Chris Dias: Taking D&D Beyond Traditional Fantasy

Chris Dias has spent his design and publishing career asking how far a familiar fantasy rules framework can travel. Through Dias Ex Machina and projects including Amethyst, Ultramodern4, Ultramodern5, and Affinity, he has made room for firearms, powered armor, cyberpunk cities, far-future machinery, and worlds where magic and technology do not sit comfortably together.

That genre-expanding direction is his clearest contribution. Dias did not perform every task on every book, and the published credits make the work of his collaborators visible. His role was to establish a creative and mechanical direction, then work with writers, artists, editors, cartographers, layout designers, and advisors to turn that direction into settings and systems other groups could use.

The result is a body of work that treats popular rules not as a cage but as an engineering problem. What must change when a hero carries a rifle instead of a sword? How can a setting preserve its identity when it moves between systems? How can several science-fantasy worlds share a larger idea without becoming interchangeable? Dias has returned to those questions across multiple releases and found a growing audience willing to follow.

Amethyst Changes the Frame

Amethyst placed Dias’s central idea into a world where fantasy and technology collide. The published preview for Amethyst Foundations credits him as Creator and Lead Writer and Conan Veitch as co-writer. Elizabeth Bauman is separately credited as editor, Jeremy Simmons for cartography, Joshua Raynack for cover and layout, Nick Greenwood and other artists for their visual work, along with the relevant contributors and publishers.

Those boundaries are part of the achievement. Dias supplied the central creative direction and lead writing, while Veitch’s co-writing and the book’s editing, art, cartography, layout, and publishing work remain attached to the people and organizations that performed them.

The 2013 Amethyst — Fantasy & Technology Collide Kickstarter documented an unusually broad multi-system plan: Pathfinder, D&D Fourth Edition, D&D Next, Fate Core, 13th Age, and Savage Worlds. It raised CA$10,529 from 174 backers.

Adapting a setting across systems is not a find-and-replace exercise. Each rules engine expresses characters, threats, and progression differently. The multi-system Amethyst project made Dias’s design challenge concrete: preserve the world’s tension between fantasy and technology while changing the mechanical language underneath it.

The later Amethyst Quintessence preview again credits Dias as Creator and Lead Writer while separately naming Christopher Peregrin Stilson, Conan Veitch, and William Miller as contributors. The pattern is consistent: a clear creative lead surrounded by visible collaborator credits.

Building a Broader Chassis

Ultramodern turned that same genre-expanding instinct toward rules that could support modern, military, science-fiction, and other nontraditional settings. A 2012 Mystical Throne review gave Ultramodern4 a 9/10 and called it a “magnificent accomplishment in alternative game design.” That language is the reviewer’s assessment, not a neutral market fact, but it captures the ambition readers recognized in the project.

The Ultramodern5 preview credits Dias as Creator and Writer. Christopher Peregrin Stilson is separately identified as contributing writer and editor; Joshua Raynack for cover and layout; Nick Greenwood for cover and interior art; Jeremy Simmons for cartography; Jaime Jones for interior art; Geoffrey Lamb as military advisor; and additional contributors in their own roles.

That credit page prevents an easy distortion. Ultramodern5 did not arrive from one person working alone. The direct record supports Dias’s creator and writer role while showing the expertise around it. Its aim was larger than placing a modern coat of paint on fantasy classes. It sought to make the familiar 5E chassis useful for worlds built around different assumptions, equipment, conflicts, and forms of expertise.

The 2019 Ultramodern5 Kickstarter raised CA$83,212 from 1,166 backers. The figures are Canadian dollars and the primary Kickstarter total. Later platform summaries may include additional pledge-manager activity, but that is not the same number and is not folded into this record.

Affinity and an Expanding Audience

In a direct 2021 Q&A, Dias said he created Ultramodern5, Amethyst, and Affinity. The Affinity Kickstarter presented three campaign books—Paradise, Torus, and Conestoga—and raised CA$107,128 from 1,175 backers.

The three-setting structure extended Dias’s central design habit. Instead of treating science fiction and fantasy as opposite shelves, Affinity put different mixtures of both into conversation. Its scale became a creative tool: three distinct worlds linked by a larger concept rather than one setting asked to contain every possibility.

The campaign record supports Dias’s creator role. It does not imply that he personally wrote, illustrated, edited, or designed every contribution. The collaborators and production roles remain part of the work.

Primary Kickstarter totals show the audience growing across related projects: CA$10,529 for Amethyst in 2013, CA$83,212 for Ultramodern5 in 2019, CA$107,128 for Affinity in 2021, and CA$102,126 for the Amethyst 5E Collection in 2022. Those figures need no currency conversion or invented lifetime total to show momentum. They document a creator-publisher returning to connected design questions and finding larger groups of backers willing to join him.

Taking Familiar Rules Somewhere New

Dias did not take D&D beyond traditional fantasy by rejecting everything recognizable about it. He treated familiarity as a platform from which to explore a different range of stories.

His games ask what happens when modern weapons, military structures, advanced technology, and science-fiction scale enter systems shaped by fantasy adventure. They also ask how a strong setting can survive a change in rules and how several settings can share a direction without losing their differences.

The direct credits show Dias repeatedly taking responsibility for those questions as creator, lead writer, and writer. They also show that the answers were built with collaborators whose work remains visible. Strong direction and precise credit are not opposing ideas here. Together, they explain why Amethyst, Ultramodern, and Affinity form a coherent contribution: Dias expanded the range of worlds these rules could carry while leaving the production record intact.

References

1. Dias Ex Machina, “The Company.” https://www.diasexmachina.com/company.html
2. Dias Ex Machina, BackerKit creator profile. https://www.backerkit.com/c/users/544291/profile
3. Amethyst Foundations preview and credits. https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/pdf_previews/81214-sample.pdf
4. Amethyst — Fantasy & Technology Collide, Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diasexmachina/amethyst-fantasy-and-technology-collide
5. Amethyst Quintessence preview and credits. https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/pdf_previews/176948-sample.pdf
6. Chris Dias, direct Amethyst Q&A, 2019. https://gmshoe.wordpress.com/2019/02/04/qa-chris-dias-amethyst-2/
7. Ultramodern5 preview and credits. https://d1vzi28wh99zvq.cloudfront.net/pdf_previews/190188-sample.pdf
8. Ultramodern5, Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diasexmachina/ultramodern5-a-5e-universal-sci-fi-sourcebook
9. Affinity, Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diasexmachina/affinity-three-sci-fi-fantasy-campaign-books-for-5e
10. Amethyst 5E Collection, Kickstarter. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/diasexmachina/amethyst-5e-fantasy-and-technology-collide-collection
11. Chris Dias, direct Affinity Q&A, 2021. https://gmshoe.wordpress.com/2021/04/09/qa-chris-dias-affinity-three-sci-fi-fantasy-campaign-settings-for-5e/
12. Mystical Throne Entertainment, Ultramodern4 review. https://mysticalthrone-ent.com/review-dias-ex-machina-ultramodern4-dungeons-dragons/
13. Chris Dias, identity-matched professional profile. https://ca.linkedin.com/in/chris-dias-70517323

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