The security officer aboard a luxury space liner, the Chimera, goes missing after the heroes witness her arguing with a passenger. Soon after, the Chimera's engines fail and defy repair. A scholarly patron asks the heroes to investigate the disappearance, which involves murder, misdirection, and misapprehension. To unravel the murder mystery around them, the heroes must follow clues about more than one enigma aboard the Chimera. Secrets and unexpected foes abound. In the end, the investigators find that the whole whodunit is only part of a much larger conspiracy!
"The Chimera Mystery" is a Starfinder Roleplaying Game adventure for four 1st-level characters. This adventure begins the Threefold Conspiracy Adventure Path, a six-part, monthly campaign in which the heroes unravel the machinations of insidious aliens who have infiltrated galactic society. This volume also includes an article on running mystery scenarios, more on spies in the Pact Worlds and beyond, and a selection of new alien creatures!
Each monthly full-color softcover Starfinder Adventure Path volume contains a new installment of a series of interconnected science-fantasy quests that together create a fully developed plot of sweeping scale and epic challenges. Each 64-page volume of the Starfinder Adventure Path also contains in-depth articles that detail and expand the Starfinder campaign setting and provide new rules, a host of exciting new monsters and alien races, a new planet to explore and starship to pilot, and more!
ISBN: 978-1-64078-205-1
The Threefold Conspiracy Adventure Path is sanctioned for use in Starfinder Society Organized Play. The rules for running this Adventure Path and Chronicle sheet are available as a free download (6.7 MB PDF).
Other Resources: This product is also available on the following platforms:
Other than a SFS scenario I ran to test the waters, this was my first time running Starfinder (I had some experience with PF2e and Delta Green though). I thought it was fun and generally easy to run, although a natural 20 on a perception check near the mid point did sort of disrupt the intended flow of events. But that is on the dice. Overall I think it took my slightly indecisive PCs about 20 hours to complete.
The thing I enjoyed the most about this module was actually the NPCs, which I thought were well written and (mostly) had nice artwork. There were just enough of them that it wasn't that hard to prep and introduce them, but a large enough number that the PCs could pick a couple they enjoyed having conversations with or asking for help. Also the fact that they all had at least something to discover/uncover about them (even if it turned out to be unrelated to the mystery) was a nice touch I thought.
If I had any mild criticism, it would be that information for a particular character is often spread out over multiple chapters. I get that this is to put follow-up information closer to the events likely to trigger it coming out, but due to the non-linear nature of the module I think it would have been easier to run if everything was grouped together for each character (or at least summarized) in one place.
I *loved* this book. I ran this for four (fairly casual) players on roll20 and you can read my summaries and notes on the experience on the messageboards right here. Spoilers galore, of course!
I really don't have anything negative to say about this. Given that there is only one other review so far, I feel compelled to address the negatives James pointed out:
I actually did not notice any poor editing, let alone any truly confusing mistakes. Maybe I am not reading thoroughly enough or my exocortex is properly autocorrecting, but there was nothing that bothered me at all. The only minor mistake I noticed is that a location is called out as being on the port side (the cargo hold for Event 4), but the map depicts the starboard side. Not that big of deal in my mind, though.
There was indeed not a lot of content in terms of crunch and encounters, but the module delivers in terms of atmosphere and plot. It took us about 15 hours to get through, but you could easily double that if you and your players like roleplaying out NPC interactions. There is everything you could possibly need and then some to bring each of the NPCs on board to life. So for the right groups, you would probably get way more playtime out of this than with your average dungeon crawl book.
One minor warning, though, to those who consider getting this book to just dip their toe or toe-like appendage into the AP with this book and then take it or leave it from there: It is very difficult to drop the AP after the finale of this one for numerous reasons. But I am almost certain you won't want to, anyway.
So go grab your ticket for the Chimera, it will be a trip to remember.
I was all set to start GMing one of the other APs for Starfinder when I took a look at this new one. I quickly dropped my previous plans in favor of The Threefold Conspiracy.
Positives:
1) Based on the first book, I've got high expectations for the story in the remaining parts of this AP. I really want to see where it goes from here.
2) I like how fluid this adventure feels. It's an investigation with some twists the PCs likely won't see.
3) It's got a lot of little secrets for them to ferret out, but still keeps them looking for more.
4) I like that it doesn't feel the need to add in an obligatory ship combat like almost every other AP book does.
Negatives:
1) The editing was pretty poor on this. I haven't seen Paizo's editing get this bad in a few years. There are lots of sentences that just get cut off without ending properly. And a few places where it tells you to look in the wrong location section for the details about a character.
2) I worry that there isn't enough actual content to make the adventure feel like a real AP book. Starfinder APs tend to be rather light on content compared to Pathfinder, but this one seems like it might be even lighter. I suppose that more word count was required to handle an investigation compared to a typical site-based adventure, so that's probably why. Since this should involve more role playing, it's entirely possible that it won't feel so light or short to the PCs, though. I'll have to see how this goes when I run this later this month for my group.
Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Adventure Path, Starfinder Roleplaying Game, Starfinder Society Subscriber
Moving away from the garbage post (which I highly suggest people flag as sexist) I really want to double down on how much I enjoyed the back page articles in this one. Both really felt like they were enhancing the SF world and I really enjoyed them. :)
so, what maps work with this AP? I like the way the maps look in the AP, but I can never get them to transfer over to print out so that they look good.
Ya know, I have to wonder if there is any other type of mystery you can start mystery APs with than "murder mystery" or "people in town vanish completely!" mystery
There is so much more to this AP than just murder mystery. That's literally just the start of the start of the start of the campaign. So much is going on here.
