09/09/2025
The Roleplaying Game of the Planet of the Apes review
I was excited to receive my Planet of the Apes RPG books in the mail last week. Production values are very high, and the art is beautiful. My Kickstarter fulfillment included the Core Rulebook, the ANSA Files, the boxed Into the Forbidden Zone campaign set and a number of Kickstarter exclusives. Overall, the books are very faithful to the PotA canon established by the original movies, the TV show, and supporting books and comics.
The Core Rulebook starts with a primer on the future history of the Planet of the Apes. This is the history of the world from the first two movies, Planet of the Apes and Beneath the Planet of the Apes, before Zira and Cornelius traveled back in time in Escape from the Planet of the Apes. In this history, mankind continues thrive until the year 2550, when, with the world on the brink of another world war the ape Aldo speaks up and leads the ape rebellion. The second rule book, the ANSA Files has more information on different timelines and eras of the PotA universe.
The book goes on to a rules primer. The game is based on the D6 system from West End Games, made popular in the first Star Wars RPG of the 1990’s. Magnetic Press has updated the rules somewhat for modern gaming audiences. The rules are straight forward and simple enough to run the game and keep the focus on the story rather than the rules. In a nutshell, the game uses dice pools of d6s to roll over a target number. Stats and skills are listed as the number of dice to be rolled.
Each of the playable races - apes, humans, and mutants gets its own chapter with information on culture, politics and hierarchy. Apes can be chimpanzees, gorillas, or orangutans. Human characters can either be wild humans or astro-nauts from the past. The chapter on mutants presents two factions of mutantkind to choose from, the Fellowship of the Holy Bomb, or a splinter group called simply the Underdwellers. Within each chapter are a number of archetypes to specialize your character.
The following chapters cover detailed combat rules, weapons & equipment, vehicles, and GM (or Law Giver) advice. Equipment and vehicle entries cover both artefacts from the past to equip your astro-naut, and modern equipment for the discerning ape. As well as the usual advice on how to run NPCs, character advancement, etc., the GM chapter has many charts for environmental challenges, structures, and conditions.
The Limits of the Known World covers most of the setting material and is divided into the nation of Simia, the Border Region, the Forbidden Zone, the Underworld, the Eastern Sea, and the Northern Wastelands. Each subsection is full of description, charts for sandbox creation, and NPCs & monsters. The game is intended to be run as a sandbox, and doesn’t contain any maps of the land, however.
The final chapter contains an introductory adventure, pregens, and advice on different campaign styles. It is recommended that players decide on which racial campaign they want to play as a group, for example a mutant campaign, a human campaign or an ape campaign. In the polarized world of the Planet of the Apes a mixed group would be difficult to run.
I only have two complaints about the book, that is the lack of map for the setting. Even in a sandbox campaign it’s nice to have a general map to improvise off. The second thing, which is a failing for many RPG books, is the lack of an index in the back of the book. Why you would make a reference book without an index is a mystery to me. Overall, I’m really happy with the book and glad I backed it; not only for the RPG possibilities, but also for the nostalgia of the original movies that I enjoyed so much as a child.
I plan to continue the review of the series as I read my way through the books.
