BRP Planet of the Apes

[Zane]

I've always felt it stacks up something like this...

Gorilla's are stronger, but less intelligent, and very militaristic

Orangutans and Chimps about the same on Strength

Orangutans have wisdom, while Chimps are more clever. I'm not sure which would rated higher for Intelligence.

Probably should admit it's been years since I've seen any of the movies, and even longer for the TV show, books, and comics.

Zane

[Hedgehobbit]

Or....

we could assume that the time travel trip in movie #3 altered the course of the timeline and lead to a different future. That was somewhat hinted at through the course of the films. THere are a lot of ways to put it together.

I'm not making that up. The TV series really did take place on the west coast.

I wouldn't reduce the INT of humans because it takes most of the kick out of the setting. Its one thing for apes to hunt, murder and enslave a degenerate sub-human primate but its quite another for them to enslave and murder real humans like you, me and (hopefully) your players.

[Atgxtg]

I wouldn't reduce the INT of humans because it takes most of the kick out of the setting. Its one thing for apes to hunt, murder and enslave a degenerate sub-human primate but its quite another for them to enslave and murder real humans like you, me and (hopefully) your players.

The films and TV series had differernt "kicks". The film was about Apes and men reversing roles, and then tossing a "normal" human into the mix.

The TV series was about an oppressive ape culture enslaving men.

Personally, I prefer the films. More interesting and original. For all practical purposes the role filled by Apes in the TV series could have been filled by humans or anything else. It really not much different than Rome or the American South prior to the Civil War, but with monkey masks. Basically it is the sort of topic that Star Trek used to visit several times a season.

Of course it all depends on what sort of campaign you want to run. Is it for the PC heroes to escape and carve out a place for themselves, fine a way home, or to bring about the overthrow of the oppressors?

Something like the Apes overthrowing the humans from the 4th film, or even a Ape-Human alliance in a post apocalyptic world similar to the 5th film could be interesting settings too.

[Shaira]

I think personally the films - and really the first and second ones - had the most original and interesting backgrounds. Quite some distance into the future (what was it - 3000AD or something?) with humans having regressed to high animal intelligence. Remember "humans" in the first film had lost the power of speech, and were pretty much clothed for film-decency's sake - but you got the message they were basically animals, so herdmen is probably a pretty good comparison.

I liked the open-ended feel of the first two movies. It was clear that the world was in a mess - there was no huge empire over the hills anywhere - and that more or less anything was possible. Given the worshippers of the bomb guys underground, who weren't human but all Hideous Mutants, it's certainly possible there are other sentient groups out there. All nicely weird and strange, with the Apes being the most "human" of the groups you could find.

For me, the later films degenerated a bit too much into thinly-disguised racial rights allegory and lost some of its universality and became a bit dated. Still fun, but nowhere near as weird and disturbing as the first two films.

[TRose]

I was thinking the humans 3d6 for all stats like normal.

except for the humans that lived real close to ape city Im not that familar with the stats of the humans herdsmen from glorantha. Can someone enlighten me on their stats.

In the Book Drastic Resolution Prax herdmen have a fix int of 8. That even better then a dog(4) or even chimpanzee(7) . All other stats are same as human .

[Rurik]

I gotta throw in with the films over the TV show - though it has been years since I've seen either. Excepting the recent re-make, which was just awful, and I generally like Tim Burton movies (I don't think I've ever said "Wow, that was a great movie" after watching a Tim Burton movie, but they all 'look' really cool, and typically I feel I was entertained - except for Planet of the Apes, which was a waste of a couple of hours of my life even if it did look cool).

[drohem]

Yeah, the only I could mine for the Marky Mark film is the cool costumes and make-up.

[PK Games]

So the core setting is Gorilla, Chimp, Orangutaun with Herdsmen. 19th century firearms (possibly a bit 20th century firearms as seen in BtPotA), horses and the forbidden zone.

On the fringes of that setting you have mutant bomb worshipping psychic humans. Even further out you have normal humans and a ape culture that enslaves intelligent humans where dogs still live.

So you cover the four main species (races) found in the setting (the three types of apes and herdsmen) and their variations (mutants, time lost human, human). Describe the basic ape culture then give variations. So we know how the "basic" culture is from the first few movies (PotA, BtPofA, EFtPotA), and we show the mixed cultures of CotPotA and the warring cultures of BftPotA. Then we see what the west coast was like in the PotA tv series.

Then we get to have a little fun. We get to explain continuity errors (according to CotPotA all dogs and cats are killed in a plague, yet there are dogs in PotA the TV Series) and we get to create other cultures around the globe. Like we know the east coast and west coast, but what about Ohio, or Gulf of Mexico, or Europe or Asia?

Surely we dont want to explore too far out, the heart of PotA is not knowing whats out there beyond the Forbidden Zones. But it could be fun to write.

[TRose]

Here a question Since the forbidden zone was nuked some time in the past , anyone know rules that handle radioactive areas? My guess is one of the reason the Forbidden zone was forbidden in the pass was you got sick and died there in the past and although the radiation level would have gone down over the years, there still might be hotspot around which is why the east coast and west coast apes dont know about each other.

[Shaira]

I don't know if the new rules say anything (still waiting for mine...) but I'd be tempted to rely on the old Gamma World trope of a 3D6 radiation intensity, which you can then resist with your CON or take damage and possibly gain a mutation (haven't seen the mutation rules yet either, so winging it here).

The GW1 radiation rules weren't that realistic, but they played extremely well, and were fun to use, and they fit quite well with the BRP paradigm (a bit like poison POT).

[Atgxtg]

If we want something more realsitisc for radtion we could use some real data:

Generally there is a difference between chronic exposure and acute exposure. Something like the forbidden zone would have both.

For acute exposre, people tend to get radiation sickness at around 100 rads; serious effects like bloods changes and permanent physical changes start here.

at 450+ rads mortality is about 50%; rising up to around 80% at 600 rads.

So POT of 1 per 40 rads seems to match up with the mortality rates.

Since death tends to occur a couple of months later, most radiation poisons should do damage at around a point every 3 days.

TO account for the effects on the body, say that for every 3POT Of Radiation a character must roll on the following table. Or just say make a Luck roll or roll on the table.

D10 (STAT)

1-STR

2-CON

3-SIZ

4-INT

5-DEX

6-APP

7-10 No loss

.

[seneschal]

I know it would be the GM's call, but just how "hot" would those hot spots be in "Planet of the Apes"? The Forbidden Zone prohibition was ancient, the nuclear war had occurred thousands of years ago. Taylor defied the Forbidden Zone twice and didn't catch radiation sickness, and his spaceship apparently crashed in the nuke-created desert.

"Damnation Alley" style mutant critters may not quite fit, but it would be a shame to have no strange creatures running around out there, even if they didn't appear in the movies. Of course, the apes didn't get around much.

[Atgxtg]

I know it would be the GM's call, but just how "hot" would those hot spots be in "Planet of the Apes"? The Forbidden Zone prohibition was ancient, the nuclear war had occurred thousands of years ago. Taylor defied the Forbidden Zone twice and didn't catch radiation sickness, and his spaceship apparently crashed in the nuke-created desert.

I would depend on just what made the area hot. Different radioactive materials have different half life ratings. There are still spots in Hiroshima and Nagasaki that are hot today, but other areas are habitable. Some forms of radiactivy remain hot for thousands and thousands of years, others can be clean in a few days.

Consider the "big bomb" that exists in the second film, I think just about any level of radiation if fair game. Once you got a world-killer, you have to assume the existience of "lesser" weapons of insanity.

"Damnation Alley" style mutant critters may not quite fit, but it would be a shame to have no strange creatures running around out there, even if they didn't appear in the movies. Of course, the apes didn't get around much.

You could put just about any sort of post-apocalyptic thing you wanted to on the planet. If we wanted to keep both the films and the series that only covers the coasts. For all we know they really could be a settlement of humans at Fort Wayne, or Intelligent lizards living in Arizona. We could even use Hawmoon's Europe with this, or overlay the Cthulhu Mythos. You could even have cultures where humans rule over apes, or both coexist peacefully.

That might be some of the charm of the setting. It is so easy to put into any other shattered world setting.

[TRose]

Well in my opinion , the vast majority of the area would no longer be hot , but how could you tell which areas where safe and which where not. The only working Geiger counters would be on the Spaceship that crashed and maybe with the mutants.

And there the effect that even where areas where no longer hot, there could be poisons in the water and dust, the fact the area was left open to the elements with no plant life of any kind for many years etc, i think a trip across the forbidden zone would make crossing the Sahara seem like a walk in the park.

[Atgxtg]

Well in my opinion , the vast majority of the area would no longer be hot , but how could you tell which areas where safe and which where not. The only working Geiger counters would be on the Spaceship that crashed and maybe with the mutants.

And there the effect that even where areas where no longer hot, there could be poisons in the water and dust, the fact the area was left open to the elements with no plant life of any kind for many years etc, i think a trip across the forbidden zone would make crossing the Sahara seem like a walk in the park.

Yeah, that is the problem with radiation. You can't see or feel it until it is too late. In game terms a GM would probably need to wing it and just have people get sick when they go where he does want them to.

Part of the reason for the forbidden zone in the films was to help conceal the truth. From what we see in the films the "Planet of the Apes" may in fact still be the "Planet of the Humans", only Taylor landed in the wrong area.

[soltakss]

Looking at areas where radiation has had an effect (Hiroshima, Nagasaki and Chernobyl) it doesn't look as though there are screaming hordes of mutants running around nor does it look as though entering such zones means instant death.

Most of the illness/death/damage was done in the immediate aftermath of the event. Further down the line, many people got cancer or other radiation-induced effects. Perhaps there are more congenital problems with births and descendants of survivors, but I don't know how much is talked about and how much is hidden in ther records.

So, looking at real world properties of radiation isn't really the way to go.

The Forbidden Zones have several properties:

1. Being nuked is a bummer

2. Cities are ruined and the survivors either died out, ran away or mutated

3. Mutants live in the cities. Mutants are a bummer.

4. Most of the Forbidden Zone is wasteland and is therefore difficult to survive in. A lot seems to be desert, for some reason.

5. The Forbidden Zone was forbidden for a reason, well serverl reasons. It was dangerous, it had ancient relics that could corrupt good apes, it was a Human Place and therefore should be avoided, Ape Religion is based on certain falsehoods that the ape leaders know about but don't want everyone to know.

I shouldn't think that much of the Forbidden Zone would be that radioactive any more. Most radioactive isotopes very quickly degrade, having relatively short half-lives. Materials with long half-lives are not that radioactive, by their nature if they have long half-lives it takes a long time for half the material to decay, which means the rate of decay is low which means the radiation is low. So, much of the danger is from material with short or medium half-lives and effects the immediate surviovors or the next few generations.

[Atgxtg]

In the last film, when the vist the forbidden zone for the first time, the radiation seems to be from the world buster nuke that is being housed in the city. So that is probably what is causing the radiation. It is probably only a problem to a small area. The rest of the zone if probably off limits for other reasons. Namely:

1) Remains of human civilization would disprove ape history.

2) There could still be mutant humans in there.

[PK Games]

GORE has radiation rules for BRP style play.

[seneschal]

I'm currently reading Alan Weisman's "The World Without Us," a book of scientific speculation about how the Earth would or wouldn't recover if humans magically vanished overnight. Hope it'll provide some game-able ideas.

The movie series' nuclear holocaust and genetic manipulation aside, Weisman doubts surviving primates would learn to become grassland walkers a second time. Without human industry and agriculture, Africa's vast forests would quickly return, and apes wouldn't need to adapt to new environments or develop higher intelligence to survive.

Even dense urban areas such as New York City would be reduced to forest again within several hundred years without humans to maintain them. Especially NYC, which was built on top of 40 Manhattan Island rivers and streams and which requires constant pumping to stave off floods. Seasonal temperature fluctuations would crack open skyscrapers to the ravages of rain and mold while the flooded subways would undermine their foundations. The damaged towers seen in films such as "Beneath the Planet of the Apes," "Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome" and "The Omega Man" would remain standing only several hundred years, although older stone buildings and overbuilt suspension bridges from late 19th and early 20th centuries might endure longer. Without human garbage to feed them and human furnaces to keep them warm, rats and roaches would die out rather than evolving into giant mutants. Wildlife, meanwhile, would colonize crumbling human buildings quickly (finishing off the rats and most domestic cats and dogs). Individual homes and smaller buidlings would vanish within a couple decades.

So ... some of our favorite movie images may be mere human hubris. Our mighty monuments and structures wouldn't endure after us in stately decayed grandeur, or at least not for very long.

[TRose]

As far as Mutants go. Most mutations are in real life fatal and very few offer any benefit. But who want to roll on a mutation table where 90% of the time you die or are handicapped?

But the nice thing about the Forbidden Zone I would say is whats in there would be up to each GM.

[drohem]

There are rules for Radiation in the new BRP. Radiation is rated in POT based upon grades of radiation intensity.

You match CON vs POT of radiation at intervals determined by radiation intensity level.

If the CON vs POT is successful you avoid the effects for the period indicated by intensity.

These rules are for realistic radation. It suggests that if you are allowing beneficial mutations from exposure (like Gamma World or others), then you might allow a POW x1 chance of the exposure giving a beneficial mutation. These beneficial mutations are left up to individual GMs to develop. There are no lists and such.

[Atgxtg]

These rules are for realistic radation. It suggests that if you are allowing beneficial mutations from exposure (like Gamma World or others), then you might allow a POW x1 chance of the exposure giving a beneficial mutation. These beneficial mutations are left up to individual GMs to develop. There are no lists and such.

Well there are the Hawkmoon mutation rules, right? Or the old RQ "chaotic feature" chart.

[drohem]

Well there are the Hawkmoon mutation rules, right? Or the old RQ "chaotic feature" chart.

Certainly, and that's were I would start too. It's just that in this edition there are no examples or lists; just one sentence suggesting that GMs can develop their own if they are going down that road.

[skull]

At one time i had planet of the apes(old school movie based) all stated out or Chaosium runequest2 rules, i loved the genre , love to play it, somewhere in my massive roleplaying game room, lol aka bedroom is a notebook of it all lol . i hope i still have it , i even did my own drawing,pictures for it. Ah dreams of the past creativity! if i find it ill post it in the downloads.

[seneschal]

Sounds good. We look forward to the opportunity to "go ape" upon seeing your stuff.