Search
Review Editing
Review of Planet of the Apes - Preview Game
All tasks are resolved by rolling a number of d6 and comparing the sum to a Difficulty Number. The number of dice you roll is equal to one of your stats. If you have a relevant skill, you add dice equal to your skill level.
This thing involves as many die rolls in combat as Champions does. Maybe more. Opinions vary on whether this is good.
I roll to attack you. If I succeed, I roll dice for damage, while you roll Stamina dice to resist. If my damage roll beats your Stamina roll, your wound increases. So that's three die rolls to resolve a successful attack.
And if your players are at all trying, it's lots o' dice. Players accumulate Hero Points (see below). You can spend a Hero Point to double the number of dice in one roll. You can also spend a Hero Point to reroll a failure, or to reduce an injury. My players did all of the above, and it made the difference between failure and surprising success. The game notes indicate that's the way it's supposed to work, allowing characters to prevail in a world where a single hit can be lethal. (The preview game doesn't indicate whether NPCs can get Hero Points. We decided they can't. Hero Points are for heroes.)
One die in every roll must be a special Wild Die, easily distinguished from the others. You add it to the total just like any other die; but if it's a 1, you also get a Complication (Law Giver, i.e., gamemaster, chooses). If it's a 6, you get an Advantage (you choose). And of the Advantages, most give your party 1 or sometimes even 2 Hero Points. Even some of the Complications give you a Hero Point as sort of compensation. So doing the math, that means a lot of Hero Points. Loosely, one roll in six will give you a Hero Point. And each character starts with 6.
My players instantly glommed onto this. They were trying to escape from armed gorillas (while themselves unarmed). They set up the plan carefully, and then spent Hero Points like candy. The five of them snuck up and attacked the four guards. Dice were rolling everywhere!
It also helped A LOT that Dana chose his character carefully: a gorilla with a 7D punch WITHOUT spending a hero point. (It was 6D as designed, but I gave them each an extra 1D Strength due to their time laboring.) Double that with a Hero Point, and it's 14D, average roll 49. The target roll to punch most characters is 6, so he beats it by 8x. The chart only goes to 3x, and that increases the injury level by one class. Then he he spent another Hero Point and rolled 12D for damage, average 42. The gorilla's Stamina to resist that was 3D, so average 10. He beats that by 4x, and that means mortal injury. Then he increases that by one level. Dead. Rich took the guard's gun. This all happened in a big corn field, so the other three guards never noticed. So they snuck up on the other guards, one at a time; and through profligate use of Hero Points, they took out all four.
Quick game, right? They can escape, right?
But they decided they wanted revenge. A bunch of slaves escaped, and 10 guards set off into the wilderness to recapture them. Meanwhile the heroes snuck around and planned an assault. Thanks to spending Hero Points with abandon (at one point, Rich had 10 stocked up), they took out sixteen more guards and burned the Undergod in his lair. They had a few Stunned incidents, and Buck got Wounded. Rich got possessed by the Undergod. But really... five of them against thirty guards plus the Undergod, and the ending was never seriously in doubt.
But they were pretty near zero Hero Points at the end.
This was a one-shot adventure, and they were trying to escape with their lives and rescue forty other slaves. If ever there were a time to spend the Hero Points, this was it. In a campaign, you would probably want to conserve them a bit. But when the action heats up, spend those Hero Points!
We're not sure about initiative in combat. One person rolls for each side. ALL characters on the winning side go first, then all characters on the losing side. This seems a bit... lopsided. Especially when the players realized they could use a Hero Point to double the initiative dice. (Or at least the rules don't say you can't.) So they ALWAYS had the initiative, and so could eliminate opponents before they got attacks. The LEAST effect you can get from an effective attack is a Stunned opponent who gets no action that round. So they eliminated four or even five attackers per round. When the gorillas responded, even if the hit, the player would spend a Hero Point to reduce the result to Stunned. Stunned means you can take no action for the rest of this round. But since the players had initiative, they already acted this round! And Stunned ends at the end of this round. So as long as they had Hero Points, they were practically unstoppable. The only way to stop them would be through attrition. Keep on them until they run out of Hero Points.
Of course, that sums up Taylor's escape in the first film...
Note: The stylized "ape" font they use for headers is really difficult to read.
