Chimera Playtest II: Mutants, Mutants Everywhere!

[sentry0 8]

It's been a long time since I did anything with Chimera, this project got shelved when the world changed essentially. For those unfamiliar, Chimera is a blending of OpenD6 and HERO System into one game. I took OpenD6 and swapped out the 'Special Abilities' for a more mature and sophisticated 'Powers' system based on HERO. Using the new power building system you can simulate just about any character for any genre you can think of.

Playtest I: High Fantasy
The first playtest went well, we played a high fantasy 1-shot set in the Forgotten Realms setting using the Chimera rules. The system was (unsurprisingly... it's OpenD6!) easy to pick up and use for the players and they had a good time. Everyone used pre-gens or a character I created specifically for them based on their request.

Playtest II: Modern Day
Skip ahead a few months and we're going to start a new playtest where everyone is a mutant. This is not set in any established world and is instead a custom setting I've been working on in the background. It's 2020 in the setting and people with powers do not officially exist according to the goverments of the world. The players have strange powers and have been hiding their true nature from the world around them out of fear.

This time we will be sitting down and building characters from scratch after a session 0 which is yet to be scheduled. We will be building in the "Heroic" band... 90 points +10 from Disadvantages. Hopefully this will provide me with the feedback I need about the power building section of the book. I already have one player chomping at the bit with a character concept which is fantastic.

Get Chimera
For those of you interested the Chimera books are available on my Google Drive. I have revised some things based on the first playtest as well as added art to the book; all art was freely available and usable without attribution according to the source website. If anyone wants to give feedback on the work please do so by responding in this thread or DM me here.

• Chimera
• Chimera Form Fillable Character Sheet

Edited September 28, 2020 by sentry0

[Grimace 34]

Wow!  Lots of work there!  Good to hear that your first high-fantasy went well.  

 

I'm curious, have you done a "blind" character generation yet?  One where you have players make up characters without ANY input from you other than the rules?  

Good luck with your ongoing work with this!

[sentry0 8]

That is an interesting idea... I know one of the players has been tinkering.

Maybe I can ask some of the more intrepid players to give it a go before the session 0.  

It'll be interesting, the power building system is more complex than it was and has inherited some of the problems in HERO.  Namely, players have to wrap their heads around seperating mechanics from SFX.  The math in Chimera is more simple than Champions with it being just addition and subtraction based... no formulas to follow like in Champs, less margin of error.

I know when I was learning Champions I didn't make the first couple of characters, I learned from an established group of players.

I will run this by the group

[Durran 25]

Late to the party but looking forward to seeing what you've done.

[sentry0 8]

Got a little sidetracked but I've decided to go with a more free-form playtest where you don't have to be a mutant.  More player freedom and more stress on the system to handle all the weird stuff my players come up with

I also made couple of sample writeups Iron Fist and Luke Cage for my players to see what well known superheroes could look like in Chimera.  My hope is having a couple of example characters will help them build their own characters.

Here's my writeups:

• Iron Fist
• Luke Cage

I also put in a system for martial arts, not in the current version of Chimera... needs some playtest time.

Edited November 15, 2020 by sentry0