Review of Chasis

Hello again, in today's post I will talk about Chasis, written in Spanish and created by Omar Vigón Álvarez and offered under a CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license.

What is Chasis?

First of all I would like to allow Omar to present Chasis with the foreword of his work (translated by me):

From the first moment my cousin Alejandro teached me how to play role-playing games I loved it. Those gaming sessions of the red book of Lord of the Rings were memorable.

I think that I internalized how to play very quickly. That experince changed me forever.

My first love was Rolemaster. My cousin and I played marathon journeys until early in the morning. But we chanfged its rules right away to make our own. If the authors would have seen which things we did with the system probably would had a fit.

I didn't take long to create my first role-playing game: Caballeros y Guerreros (Knights and Warriors). It was a copy of Rolemaster; a manuscript written in pencil scrawled in some greasy folios and with a system that was a completely nuts. We had a good time.

After this I created many other roel-playing games. One was about Transformers. Another one about Saint Seiya: Knights of the Zodiac. Some were very weird. Others quickly dissapeared into oblivion.

After testing and mastering professional games I realised one thing: I never had played any role-playing game following its rules to the letter. I always teared apart its rules, added mine, ignored complete paragraphs I didn't like, renamed its terms, improvised rules and added things I thought cool. Probably the original game didn't exist anymore.

From then a little of the spirit of Chasis is born. Take a look. See if there are things in the book that suggest ideas for playing. Grab what interests you. Change the things you like. Discard the rest.

I have always searched a system allowing to do anything in any setting. One which also allowed me to change some rules for others. I have never find it.

Even generic games have seemed very generic to me. Why I have to use 3D6 if I like the D12? Why won't there be any open ended rolls in this game? Why an only way of making things is mentioned? Why I have to play this way if I don't like it?

To use another system and having to tear it apart, modify it, twist it and change it the way I like it I have prefered to start from scratch. Chasis is a hodgepodge of pieces. Its components sustain the foundations of all role-playing games, with the purpose of assembling your own game the way you like it.

I will tell you a secret: even I'm not going to use Chasis verbatim. I'm going to do whatever I want with it. You should do the same.

As you can see from this introduction, Chasis is the product of the interest that players and referees can show for the game design after having been into this hobby for some time, which frequently involve studying published games and ending up developing home rules for our gaming sessions and even our own rulesets.

In the case of Chasis it's necessary to state that it isn't a complete role-playing game, because it don't has a background or a completely developed game world, instead of this Chasis is a tool which allows all people interested to study the design mechanics of role-playing games, focused in the elements allowing to define character traits and the different kind of dice rolls which are possible to find in published games.

To present this information the author recourse to use varied neologisms and notations which may seem a bit cumbersome for the neophyte (not in vain Chasis is recommended for referees and players with a certain experience in reole-playing games), but in this way he tries to systematize somehow all the mechanical details designers must take into account in their projects.

Chasis: Basic and avanced versions

Having clarified what is it it's time to see the couple of versions in which Chasis is presented: basic and advanced (I analize version 110, the most recent version at the time of writing the post is 111, corresponding to November 2020).

The basic version offers a ruleset framework (I repit, this isn't a complete game and can't be used as such) based in rolls of two 12-sided dice (D12) added up, obtaining number outcomes ranging from 2 to 24 as can be seen in the summary table I had created and put below:

As can be seen in the previous chart, the rolls system can offer up to 6 different types of outcomes:

• Success (the action is achieved)
• Neutral (the action is achieved and an advantageous or disadvantageous action for the player character takes place)
• Failure (the action isn't achieved)
• Critical (a super succes is achieved, so in addition to achieving it there's also an advantageous situation for the player character)
• Hyperbole (there's a Critical outcome followed by a Fumble)
• Fumble (theres a super failure, so in addition to not achieving it there's also an unadvantageous situation for the player character)

The level of the abilities and modifiers deemed to be necessary by the referee also can be added to the roll, whether by the circumstances or the equipment used.

Diferrence between the achieved numbre and base 13 difficulty also will indicate the degree of success (DOS, shortened GDE in Spanish) if positive and the degree of failure (DOF, shortened GDF in Spanish) if negative, so it's also possible to calculate the effect of an action as an optional possibility.

All this could be represented with this animated gif of the scene of the Special Edition of Star wars, in which han Solo chase imperial stormtrooper soldiers in the Death Star corridors and ends up finding much more than he expected.

As for character's creation the basic version suggests to use a system of traits (descriptive sentences about the character) and atributes (ATB) based in the allocation of development points (named PL) to determine the capacities in which he excels (these are positive and add up to the roll outcome) and incapabilities or weaknesses (these are negative so would substract from the roll outcome).

The allocation of these PL would be summarized in the following graphics, in which is possible to see the different combinations:

Regarding other questions, such life points or magic, these are determined by a series of auxiliary attributes (AUX), which may be Damage (character's life points), Pain (how much can the character endure before falling unconscious), both attributes will have 13 points each one, and the Magnitude, that would rule powers like magic.

The advanced version collects everything exposed in the basic version and expands it considerably, offering different models of attributes and characteristics, of dice rolling and checks as well as an appendix devoted to game creation and different topic compendiums of related issues (traits lists, equipment, character classes, etc.), so the author has created a document of nearly 700 pages which must surely include the mechanics of most part of the games published until now, needing time ro be read carefully due to its complexity and extension.

A sample character: Julia Strauss

Inspired by what I have read of Chasis I present you Julia Strauss, a character in a science-fiction setting I have created using the basic rules (I hadn't the chance of testing it in the game table, if any of you use it, I would appreciate it if you would leave me a comment in the post with your impressions).

Break Time by macarious on DeviantArt (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

 

System: Chasis (Basic system v.110)
frame: 2045: first crewed mission to Mars (hard science-fiction)
Name: Julia Strauss
Archetype: Systems engineer
Stereotype: Outstanding student
Quote: “Do you have tape duct?”
Appearance: Blonde with a turned up nose, crewmember uniform
Attitude: Sly and foul-mouthed
Past: Orphan of both parents
Future: If she is lucky she will be one of the first persons to enter deep space
Quirk: When she is nervous she pinches her right earlobe
Capabilities (12 PL):
   +4  Systems engineer (ship maintenance tasks)
   +3  Computing
   +2  Extravehicular activity (use of the astronaut suit)
   +1  Shuttle piloting
   +1  First aid
   +1  Survival
Weaknesses (-4 PL):
   -2  Firearms
   -2  Driving off-road vehicles

Health points: 13  ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐
Pain points: 13  ☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐☐

Equipment:
Tool kit (DOS2, adds up to the degree of success obtained in Systems engineering checks)
Laptop (DOS2, adds up to the degree of success obtained in Computing checks)
Astronaut suit (Protection DOS5)

Chasis (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0)

In a next post I will present you a development of a ruleset based in the advanced version of Chasis as well as a pair of sample characters.

Conclusions

You can see that Omar likes role-playing games and that he has put a lot of effort into creating Chassis, a work that has been evolving with time and that I hope will keep doing it so creators can use it as a bedside reference and who knows, maybe it may end becoming the Linux of role-playing games as says the author.

This entry it's also available in the following languages:
Castellano Català