Month: October 2017

The Old Monkey Clans (Catarrhini)

Primate lore holds that before the precursors disappeared, they grouped some clans together as Catarrhini, or “Old World monkeys.” It’s a matter of much debate as to exactly what this means. The Old Monkey clans contain all of the larger monkey types, but also some of the small ones. The official party line of most of the Catarrhini Clans is that the precursors came from another world, an old world, and brought the Old Monkeys with them. The New Monkeys came from the current world, which is the new one, and when the precursors vanished, it was to return to the old world. Whether the precursors left to punish the monkeys, old and new alike, for their wickedness, or because they thought the monkeys had grown enough not to need precursor guidance any longer remains a matter of much theological debate. What all the Catarrhini Clans agree on, however, is that older is definitely better.  Since the New Monkey theology requires the precursors to be creators (the New Monkeys believe that they are newer, upgraded versions of the Old Monkeys) and the Catarrhini theology does not, most Old Monkeys believe that the precursors didn’t create the other primates at all.

Continue reading “Creating A Troop In Monkeys With Guns: Monkey Stats” →

Also a reprint of the fluff I posted before, because this is the part in the document where that fluff goes.

Continue reading “Creating A Monkeys With Guns Troop: Ape Stats” →

Each turn, you move one platoon. At the start of the game, these platoons will contain four squads which each take individual turns (and some of which may be split into two separate fireteams). You activate one platoon each turn, not four squads. If one of your platoons loses a squad, when that platoon is activated you will only move three squads. If the platoon is wiped out completely, you will not get a turn when it is activated. On the first turn you take, the platoon you activate is designated Platoon A, and on the next turn you must activate an undesignated platoon, which will then be designated Platoon B. This continues until all platoons have been designated, at which point you must activate the platoons in order, starting with Platoon A. All battles must be fought with the same number of platoons on each side (although the number of monkeys in those platoons might be very lopsided).

When activated, each squad has two actions by default, although some squads may get more from special abilities. These actions may be taken in any order at all. You can even have other squads take actions in between the first and second action of a squad. However, when a squad’s turn is ended by a certain action, that squad may not take any more actions for the rest of the turn, no matter how many remaining actions they have.

Continue reading “Monkeys With Guns: Turn Sequence And Actions” →

Ongoing first draft rules for Monkeys With Guns goes below the break.

Continue reading “Monkeys With Guns: What Stats Mean” →

I’m still primarily working on Monkeys With Guns, mainly organizing playtests and writing up the campaign (I’m going with the Macaca Expanse). In order to have something to feed the blog while I do so, I’m dropping the first draft rules one bit at a time.

Continue reading “Monkeys With Guns: Basics” →

I only have a vague idea of what the Gorillini Invasion would actually include. I just know it would be a good name for a campaign about a large number of armies with high scrap:platoon ratios fighting on a big map. It’s the bigger, better super-campaign idea. Armies are more able to use very expensive toys like power armor and tanks, and the total scale of the conflict is larger. It’d probably have some kind of good vs. evil narrative, where one gorilla tribe has gone tyrannical and has invaded their neighbor. The goal would probably be to occupy the enemy capital.

The only thing I know about the Ateles Vendetta is that the name sounds bitchin’.

This campaign would be an asymmetric one, which is why it’s not really in the running as the starter campaign. Like the Cebidae Exchange, it has neat ideas that make it less accessible to someone who’s still trying to figure out how campaign rules even work, but in this case even more so, because each of the two players has to grapple with a different set of rules.

The idea in the Pan Insurrection is that a bunch of chimps have taken over a region traditionally under the aegis of the gorillas, who are mounting an expedition to reclaim it. The gorillas just plain get more armies and have more scrap to spend on them, but the Pan Clan begins with total control of the entire map except for the hexes the gorillas start out on (and the wilderness hexes that make up most of any campaign map, which cannot be controlled by any side), and they move in secret. Each turn, the Pan Clan writes down which army has moved to which hexes. When the Gorilini Clan arrives in a hex, they can try to track them, and the Pan Clan must share if one of their armies has been in the area within the last three turns, and if so, how many turns ago it was and which direction they left in. If the Gorilini Clan tracks in a hex and discovers a Pan Clan army in that hex, they can attack, and will likely have the chimps outmatched. If the Gorilini Clan discovers the Pan Clan has been here within the last turn, that army’s current location is revealed. On the other hand, if the Pan Clan catches a Gorilini Clan army who aren’t currently tracking any Pan Clan armies, they can ambush the gorillas.

Continue reading “Monkeys With Guns Ideas: The Pan Insurrection” →

As the name implies, this campaign would be about orangutans reclaiming lost Precursor tech in an heretofore undiscovered ruin. This campaign definitely won’t be the one I write up for the game’s initial release, because its obvious role is as a vehicle for new units, equipment, traits, and maybe some errata if anything in the initial release ends up too broken (I’m really concerned about the balance of tanks right now). The race to reclaim tech from the vast new Precursor ruin serves as an excuse to introduce expansion material one little bit at a time, particularly to help old players settle into the new errata during the first few battles before they reach the heart of the ruin and start unearthing the new stuff.