Introduction
I’m the last of my platoon. They struck us in the night; not even our cover in the trees could save us. We assumed they wouldn’t find us, but we were wrong. When they first came they promised peace. They said that as much as they looked different from us they really were much the same underneath. We were foolish to believe. Now I’m here, in the jungle, the last of my group. They’ve stalked me for days; I know it’s only a matter of time before they capture me. God help me if they do to me what they did to Brian. I found him two days ago, skinned, hanging upside down by a rope from the trees. What Beasts
! Their cruelty knows no bounds! I won’t even think of what they did to the women of the last village I passed through. There’s no one left to save but myself, for what it’s worth. I swear by the blood of my comrades that the next group of pale, hairless fiends that pops up to do me in will eat lead till my dying breath. May they rot in hell!
What if you weren’t a human suddenly encountering intelligent apes, but an ape encountering a new, strange hairless primate? The sub genre of intelligent apes can be inserted into any other genre. The situation I wrote above is just one possibility that Terra Primate, by Eden Studios, can deliver. I’ll look at the art in the book as a whole, and then I’ll go through a casual chapter-by-chapter commentary. If the idea of intelligent apes in roleplaying gives you a twinge of glee that you are almost ashamed to admit to your friends, and even if it doesn’t, please read on and decide if Terra Primate is for you.
Art
The art in this book ranges a spectrum from very nice to questionable. It is clear that Eden Studios was trying to convey through their art a range of “feels” for the genre of intelligent apes. In this, I believe they succeed regardless of the art that may be a bit lacking.
The cover has a nice layout, and the fuzzy green and black background does a good job of portraying a murky, impenetrable jungle. The only complaint I have about the cover focuses on the picture of the ape on the front. First let me create some context. There is a prominent ape soldier on the back cover, with his face pointed towards the viewer. One will note that all of his teeth are canines. This is fine, because it conveys a beastly, pulpy kind of feel, not unlike what you might find in a comic book. However, if you look at the ape on the front cover, his wide grin reveals very large canine teeth that appear much to far back in the mouth. There are no visible canines on the lower jaw. This anomaly of the tooth placement for me throws the whole picture off. To make matters worse, this face appears again before the credits page, and yet again on page 40. Perhaps I am being nitpicky, but this picture fails to me because it appears as if the canines were added as an afterthought, and they appear as if they are a mistake.
I’ll try to make a note here of a few exceptionally good and a few more “questionable” pictures to achieve a rough balance, since it would be unwieldy to comment on every piece of art. The picture on the back cover of a group of soldier apes surrounding a group of crash-landed humans appears again as a two-page spread on pages six and seven. As a whole this is a nicely done picture, and several pictures appear throughout the book in a similar style. There is another two-page spread on pages 16 and 17. Several human servant women attend an ape chieften, and several armored ape soldiers stand buy as two human men are restrained with chains. I like this picture, and although some people will think it is cheesy due to the presence of the scantily clad women, I disagree. First of all, I have no problem what so ever with scantily clad women in RPG artwork, but more to the point I think this picture is appropriate because it touches on a basic, deep seated human fear. “What if they take our women!” Maybe this sounds silly, but I think it is true. Through history when one group of people raids another, women are often a valuable “commodity” to claim. There is a sense of “us vs. them,” which I think is even more pronounced when the “them” are not even human.
One of the more questionable pieces of art appears on page 13. A female ape holds a human skull. I think this picture is simply a poorly done picture. It does not look professional, and that is about as specific as I can be.
There is a lot more, both good and bad, about the art that could be said. However, quite frankly art critique is not my strong point. I must emphasize that although some of the art lacks quality, by far most of it is very nice and covers a wide range of possibilities. Overall the art does a good job of inspiring and capturing multiple feels. Let’s take a look at some of the meat now.
Chapter One: My God! They’re Apes!
Like all of the chapters, this one is started by a piece of gaming fiction. I won’t comment on all of the fiction, but suffice to say that they are all well written and further convey an idea of the possibilities presented in this game book. I think one thing that would be good to mention here is that throughout the book I found only a small handful of typos. If you’re anything like me, a large number of typos in a book can really distract from the material. Overall this book was very well edited.
This first chapter is a nice introductory chapter that not only deals with the standard roleplaying jargon for beginners, but it also introduces a brief history of intelligent apes in film and fiction.
Chapter Two: Of Apes and Humans
In this chapter we start to get into the meat of the Unisystem through character generation. This chapter will look very familiar to fans of
AFMBE and
Witchcraft. This chapter contains the standard explanation of the attributes in Unisystem, as well as a list of Qualities, Drawbacks, and skills. For those people unfamiliar with the Unisystem, the Qualities, Drawbacks, and skills cover a wide range of options. This will allow for a very detailed character, but at the same time it is not as overwhelming as some people find certain other point based character generation systems. An important note is that although this chapter is useful for creating ape characters, there are elements to these characters that are not presented until a later chapter.
One of the real jewels of this chapter is the Psionics section. Would you like to be a mutated psionic human on a radiation blasted world? What about a genetically engineered ape that can “see” enemy troop movements from miles away? You can do all of that and more. At character creation you “buy” psionic abilities much like you buy other Qualities. However, there are two statistics relevant for most uses of the branches of psionics – Strength and Art. The strength determines how “powerful” of an effect you can achieve, and the art determines how skillfully you achieve it. The psionics presented here cover a complete range of psionic possibilities. Overall this is one of the nicest systems in the book, and an excellent addition to the Unisystem.
The end of this chapter contains several archetypes, or pregenerated characters. They cover a range of character types for various worlds, and a picture represents each one.
Chapter Three: Opposable Thumbs
This chapter contains the heart of the Unisystem. People familiar with
AFMBE already know what to expect here, but people who have only been introduced to the Unisystem through
Buffy will find a few slight differences. The basic mechanic is to role a ten-sided die and add it to the relevant skill and attribute rating, with a common target number of nine or higher. This system is easy to grasp and fast to execute. My only complaint is that diceless resolution and the option of using a deck of playing cards for task resolution is not detailed here like it is in the equivalent chapter in
AFMBE. Instead, these topics are briefly mentioned but it is stated that they are covered on the
Terra Primate website. The last time I checked, the website does not have this information. This is a shame, because the diceless resolution can appeal to some people who want to reduce their dice rolling, and the playing card technique can add a fun element to task resolution.
Chapter Four: Tool Users
This is your standard equipment chapter. It covers modern equipment very well, and ancient equipment adequately. My only disappointment here is that this section does not include science fiction equipment, which would have been nice to flesh out the possibilities. Although a few items do appear later in one of the ape world descriptions, more would have been better. To those people who really wanted high tech equipment I would suggest looking at the various technology books published for GURPS, or various Eden fan sites, at least until something more is created by Eden Studios.
Chapter Five: Anthropology
This chapter provides a framework to base an apeworld concept on. Included are topics to consider when creating an apeworld, ranging from how the apes might have become intelligent to what their culture might be like and how it might interact with a human culture. The chapter also discusses possible cultures for both apes and humans. Are your apes the product of evolution? Where they created by God? Are they the result of genetic engineering? Is the ape culture in its Stone Age or do they have colonies on Mars? This is very much a “concept” chapter, which any apemaster should find very useful in creating a world to tortur…I mean to entertain the players.
Chapter Six: Going Ape
Ahhhhhhhh…finally. This is the subject dear to my heart. Apes! Apes! Someone, quick, wipe the drool from my chin! When last we discussed character creation we were still hung up on those ugly, hairless primates with deluded ideas of grandeur because of their cranial capacity. Well, let me tell you something, if you think intelligent apes by themselves are intimidating, how about ones that can fly? Or bite you with their venomous fangs? This chapter contains Qualities and Drawbacks exclusively for apes, or at least nonhumans. The beauty of this chapter is that one could use it to create nonape creatures as well. Standard templates are provided for the four apes, which include chimpanzees, gibbons, gorillas, and orangutans. Although monkeys are not included, the tools are provided here to allow you to create them if you desire. One minor quibble I have in this section is that although claws are listed as an ape power to purchase, bite is not. In the natural weapons section of the ape templates it is commented that apes have a bite, and how many character points it costs, but for the sake of organization, consistency and clarity I think it should have specifically been listed as an ape power, even though the natural apes already have it. This chapter gives you the tools to create a basic template of an ape species, as you want it for your world. This template will have a point cost that essentially reflects a racial package that can be purchased like any other Quality at character generation. This concept is not unlike how GURPS handles racial creation.
Chapter Seven: It’s a Planet of Apes!
This chapter is another example of how Eden Studios really shines with its products. Modeled very much like the deadworlds in
AFMBE, the apeworlds in
Terra Primate cover a wide range of potential worlds, with more than enough detail to get you started. Included in each apeworld are the templates for the ruling apes, so that the apemaster can create NPCs or a player can make a character based on one. Also, each apeworld includes a few story seeds to get you started on a scenario. Below I will briefly comment on each apeworld.
Dominant Species
This is the classic apeworld ruled by intelligent apes, and the game wouldn’t be complete without it. The technology level of the apes is Iron Age, with the option of early gunpowder weapons. The humans are in a more primitive, hunter/gatherer state. The actual background for how the apes got to be the way they are is left up to the apemaster, but there are several innovative possibilities offered. I would love to detail them here but I want to leave a few juicy secrets for anyone interested in purchasing the book.
Apeopolis
This world is a world like ours, but Apeopolis is a futuristic city in the arctic ruled by apes. The apes are intelligent, and their technology level is far above modern humans. Again, there are several possible explanations offered for the existence of the city, and a number of possibilities are offered for what happens to the poor humans stumbling upon this society. This is a nice deviation from the standard “planet of apes.”
Heart of Africa
This is a pulp setting in which human explorers discover a strange tribe of intelligent apes in the heart of Africa. If you like pulp adventuring and Indiana Jones meets intelligent apes, you will like this setting idea!
Majestic Apes
Imagine a medieval feudal society ruled by apes, in which humans are serfs and gorillas are the knights in shining armor. What if Juliet was an ape princess and Romeo was a lowly serf human? This is a nice setting, with various options for native humans or apes, or even dimension traveling humans.
Invasion of the Apes
The world is like our world, but one day dimensional portals appeared, and militaristic intelligent apes poured forth in force. The apes are technologically like us, with the exception that they have invented a method of traveling to parallel dimensions. Campaign possibilities include fighting against the apes, or being an ape yourself and trying to exterminate the pathetic humans that dare offer resistance to the obviously superior apes. (I try not to let my bias creep in…)
Island of Dr. Monroe
The title is pretty self explanatory, but I will add that there are some interesting twists offered. Again, I don’t want to reveal too much…
Simians and Sorcerers
This is a magical fantasy world in which a mad sorcerer has created an ape army to conquer the world. There are several options suggested for campaigning, including being a knight fighting the god fight or perhaps being an interdimensional traveler that comes to fight against the evil sorcerer.
Primal Apes
This is a parallel dimension in which there are dinosaurs, aquatic humans, and intelligent apes. The apes, although primitive, are dominant on land. This world would present an interesting stop in an interdimensional type campaign, and there are a few story ideas toward such an end.
Appendix
This is another section of the book that really goes the extra mile, so to speak. It includes animal stats for common animals as well as more fantastic creatures including dinosaurs and a few fantasy creatures. A creative apemaster can create stats for other creatures based on this wide variety of examples. Another great part of this section is an extensive bibliography of movies and books that share the flavor of
Terra Primate. If the game book is not enough for inspiration (but it probably is) the extensive list of outside sources provided will give even further inspiration. There are also tables in this section to speed character creation, although one thing inconvenient that I noted was that it appears there was a goof up, and they failed to put the page numbers in the table for the skill list.
Conclusion
There are many advantages to buying this book and few, if any, down sides. If you love the genre of intelligent apes as much as me, then by all means buy this book! Snatch this book up while you can, because it is a rare thing indeed to find something like this that caters to a special interest. If you are only luke warm to the idea of intelligent apes, I would recommend you pick up the book anyway. There are so many options available for characters and campaigning that if you only like the idea of intelligent apes making a guest appearance here and there, this book will still be valuable to you. Besides the great story ideas, the book uses the Unisystem, which is a very clean, streamlined system that can meet the needs of people who like detailed characters and who like a fast resolution system that doesn’t bog you down.
In short, this game is yet another fine example of Eden Studios’ boundless creativity and quality work. It has crossover potential to their other games, and all by itself it is a viable game with many possibilities. Who knows, you might find yourself in the dungeon of some vivisection laboratory, where slobbering mad apes plan to…
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