Frank Herbert's 'Dune' Getting Tabletop RPG and New Board Games

Gale Force 9 has announced they will be making a series of board games and tabletop RPGs based on the world of the classic sci-fi book series Dune.

The tabletop game publisher announced (via an ICv2 exclusive) that they have obtained the master license for Dune, a popular science fiction series set on the world of Arrakis, which is the exclusive home of giant sandworms and the addictive spice they produce. Gale Force 9 will be publishing multiple miniatures and board games to coincide with the release of a new Dune movie in 2020. The new games will be the first Dune tabletop games to be published since a limited edition run of a Dune tabletop RPG back in 2000.

Gale Force 9 will also be collaborating with other game publishers for other Dune games, including a new tabletop RPG by Modiphius, the maker of Star Trek Adventures and Fallout: Wasteland Warfare. The new Dune RPG will be released in late 2019, and could finally give players a chance to play as a Bene Gesserit or a Freman.

The first Dune book, written by Frank Herbert, centers on Paul Atreides, the son of the recently installed ruler of Arrakis. When rivals to House Atreides kill his father and force the rest of his family to flee into the deadly desert, Atreides learns the ways of the native Fremen and eventually becomes their fabled messiah. Later books, written by Herbert and his sons, explore both the rise of the empire seen in Dune and its eventual downfall, along with the complicated path that Atreides and his descendants follow to ensure humanity's ultimate survival.

Dune is considered to be one of the greatest science fiction novels ever written and was adapted into a movie directed by David Lynch (of Twin Peaks fame) in 1985. SyFy also adapted Dune into a TV miniseries back in 2000, which remains one of their highest-rated programs to this day.