Wednesday, February 22, 2017

Cortex Plus Dune RPG Hack


I'd posted this a bit ago to the Cortex Plus G+ group, but figured that this was a good opportunity to open it to a potentially wider audience.  Here you go straight from the document's intro:

Dune, by Frank Herbert, is possibly the best novel in all of science fiction.  Fans like myself wished for a good system to come along to properly represent the things that we loved about the novel, but the one highly anticipated try fell short and went out of business not long after putting out an unfinished and unplayable core book.  I’m looking at you, Last Unicorn Games.  So here is my best shot.  Cortex Plus Action Firefly is a great base.  The Cortex Plus Firefly RPG is required to use this hack.

The Skills section is modified to better reflect the Duneiverse.  I also added Strategize to cover the goings on in Dune from the politics of the Imperium to the plans of assassins to open war on the battlefield.In creating this hack, I went through the Dune novel and designed a new Distinction every time that I saw something in the book that wasn’t adequately covered by the Firefly system.  Any Firefly Distinctions that the GM decides will work in the game are allowed, though you may want to change their names to be more “Duneish.”

I added a category of Distinctions - Advanced.  The idea behind them is that they have a prerequisite of one other Distinction in order to take on that Advanced Distinction.  The prerequisite Distinction doesn’t need to be maintained, but the skills that got the character to that point in the first place may be integral in being successful in the Advanced Distinction.  The Advanced Distinctions are also positions of high responsibility.  If your character is interested in taking on those Distinctions, they have to understand that they have become more duty-bound and less autonomous than they were before taking it.  Your GM may even require the entire campaign to change directions from the characters being out in the field, so to say, to being the leaders of the people who are out in the field.  Uneasy lies the head that wears the crown, as the saying goes.

The last section - Special Rules For Dune - is just that.  Some things that are important or prominent in Dune weren’t easily represented using the standard Cortex Plus Action ruleset.  Poison is now just another weapon in a killer’s arsenal.  Body-shields are another form of armor, so to speak, with their own drawbacks.  And The Voice - without which a Dune RPG wouldn’t be the same - is represented, but with serious limitations to keep its use from getting out of control and dominating the game.  It was, after all, a very subtle and rarefied skill even in the book.

Well, there you go.  I hope that you enjoy playing this Cortex Plus hack!

Dune RPG Hack For Cortex Plus

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