All adventures in Dune: Adventures in the Imperium are broken down into scenes, which the gamemaster is responsible for setting up. Once the gamemaster has set up a scene, the players may take whatever actions they desire, and once there’s nothing else they can, or wish to, do in that place, the scene ends. Scenes also include descriptors called traits, which point out anything important about the scene’s time or place, or the characters or objects within it.

A scene is the basic building block of an adventure, just like books and movies are broken into scenes. A scene is a place and time involving a specific set of characters, in which an exciting or dramatic event occurs, usually moving the story forward. 

At the start of a scene, the gamemaster will inform you where your character is, what’s going on, and anything else useful or important you should know. There’ll always be a reason behind this scene, driven by what happened in the scenes before it: perhaps you came here because of a clue left by an assassin, or because you’re looking for a specific person. Once the gamemaster has finished setting the scene, you and your fellow players can ask questions about the situation and choose for your characters to do things within the scene: move around, talk to other people, or otherwise take actions. Once you’ve reached a point where you can’t do anything further toward your goal, or you’ve gained a new goal that requires you go somewhere else, the scene ends, and a new one begins. 

During a scene, your decisions are important; the choices you make have an impact upon the world around your character, and you’ll have to face the consequences of those choices. The gamemaster can shape the events in a scene, too, by spending Threat and through the actions of non-player characters, but this is normally in response to your choices and those of your fellow players.

For the gamemaster, part of setting up a new scene is describing the traits which apply to that scene. Traits describe the notable and interesting details about a place, time, person, or object, sort of like keywords for other rules to interact with. Each trait is a single word or a short phrase that describes a single detail about the thing it belongs to. A trait is always both true and important: a trait goes away if it stops being true or important.

As a player, traits influence the kinds of things your character can try and do, and how difficult those actions are, but you can also interact with traits more directly, adding, removing, or altering the traits in a scene as your actions change the situation. How you can do this is explained later in the chapter.

The Effect of Traits

In practice, traits have a simple impact on your character’s actions: if a trait is relevant to an action being attempted, it makes the action possible or impossible, or it makes the action easier or harder. Multiple traits can be applied to a situation at once, whether canceling one another out or adding to one another. Some especially intense or potent traits may actually be multiple identical traits added together: a battlefield might be shrouded in Smoke, or visibility might be reduced by Thick Smoke 2, with the number indicating that it counts as two traits.

In practice, this is easy to apply. Each trait can be placed into a simple statement, such as one of those below, and if that statement makes sense, then it applies. If it doesn’t make sense, then it doesn’t apply.

• Because I am [personal trait], this activity is…
• Because of [situation or location trait], this activity is…
• Because I have [equipment trait], this activity is…

The end of each of those statements is either ‘easier’, ‘harder’, ‘possible’, or ‘impossible’. At the simplest level, that’s as far as the gamemaster needs to go with trait: if the statement ends with ‘easier’, reduce the Difficulty, if the statement ends with ‘harder’, increase the Difficulty. If the statement ends with ‘possible’, then the activity can be attempted while the trait applies, while if it ends with ‘impossible’, then it can’t be attempted while that trait applies.

It’s also worth remembering that if a trait makes an action impossible, that doesn’t necessarily mean you can never attempt that action: rather, it may mean that the action is impossible unless you change the situation to make it possible. 

Remember also that assets are also traits. If one can apply to a scene it works just like any other trait. Having a knife makes a combat easier than fighting unarmed. Having blackmail evidence makes an attempt to blackmail a target possible. For the most part, assets (especially in architect play) are what makes the test possible. 

Example: Kara Molay, heir to her House, is trying to negotiate a new trade deal with a spice merchant at a large social gathering. As the merchant is known as a fair trader, Kara’s player believes her ‘Honorable’ trait may apply. She tells the gamemaster “Because Kara is honorable, it will be easier to make a deal with the merchant.” The gamemaster agrees and reduces the Difficulty of the test.

As many traits as you like can be added to a scene, but the gamemaster can veto any they don't believe are appropriate to the situation, or will do what the player wants. As traits can be used to cancel each other they should be brought into play one at a time, giving the other side the option of playing a trait to counteract it. This build up of traits to finalize the total modifier of the action is something that should be played out and described.

Example: Revisiting the example above this is how the scene might play out with a more complex interchange of traits. 

Kara attends the party to try and speak to the spice merchant. The gamemaster describes the scene and gives the scene the trait 'Convivial'. As Kara makes her approach the gamemaster tells her player that as Kara doesn't know the spice merchant, he won't do business with her without a proper introduction. Kara doesn't have time to try and make another test to convince someone to make such an introduction. So Kara asks to invoke the Convivial trait to make the attempt possible. It's a friendly party, and so the gamemaster allows Kara to use the trait to approach informally and introduce herself. In this way the trait makes the test possible.

The gamemaster then declares the merchant is 'Distrustful 2' upon meeting Kara. Kara can use her Honourable trait to mitigate this a little and drop Distrustful to just 1. But this means the test to negotiate is one step more difficult.

Kara wants better odds so decides to use her blackmail evidence asset, making it apply to the merchant. She whispers a few hints into the conversation and the merchant goes pale. The Difficulty penalty is removed.

Kara could leave it there, but might spend Momentum to create another trait to make the upcoming test easier. She might even bring in her knife as an asset to physically threaten the merchant, but that might be a little much! The gamemaster might also use Threat to add more traits to make things harder again, such as the merchant having friends or not being easily frightened.