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Was reading this t'other day : http://io9.com/5728547/check-out-a-never+published-dune-rpg

and was intrigued with the idea that the players wanted to play in the setting and be involved in the main story, but did not want to play any of the main characters. This tallies quite well with my experiences -- I've been running a Star Wars campaign for the last 2 -3 years ( we're now into "book 3" of the campaign, it is, of course, a trilogy ) and whilst the players were up for meeting and interacting with some of the names/faces from the films they didn't want to play them at all.

The only exceptions to this in my experience were A. when we were and new players and really into Dragonlance and B. Whenever I've ran a superhero RPG someone has always wanted to play as Batman/Wolverine/famous character they dig.

Does this tally with other people's experiences here ? If you were playing a 40K rpg would you be pro or against playing , for example, one of the characters from one of the novels ?

I played in a Star Wars RPG for a long while and we interacted with the main characters but had our own story going.

I feel that it would be a lot hard with DUNE. While awesome, Dune is centralized around Paul and later his children. There isn't really much side story going on. It's a limited space on a single planet. Star Wars had stuff going on all over the galaxy, and while the main story revolved around Luke and the gang it is easy to add in side stories of importance.

A Dune game would be cool as all hell, but it I feel that it would most likely have to take place before or after Paul's uprising. Before might be best, since then you could change the story depending on how bad your characters muck things up.

In general I, and every other player I know prefers to create their own characters. Pre-existing ones not only come with expectations that a person may not want to try and meet but also lack the personal touch that I feel really creates attachment to a character. Most want to forge their own path and create their own history and future...not borrow someone else's.