Terra Primate Corebook *OP

by Patricck Sweeney, C.J. Carella, David F. Chapman

From the creators of All Flesh Must Be Eaten, similar in style but this time . . . with apes! Terra Primate has no specific setting. The only constant is the concept of intelligent apes. Planet of the Apes is a movie about intelligent apes, but then again so is Congo. As long as the characters are interacting with intelligent apes -- or are intelligent apes themselves! -- the game could be set in the pulp era of adventure, on a post-apocalyptic Earth, on a faraway alien planet, or downtown on Main Street.
The main rulebook includes rules for character creation, combat and everything else you need to play in a world where man is the missing link! Also detailed are the multiple campaign settings so you can customize the type of "Apeworld" you wish to explore.

Genres: Role Playing Games

246 pages, Hardcover

First published May 15, 2003

Reviews

[Max · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is basically a one-off and somewhat less fun ape-themed version of All Flesh Must Be Eaten. It runs off of the same game mechanics, with the biggest difference being that the special powers provided are psychic powers rather than magical prayers to God. Aside from the start of chapter fictions and the ape-based examples, the first four chapters are largely the same as AFMBE or other Unisystem games. It's a fairly reasonable system that seems like it'd be fast and fun, and in a lot of ways it feels like a predecessor of Savage Worlds and the Vortex System used in the Doctor Who RPG. Roll a d10, add your relevant stat and skill, try to get a 9 or higher. Of course, unlike the later systems I mentioned, it's got hit points and no form of plot-alterting metacurrency (that comes in Cinematic Unisystem, which I haven't read yet). My main critique is I feel like combat is likely to be rather samey, since there's a dearth of tactical options or any special abilities beyond psionics (which itself is serviceable here, though I wish pyrokinesis had been added to the set of otherwise classic powers).

Things become different in chapters five through seven which focus on the ape factor. In essence, the goal of this game is to be an unofficial Planet of the Apes RPG. Chapter five is fairly nice, as it goes over some of the major concerns when designing your own Ape World (as the game calls a campaign setting). There's stuff like how the intelligent apes came about, how the PCs got there, what sort of government and organization structure each race has, and what the tech levels are. (I do feel like more explicit tech level rules a la D20 Modern and GURPS would've been nice here.) Chapter six is the game mechanics of apes, in four kinds: gorillas, orangutans, chimpanzees, and gibbons (though the last are often viewed as an underclass and not used in all of the example Ape Worlds). I don't know that much about apes, and feel like this chapter didn't give me quite enough to work with in terms of info or mechanics. Yes, there are writeups of each species, but the special powers and abilities were a big letdown compared to the wide variety present in the AFMBE core book, let alone the supplements for that gameline. Fortunately, the seventh chapter with nine whole Ape Worlds was kinda fun, and I'm tempted to steal some of them for use with a game system I like better. The highlights include a medieval society where apes are the nobles and priests and humans are the peasants, an ape city hidden under the ice in Antarctica, Mad Max but with apes, and a Lord of the Rings style fantasy with mind-controlled apes in place of orcs. Thanks to mentions of time and dimension travel, I'm even tempted to run some of these in the Doctor Who RPG and/or present them as one unified apes versus humans timeline.

I can't help but wonder if I'd like this game more if it had the breadth of supplements the equivalent zombie game has. Wild West apes, wrestling apes, and so on would be pretty fun, and technically there's nothing saying I can't do the work of that myself, but half the fun of reading an All Flesh Must Be Eaten book is seeing the wacky and wonderful ideas of the Dead Worlds. I'm not enough of a talking apes enthusiast to come up with clever ideas for myself, and I can't help but think that the relative nicheness of this concept compared to zombies is what condemned it to being a one-shot. Still, it's not a bad game for 5 bucks as a PDF, and if you're a big fan of roleplaying and Planet of the Apes, I could see this as a fun source of occasional one-shot campaigns. (Plus, it does have a few neat bits and bobs to pull for other Unisystem games.)

[David Takarai · Rating 3 out of 5]

El planeta de lo simios con super poderes y armas guays.