As mentioned in Chapter 6: Conflict, characters employ assets to manipulate and overcome opponents and obstacles during difficult situations. These assets come in a wide variety of forms and types, ranging from personal items like knives, shield belts, portable poison snoopers, or symbols of office; vehicles such as ornithopters and groundcars; to the service of groups of servants or soldiers, or agents like spies and informants; or resources such as valuable goods or raw materials. Assets may also take the form of information known about an enemy, rumors spread to discredit them, or similarly intangible advantages.

Assets are merely tools for the characters’ goals; what matters is how they are used. This is not merely a matter of the skill with which those tools and resources are employed, but also the ends to which they are employed.

Structure of an Asset

All assets share a common structure that lets you see what they’re useful for and how effective they are at a glance. These elements are described below.

Functionally, an asset works as a trait with the asset’s name. The other details of an asset are there to provide extra context and differentiation between assets. Each describes a tool, resource, or something else useful which a character possesses. 

These assets are used during a conflict (as described in Chapter 6: Conflict) to overcome opponents and obstacles just like traits, usually in the following ways:

• To make a task possible when it otherwise would not be (such as using lockpicks to pick a lock).
• To make a task easier, reducing the difficulty (such as using a weapon to attack an opponent rather than bare hands).
• To make a task harder for an opponent (such as using a blade or shield to parry an attack).

Some assets are tangible—representing physical things, from weapons and other small possessions, to vehicles such as groundcars and ornithopters, to squads of troops and the services of agents and other subordinates. Others are intangible, representing contacts, favors, the ability to call upon friends, and similar useful things which have no physical presence in their own right.

Additionally, some assets are hard to come by and must be either purchased or provided specially by the character’s patrons or House. These are usually expensive or use advanced technology such as shields and ornithopters. If a character is trying to create such as asset during play the gamemaster may not allow it without a good reason why they would have access to such a thing. Other assets can be considered ubiquitous and are freely available almost everywhere, and easily brought into a scene with a Momentum/Threat spend. 

When characters choose their starting assets, or gain assets with advancement, and they opt for a ubiquitous asset as one of their starting assets it should also have another aspect that will grant it a broader range of useful applications, such as the following:

• The asset can be easily concealed.
• A sign of sigil on the asset proves the owner has the backing of someone powerful.
• The asset has a secret compartment.
• The asset can be used as another asset (such as the way a crysknife represents more than just a weapon to the Fremen).

Name

An asset’s name will normally serve as a basic description of what the asset is. This name will normally provide some clues as to the circumstances where the asset will be useful—a dagger is obviously be of some use in single combat, for example—but this may not be the whole story.

Keywords

Keywords provide an additional context for how an asset may function and the situations where it may be useful. An asset may have 2–3 keywords, most of which may only be a single word. The keywords don’t do anything themselves—there are no specific rules which refer to them—but they can be useful prompts when determining if or how an asset applies to a situation. Knowing that a particular asset is a ranged weapon tells you the circumstances where it is useful (and the ones where it isn’t, such as if an enemy is shielded).

Creating and Developing Assets

In addition to knowing how assets work, it is necessary to know who has which assets.

• Main player characters begin play with three assets.
• Notable supporting characters have a single asset each, created the first time they appear.
• Minor supporting characters have no assets, except at the gamemaster’s discretion, such as when assets would be necessary for the character to perform their duties.
• Non-player characters have whichever assets the gamemaster wants or needs them to have, with some consideration as to the kinds of resources a given non-player character has access to.

Beyond these initial assets, characters can obtain assets in several ways during play.

Assets and Traits

All characters can attempt to create assets in play, in the same way that they can attempt to create traits: at their core, assets are essentially just a slightly more detailed form of trait.

As noted in Chapter 5: Core Rules, a character can create a trait by spending 2 points of Momentum (normally after a successful test, but the gamemaster may waive this requirement), or by succeeding at a skill test with a Difficulty set by the gamemaster (normally 2). These common methods can be used to obtain assets as well, though the context of the skill test will determine what kinds of assets you’re able to create.

Intangible assets can be created in most situations, as they have no physical form and thus tend to represent the benefits of position, information gained, contacts, favors, and similar benefits. What kind of intangible assets are created depends on the circumstances and the actions taken: creating an asset based on positioning requires moving to an advantageous position, while creating an asset based on a favor from someone else requires convincing that person to perform a favor for your character. 

The drawback to this is that intangible assets are often easier to lose: they can be taken from your character or rendered useless with relative ease, because they are intangible. Knowledge can be invalidated, positions can be lost, contacts may turn away from you, those who owe favors may refuse to give aid, and so forth. This won’t happen unless the gamemaster has a non-player character take action against your character or through the spending of Threat (and even then, there must be a reason for your character to lose an asset), but it is a risk worth considering.

Tangible assets are a little trickier to create because they have physical presence—they are substantive, physical things which exist, such as spice. You can reasonably only create a tangible asset during a scene if…

• Your character could normally obtain that asset. Perhaps your character gained the asset in trade, or by leveraging your House’s wealth, status, and resources. Maybe your character simply found it in the environment where the scene is taking place.
• Your character could reasonably have already obtained the asset and simply be revealing it now. The asset must be something your character could conceal on their person or within the environment (if they’ve been there before or had time to prepare), such as a concealed blade, or a squad of troops using camouflage or disguise. Your character is assumed to have obtained the asset at some undisclosed earlier time, without anyone else knowing.

However you choose to create an asset, the asset is created with keywords chosen by the gamemaster (you may suggest keywords, but the gamemaster’s ruling is final here; you get to choose the kinds of assets you create, but the gamemaster gets to define the specifics), and it has a Quality of 0. You may, when creating an asset, spend 2 points of Momentum to increase the asset’s Quality to 1, to represent obtaining a better-than-average asset.

At the end of a scene, any assets you created which no longer serve a purpose—such as intangible assets based on observations which are no longer relevant or based on positioning on a battlefield your character is no longer on—are discarded. Any assets remaining will stay until the end of the current adventure.

Determination and Assets

One method of creating a trait is by spending Determination. This is just as useful for creating assets, though these factors are worth considering:

• Assets created with Determination have a basic Quality of 1, or 2 if you spend 2 points of Momentum to increase the asset’s Quality.
• Tangible assets are considered to have been obtained previously and are only being revealed now; you must give a brief description of how you obtained the item.
• Assets created with Determination remain in play for the remainder of the current session.

This means that assets created using Determination are often more significant and effective than most newly-created assets and require a little more thought be put into their creation. Because you must describe how your character obtained the item, this is an ideal opportunity to reveal or elaborate upon some aspect of your character, particularly if it relates to the drive statement you used when you spent the Determination.

Quality

Some assets have a Quality rating if they are of a better Quality than usual. An ordinary example of any particular asset, even a rare one, has a Quality of 0. An ornithopter is no better than a knife as a knife isn’t much use if you need to fly, just like an ornithopter is only useful to escape a duel. So, a knife with a Quality rating is better-balanced, more durable, or sharper than an ordinary knife. An ornithopter with Quality is faster, easier to handle, or stronger than a standard ornithopter. The higher the Quality, the more advanced or special the asset is. 

Quality does not just apply to objects and weapons. Documents with Quality are more complete or damning when used for blackmail or intrigue. Soldiers, servants of criminals in your character’s employ may be better trained or better equipped. Favors are more clearly defined and harder to ignore when called upon. Any asset can have Quality, tangible, intangible, or ubiquitous, but where a Quality is not noted it is 0.

An asset’s Quality determines how effective the asset is when used in a conflict. This takes several forms, and different types of conflict may refer to asset Quality for different purposes. Commonly, if you’re using an asset to overcome an extended task, then the asset’s Quality determines how much progress you make towards that task’s requirement with each successful skill test.

In any circumstance where you’re making a skill test with an asset and the asset’s Quality has no other effect within the rules (for that specific test), then the gamemaster may allow you to generate bonus Momentum on a successful test equal to the asset’s Quality. This is purely at the gamemaster’s discretion and applies only when the gamemaster feels it would make sense.

Quality can be increased as a character advances. The character can improve their equipment and do the same for those that serve them, who may also grow in their skills and training. Physical items might be improved with better technology, sharpened, or even have secret compartments of poison edges added. An asset might even just be swapped out for a newer and more advanced model. Intangible assets can be grown by gains in the character’s reputation or further study into their enemies to make one’s leverage more powerful. Servants, spies, and soldiers can undergo better training or be given better equipment.

Character Advancement

Your character’s assets, or at least the most potent and significant of them, will stay with them and may even grow and develop over time. This represents time and effort invested to refine and improve upon their tools and expand their resources. However, your character can only maintain a finite number of assets in this way, as upkeep and maintenance become an increasingly large drain on time.

Your character may have a total of five permanent assets, though you can increase this number through purchasing certain talents.

At the end of an adventure, after purchasing advancements, you may take any of the following actions to maintain your assets:

• You may choose to keep any assets you created during the previous adventure, up to your character’s maximum limit.
• If your character is at their maximum number of assets, you may discard any number of them to make room for new assets you have created.
• You may select one of your assets and increase its Quality by 1 by spending a number of advancement points equal to twice the new Quality of the asset (i.e., if you’re increasing an asset from Quality 2 to 3, it costs 6 advancement points). The asset’s name and/or keywords may be updated when you change the Quality, to reflect how the asset has been improved.