Hello!

My name is Anthony, and I made this game! This player guide is the driest (0% moisture), no fat, left-brained, most efficient way of absorbing player rules. I recognize that doesn’t work for everybody, so I’ve also made videos [link will be populated when rules are finalized].

If you’ve played TTRPGs before, think of Imaginarium RPG as a version of D&D or Pathfinder focused on lowering the barrier to entry, trimming downtime, and getting to the fun. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.

If you have feedback, I’d love to hear from you. Email me at anthony@imaginariumrpg.com.

Now, without further ado:

The Basics

In Imaginarium RPG, several players each create distinct characters that inhabit a fantasy world. A Game Master (GM) guides Player Characters (PCs) through a gaming experience that is equal parts narrative, combat, and exploration.

Imaginarium RPG is a roleplaying game, meaning you, the player, place yourself in your character’s shoes and act as your character would within their circumstances. Your character’s choices meaningfully impact both the overarching narrative and their personal stories.

The basic gameplay loop is:

1. Exposition — The GM provides a description of your surroundings.
2. Player Choices — You react accordingly.
3. Challenge — Depending on your choices, the GM either presents you with an Encounter, a Skill Check, a Save, or they Progress the Story.

Example

❃

GM: You stumble across a pit teeming with snakes. At the bottom, amidst the writhing tangle, a massive jewel emits a soft glow. Gerp, the Rogue: I’m going to transform into a rope, lower myself into the pit, wrap around the jewel, and extract it without them noticing.

GM: Got it. Start by rolling a stealth check.

❃

GM: You come upon a crumbling, stone tower within a clearing. Broken sticks are littered about, and a large, red crystal hovers ominously in the air.
Jess, the Astronaut: I step into the clearing, approaching the crystal.

GM: As you move closer, the crystal glows an even brighter red, as if in warning.
Gerp, the Rogue: Let’s break it!
Leaves-in-Shadow, the Vanguard: Agreed. I raise my bat, charge forward, and try to smash it.

GM: That’s a trivial Strength Check for you, Leaves, which you automatically succeed. As your bat shatters the crystal, shadowy figures appear from its remains. Prepare for an encounter!

Additionally, as you move through the loop, your characters progress, gaining in abilities and items.

While the GM may opt to use various game pieces, such as maps, cards, figurines, and tokens, the majority of play is done through theater-of-the-mind (i.e., the collective imagination of the GM and the players).

All About Your Character

How to Create a Character

Character creation is done through the Character Creator. If you’re reading this document, you’re already on that page.

What Makes a Character

A character has several key components:

Identity

Your identity is simply the persona you’ve conjured for your character, plus their age and sex. The Character Creator presents several flavorful options for adding depth to their story.

Race

Your character’s race informs, to some extent, how they perceive the world and how the world perceives them. For more information, see Races.

Classes & Abilities

Your character’s class is the manifestation of their imaginative abilities. Each class comes with its own abilities, which are then used to deal damage, inflict statuses, and provide beneficial effects.

For more information on each class, see Classes.

Background

Your character’s background is a general term used to describe their past. It used both for roleplaying purposes and determining starting items and skill bonuses.

For more information, see Backgrounds.

Attributes

Attributes represent your character’s physical and metaphysical characteristics.

There are four attributes your character can have:

Strength, symbolized by 💪 , represents your character’s athleticism. It also contributes to how intimidating others find

them.

Mind, symbolized by 👁 , represents your character’s mental faculties: ingenuity, logic, memory, and mindful awareness of

their surroundings.

Moxy, symbolized by 🎭 , represents your character’s savoir faire,

the seeming ease with which they accomplish difficult tasks, and their sheer force of personality.

Heart, symbolized by ❤ , represents a character’s intuition, empathy, force of will, and their ability to perservere.

When you first create your character, you are given 3 points to assign to your attributes. For each point assigned you roll a die of that type when you Build Your Dice Pool.

(Build) Your Dice Pool

Your dice pool is simply the amount of red Strength dice, blue Mind dice, pink Moxy dice, and green Heart dice you have to spend on abilities, or to augment your Skill Checks and Saves.

At the beginning of each-in-game day, you roll dice based on your stats. I.e. if you have 3 Strength and 1 in your other stats, you would roll 3 red Strength dice. You then add them to your dice pool for use. When they are spent, they are placed to the side and unavailable for use until they are re-rolled — via your party sleeping and starting a new day, your PC taking a short rest, or refreshing a single die at the beginning of a new round in an Encounter.

Skills

Your character’s skills represent their particular proficiences. Each skill is associated with an attribute. The skills and their uses are as follows:

Strength:

• Acrobatics – Your ability to be nimble, to leap and land gracefully, to balance.
• Athletics – Your ability to wrestle, shove, lift, and generally exercise your strength.
• Negotiation: Force – Your ability to negotiate by inspiring awe, fear, or reassurance in your competence. Moxy:

• Subterfuge – Your ability to trick and subvert standards, to pick locks, to sneak, to pick pockets, to con and deceive.
• Streetsmarts – Your ability to fit in in urban settings, to intrinsically know social rules, to “speak the lingo”, to make connections, to get the vibe of a place.
• Negotiation: Charm – Your ability to negotiate through flattery, persuasiveness, savoir faire, or good looks.
• Mind:
  • Knowledge: Medicine – Your ability to obtain, recall, and apply knowledge of the medical field.
• Knowledge: Scholar – Your ability to obtain, recall, and apply knowledge of history, religion, and geopolitics.
• Knowledge: Engineering – Your ability to obtain, recall, and apply knowledge of computers, engineering, and math.
• Knowledge: Metaphysics – Your ability recall and apply knowledge of the imaginary realm, old magic, imagination, and strange and mystical phenomenon.
• Knowledge: Nature – Your ability recall and apply knowledge of wilderness survival and animal handling.
• Mindfulness – Your ability to perceive your surroundings and make logical deductions about them.
• Negotiation: Logic – Your ability to negotiate through facts and hard truths. Heart:
  • Intuition – Your ability to sense other’s moods and intentions.
  • Empathy – Your ability to express comfort and relate to others; to calm and reassure them.
  • Perseverance – Your ability to push through pain, discomfort, and negative effects.
  • Negotiation: Conviction – Your ability to negotiate through the strength of your beliefs, earnestness, and courage. For more information, see “Skill Checks, and Saves”.

Equipment

Equipment are usable items that are printed on cards. Each card occupies one equipment slot on your character sheet. Characters each have four equipment slots. Likewise, there are four main types of equipment:

• Weapons

• Armor & Clothing

• Artifacts

• Tools

Some equipment cards are divided into subtypes (i.e. melee weapons, ranged weapons, helmets, boots, etc). Unless explicitly stated on the card, players cannot use two pieces of the equipment of the same subtype.

Equipment are covered in more detail in the Items > Equipment section.

Non-Equipment Items & Money

Your character will naturally accrue cash and non-equipment items.


Money functions in-game exactly as it does in the real world.

Non-equipment items — i.e. a torch, a bag of dice, a mirror, a set of oven mitts, a raffle ticket, a watch, a hangglider, or a pair of chopsticks, to name a few — are not printed on cards and do not occupy equipment slots. Additionally, they do not have usable mechanics expressly defined within the rules. This does not mean they cannot be used, just that they function as logic (and the GM) dictates. Possessing a hangglider would naturally allow you to glide from high places — provided you possessed the skills to use it.

Encumbrance and Large Items

Imaginarium RPG does not have a traditional weight system. In theory, your character can carry as many items as they want. However, the system expects you to apply real-world logic to these situations. Picking up items should never interrupt the flow of gameplay, but there are some cases where you may need to pause and consider. In such cases, it is the GM’s judgment that matters. For example: If you decide to pickup 999 jars of pickles, your GM may rule that you can’t, or that you can but are so burdened that every action incurs a doom die. These are edge cases that may not occur too often, depending on the zaniness of your party. More commonly, you may experience situations where you desire to carry large items — like a hangglider. In such situations, the GM designates that item as “Large”, and you mark it with an (L) next to its name on your character sheet. Your character may only carry one (L) Large item at a time. Carrying more burdens them with doom dice or the inability to move, again, depending on your GM’s judgment.

Hit Points, Armor, & Magic Armor

Hit Points (HP) represent your character’s health. When your character’s HP reaches 0, they are downed and considered wounded. Wounded is a persistent status effect that is only removed upon sleeping and consuming rations. If instead they were already wounded, they are retired (they are removed from play permanently, and you must make a new character — for more information, see Retiring a Character below).

Armor represents your character’s physical defense. A character with 1 Armor can take one physical attack per day without taking any damage and, if applicable, its corresponding status effects. 2 Armor provides protection against 2 Attacks; 3 against 3, and so on. The process of losing armor from attacks is referred to as shredding. Armor is fully repaired when your PC’s party sleeps.

Magic Armor is identical to Armor, except that it protects against magical attacks — their damage and status effects. Magical damage is cold, fire, psychic, and other types of non-physical damage.

Temporary Hit Points, Armor, & Magical Armor is a short-term bonus to these stats that can occur from abilities or events. Temporary values never stack, meaning two abilities that add 1 and 2 Armor to your character, when used at the same time, would result with a total of 2 armor being added to your character instead of 3 — the higher value being the one that takes precedent. Temporary Armor and Hit Points last until a character sleeps, unless otherwise specified.

Status Effects

Status effects or statuses are negative and positive effects applied to your character or to enemy encounters. Negative effects are sometimes referred to as debuffs. Positive effects are sometimes referred to as buffs. For more information, see Statuses.

Professions

Your character’s profession is used to craft equipment from reagents. Reagents are dropped from encounter cards and found out in the world and in shops. For more information on Professions, see Crafting.

Rank

Your character’s rank starts at 1 and increases as they gain experience. Your DM dictates when you increase rank. The party advances as a whole.


Encounters

Encounters are pre-generated events that PCs partake in. They come in several different flavors, but they most commonly involve combat with an enemy.

Order of Play

An Encounter begins at the GM’s discretion. When it does, the GM places an Encounter Card in front of the players. You may read it at your leisure.

Once the Encounter Card is revealed, each player decides if their character will go first or second. The players who choose add a bonus golden die to their dice pool. Then the following occurs:

• The round begins. The GM draws Ability Cards from the Ability Deck and places them face down next to the Encounter Card.
• The players who chose “first” simultaneously take their turn. As a group, they discuss which abilities they will use and in what order they will use them. Once done, they spend dice from their dice pool to execute their abilities.
• The Encounter (if it has not been defeated or resolved) takes its turn. The GM plays Ability Cards to execute its abilities.
• The players who chose “second” simultaneously take their turn. Likewise, they plan and execute abilities.
• The round ends. The players refresh 1 spent die (they re-roll a die). A new round begins.

An encounter ends when any of the following conditions are met:

• Its Hit Point Total (HP) reaches 0
• Its special conditions are fulfiilled
• The players are distant from it and choose to flee
• All of the PCs are downed
• At the GM’s discretion

Combat Encounters

The majority of encounters are combat encounters. Each encounter has its own unique rules, abilities, statistics, rewards, and so on. For example, in the “Shadow Wolves” encounter, the Shadow Wolves have the Shrouded effect, which makes every attack against them roll a Doom die. Likewise, in the “Orcish Accountants” encounter, there is an alternate victory condition: give them money.

Speed Is Your Ally

Combat is designed to be brisk. It is to the PC’s advantage to finish combat as quickly as possible because encounters draw ALL of their ability cards at the beginning of a new round, but PCs only refresh 1 die. This means that in a war of attrition the PC’s rarely win.

Using Attacks and Abilities

The most common way to end combat encounters will be to reduce their HP to 0. To do so, PCs use attacks and abilities by spending attribute dice.

Players may spend dice from their dice pool, which is built at the start of each day or after they take a short rest. In order to use the attack or ability, the cost associated with it must be paid. So,

if an ability costs 💪 💪 , the a total value of 💪 💪 must be paid to use it, whether by combing two dice with a value of 💪 or by spending one die with a value of 💪 💪 or more.

PCs can use as many attacks and abilities in a single turn as they can afford, but they can only use each attack or ability one time.

Attacks and abilities resolve in whatever order the players choose. This can either be a collaborative process where players work together to come up with the winningest strategy, or each player can solitarily take their turn. Regardless, each player has the final say over their own character’s abilities and when they will use them; likewise, players may suggest strategy but should never attempt to control other player’s characters.

Range

Most abilities have a Range marker. Range is divided into four categories:

Next To, Near, Far, and Distant.

Ranged abilities, unless otherwise stated, only target enemies who are Near. Targeting an enemy outside of that range incurs a doom die for each level outside the range. I.e., if you use a ranged ability to target an enemy that is either far away or next to you, you roll one doom die. If you use it to target an enemy that is distant from you, you roll the doom die twice.

Likewise, if a ranged ability has the far range, the doom die is incurred once for distant or near targets, and twice for next to targets.

In terms of visualization, Next To means within arm’s reach, Near means within ten yards, Far means anywhere between ten yards and few dozen yards, and Distant is anything past that. For the majority of Encounters, Distant will not be used.

Movement & Abstraction

During an encounter, movement and distance are abstract concepts shared between the Players and GM. Rather than using a grid or measured spaces, characters are understood to be Next To, Near, or Far from their opponents. These zones help determine range and action feasibility without requiring precise distances.
Movement typically requires no dice—players simply declare where they move. However, if a player is Next To an enemy and wishes to move away, they must spend a die from their dice pool to create distance (moving to Near range). This is called the Withdraw action, and this cost remains the same even if multiple enemies are engaged.
If a player cannot or chooses not to spend a die to disengage, the GM adds an ability card to the pool of one of the enemies that the PC retreated from.

Generic Actions

Any action not expressly defined as an ability and not requiring a skill check is called a generic action, and, like movement, does not require dice. It just “happens”. For example, speaking,

pressing a button, throwing a switch, opening a door, picking up an object, dropping an item or equipment,

MOVEMENT ABILITIES

There are special movement abilities require specific dice but that any PC can use. They are:

Sprint: Spend a Strength die to double your movement. Move from Next To → Far, or Near → Distant.

Take Cover: Spend a Mind die to find partial cover from ranged attacks. Must not be next to an enemy. You still have line of sight, but enemies now roll a Doom die when targeting you with ranged attacks. There must be cover for available for you to use this action. I.e., if you are in a flat, open plain, you likely cannot take this action.

Exert: Spend a Heart die to push through difficult terrain or conditions. Tromping through a sodden marsh, navigating caltrops, pushing through a thicket, swimming, ascending steep terrain, climbing a ladder or a many-branched tree, etc.

Hide: Spend a Moxy die to become hidden. Must not be next to an enemy. Enemies lose line of sight and cannot target you with ranged attacks. You are revealed once you move, take an Action, or make an Attack. There must be a place for you to hide to take this action.

Generic Abilities

There are several generic abilities that can be used by any PC. Each of these abilities cost 1 of any resource, meaning you can pay their cost with a Strength, Moxy, Mind, Heart, or Bonus die:

Make a Skill Check: Anything you can think of… from trying to shove your opponent over a ledge, to picking a lock, to swinging on a rope while performing the Ode to Joy on a musical instrument necessitates spending a die and then performing said skill check to the difficulty the GM specifies. Naturally, you can perform as many skill checks as you see fit during your turn, provided you have the dice to spend and the consequences of a potential failure don’t prevent further attempts.

Equipping an Item: Picking up and equipping an item for immediate use, essentially. Note that you cannot equip armor during an encounter.

Withdraw: You move away from an enemy or enemies you are next to without adding an ability card to their count.

Hazard Encounters

Hazard encounters are that are typically not resolved by dealing damage. They still have abilities and Ability Cards, but they are moreoften forces or phenomenon that the PCs must escape from or handle with means other than force: for example, escaping a rockslide, fleeing a barbarian horde, surving a magical trap, and so on.

Non-Combat, Non-Hazard Encounters

Finally, there are other encounters that may not involve any conflict at all: meeting a mysterious stranger bearing gifts, finding a magical door covered in glyphs, or stumbling upon a sword embedded in stone as examples.

Retiring a Character

When a character is retired, they are taken out of play, no longer to be used. Their player must start over with a fresh character. In terms of what happens in-game, the GM should decide that with the players before the first session starts.

Traditionally, that character dies, but there considerations to be made for retiring characters in other ways (i.e. they give up the adventuring life, or suffer a limiting wound, or are converted to the enemy’s side).

The reason Imaginarium RPG does not explicitly define retiring as death is to give the GM options as to how he wants to run his campaign.

When a character with 5 or more ranks is retired, the GM awards that player with one or several legacy points. These can be used when creating a new character.


Sleeping and Resting

At the end of each in-game day, the party Sleeps. They must be safe. If at least one party member has a “Ration” item card, that card is spent and the party fully recovers. They regain Imagination tokens, their individual Short Rests, and re-roll their dice pools. They lose temporary negative status effects.

If the party is sleeping in a safe place within civilization, such as an inn or a friend or ally’s house, they do not spend Ration cards and still make a full recovery. Typically, staying in an inn does incur a cost to players, however, in the form of cold, hard cash.

Ration item cards are only required when players are roughing it – whether it be in a forest, on a mountain, in a desert, in a cave, in a dungeon, or in a particularly nasty part of town.
If the party Sleeps without Rations, they do not regain Imagination tokens, do not regain Short Rests, and re-roll only half of what they would normally roll for each stat attribute, rounded up.

Short Rests are individual and can be taken at any time the party is safe and outside of a challenge. Although in actual game-time, a few minutes are passing during Short Rests, mechanically a

player simply announces “I am using a Short Rest”, notes that they have used one of their Short Rests for the day, and promptly builds their dice pool once more, so as not to interrupt the flow of the Session.

Traits

Traits are freely given abilities. They serve to specialize your class and provide variety on subsequent playthroughs of the same class.

The available traits to choose from are:

• Assassin — The first time you would deal damage during an encounter, you instead deal critical damage (you deal double damage).
• Berserker — Whenever you fall below 25% HP, you gain 1 temporary armor (temporary armor does not stack) and your attacks deal 2 additional damage. These effects end when you rise above 25% HP.
• Child of Destiny — You get your own personal destiny token that you can use once per day. When it is spent, it does not flip.
• Dual Wielder — You can equip two 1-handed melee weapons. When doing so, you deal an additional 2 damage with each weapon.
• Elementalist — You deal an additional 2 damage on any abilities that deal cold or fire damage.
• Goliath — You are massive. Your size is considered to be large. Whenever you build your dice pool, you may re-roll a strength die one additional time.
• Gourmand — Double the beneficial effects of potions and food consumables for you (this has no effect on rations or sleep).
• Iron Man — You can wear heavy armor, regardless of your class (astronauts cannot use their suit abilities while wearing heavy armor).
• It’s over! I have the high ground — Your attacks and abilities deal 4 additional damage when you are above your opponent.
• Jack-of-all-Trades — Whenever you Build Your Dice Pool at the start of each day, add three bonus die. They can only be spent on Skill Checks.
• Last Man Standing — At the start of a new round, you heal 1 HP and refresh an additional die for each downed party member.
• Like the Wind — Your regular sprints count as double sprints.
• Physically Fit — You can take an additional short rest each day.
• Pyromaniac — Whenever you scorch an opponent you gain 6 temporary hit points (temporary hit points do not stack).
• Sniper — If you roll the Doom die one or more times when using a ranged ability or attack, you instead roll it one less time. E.g., if you would need to roll the Doom die twice to make a Distant attack, you would roll it once; or once to make a Far attack, you would not roll it at all.
• Small Hitbox — Whenever you are in cover, your enemies roll the doom die twice instead of once when making ranged attacks against you.
• Strategist — You gain an additional bonus die whenever you choose to ‘go second’ during an encounter.
• Vampire — You heal for 1 HP whenever you inflict a status (singed and chilled count as statuses).

Skill Checks, & Saves

Skill Checks are PC-initiated actions that are difficult enough to warrant a roll of the dice. A skill check is done with a single d10. Once the die is roll, the value of your character’s attribute associated with that roll is added to the roll’s total. Likewise, if you are character is talented with a skill, you add an additional +3 bonus to the roll. Talents can stack: a PC talented twice in a skill gains a +6 bonus.

E.g., you ask to pick the lock. The GM has you roll Subterfuge. You have 3 Moxy and you are talented in Subterfuge. You roll a die, and roll a 3. Your total value is 3+3+3 = 9. The GM lets you know if that number meets the difficulty of the check. The standard difficulties are as follows:

Trivial – 0

Anyone could do it

Moderate – 4

Some proficiency or luck required.

Challenging – 8

Significant proficiency or luck required.

Hard – 12

Expert proficiency and some luck required.

Extreme – 16

Expert proficiency and a significant amount of luck required

Impossible – 20

The stars must align

Saves are checks that are forced upon the player. A boulder is rolling down the path: the GM bids you roll a challenging Acrobatics check or be squished.


Reading Encounters, Abilities, and

Equipment Ability Cards

Ability cards are abbreviated from full ability descriptions on class pages. Here’s an example of how to read them:

Neutron Fist

🎲 1d6+💪 🎯 next to ◎:🔥 singe+push

◉: 🎯 →near + pull + prone

Icon & Cost: The icon to the right shows a fist. Just below it is 💪 , which indicates the casting cost: 1 Strength. To use this

ability in an encounter, place a Strength die (or multiple dice) over the icon. This shows you’re spending that die to activate the ability.

Damage 🎲 : The 🎲 icon tells you what damage to roll. Here it’s

1d6 + 💪 . The “+💪 ” means you add the value of the Strength die (or dice) you spent. For example, if your Strength die total is 💪 💪 💪 💪 , then the damage would be 1d6 + 4.

💪

Range 🎯 : The 🎯 symbol shows the required range. In this case, it says “next to,” so you must be adjacent to your target.

Astronaut Modifiers (◎ / ◉): Astronauts have a unique resource called Sun/Void that augments their abilities:

If you spend ◎ Sun, the attack 🔥 singes the enemy and pushes them away.

• If you spend ◉ Void, the range changes from “next to” to

near/above, and the effect becomes pull + prone, meaning you draw the enemy toward you and knock them down.

Let’s look at how this ability is written out on the character sheet:

•

Let’s look at a more complex ability now:

Here’s what that looks like in card form:

Touch of Infinity

🎲 1d4physical;if4,re-roll

🎯 nextto
🔻 re-rollon3+
◎:fire+🔥 singeforeachroll 👁👁 ◉: cold +🧊 chill for each roll

Re-roll in this instance means that you apply damage again. So if you end up re-rolling 4 times, rolling 4, 4, 4, and 3, you do a total of 15 damage.
Fire and cold here indicate you do those damage types instead of physical damage when spending the corresponding resource.

🔻 indicates that if your target is marked, you re-roll on a 3+ instead of a 4.

Note the type: imagination. Type is reflected in the 🎲 section. If

it’s an imagination, you’ll see a damage die or dice specified. If it’s an attack, you’ll see it say “weapon”, indicating you use your weapon’s damage dice.

Encounters

Equipment