Apes Victorious is a role playing game that is heavily inspired by the 1970’s Planet of the Apes franchise. I’ve enjoyed watching this series when I can and I even put in the DVD of the first movie last night to prep for today’s challenge. While I’ve seen a few of the newer Planet of the Apes movies, I haven’t sat down and watched all of them. This was a universe I was interested in role-playing in. So I decided to make a character for the Character Creation Challenge.
One of the things that stood out from last night’s viewing is that the smart Humans did not have their technology to save them or confirm their stories. The ship crashed in the water and the non-intelligent Humans stole and trashed their equipment. Making another astronaut character seemed a little cliche, but the Apes Victorious book suggested that a smart Human could have emerged from a cryo-sleep in a bunker. So Martin Reynolds was a smart Human that was woken from his hibernation state by an alarm that he needed to evacuate the underground facility quickly before it exploded. Grabbing a few things while running for the exit he now finds himself in an unknown world. What will he find? What caused the destruction of his bunker? Who else survived?
Apes Victorious uses the same system as other Goblinoid Games (Labyrinth Lord, Mutant Future, Starships & Spacemen 2e) which are all D20 based with a few minor tweeks. The ability generation is done by 3d6 with the option to assign the scores after rolling. I will be using the Astronaut class for the revived sleeper (since he just woke up and not constantly living underground like an underdweller descendant).
The only difference between B/X D&D attributes and AV attributes is Psionic Potential (PSI) replaces the Wisdom (WIS) score. Astronauts do not get any attribute adjustments so Reynolds ended up with the following stats. STR: 11, CON: 11, DEX: 17, INT: 13, CHA: 9 and PSI: 8. Rolled a 5 for his Hit Points.
The equipment was easy (Astronauts get this). I didn’t include the rubber raft since he was actually a sleeper instead of a flyboy.
It appears that only Underdwellers get the psionic abilities. I wrote down the To Hit score and the save checks for Energy Attacks, Poison or Death, Stun Attacks and Radiation. After I wrote some description notes I considered the character done. Here is the character sheet.
Afterthoughts:
I really want to write up a homebrew for the Sleeper class now. It would be very similar to the Astronaut but have some tweaks from the Underdwellers and other sources.
I liked how the character sheet has the graphics that remind me of the classic PotA series. The system was pretty basic and straightforward. I could see myself playing or even being the Ape Master (Game Master) for a campaign.
Additional Notes:
While I still haven’t been able to locate any additional websites that has posts for the Character Creation Challenge, I have been seeing a lot of participation on the social media hashtag #CharacterCreationChallenge.
Coming Up Next:
Starships & Spacemen