Stefano Buonocore
Before we start this review, we want to say thank you to Panzer8 Games for sending us a digital copy of Primate Virus, a roleplaying game “in 1d4 pages”. This is the motto of the line Essentials, through which the publisher promotes short games by independent authors. In this case, it is Danilo Teti, with the help of Clemente Musa for all the graphics and editing.
Primate Virus is available for download on the page Drivethrurpg by Panzer8 Games, only in Italian. This is a project pay what you want. The contribution is a free offer, with a recommended range from 0.97 to 3.86 dollars. More than a price, it is a way to show your support for the author and publisher.
Review of Primate Virus: the Volume
Excluding the cover and character sheet, the manual is divided into four pages (including the introduction) in A4 format. The two-column layout is quite clear, and the background of the page recalls the entrance to a cave but in neutral colours, so as not to disturb reading. Apart from the game logo (which shows the classic evolutionary ladder with the addition of a “return to the monkey” phase), there are no illustrations.
The product is perfectly in line with the aspirations and price range of the project. Perhaps we could have done better in choosing the font used for titles and paragraphs. The intent to recall characters drawn by an inexperienced hand and with an almost feral flavour is clear; unfortunately, the result is not the most readable. And if it is easy to ignore when reading the manual, it makes the player’s card much less usable.
The Setting
The setting of Primate Virus is deliberately minimal. It is mostly left to a brief introduction in which Danilo Teti identifies himself as a researcher who participated in the development of a new drug capable of fighting neurodegenerative diseases. This diary excerpt explains how the virus, in the experimentation phase on primates, achieved completely unexpected effects.
Some subjects saw an enormous improvement in their psychic faculties to the detriment of their physical ones. Others underwent a reverse procedure. Within a short time, the genetic drug turned into a virus that spread across the planet, infecting every primate. Including human beings. The result was to bring this strong imbalance between the individual’s psychic and physical development to the entire earthly culture.
There’s no other explanation. The game simply reports that society has completely lost control following the pandemic that resulted from the experimentation and that every civil institution has collapsed. A somewhat sparse explanation, which must be accepted as the premise of the game: the characters are primates (again, including humans) who, having gathered into tribes, try to fight to maintain their place in the world.
Review of the Mechanics of Primate Virus
The rules of Primate Virus are exquisitely essential, essentially based on a single mechanic: Structural Balance. A path divided into fifteen steps that leads from the Motor Area to the Cognitive Area. Simply put, the player chooses in which position to place his PC between these two extremes.
The closer he is to the Motor Area, the more dice he will have available for actions related to the physical and fewer for those that require reason and empathy. Taking the Motor Area to the extreme allows you to develop superhuman physical abilities. Conversely, the closer it is to the Cognitive Area, the more the character is suited to conceptual activities, to the point of developing telepathic and telekinetic powers (obviously weakening the body).
Structural Balance is not a static value; every time you are successful (i.e. at least one six-sided die exceeds the difficulty of 3, 4 or 5 set by the Master for the action), you get closer to the Area that was used. Failure, on the other hand, pushes in the opposite direction. Exceeding either extreme means that the virus has permanently altered the character’s structure, leading to his death. The system closely resembles that of Lasers & Feelings by John Harper, although no specific sources of inspiration are made explicit.
Characters
The Characters can fall into five different Membership Groups, which also determine the customization of their Traits, i.e. descriptors that allow the Degree of Difficulty of the actions to be lowered. Humans can choose five Traits linked to their background, therefore skills acquired through study and training. Anthropomorphic Apes, as gorillas and chimpanzees are, possess only three Traits related to their background, while three others are fixed, dating back to their animal nature.
Old World Monkeys, such as monkeys and baboons, are even closer to the bestial side. They only have two background traits and four fixed ones. New World Monkeys, such as howler monkeys and tamarins, with a single stroke free from the background. Finally, the most beastly of all are Protoscimmie, such as lemurs, with seven traits available but all pre-generated and tailored to their feral nature.
Conclusions of the Review of Primate Virus
Primate Virus is a small indie game and, as it is, has many ingenuities that could be ironed out over time. Leaving aside the texts which could have been a little clearer, it is true that the games based on Lasers & Feelings or similar systems are usually devoid of setting or lore. But this happens because they rely on other works that have a strong impact on pop culture. It is a type of game that is based on a shared imagination before sitting down at the table.
Primate Virus in this he proves lacking. The objective is quite clear, to play the contrast between rationality and instinct in a system that tends to highlight the defects of polarization. All in a context in which civilization no longer offers any safety net. This is a highly introspective and interesting idea for a role-playing game that can be started in a matter of minutes.
However, the work on fiction and lore will fall entirely on the shoulders of the master, because the game in this sense limits itself to talking about an unspecified fall of civilization due to the virus. The idea behind the manual is intriguing; it is a small project that deserves to be encouraged, even if only to hope to see a more refined version.
