So I had picked up this game from an online auction and it actually arrived before the 2024 #CharacterCreationChallenge had ended, but I didn’t want to drop any of the scheduled games that I had at the time. So for Day 11 of the 2025 challenge I am using Terra Primate from Eden Studios Inc. This hardbound book was published in 2002 and from my look-through, it has all the hallmarks of a late 90’s early 00’s game. The first Planet of the Apes remake had been released in 2001, so I’m certain the game was released to follow up on that movie.
Terra Primate uses something called the Unisystem which appears to be a generic system that Eden Studios used with several other RPGs they had released. To resolve an action/task the player rolls a d10, adds the character’s attribute and/or skill number to beat a target number set by the Ape Master (aka GM). Sounds simple enough. I had to dig to find this all the way back on page 89.
On to character creation. The game provides us with a two-page character sheet. The character creation process starts on page 21. The book recommends that new players create human characters at the start and after they have been more experienced there are rules for creating ape characters farther back in the book. There was an option to just take one of the template characters (pre-made) and alter them for a game, but that obviously won’t take us through the process. But I was appreciative that the game designers had that available. The six character elements in creation are 1- Character Type (how powerful are the characters), 2- Generating attributes, 3- Select qualities and drawbacks, 4- Select skills, 5- Select powers (if present) and 6- Possessions. The characters are built by spending points and these points were allocated depending upon the character type and any drawbacks selected.
The character types are Pre-Heroic (aka every day person suddenly thrust into a dangerous situation), Heroic (aka the characters are stronger, smarter, more capable than every-day folks) and Powered (aka your characters are practically gods among men). The Ape Master would determine the character types, but since I have no AM for this character, I’m going to go for Pre-Heroic. So the character has 15 points for attributes, 5 points for qualities, can only earn 10 points for drawbacks and 30 points for skills.
The primary attributes in this game are Strength, Dexterity, Constitution, Intelligence, Perception and Willpower. There are secondary attributes that are generated from the primary attributes and they are Life Points, Endurance Points, Speed and Essence Pool (spiritual energy). The point cost for the primary attributes are 1 to 1 up to level 4. Level 5 and 6 cost two points each. 6 is the max that a starting character can have in an attribute. The average rating for a human is 2-3 in each primary attribute. I’m starting to get a mental image in my head of what this character is going to be, so I spent the attribute points. The secondary attributes are determined mathematically from the primary attributes, I pulled out the calculator to made sure I had them correct.
Now I have 5 points to select some qualities and earn 10 more points if I select several drawbacks. The book says that I can use the points earned from draw backs on a 1-to-1 basis if I want to earn more qualities. If I want to use these points to increase an attribute, then the cost is the level (example: If I wanted to move my STR to 4 it would cost 4 points). I was able to eek out 9 points in drawbacks. This also generated into the backstory than an Ape General wanted this character dead. In an attempt to kill him, the Ape General ended up killing his family by trapping them in a barn which was then set on fire. I used these points to bump up two primary attributes (which I then had to go back and adjust the secondary attributes) and spent the remaining points on qualities for this farmer turned human rebel in the Ape Kingdom.
Now we move onto skills for our unnamed farmer turned rebel. I found it easier to go and write down the skills I thought is farmer turned rebel would have and then decided how many points to put into each skill.
The section on possessions says you just own stuff. So I’ll write down some basic items and move onto finishing touches. This included a name (uh…. random name generator says Caleb) and appearance (I’m going to imagine Captain Pike on his ranch before he shaved) and age (25 works for me). I then transferred from my notes to the character sheet and scanned it.
Afterthoughts:
During creation I was really reminded of the time I attempted to make a GURPs 4th Edition character in a past challenge. I didn’t really like that process trying to pick this and that and I was getting the same feeling here. If you like making characters in GURPs, you might like this Unisystem. While it might make it easier to homebrew stats for a character from another source (book, comic, show, etc.) I find it clunky when trying to create an original character. I’m not a big fan of min/maxing.
When it came time to pick the qualities and drawbacks they didn’t have a master list in the chapter with the descriptions. For some reason it was all the way at the back.
In the Ape Master section it left the world pretty open for the AM to select. This could be straight up Planet of the Apes (that is what I was using for the above character), but the Apes could have been in modern society, suddenly appeared from another dimension or a host of other ideas.
While the character creation system didn’t push me into tho no category when it came to playing/homebrewing for this game, there are too many other systems out there that would probably scratch the itch of playing a Planet of the Apes inspired game.
Additional Notes:
I’ve been enjoying the various entries into the challenge that I’ve seen on both social media and on the three big message boards. If I’m missing a blog, message board or another location, please let me know about it.
Coming Up Next:
Star Wars: Edge of the Empire
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