Posted By Dan Greenfield on Feb 8, 2025 | 3 comments

An ANNIVERSARY SPECIAL: Marking the movie’s 1968 premiere with the new Planet of the Apes: The Role-Playing Game…

By JIM BEARD

Paws? We don’t need no steenkin’ paws! You just need to sit down and listen while I jabber away about this, ya damn, dirty apes!

The upcoming Planet of the Apes role-playing game has been a long time coming. How long? Well, I’d say 57 years as of today, the franchise’s birthday… or a few thousands years, depending on your perspective. But who’s counting? (The first movie premiered Feb. 8, 1968, in New York City before going wide in April.)

Magnetic Press, that’s who, along with a team of writers and artists spearheaded by Andrew E.C. Gaska with Blam! Ventures. I’m one of the members of that illustrious team and I’m here to tell you: It’s gonna be well worth the wait.

Cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz

It’s amazing to me that before now there has never been an official RPG for the franchise, one of the most important in all of science fiction film history. Before 1968, its likes had never really been seen in the industry and it paved the way for later blockbuster film series like Star Wars and Alien. Who woulda thunk it from a crazy collection of cavorting chimpanzees and grouchy gorillas? Not to mention those outrageous orangutans, of course.

Magnetic ran an amazing Kickstarter campaign for the game last year that was funded in 15 minutes and wound up going way, way, way past its original goal. I call that a testament to not only Planet of the Apes fans but to the film series itself. Call me crazy but I think by 3978 we’re still going to be talking about it—and playing the RPG.

Now, pull up a banana—even if you loathe them—and settle in while I run down all my reasons I think the franchise is simply perfect for a role-playing game, and what will make it one of the most creative, fascinating, and fun ones yet.

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The Core Concept. Man vs. Apes, Apes vs. Man, dogs and cats, living together… oh, wait, that’s another franchise. Anyway, POTA makes a perfect landscape for an RPG because at its core it’s either incredibly simple or amazingly nuanced. Gamers can either explore its many and varied themes or just run a hack-and-slash campaign through Ape City. No one will question you either way.

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Evolving Eras. This is a big one. The franchise stretches over 3,000 years plus a few more — fertile country for a Lawgiver to pick the fruit of any given era that’s been represented in the films, TV shows, books and comics.

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Location, Location, Location. Just like its many eras, POTA offers a lot of locations to choose from, not to mention the ones that we never got to see on the screen. When we did the Tales From the Forbidden Zone fiction anthology in 2017, we encouraged the writers to look at other spots on Earth to set stories and readers seemed to really dig that. It’s a much bigger Planet of the Apes than is dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio…

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Jumpin’ Genres. The original five POTA films didn’t nail things down to a single genre, but explored beyond the SF-horror beat of the 1968 movie. Beneath got all weird with the mutants, Escape lightened the mood with some comedy, Conquest spoke of revolution, etc. A role-playing campaign could embrace every single genre known to fiction.

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The Expanded Universe. You know how it goes: The films are popular so the audience’s appetite expands to “more stuff.” With POTA it began with novelizations and comic books, but soon grew to toys and TV shows, not to mention even more comics and original fiction. There’s a lotta apes in them thar hills and a whole slew of spin-offs and tie-ins to adapt for the game.

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What a Bunch of Characters. It’s hard to conceive of a better bunch of bananas than the characters of POTA. The whole lot’s a role-player’s dream—how could you ever choose from such personalities as Taylor, Zira, Caesar, MacDonald, Nova, Aldo, or even Dr. Zaius himself? Every type of character lurks within the franchise, and in our hearts.

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Crossover Characters. Speaking of Caesar, one of the things I love about POTA is that many of the characters live their lives across more than one film and even into expanded media. It makes me think of Armando, whose story arc crosses over from Escape to Conquest as he goes from happy circus owner to wary and worried as the world grows darker around him. Think of what he likely encountered between the two films and you’ve got yourself some rich campaign fodder.

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OG’s the Way to Go. All that said, the game and its infernal taskmasters actually encourage players to create their own characters. That’s a wise directive, I think, because while we love the existing apes and humans, the chance to create a living, breathing personality whole cloth to reside on that planet is too good to pass up. And the real challenge will be what you’ll choose, an ape or a human, which of course is only the beginning of your worries as you realize there are more than one simian species to pick and more than one human type to ponder.

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Tantalizing Technology. One of the really cool things I got to write up for the game wasn’t just a dossier on a favorite character but the amazing tech the world offers. POTA’s technology swings wildly, sure, but that makes it more fun to my mind. In a universe where galactic space travel existed in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and some pretty scary tech lurked in the early 1990s, all bets are off and the sky’s practically the limit for what you can use in the game.

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Taboos R Us. I think it needs to be said: The franchise is rife with those subjects that would normally be considered taboo in mixed company (apes and humans), but could be rich food and drink for a lusty Lawgiver. Role-playing is quite often a vehicle to explore the topics we might not speak freely of in the waking world—religion, politics, sex, etc.—but just might spice up a POTA campaign. Just make sure the kids are out of the room when a chimp kisses a wayward astronaut, right?

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Time Travel for Tourists. It might not be the very first thing you think of when Planet of the Apes comes to mind, but time travel is one of the underpinnings of the franchise and has the potential to be expanded on in an adventure or two. Dr. Hasslein had his theories about such excursions and maybe, just maybe, there was more than just those funky one-way trips those unlucky astronauts kept taking. Who knows? Maybe it will be you who finally gets Virdon and Burke home again.

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Boulle’s Full of Bananas. Here’s a fun thought: You know what’s never really been explored outside of its pages? Pierre Boulle’s original 1963 novel La Planète des singes. I can imagine what a hoot it would be to try to adapt its milieu to the RPG, a world quite different from what we’ve seen on screen and in the comics, etc. It’s only been very lightly touched upon, such as in the 2001 Tim Burton film — I promise never to bring it up again — and the graphic novel adaptation of Rod Serling’s original screenplay, and is still waiting to be fully embraced by POTA fans.

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Monkey Mash-Up. The comics have done it, combined the franchise with other properties, and now you can in the RPG. Just picture it: Planet of the Apes Meets Star Wars, or Terminator, or The Matrix. Or why stop there? The entire universe of licenses is open to you for your personal and private basement use… how about Zira and Cornelius team up with Lucy and Ricky Ricardo? Or the Munsters? Just don’t tell any of the license-holders. We won’t if you won’t.

Co-written by our pal Scott Tipton

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And because I just can’t stop when I’m jawin’ about Planet of the Apes, here’s an extra, 14th reason:

Alternate Avenues. This is another big one: What if? We had a blast being able to include a few alternate history stories in Tales From the Forbidden Zone and they proved to be some of the most popular in the anthology. What if Taylor survived past Beneath? Heck, what if the entire blamed planet survived past Beneath? Sometimes I think these could-have-beens might be even more exciting to explore than anything else. The only limit is your imagination…

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The digital edition of the core rulebook for Planet of the Apes: The Role-Playing Game has been released to crowdfunders, with the ANSA Sourcebook due soon. The print versions are expected to be published before long. Click here for more info.

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MORE

— 1968’s PLANET OF THE APES — Still the Gold Standard. Click here.

— LOVE AFFAIR on the PLANET OF THE APES. Click here.

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When JIM BEARD’s not editing and publishing through his two houses, Flinch Books and Becky Books, he’s pounding out adventure fiction with both original and licensed characters. In fact, he’s put words in the mouths of Luke Skywalker, Superman, Fox Mulder, Carl Kolchak, Peter Venkman and the Green Hornet… and lived to tell about it. He’s also edited D20 or Die! — a love letter to classic RPGs, available here.