“This is only the beginning of our big plans in tabletop for this captivating franchise,” said John-Paul Brisigotti, CEO of GF9. “Dune is a rich and wonderful universe, and we expect to produce an equally expansive and inspired line of games for years to come.”

“Gale Force Nine has consistently demonstrated a skill and passion for building successful tabletop game series alongside category leading partners and we are thrilled to announce this exciting addition to the Dune licensing program,” said Jamie Kampel, Vice President of Licensing & Partnerships for Legendary. “Legendary looks forward to a fun and meaningful contribution to this revered legacy property.”

The full range of products, including board and miniatures games, are scheduled to release just prior to the upcoming Dune theatrical release in 2020. GF9 plans to align with other game companies in numerous categories and formats for future releases as well.

The first official Dune game to come out of this partnership will be a tabletop RPG, and it’s set to come out in late 2019. No word yet what it will be about or what parts of the franchise it will cover, but we do know it’s a collaboration with Modiphius, the team behind Star Trek Adventures and Tales From the Loop. Gale Force Nine’s CEO said it’s the first of many tabletop games they’re looking to produce over the next several years. So buckle your sandworm seatbelts.

Well the data said that people wanted to play new, original characters in Dune, in the Main Storyline with the Kwisatz Haderach and everything you read in the novel, but they didn’t want to play the heroes in this story. They wanted the story of Dune to unfold as written, with their characters as sort of Rosencrantz & Guildensterning around. I believe the data indicated they wanted to have *some* influence on events, but not affect major changes.

It fell to me to figure out how to make that adventure. Initially I thought “man this is going to be a pain in the ass, that’s some pretty specific direction.” But I quickly realized I was completely wrong. As it turned out, it was easy. It was super easy. There’s a ton of amazing content happening right off-screen, in the novel, which they reference. Thufir says “We’ve sent an advance team to Arrakeen to clean out the palace,” YOU ARE that advance team. The first member of House Atreides on Arrakis! “We’re having the devil’s own time clearing out these sabotage devices, but we’re almost done,” because of YOUR work! Duncan mentions sending a team to meet with Stilgar and how well that went. YOU play those characters, the first members of House Atreides to meet the Fremen.

Also just thinking yesterday about the setting and how well it would lend itself to an actual skirmish TTG. One of the brilliant parts of the Dune setting was the presence of the Holtzman effect had on defense. Effectively creating near impregnable shields to fast moving objects. This meant things such as fancy sci-fi weapons, rapid fire long range weapons, etc became ineffective in that world. Instead short range weapons such as dart guns, 'slow pellet' rifles, infiltrating and spec ops over large open warfare, and ubiquitous hand to hand combat training became the norm. That just screams for a character based TTG

What's this random pdfton my hard drive? Looks like it fell off someone's laptop. Hrmmm