Chimera is a unique role playing game experience designed by Ryan Boelter and Amr “ammourazz”. It plays with genre in a very interesting way by allowing you to build your own game easily using different Genre Modules. To find out a bit more about what this game is all about, please see the following excerpt from the in-progress Core Rules document:

What is this game?

What is an RPG?

RPG stands for Role Playing Game. It is a type of game that allows a player to take on the role of a character and try to tell that character’s story. This is generally done as a group where one person acts as the main story teller and the rest of the group acts as an individual player in the setting. Following a set of rules, the players work with the main story teller and create different scenes of a story together through a combination of improvisation, game mechanics and imagination.

Powered by the Apocalypse

Chimera is Powered by the Apocalypse. Meaning that it is all about characters and their interactions with others on the team as well as storytelling. You play by having a conversation with one another and the GM, and certain actions or dialogue triggers a roll. The blending of the genres adds extra flavor to the world and the characters, allowing for interesting combinations.  Each genre will add new setting potentials, Primary/Secondary Archetypes and new options for the Genre Moderator (GM) to create conflict and story with the players.

Characters

Primary Archetypes and Secondary Archetypes. You choose two different archetypes during character creation. These two can be from the same genre or you can mix and match from the genres you selected during world creation. When a archetype is selected, it cannot be selected by another player.  Meaning you can’t have one player use the Primary for one Archetype and another player use the Secondary from the same Archetype.

Setting

Genre blending is the main draw to this game. You create the world by selecting two or more genres. Each genre has a list of world building tropes for that genre. You will select a predetermined amount of tropes across all selected genres, and describe what sort of world that makes.

Genre Modules

Fantasy

The fantasy module will help you blend in elements of games like Dungeons & Dragons, Dungeon World, and many others. Ten Archetypes are planned for this genre and they are all split up by traditional fantasy classes. Each archetype will explore the person behind the class and try to tell the story of someone who’s life lead them to the decision to become that person. Whether they are a calculating battle master in the Fighter Archetype, a charming performer in the Bard Archetype, or a master of spellcraft with the Wizard Archetype, the stories you tell will be more about the character and how they feel and interact with others than what they are capable of doing.

Magical Girls

The Magical Girls genre is becoming more and more popular in pop culture. This genre usually follows a group of young girls who discover magical powers through some act of destiny. These powers are then used to fight for love and justice in order to defeat some sort of ultimate evil. These stories generally balance the mundane life, such as being a high school student, on top of transforming into a magical protector of the city, or even the world. These transformation sequences are generally quite elaborate and are a staple of the genre. Usually, there is also a magical companion, likely an animal of some sort, that guides the team. Some really good examples of the genre are Sailor Moon, Miraculous Lady Bug, Card Captor Sakura, and many others. In Chimera, you will be able to be the doubtful Leader Archetype, the protective Guardian Archetype, or even the all-powerful Destroyer Archetype who’s sole destiny is to annihilate everything as a last resort, but they were awakened early. In total, there will be ten Archetypes to choose from, and all will give you a different lens into the magical girl experience.

Superheroes

The superhero genre is one that is very well known to a lot of people nowadays. From Marvel to DC, heroes have permeated pop culture so well over the last century, that the spandex and masks have become iconic. Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, the Avengers, the X-men: these are all examples of superheroes that almost everyone has at least heard of nowadays. They are generally seen as super powered people who don masks and costumes to protect their everyday normal identities. There are also plenty of people who don’t have any powers and just are really skilled with certain things. The common factor here is that these people wish to save people and protect people. Whether it’s for personal reasons or not, these heroes often put themselves in danger to protect the innocent. This is what you will embody in Chimera. You’ll select from Archetypes such as the Gadgeteer, a person who relies on technology to fight crime. There is also the Creation Archetype, someone created for a specific purpose, whether you are an android, a genetically created person with powers or even a clone of someone else. You can even play as the Displaced Archetype, a hero who is from another dimension, another time, or both, who is stuck in your world with no idea on how to get back home. What sort of heroic story do you plan to tell with your characters?

More to Come

This is just brushing the surface of the types of genres you’ll be able to mix together. We currently have six additional, full genres planned for the future. We also have a few micro-genre modules that won’t include extra archetypes, but will include some excellent genre flavoring you can tag onto your games.

Support Us

If you’d like to support us, the best way is to spread word about the project on social media. If you’d like to financially support us, for now the best ways are Patreon or Ko-fi.