. An activated pseudoshield can be detected by the characteristic ozone smell of an active shield (this requires a successful perception roll).

Transport Technology

Suspensors

Nullify the effects of gravity or acceleration. Objects or people within the influence of a suspensors "nullfield" experience reduced or zero gravity. They can therefore float in a planets gravity field or be cushioned against the effects of acceleration. Suspensors cannot provide lateral thrust.  Use the stats for Floaters.

3.2 Vehicles

Carryalls, ornithopters and groundcars are normally shielded. Spice harvesters are not shielded as this would attract worms. The use of lasguns on vehicles is very restricted. Laser cannon are generally too heavy for ornithopters. Flame throwers ignore shields and are light and usable against other thopters and ground troops are therefore used extensively on vehicles.

Ornithopters are designed for maximum manuverability. They have rapidly beating wings and resemble insects more than birds. They don't use suspensors because this would reduce manueverability. Carryalls are not ornithopters. They are supported by suspensors and given lateral movement by ducted jets.

Fremen use rockets (treated as bazookas) when attacking spice mining operations. Carryalls and thopters have shields turned off during spice mining to avoid attracting worms.

Groundcar