LouGoncey
Level 4 Theurgist
"Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That's my philosophy."
Posts: 108
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Post by LouGoncey on Aug 2, 2011 11:54:40 GMT -6
Just watched all five Planet of the Apes films (plus 2 of the Return to cartoons) at the Exhumed Films Go Ape Festival in Philly this past Sunday. Are there any official Apes monsters or charatcer classes made for OD&D out there that I'm not aware of?
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Post by Falconer on Aug 2, 2011 12:20:03 GMT -6
“Planetary Ape” is a race in Encounter Critical.
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Post by kesher on Aug 2, 2011 14:11:22 GMT -6
Are there some that you ARE aware of?
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Post by talysman on Aug 2, 2011 14:53:33 GMT -6
No one's mentioned Fight On! #12 yet? The article there is actually for Mutant Future, but is easily adaptable. Honestly, though, the apes of Planet of the Apes are mostly human with an ape overcoat. Just roll up a human character and base the character's "subrace" on the starting class: - Fighter = Gorilla
- Cleric = Orangutan
- Magic-User or Thief = Chimpanzee
Apes can switch classes, but this obviously doesn't change the subrace; so you can have Orangutan Cleric/Fighters or Gorilla Fighter/Thieves.
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LouGoncey
Level 4 Theurgist
"Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That's my philosophy."
Posts: 108
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Post by LouGoncey on Aug 2, 2011 16:25:50 GMT -6
Are there some that you ARE aware of? No, but I only started playing OD&D about 4 years ago.
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LouGoncey
Level 4 Theurgist
"Lather. Rinse. Repeat. That's my philosophy."
Posts: 108
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Post by LouGoncey on Aug 2, 2011 16:28:09 GMT -6
Honestly, though, the apes of Planet of the Apes are mostly human with an ape overcoat. Just roll up a human character and base the character's "subrace" on the starting class: - Fighter = Gorilla
- Cleric = Orangutan
- Magic-User or Thief = Chimpanzee
Apes can switch classes, but this obviously doesn't change the subrace; so you can have Orangutan Cleric/Fighters or Gorilla Fighter/Thieves. That's what I thought, but I didn't see Chimps as MUs (I only play the original 3 classes -- Now I'm thinking of changing.) Thanks for the help everyone.
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Post by gloriousbattle on Aug 2, 2011 16:58:13 GMT -6
Are there some that you ARE aware of? White Apes are a character race in Realms of Crawling Chaos (OD&D Cthulhu) as are Voormis.
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Post by calithena on Aug 3, 2011 20:46:50 GMT -6
There is indeed an article on mutant apes with some campaign seeds in Fight On! #12.
Going with Talysman's classification, the advanced rules should have Bonobos as thieves.
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Post by Finarvyn on Aug 4, 2011 5:45:08 GMT -6
Honestly, though, the apes of Planet of the Apes are mostly human with an ape overcoat. I heard on TV that not a single ape appears in the new Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie. They are all CGI. Indeed, I guess some of the best "ape acting" is done by the same guy who did Golllum in the LotR movies. They showed him with the dot sensors on his body, acting out some ape scenes, then they superimposed the CGI on him to look like an ape. He not only did the body movements but the facial expressions as well. He must be a great actor!
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Post by talysman on Aug 4, 2011 11:54:12 GMT -6
Honestly, though, the apes of Planet of the Apes are mostly human with an ape overcoat. I heard on TV that not a single ape appears in the new Rise of the Planet of the Apes movie. They are all CGI. Indeed, I guess some of the best "ape acting" is done by the same guy who did Golllum in the LotR movies. They showed him with the dot sensors on his body, acting out some ape scenes, then they superimposed the CGI on him to look like an ape. He not only did the body movements but the facial expressions as well. He must be a great actor! Heh, reminds me of a parody in either Cracked or Mad Magazine around the time the PotA TV series was on, where it was revealed at the end of the story that all the apes were played by horses. But of course, I wasn't referring to the technical aspects, but the conceptual aspects. There's nothing particularly ape-like about the apes, except maybe their gait. They aren't presented as having superhuman strength compared to Taylor. I think in the TV series or maybe the remake apes weren't able to swim, and I seem to remember apes in the remake being exceptional jumpers, but maybe that's just my imagination. Compare elves; if you assume these are patterned specifically after Tolkien, then elves are presented as having sharper senses, innate magic, and a distinct lack of aging. Unaging and magic show up in a couple other sources as well. D&D actually tones this down a bit, but there's a definite mechanical difference to reflect a difference between elves and human beings as presented in the source material.
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Post by kesher on Aug 4, 2011 13:43:40 GMT -6
Well, you know, Andy Serkis did do the bodywork for King Kong... I had totally forgotten that years ago, I messed around with doing this for the Moldvay Basic set...I had primates for dwarves, elves, and halflings, too... I'm going to have to dig that up! Then you could have humans replace orcs, etc! Aren't bonobos just a type of chimp? *edited to say: Oh, maybe that was the point...
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Post by calithena on Aug 4, 2011 18:21:22 GMT -6
Bonobos are a type of chimp, but their social behavior is very different. They tend to have a whole lot more sex, for example.
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Post by kesher on Aug 5, 2011 15:14:39 GMT -6
Bonobos are a type of chimp, but their social behavior is very different. They tend to have a whole lot more sex, for example. So that's why they'd be thieves---gotta get bling fer the laydeez! Okay, now that that's out of my system... I hunted down my journal from back on '00 and found that I had indeed jotted down some notes on this topic, inspired originally from reading Robert Anton Wilson's excellent Schrodinger's CatUsing B/X as the framework, I came up with: Fighter = Gorilla Thief = Macaque Cleric = Orangutan Magic User = Chimpanzee Elf = Lemur Dwarf = Baboon I also changed ability scores to: Strength = Dominance Intelligence = Cunning Wisdom = Connection Dexterity = Quickness Constitution = Aggression Charisma = Vanity And then connected each new class to an ability: Dominance = Gorilla Aggression = Baboon Quickness = Macaque Cunning = Chimpanzee Connection = Orangutan Vanity = Lemur I was then thinking about this during my drive home last night, and would probably alter this by only using Gorilla/Chimpanzee/Orangutan/Baboon in the context of a caste-society modeled on ancient India: Orangutan = Brahmin = Priests = Clerics Gorilla = Kshatriya = Warriors and Leaders = Fighters Baboon = Sudra = Commoners, peasants, unskilled laborers = Thieves Chimpanzee = India's system had a caste of merchants and landowners, Vaisya, which would probably work = Magic Users In Indian literature, different types of Brahmins play the Western Wizard role, so that could be blended somehow. I'd leave out the Pariah caste level, mostly because it doesn't seem game/class relevant.
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Post by aldarron on Aug 9, 2011 10:35:09 GMT -6
Bonobos are now considered to be a seperate species from Chimps. I don't know if they are cross fertile (but then, it hasn't been absolutely established that humans and chimps aren't cross fertile either - there's been rumors...)
Bonobos tend to be longer legged and walk upright more, have some skeletal differences and behave differently.
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Post by kesher on Aug 9, 2011 10:44:05 GMT -6
Bonobos certainly LOOK more like us...
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Post by Zenopus on Jul 23, 2016 15:12:41 GMT -6
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