Now, it’s time to gather some more spice and head back to Arrakis with the Masters of Dune Campaign Book, the next campaign resource for Gamemasters in the Dune universe. As you might expect, this is actually a direct sequel to Agents of Dune. If you’re primarily running your campaign with sourcebook material and only supplementing with your own, Masters of Dune provides a complete campaign for your gaming group, picking up where Agents of Dune left off. The Harkonnen are still as unpleasant as you’d expect and House Nagara are still in their crosshairs. Unlike Agents of Dune however, this is purely a Gamemaster resource with no additional player supplies and items.
Whether you’re running your own campaign and just looking for supplementary ideas or you’re looking a new-ish GM looking to expand your skills, Masters of Dune has something for everyone. The Core Rulebook is required for play, but if you’re looking at getting Masters of Dune (and you probably should) then you’ve probably already got a Core rulebook. Creative GMs can easily adapt the ideas and events within this volume to their own campaigns as well as there is no need to follow the book to a T. The 2D20 system’s flexibility here is only limited by your imagination and the book itself provides ideas on how to scale up or down events from Masters of Dune into various levels of campaigns. Extrapolating those ideas is then only a matter of fitting events into your existing narrative in true TTRPG fashion.
For those of us who are less creative however (*cough cough*), there’s no question that Masters of Dune is an excellent resource that allows GMs to expand their skills and lead players on a complex and challenging campaign that will last multiple play sessions. Unlike campaigns from other TTRPGs, Masters of Dune stands out because of its overall non-linear structure that allows for a wide degree of latitude from players. The campaign starts off with an opening chapter that sets the stage following the end of Agents of Dune and establishes the current political climate on Arrakis for House Nagara, House Harkonnen, and the empire itself and then expands into a complex web that can send players all over the known systems in search of answers.
Masters of Dune consists of nine chapters and each chapter consists of multiple events broken apart into Acts. Each act has multiple components and depending on the speed and skill of your gaming group, could take multiple play sessions. Realistically, a GM could get months worth of play out of this single campaign resource, resulting in a very nuanced and gratifying series of play sessions and a deep immersion into the mechanics and machinations of the denizens of the Dune universe.
Taking a deeper look at the structure of the campaign, the only two chapters that are fixed in placement are Chapters 1 and 9. The introductory chapter sets the scenario at six months after Agents of Dune, putting House Nagana in a strong position for spice collection on Arrakis and working under duress with House Harkonnen. Fremen raids are disrupting spice harvesting and things are tense but functional. Within the first act there are already options to diverge the story at various points depending on the direction players choose to take and by the end of the first Act, it’s clear that tehre’s a lot more going on than meets the eye. The mix of action and politics in the first chapter illustrates the wide variety of options available within the game and keeps things fresh and exciting regardless of the direction the players choose to take.
After Chapter 1, players can take a number of different pathways to pursue leads that they may have discovered throughout the first three Acts of the campaign. Masters of Dune indicates which chapters correspond to which information and player decisions at the beginning of each chapter, summarizing the forthcoming events of the chapter in several easy-to-read paragraphs that help guide the GM to the correct chapter for their needs. If you’ve already played through Agents of Dune, you’ll note that the previous campaign did a lot more handholding in order to familiarize new Gamemasters with the structure and capabilities of the Dune version of the 2D20 system. That has vanished in Masters of Dune and the resource assumes that you have a basic familiarity with most mechanics by this point. There’s still a degree of guidance present but it’s much more subdued, suggesting rather than stating what to do but still providing necessary tables, charts, and NPC information as needed in each Act and scenario.
The range of scenarios in the various chapters is interesting as well. Players may return to report directly to the Emperor or embroiled in direct combat with a host of opponents. Fluctuating trust levels of various NPCs have a number of different impacts, forcing the hand of the players as events outpace them or allowing them to proceed with informed caution if their investigations bear fruit. Chapter 4 for example is triggered by drops in the influence indices on page 6 which GMs will be tracking throughout the campaign. Other chapters involve recurring characters which are optional for the GM to use depending on the situation and which previous acts and chapters the players have completed.
Among the different chapters, sections that include many of the key factions in Dune are included, involving the Bene Gesserit order, the Fremen, and more. The key takeaway for GMs here is that the design of the campaign allows players to explore the world of Dune wherever their interests may lie, allowing the GM to effectively tailor a premade campaign to the individual tastes of the gaming group. The flexibility in design here makes the campaign seem particularly complex and even playing the same campaign twice could yield different results. In effect, whatever portions are not used would be easy to repurpose to continuing a campaign or adding to a new one of the GM’s own design. There is a clear degree of added value in here in the structure of Masters of Dune that makes for not only an interesting gaming experience but also a useful resource.
All good things must come to an end however and the final chapter of Masters of Dune is where all roads lead the players. This culminating chapter can be reached in multiple ways at multiple speeds depending on the way the GM has structured player options and the choices a group makes during their time in the Imperium. The Gamemaster must take the current Indices into account for this final portion of the campaign and decisions must be made regarding who to trust, who to betray, and how to proceed. The wrap-up has the potential to shatter the current political state of the Imperium but it depends on a good Gamemaster to guide those decisions. It is also made clear that this is not necessarily the end of the story and if you’ve been playing House Nagana through Agents of Dune and now Masters of Dune, chances are you won’t be finished with those characters.
As a campaign, Masters of Dune is exquisitely designed to function with adaptability and a variety of potential directions for the story. As a direct sequel to Agents of Dune, GMs should be prepped for the more complex approach to TTRPG story and structure by the time they start this campaign and should be at least familiar with the Dune Core Rulebook. That being said, for skilled Gamemasters, the Masters of Dune Campaign Book is an excellent resource that is both a wealth of background information (mostly between the lines stuff) and a solid script with every consideration taken. At just under $50 for a high quality hardcover it isn’t cheap, but the value you get for your money is well worth it in terms of gameplay, writing, and structure, making the Masters of Dune Campaign book a must-own for Dune Gamemasters.
This review is based on a physical copy of Masters of Dune provided by the publisher. It is available directly from Modiphius here and in PDF form here, as well as at select fine gaming, book, and TTRPG retailers.
Nate Van Lindt has been a gamer since the days of yore (aka Commodore 64), and has played a bit of virtually everything out there. He's also an avid comic book collector, both vintage and current, and reads a fair amount of sci-fi and fantasy. On top of that, he watches a fair number of movies and TV shows as well. Oh, and he has a family, a full-time job, and lives somewhere in the urban wilds of Southwestern Ontario, Canada, foraging for old video cables and forgotten game soundtracks.