Animorphs RPG System Creation Thread

>>49638244
I don't know anyone who's read it.

>>49638244
Normally I wouldn't recommend it, but it feels like it would be a good fit for Eclipse Phase.

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These book covers always made me laugh

>>49638244
>All I know is, we're probably going to need a sanity mechanic.
And a Humanity mechanic.

And you can pay with your Humanity to keep yourself sane.

Anything that affects the character's mental health can't be strictly binary. The fucked up effects of animal mental overlap can't be on the same axis as the fucked up effects of accidentally a genocide, or disemboweling someone for the first time, or sending a friend to a horrible fate, ect.

>>49639449
>Accidentally a genocide
Wasn't an accident senpai

>>49639517
When you write it "accidentally a X", it's a facetious joke, fampai.

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Never read it and the only place I have ever heard of it from is ocasional mentions on /tg/. From those descriptions it sounds like paint by the numbers, spider man inspired """young adult""" so we don't have to put in effort shit.

But if we're taking sanity mechanics then Moomins would drain that shit faster than Moomin Papa drain whiskey.

>>49638358
It actually does, now that you mention it.

>>49639180
How does that even work. Like, what? Give me a narrative example of how that would be represented.
"I torture the kitten, this makes me more sane"?

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>>49639180
I like the separate humanity and sanity tracks, and paying out of one to keep the other from dropping.

Think they should be recoverable by any means? Like two weeks of quiet in the war returning one point of sanity, or getting a humanity boost from kissing your definitely-not-infested crush for the first time?

>>49639636
Humanity mechanics, when done properly, function more as "Instead of contemplating this horrible thing I've done, I'm just going to give less of a shit."
And because you don't care as much going forward, it becomes easier and easier to just keep doing bad things. What's a little murder when you've already done things that would make you a war criminal?

>>49639449
Hence why we need a separate Humanity track alongside the Sanity track.

Humanity represents your ability to fit in with society, Sanity represents your ability to function as a person. They both drop at a similar rate, but you can raise your Sanity by paying your Humanity, you can't do anything to raise your Sanity however so once you hit 0 Humanity (like the main cast did) you're basically screwed.

You should also be able to pay Humanity so you get a bonuses to rolls.

As you can probably tell flavorwise this is absolutely horrifying.

Also if you become a Controller, you can replenish your Humanity, but not your Sanity. This is because it's not you in there any more, you're taking a backseat to an alien slug and it's gonna do what it bloody well wants with your body, whether you like it or not.

>>49639673
Usually, giving less of a shit is some kind of justification.
"They're not really people", "They'd do it to us", "They deserve it", "It's for the greater good", ect.
Murder is still bad, but you don't consider it murder when it's *those* things.

>>49639699
>Sanity
Meant to type Humanity here.

>>49639652
>When your character gets in a relationship with someone not a member of the party, and thus it's not clear if that person is infested or not
>To clear them without arousing suspicion, you've got to invite them on a camping trip that goes for a little over three days, risking spending time alone with a Yeerk
>If they're a yeerk you're going to have to survive the trip, keep them there for the time, then after the yeerk dies, help the crush deal with the pschological trauma, the party will pump them for info and then draft them as they won't be able to return to their life
>If they're not a yeerk, then the only way to ensure they don't get tricked into becoming a controller is to let them in on the secret and draft them

>>49639699
If you're the DM you can simulate being a Controller by asking your player to roll some dice, pay any humanity to get bonuses and so on, but you don't explicitly TELL your player what skill they need to be rolling against.

Case in point, you get them to roll two dice when they get to a facility that's being guarded, they THINK they're going to somehow use diplomacy to talk to the guard...right up until you tell them they just snuck up behind him and broke his neck.

What you need, is for a "Temporary Bad Mental Stuff" track, and a "Permanent Bad Mental Stuff" track. Lets call the first one Stress, and the second one Sanity.

You keep your Stress down by doing human things. Talking with people, going to school, generally being part of society. Things that might make you vulnerable to controllers, but which are a big part of being a person. You gain Stress by doing/witnessing terrible things, such as having your arm sliced off by a Hork-Bajir or slaughtering a room full of Taxxons.

If you ever have too much Stress at once, you lose Sanity. The more Sanity you lose, the harder it is to interact in society (penalties to doing non-combat stuff), and you have a chance of gaining a Derangement that makes you not react well in certain circumstances. Like bloodlust, or a fear of morphing certain creatures ANTS GODDAMN, or a fear of strangers.

What you want to make sure, is that there are no benefits for going mad, only penalties. Too often, the Humanity track is a race to the bottom, because it frees a player up from caring about society and their actions, and just lets them genocide their way through problems. Sanity should be about managing yourself, not just "Wheee, I'm a mass-murderer!"

The obvious way to go with Sanity is to use the Nemesis/Unknown Armies system. Infact I'd lobby that a One Roll Engine adaptation in general would be ideal, since it's flexible, fast and lethal (as fights in Animorphs are).

In UA, there are five seperate sanity trackers: Violence, Helplessness, Isolation, Self and Unnatural. For the purposes of Animorphs, we can probably replace Unnatural with Weirdness, and probably replace Isolation with something related to animal behavior, since isolation isn't a significant aspect of the setting.

Each type of Sanity has two tracks: Hardness and Failure. A character can accumulate up to 10 Hardened Notches and 5 Failed Notices. When you pass a sanity check greater than your current Hardness in that area, you gain an additional Hardened notch. Whenever you fail, you gain a Failed notch. Hardness is useful because it makes you better able to cope with that form of trauma, but getting too hardened basically turns you into a sociopath. Failed Notches make you go crazy.

As an example, suppose Rachel, Jake and Cassie are faced with killing a human controller, which is like a Rank-5 Violence check (or something). Rachel already has 5 Hardened notches in Violence. She doesn't even need to roll. She's desensitized to it. Jake has 4 Hardened Notches and Cassie has 3, so they both need to roll. Jake passes his roll and gets another Hardened notch. Cassie doesn't pass and takes a Failed notch. She freaks out while Jake keeps his cool.

>>49640157
So I take it when your Stress bar maxes out you go into shock, right?

Of course having your stress go down is also gonna cause problems, you know the sort of thing; being violently sick, breaking down in tears, attempting suicide, all that stuff that usually happens when the impact of what you did hits you like an Iridium freight train.

>>49640364
>obvious
How is that obvious? It seems weirdly complicated when you can just have something like >>49640157

>>49640364
So when they morphed into Ants, that would have been a Weirdness and whatever we're using to to replace Isolation (Instinct?) roll.

>tfw an idea sounds great
>but then everyone else's suggestions seem dumb
I feel like you people are trying to come up with really bad, clunky systems that don't serve a purpose other than to be a sanity system, as opposed to represent sanity loss in a meaningful way.

>>49640364
Well how well would this work if you had a Yeerk in your brain?

>>49639699
Have you ever looked at O.R.E. Nemesis or Unknown Armies? They both have spectacular sanity mechanics that can be used for this.

>>49639923
I wouldn't like to be in any game which you're the DM of.

>Roll dice
>Okay, players you just did this action

What if I didn't want to do that action? Maybe, I wanted to talk to the guard.

>>49640446
Integrity?

>>49640465
Probably a massive Helplessness roll. If the party is unable to get the yerk out, then it's probably game over for that particular character and a much harder time for the rest.

I feel I should point out that the Animorphs got BETTER at fighting the Yeerks and better at warfare as they slipped further away from the shores of humanity.

Marco following the little red line and turning into a cold and calculating strategist fucked him up on a personal level but it improved him in on the battlefield. I think any kind of sanity system should be tied to character progression.

>>49640475
If you've a yeerk in your head, you don't get a choice.

>>49640475
If you're being controlled by a Yeerk, you have no control over your body unless it explicitly allows you an amount of control.

>>49640414
It's not complicated at all in any of the UA games I've played, and it does an awesome job at being both a cool simulation of psychological trauma and a compelling game mechanic. That said I'm just one guy, so it's not as if my opinion has all that much weight.

>>49640446
Morphing would prompt low-rank Weirdness checks if only because it's an expected aspect of the game so you don't want characters losing it just doing what they're designed to do. Once a morpher has like 2 hardened notches in Weird they're probably fine with morphing whatever.

>>49640465
It's very bad for you. At the very least you're dealing with Helplessness, and probably Violence if you're controlled into combat. Over time your Self stress would be attacked as you lose your grip on your own identity.

>>49640528
>>49640532
If you've got a yeerk in your head, you shouldn't be rolling anyway. You're dead and gone, barring extenuating circumstances.

>>49640542
I forget, aren't the people being used as Controllers still "in there" so to speak?

>>49640516
Which is why the UA/Nemesis system works well. There are advantages to building up psychological resilience to stress, and it's necessary when you're dealing with a stressful situation like, you know, an alien invasion. But get pushed too far and you snap entirely.

Unknown Armies 3 takes this idea and runs with it to an extreme by making your Stats directly linked to your Sanity. The more hardened you are to Violence, the better you are at fighting, but the worse you are at connecting with people.

>>49640564
In there in the sense they experience things. Some yeerks liked to toy with them by giving them control, for instance on nearly died when he left his host a single eye to control as an experiment and his host waited till he was in rush hour traffic and closed it at a crucial moment.

Yeerks have total control unless stated otherwise.

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>>49639636

>>49640564
Yes, so the player would have all the info the yeerk controlling their character views. But they can't do anything. If your party doesn't get the yeerk out, you're fucked.

>>49640564
Yes. The hosts have to be physically restrained when their yeerk slips out to feed, and the host is entirely aware of what's going on when they're being controlled.

There was one yeerk who helped... Someone infiltrate somewhere, and she allowed her host control, and another yeerk who would tease their host by giving them control of just one finger, or their eyelids, and seeing how the host would try to fight back with just a tiny amount of control.

>>49640540
Tobias probably has it the worst out of the team. He's stuck as a bird, can only communicate to people with thought speak, and he went feral when Rachel died (or did he go feral when he found out, I can never remember)

>>49640542
How'd they learn that Jake had one in his head, again?

>>49640628
They were leaving the hospital, and the Yeerk had tricked them all effortlessly by mimicking Jake's personality completely, but when they had all demorphed and Jake looked at Ax, the Yeerk's nigh-instinctual feeling of revulsion showed on his face and tipped Ax off. Then Ax touched him, Jake screamed about andalite filth, and that clued in everyone else.

>>49640684
Tsk, tsk, tsk... If only you'd played it cool, Yeerk.

>>49640606
what

>>49640542
With immense willpower you can take control of your body for a moment or two, we've seen.

>>49638244
Wild Talents or ORE maybe?

>>49640564
Yeah. You can have mental conversations with the Yeerk in your head. If I remember correctly in that one time travel book it was mentioned that Visser Four's host had dedicated himself to driving him nuts by endlessly reciting Shakespeare at them.

>>49641592
>tried to drive his Yeerk insane by reciting Shakespeare
Baller

>>49641552
This is what I'm thinking. Maybe more Nemesis-y than Wild Talents. The action economy would really work well for frenetic, intense morphing combat.

So basically with this, your character is largely defined by his mental and social abilities, because his physical qualities will shift so much and the game is built around morphing to fight and maneuver through situations. So if we did this with One Roll Engine, the important character stats would be your Mind, Charm and Command (or something similar) while your Body, Grace and Sense will vary based on your morph.

>>49641592
That's awesome.

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>>49639636
Well, one of the Animorphs, a girl named Rachel, well... She starts the series off as a pretty sweet kid. Maybe she likes a good scrap a little too much when she gets the power to turn into a fuck-off huge brown bear, but she's still a pretty normal kid.

By the end of the series, she's straight-up murdering people in cold blood and actively enjoying the fact she can pull an enemy's guys out of their body with her teeth when she's transformed. She's the go-to person for the dirtiest jobs on the team.

Tobias on the other hand, gets trapped as a hawk early on in the series. He tries to hold onto his Humanity for far longer and becomes so emotionally disturbed by it all that even when he gets back the ability to be human again, he's gone so insane from living as a hawk for so long that he's forgotten how to emote facial expressions. He's still feeling them and is terrified of the fact he CAN'T express them any longer.

>>49639699
This is a really good summary, though I'd say that you should be able to pay experience to regain humanity. Make it really expensive and all, but doable.

Cassie, for example, manages to keep both her Humanity and Sanity throughout the series, but she's overall their least consistently effective fighter. She paid her cost through her inability to help her friends or make the sacrifices she felt she needed to make...

Though I'd argue Humanity and Sanity might need to be switched. Rachel's Humanity was fucking gone by the end of the series, but she could function around normal people. Tobias' Sanity was nearly gone and he could barely handle being in public.

Maybe make it so that a roll-over-to-succeed for Humanity to do something brutal or excessively violent (hency why Rachel can make the choices she can make), while you have to roll under your Sanity not to lose your shit when dealing with normal folks.

>>49640564
Yep, but the only way to know if someone is free of a Yeerk's control is to physically restrain the possibly Yeerk-infested host until the Yeerk inside dies of starvation after a few days.

We know this because one of the novels had Cassie infested with a Yeerk, and the entire novel was set from her perspective as this happened.

The writing for the story is first-person, by the by.

The gore in Animorphs was some of the more family-friendly shit the characters went through.

>>49645984
>Cassie, for example, manages to keep both her Humanity and Sanity throughout the series
She more tries to forcibly keep her humanity, but consistently makes the more fucked up decisions.''

>>49646067
The book where an Animorph had to be forcibly restrained was from the point of view of Jake. Cassie got one in her at a later point when she was stranded in the woods alone.

If I wanted to read more Animorphs than the pitiful amount I read as a kid, how would I go about doing that?

Just head to a library or what?

>>49646642
http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks/

>>49646508
I am both people you replied to, by the way.

Yeah, I do remember Cassie getting a little more hardcore. But if I had to rank them in order by the end it'd be:

Humanity: Cassie>Marco>Tobias>Jake>Rachel
Sanity: Marco>Cassie>Rachel>Jake>Tobias

Marco and Cassie stay pretty even keel throughout the series, though neither one would be a poster-child for either of the concepts. Rachel is a flat out monster by the end, Tobias is pretty much a headcase, and Jake's long, long tenure as leader has not done good things for the boy.

>>49638244
On a related note, I'm in favor of completely stealing the morphing system for Druids. Maybe not the time limit (though it would be an interesting twist on the existing time limit), but clearly the way that acquiring morphs works and the mental shift that accompanies a first morph both provide interesting mechanical and character-oriented challenges to any Druid's wild shape ability. Plus, it lets Druids collect 'em all, rather than having a generic "predatory beast, bird of prey, venomous vermin" style of form selection.

>>49646695
That might work.

As transformed animals, they get the HD, BAB, and Saves of an appropriate Wild Shape for their Druid Level, but keep their HD (and BAB and Saves) down to 3ish when human and just give them the skill bonuses from leveling?

>>49646690
>Marco
>Humanity

>>49645984
You didn't actually give an example of how you would trade Humanity for Sanity. You just gave examples of how the characters got fucked up over the course of the series.

As an aside, as a socially awkward depressed person, Tobias really *got* to me, with the way that his books when he's interacting with people are all about trying to figure out if he's wearing the right facial expression to seem normal.

I feel like this thread's obsession over the Humanity/Sanity thing is really just a big turn off. Having played games with good sanity mechanics, it just seems pointless and gamified and doesn't actually mean anything. It's like you all want to have numbers on a sheet that represent ~Sanity~ because that's a thing that Call of Cthulhu once did, so that means it's spooky and for losing your shit, right? But for me, having the meter there is pointless. It serves no purpose by itself, without systems backing that up.

Chronicles of Darkness is probably my favourite system, and it handles it really well, particularly in Vampire: the Requiem 2e.
For Mortals, their morality is measured as Integrity. It's a simple Willpower roll whenever the ST (or player) thinks the character would be shaken by something. If they'd maybe be hardened to it, or they're doing something bad in self defense or one of their Virtues, they get a bonus. If they pass, they take a Condition that amounts to "you feel shaken up", but they're fine. If you fail, you drop Integrity and get a worse Condition (Frankly I wish the Conditions were worse, or there was more of them; 1e had a long list of pop culture mental illnesses). Going low on the Integrity scale makes you more likely to drop in Integrity.

Vampire, though? Oh man, so much stuff they did that I love.

>>49646952
By the end, he kind of is. Marco talked big game and all, but he wasn't as willing to get up to a tenth of the bullshit Jake or Rachel were.

Maybe swap him with Tobias. Maybe.

If an animorph morphs into Pepe, does that make them a klanimorph?

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>>49646988
First off, Vampires don't have Integrity. Dying and becoming a bloodsucking parasite that can perform blood magic makes it hard to be shocked by supernatural occurrences or buckets of gore. That probably just seems appetizing. Instead, you have Humanity, which is all about holding onto what it means to be a person, as opposed to an undead monster.

Like in 1e, and unlike most of 2e, Humanity has a list of "sins" you can commit, with lowest rating that sin is an issue and the amount of dice you roll to resist Degenerating is, though just like with Morality, there can be bonuses or penalties.
The higher your Humanity, the more difficult it is to keep it that high. It's hard to be a saint. Harder for an undead criminal to simply be a decent person who remembers what it's like to be a person. The Breaking Points for Humanity aren't even always bad things. Surviving a car crash isn't bad, but it reminds you that you're not human.

But like I said, the whole point is that simply having a number that goes up and down is meaningless. A sanity meter on it's own doesn't do anything other than serve as a second health bar, usually one that heals slower. So how does Vampire make Humanity meaningful?

Simple: It integrates it into damned near everything.

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Unknown Armies bar trackers or WOD Morality type bars would work for Animorphs. The trick would be balancing all the morphs. Probably have to do something on variant of unknown, like
>I have a fly morph, of course I can:
1) stick to walls
2) hide in small spaces
3) spread disease

Just give morphs a few traits each, and dont get bogged down in HP and attack bonuses and shit.

Pic related, it's your players by Book 50

>>49646988
Not the guy who initially suggested the trade, but I'd guess it'd be done in a pretty simple way.

So you have Humanity (how much of yourself is gone, how easy you can do things which most people couldn't) and then you have your Sanity (how much all the crap has effected you and fucked up your ability to function at a basic level).

Whenever you want to do something really fucked up, you HAVE to roll over your Humanity to do it. Imagine rolling a d10 against a 10-point spread, 1 being almost none, 10 being a virtual saint. Your Humanity is a representation of how hard it is to do what you need to do, even when it should be hard.

Sanity works like Humanity, but it's more a function of your outward ability to appear normal when not fighting or planning a fight with the Yeerks in a world where they could be anyone, even your closest friends and family. Go out with your family to an outing and suddenly you realize something is definitely amiss? Sanity check. Blowing a Sanity check means you get to choose whether or not you lose Sanity or trade your Humanity to keep your Sanity.

It's a choice. Trying to stay a normal person incapable of taking the hard path means you're going to blow your cover fast as the paranoia, blood, and violence you experience tear your ability to function apart.

If you fail a Humanity check to do something fucked up, you can perform a Sanity check instead, trying to roll under your Sanity instead of over. "Succeed" at this check and you can do it, but you take Sanity damage. "Fail" at this check and you lose neither Sanity nor Humanity.

It needs something to penalize low Humanity though, like in VtM, so that players don't just push Humanity down to 1 and call it a day.

>>49647144
Each clan has a Bane. Each Bane is somehow tied to Humanity. The animalistic clan has Humanity cap their dice pools to resist freaking out and acting like an animal. The social butterfly seductive clan rolls Humanity to not become addicted when they drink from someone more than once (which encourages them to either be possessive or promiscuous). The creepy clan treats Humanity as two lower for social penalties. You have no Bane until you drop below 7 (starting) Humanity.

Oh, and Humanity gives social penalties. Every two points under normal is another -1, though it starts getting worse the lower end.

Humanity is one of the two things that determines how much the sunlight hurts a Vampire. Humanity determines the damage, while Blood Potency ("Vampire Level") determines how often you take damage.

It also determines how long you go into Torpor. And how much dice you can use if you need to stay awake during the day.

You suffer a Breaking Point that you know you'll probably deal with again (like "Impassioned Killing")? You can take a Bane. Just like one of the Clan Banes, they're all tied to your Humanity rating. Things like "stay [Humanity] feet from a cross or take damage". Also the Bane means that all your future Degradation rolls are at -1.

But it's not all a slide down into depravity and bloody fangs. To keep your Humanity up, you have Touchstones. These are mortals and things from your past that remind you what it means to be human. NOT having a Touchstone means you take a penalty on Humanity rolls. Having one means you get a bonus (+2). Having more than one means a slightly larger bonus (+3)

Touchstones aren't just meant to be things that exist on your character sheet and nowhere else, though. Willpower--a very useful resource--isn't regained for sleeping as a Vampire. You can, however, spend a meaningful interaction with your Touchstone and regain a point.

So how is this useful for Animorphs?

>>49639620
It has trappings of that stereotype, but also some hard-hitting moral quandaries which aren't shoved in your face. The characters are genuinely well-rounded instead of being one-dimensional; breaks of their moral code are given the sufficient weight and not milked for cheap drama a week later, and the entire cast are cynical, burnt out emotional wrecks towards the end of the series from all the nightmarish shit they've had to deal with. As an adult the writing style and language are simplistic to fit that 'young adult' demographic, but the actual story is pretty fucking good.

Considering the writer is a grown adult even the writing style is kind of impressive, as it focuses on details and points that a teenager would consider important, something I didn't notice reading it when I was younger, but older me looks back and thinks "hey, that's actually really good writing to portray a teenager's perspective".

>>49638372

Same. I never read it, nor ever got into it because I could never take the book covers seriously.

>>49646988
>>49647144
>>49647246
For what it's worth, by far the best sanity system I've ever seen is Unknown Armies. You have a meter for different stressful stimuli - like Isolation or Violence or whatever - and when exposed to appropriate situations, you run the risk of either becoming damaged by them, or hardened. When you start becoming hardened to violence, for example, it's harder for violence to leave you shaken and shocked, but being inured to things can be a problem in its own right, as you can imagine.

So, for example, Rachel might have been too hardened to violence. Tobias got badly damaged when it came to isolation, before eventually growing hardened to it. That kind of thing.

You should check it out, if you want a really solidly represented sanity mechanic.

>>49646690
>>49646952
>>49647016
Yeah no Marco's the one who could have nearly stood trial for war crimes. Rachael was a psycho on the battlefield, but Marco was orchestrating massacres towards the end of the series.

>>49647304
(Oh, and that's all on top of the Conditions for suffering a Breaking Point, like normal mortals would with Integrity)

Well, to start with, Humanity in Vampire terms is simply "how much you remember and can pass as a normal human being". Obviously fitting for people with the magical space science ability to transform into animals. In particular, the whole "social penalty" thing is very fitting. Tobias especially is a good example of that, like I said before. The way that he tries to make the right facial expressions but can't tell if he's doing it right.

Tobias would also be another good example of how Humanity can be useful: Determining whether or not you lose yourself in a Morph, especially when you'd risk becoming a Nothlit. In fact, morphing into a new Morph with an unfamiliar anatomy and mentality is a good example of when you'd roll Humanity, as is when you do something like Tobias and run off to experience the sensation of being a hawk instead of your shitty depressing life.

There's also some of the stuff that Werewolf does. Werewolves have Harmony, which is balancing being a spiritual predator with being a flesh and blood human. Balance isn't really a big deal in Animorphs, but when you're high Harmony (more thinking like a human) it's harder to transform, and takes a point of Essence and you have to spend a full turn. At medium Harmony (balanced and best) you take a turn or can spend Essence to shift Instantly. But at low Harmony (and the idea it would be handy to pilfer) you have to *resist* shapeshifting in response to stress, and have the urge to shapeshift into a different form once per scene.

Basically, I just think "we have a meter" is stupid Call of Cthulhu bullshit. that meter has to be more than a second health bar.

>>49647239
Frankly the poster who said Eclipse Phase is right. That's a system entirely about body swapping.

>>49647390
I haven't played Unknown Armies, but I've heard about it and I saw that post, yeah. I like the sound of it (though I haven't read it or seen it in action), but it sounds like it's a good system. I mostly just hate the whole "we need a sanity system but let's just treat it like another HP bar" attitude. It has to MEAN something.

It has to influence GAMEFEEL.

>>49639620
This post covers most of it >>49647332, but I just wanted to add that the author loves to throw in a lot of legitimately horrible things to fuck with the readers.

Within three books one of five of the main characters is straight up trapped as a hawk in the third book. On the "bright" side, none of his family actually gives enough of a shit that they'll notice he's gone.

When he finally gets the ability to change back into a human, many books later, it's fucked with his head so badly that he's forgotten how to display human emotions, and if he wants to even try to live like a human he's got to get stuck as a human and abandon his friends to the fight.

This is all while discussing an alien invasion which is straight-up Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and the first thing any of the characters mention when they begin narrating a book is that the invaders could (and frequently are) friends and family who act totally normal under the control of the parasite in their brain, while they mentally beg, scream, and get mindraped for information which will help said parasite be "them" better.

>>49647514
Yeah, that's what makes Unknown Armies so good. The mix of being hardened/damaged in various areas makes for a really big, substantive impact on how your character feels. It can even lead to some situations like someone who's only mostly hardened to violence getting into a truly horrifying situation and it overcoming their hardening, causing them to suffer traumatizing emotional damage.

I strongly recommend taking inspiration from it, if not necessarily copying it.

>>49647559
>None of his family
You mean "only his mother, who's constantly in a depressed drunken stupor because her exboyfriend was an alien space prince who had to run off to fight the intergalactic war their son is now fighting, leaving her with erased memories".

>>49640613
>>49640588
You both are thinking of a flashback scene in the book "Visser", where Edriss 562 (the Yeerk who would eventually become Visser One) was in control of Allison Kim a few years before the series starts.

>>49647559
Tobias gets trapped as a red-tailed hawk at the end of the first book, not the third.

So how would combat and morphs be represented?

For morphs, it might be difficult to deal with the different scales that are available. A roach or an ant isn't going to stand a cat, let alone a gorilla or tiger.

I figure that instead of dealing with constantly looking up altered stats and new abilities, which is a pain for a druid, having a simplified stack of traits might be easier to deal with. Keep most of the stats out of the physical ones that will be constantly changing. Maybe like the stats used in Eclipse Phase, they would concentrate on your mind and your ability to make use of your various forms. Like instead of dexterity, having acuity, which represents how able to control your morph's movements you are.

>>49641276
Ranch or cool ranch?

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>>49639923
If you're a Controller the only rolls you could make would be social skills directed at your Yeerk. At a big penalty since it knows exactly what you're thinking.

>>49648754
Cooler ranch.

>>49648545
Eclipse Phase has been suggested several times in the thread, but for some reason no one seems to want to acknowledge it's a great idea.

>>49647561
Agreed with this. UA's Stress system works so well as a way of representing and gamifying trauma and, more importantly, how a person normalizes and becomes desensitized to stress and violence. Most importantly you can import the idea into just about any other system.

How does Eclipse Phase handle body swapping?

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>>49648545
>>49650656

I've never read Eclipse Phase but with UA you get a certain amount of wound points, which the DM is not actually allowed to tell you. This could change with each morph, with the DM keeping the amount of your new health a secret and applying on-the-fly penalties and bonuses to stuff you want to do based on your morph.

>I want to open the zoo gate
>It's locked.
>Okay, I spend a few minutes morphing into an elephant, and try again, using my trunk
>You force it open. It's a little noisy, but you got the job done.
>Okay, I morph back.

The player doesn't need to know what bonuses or penalties are applied to his rolls, just that being an elephant might be helpful in a certain situation.

Also, no one has mentioned that in UA third edition the different stress bars actually affect your skills as well. An Animorph heavily jaded by violence will simply be better at killing than an average Book 1 newbie.

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>>49648545
>>49650656

I've never read Eclipse Phase but with UA you get a certain amount of wound points, which the DM is not actually allowed to tell you. This could change with each morph, with the DM keeping the amount of your new health a secret and applying on-the-fly penalties and bonuses to stuff you want to do based on your morph.

>I want to open the zoo gate
>It's locked.
>Okay, I spend a few minutes morphing into an elephant, and try again, using my trunk
>You force it open. It's a little noisy, but you got the job done.
>Okay, I morph back.

The player doesn't need to know what bonuses or penalties are applied to his rolls, just that being an elephant might be helpful in a certain situation.

Also, no one has mentioned that in UA third edition the different stress bars actually affect your skills as well. An Animorph heavily jaded by violence will simply be better at killing than an average Book 1 newbie.

the Elemist did nothing wrong

>>49651541
That was mentioned up here >>49640575 actually. It's a great idea for Unknown Armies, not sure how great it is for Animorphs. I'd hesitate to hitch too much of the game to UA's system because I feel that combat isn't UA's strength (to the point where there's a famous section about how to avoid combat) and most Animorph books end in a big 'ol animal showdown. For that I really like One Roll Engine for how it adjudicates really chaotic fighting.

As someone who uses ORE all the time, it could work actually if we smashed UA 3's Shock Gauge stats into the Identity systems from A Dirty World. So the Violence stat is broken into two separate qualities: Connect and Struggle, and as you're exposed to more violence you slide points away from Connect and into Struggle, or something like that. A Dirty World is awesome but it's a system designed 100% for one shots, not campaigns.

>>49648545

You could simplify the huge spectrum of physical stats by adding a 'mass' stat. Then whenever you take a physical action you multiply your result by mass if you're interacting with something ar a different mass.


that way you wouldn't need a thousand point scale or whatever to capture the whole sweep of things. The strongest thing at its own mass level can just be str 20 (or whatever). So like a horned dung beetle and a rhino would be like str 19 and 17 and be able to plow through most things at the same mass and *feel* intuitively strong by being at the top of the scale you are using them at 99% of the time, but if you ever have to handle a fight between a beetle and a rhino suddenly the stats are Str (19*.05)=.9 versus Str(17*10)=170 and that fight goes exactly how it should.

Lends itself well to quick n dirty improvised stating by a GM too, which an animorphs game would probably frequently need. You just decide what scale it is then stat it relative to the other things already in that scale.

>>49652211
Actually the more I think of it, the more something like this would work.

I really like what >>49647239 wrote here about building Morphs like UA3 identities.

For each Morph, you can describe its traits like that. For instance for Bear, you can have:

>I'm a bear, of course I can...
>...intimidate basically anything smaller than myself
>...kill stuff with my claws and teeth
>...shrug off damage from anything less than a hunting rifle

These being things that a human is genuinely incapable of doing.

Using ORE, each Morph would start at Rank 4, so to use its Traits you'd roll 4 d10s and look for a match. A character can use his experience to increase that Rank as he becomes more adept at using that particular morph.

Each Morph could also have certain Advantages that it can add to the character's abilities. So a Fly morph could grant a +1 Advantage to a character's Stealth or Dodge, while a Wolf would add +1 to their Pursuit or Notice. These Advantages relate to things that the characters can already do in some way, like hide or run, but better.

>>49650656
>How does Eclipse Phase handle body swapping?
Your stats are all mental, for lack of a better way of explaining it.

Everything is split between EGO and MORPH.
Cognition, Coordination, Intellect, Reflexes, Savvy, Somatics, Will

Measures things like how well you can think, how well you can move your body, how well you can push your body to its limits.
You also have a big skill list of about 30 or 40 skills.

EGO is who you are. The Cartesian mind to your body. It's something that can be rewritten, transferred, and even forked to create mental clones. That's where your character sheet exists.

MORPH is your body. Bodies are squishy meat or durable and adamant metal that gleams in the starlight, or pliant high quality extra sensitive fuckmeat or anything else you can think of to house your mind. Bodies are toys and things to own. It's a vehicle, and one you might feel comfortable in, but it's not YOU, because you are the EGO.

Bodies get destroyed or discarded a lot in the default setting assumption, where you're secret agents fighting for a shadowy maybe-philanthropic organization that has plenty of spare bodies in the post-singularity world. Hell, transferring your mind across the stars through data signals is a lot easier than shipping that hunk of matter across the solar system over months.

Of course, in Eclipse Phase death is also cheap, because you're facing things that are big and scary as fuck, and those bodies of yours won't last. You die and your back up just gets put into a new body.

>>49652429
Okay so what impact does that have on the game mechanics? Are Morphs just a collection of permissions and bonuses that you attach to your Ego abilities?

>>49652556
Mostly physical traits like size and health, Skill and Aptitude modifiers, and special traits (new senses, different limbs). They're essentially equipment.
https://eclipse-phase.wikispaces.com/Morphs

So for the morphs in this, you'd create a list of more detailed animal traits. Here's the Octomorph (used primarily by sentient octopi):
>These uplifted octopi sleeves have proven quite useful in zero-gravity environments. They retain eight arms, their chameleon ability to change skin color, ink sacs, and a sharp beak. They also have increased brain mass and longevity, can breathe both air and water, and lack a skeletal structure so they can squeeze through tight spaces. Octomorphs typically crawl along in zero-gravity using their arm suckers and expelling air for propulsion and can even walk on two of their arms in low gravity. Their eyes have been enhanced with color vision, provide a 360-degree field of vision, and they rotationally adjust to keep the slit-shaped pupil aligned with “up.” A transgenic vocal system allows them to speak.
>Implants: Basic Biomods, Basic Mesh Inserts, Cortical Stack, Chameleon Skin
>Aptitude Maximum: 30
>Durability: 30
>Wound Threshold: 6
>Advantages: 8 Arms, Beak Attack (1d10 DV, -1 AP, use Unarmed Combat skill), Ink Attack (blinding, use Exotic Ranged: Ink Attack skill), Limber (Level 2) trait, 360-degree Vision, +30 Swimming skill, +10 Climbing skill, +5 COO, +5 INT, +5 to one other aptitude of the player’s choice
>CP Cost: 50
>Credit Cost: Expensive (minimum 30,000+)

>>49647144
>Instead, you have Humanity, which is all about holding onto what it means to be a person, as opposed to an undead monster.
It's more about "How well can you lie to yourself that you're totally just a normal human with a weird sun allergy and nutritional deficiency", honestly, which is why stuff like "surviving something that would kill a human" causes a roll. You didn't do anything wrong, but you've still been brought face to face with the fact that you're fundamentally something other than human now.

But this is irrelevant to Animorphs.

>>49653022
That's more or less what I said. Hard to remember what it's like to be human when you're experiencing things that remind you "you're not a human, you fuck, stop pretending".

>But this is irrelevant to Animorphs.
Your post correcting me, or the concept in general? I mean, it's hard to remember what it's like to be a normal person when you're fighting space slugs and transforming into a tiger. Surviving danger by morphing is a big "you're not normal, you fuck, stop pretending" moment.

>>49653160
Mostly my post correcting you. It was a big tangent and that was a "I'll stop here"/

>>49652556
Morphs are basically equipment in Eclipse Phase. You upload your brain into them, and go. If you're lucky or rich enough, you might have a number of different morphs stashed on a variety of planets, planetoids, moons, and stations. More likely that you'll be renting them out in exchange for services performed.

Also, every time you are uploaded into a new morph, you have to make a number of different checks to integrate into the body. The further you go from your natural body or the body you are used to wearing, the harder these checks get. It's easy to make the checks for a familiar body. You get penalties for failing these checks.

What this means in terms of Animorphs is that your base statistics would tell you how good you are at using your body and mind, and the traits of your body tells you what they can do. If you morph, you have to deal with making the checks to be comfortable in that new body and gain control of it. When the kids change into their combat morphs, they're used to them and so the checks would be significantly less difficult.

>>49654842
This all is leading nicely into the UA3 set-up, where a character's abilities are almost entirely psychological. The primary "fighting" ability, Struggle, isn't based on how strong you are or even how well trained you are, but how vicious you are in a brawl. By the same token the Pursuit ability, used both to chase and flee, isn't really based on how athletic you are but on how immediately you react to situations where you have to run and how desperately you do it.

These quite nicely fit into the idea of Morphs-as-Equipment in that they are based 100% on your character's mentality and personality, which doesn't shift between forms.

>>49655494
Igor! Set up the lightning table, we have work to do!

>>49655494
>>49656232
How does UA3 play out in general? I mean, what are the dice mechanics? How is conflict resolved, both in and out of combat?

>>49656276
>>49656232
>>49655494
I have to agree in the asking. I really haven't a clue how UA3 works.

I am also more of the mind of taking ideas from systems and trying to work them into a new system, rather than just lifting and re-flavoring a pre-existing system. It seems to me that most people advocating for UA3 mechanics in this thread are wanting to do the latter.

Isn't there a transformation ability in gurps?

I'm pretty sure we can make it work anon.

>>49657312
Here's your (You)

>>49656949
No I'm in favor of lifting, not directly pulling the exact rules. UA3 is a post-modern horror game about magicians who gain power by embodying social archetypes or by being so obsessed about elements of our culture and society that it lets them break reality. A lot of the game is directly built around that.

Animorphs is a game about fighting an impossible battle against a vastly overwhelming enemy and trying to not crack under the pressure, while also turning into rad animals. The two narratives have very little to do with one another, but certain structural components of UA3 fit very nicely into what we're looking for with Animorphs.

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I hear a lot of talk about Sanity and Humanity, which I think is good, but I'm not hearing anything about how it actually impacts gameplay.

In the books, the concept of Sanity would impact the character's morale and self-control (characters who are losing sanity become pessimistic or reckless despite their best intentions). The concept of Humanity, on the other hand would be more consistent with an Alignment system than a stat or ability. (A character with low humanity would be more willing to be violent or disregard collateral damage than one with high humanity). The former could have a practical impact on gameplay, while the latter would require good roleplayers to be meaningful. Concievably, you could tie Humanity to effectiveness, with low-Humanity players having boosts to combat skills and high-humanity players being more effective at social interaction, stealth or perception.

I think it would be sensible to de-emphasize combat in this system. After all, the books emphasize that most encounters with the enemy would involve overwhelming opposition. Likewise, the secretive nature of the game would minimize the importance of social interaction, beyond Bluff-type interactions. Except perhaps if it were possible for Controllers to resist their Yeerks more effectively than in the books.
More important would be systems for stealth, morale, and investigation. Probably also a system for governing willpower, if resisting Yeerks is a thing. Most important would be a system for fluidly tracking Time, since time limitations on morphs are so significant.

>>49658217
Aye, the flavor seems pretty different. I do like the idea of using the "sanity meter" stats as actual things that affect play. That's actually a neat mechanic.

I feel like having morphs have a few, easy to remember traits would be better than having complex and defined stat blocks. Don't really need to go the 3.5 "Look up stat block in mid combat" route. That would be a mistake.

At the same time, I figure having some definition to combat would be necessary, but that might be what I've played giving me bias. The only systems I've played that don't have defined combat in were larping systems focusing on social positioning.

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These are the concepts that I can come up with which would need to be captured by the game's system. Anyone have any additions?

Secrecy:
The players must maintain the secrecy of their identities or the Yeerks will find and kill them.
The players can only tell others about the Yeerks in a limited way without being found out.

Morph Acquisition:
Players must locate and establish physical contact with an animal before they can use its form.

Morph Limitations:
Players may not spend more than 2 hours in a morph without becoming "stuck", permanently losing their most valuable ability.

Morph Rarity:
The Morphing ability is uncommon and highly coveted by the Yeerks.

Guerilla War:
The Yeerks are organized and possess superior numbers. If the Yeerks are attacked where they are strong, they will win. If the Yeerks are aware of the players intentions before they are executed, they will be able to thwart them. In small groups or when surprised, the Yeerks can be defeated or evaded.

Psychological Impact:
The players are under constant physical and emotional stress.
Moral Weight:
The players are children dealing with adult problems. They are motivated to do "good" as that has been defined by their backgrounds. There is a constant tension between this desire and the expedience needed to be successful.

>>49659351
I'd almost add in "Morphing is weird and dealing with animal instincts is difficult and draining" somewhere. It could probably be fit underneath another thing.

Other than that, what you have looks pretty good.

>>49657312
There's also one in Mutants & Masterminds.
But neither of those systems has the kind of GAMEFEEL that would be needed for something like this.

>>49658217
That wouldn't be considered "lifting", at least, not in my book. Lifting would be "Okay, so let's use these mechanics directly", as opposed to, say, turning UA3's system and putting it into WoD.

>>49659000
>I hear a lot of talk about Sanity and Humanity, which I think is good, but I'm not hearing anything about how it actually impacts gameplay.
I mentioned this earlier. There's been a lot of good stuff on that, from me suggesting how the CofD mechanics work, and other people talking Unknown Armies.

>>49657312
Yes, Altered form in the basic set.

>>49659431
to update:
Psychological Impact:
The players are under constant physical and emotional stress. Stress comes in the form of the constant threat of detection, exposure to traumatic events outside of the self (witnessing atrocities), physical pain, social alienation, and the struggle of dealing with animal instincts.

Morph Roles:
A morph will never improve a player's psychological or intellectual abilities, and will not reduce them except insofar as cognitive resources are expended on dominating the animal instincts. A morph may serve to increase combat ability or damage resistance, significantly increase or decrease size, improve mobility in a specific environment (flying, swimming, climbing), make use of a specific racial trait (advanced vision, echolocation) or blend into the environment.

>>49659730
Also:
Physical vs. Mental Strength:
Yeerks are physically weak but capable of dominating the wills of any creature with sentience (though not creatures without sentience). A Yeerk can dominate a player without killing him. Most interactions with Yeerks will involve direct involvement of a presumably innocent host. A host can exercise a degree of control over their body for brief periods by expending significant mental effort. Yeerks are unable to survive in a host indefinitely and starve in a short period of time without access to a yeerk pool.

>>49659351
>>49659730
>>49659874
So, relevant values would be:
Profile - The extent to which players have said or done things the Yeerks could use to identify them. (influences Secrecy). If a particular value is reached, the game ends in failure or an extremely difficult scenareo is enacted with player death as a consequence of failure. Increased by failed checks/decreased by successful story milestones or check successes.
Willpower - The player's relative ability to exert their will on another. Would impact the player's ability to resist Yeerk control and to control morph forms. Would probably need to be mutable and act as an effective "spell level" for morph forms, with more powerful morphs having stronger resistance to control.

Sanity: Lowered by a player's exposure to bad shit, increased by a player's exposure to "normalcy" via role-playing and social interaction. Represents the player's ability to cope emotionally with stress. Low values decrease willpower.

Morality/Humanity: Measures a player's willingness to forego expedience for moral principles. Changed by RP actions. Higher values increase


Mental stats would be consistent between forms:
Willpower
Perception
Technical Ability?

Physical stats would vary by form and reset when morphing/demorphing:
Strength
Hit Point Max (no need to worry about END, I don't think)
Dodge
Stealth
Speed (use separate flying/walking/swimming speeds as in DnD)
Morph Traits (e.g. low-light vision, echolocation, heightened reflexes)
Size

A typical session would consist of a hook, a period of preparation in which players are required to plan and acquire necessary morphs, and an execution or "heist" phase, in which chose morphs are used creatively to accomplish an objective.

>>49660082
>Physical stats would vary by form and reset when morphing/demorphing:
I still think that Eclipse Phase handles it best. No physical stats, just how well you can drive the body.

>>49660082
>>49660151
I've gotta agree that having to keep on looking up a bunch of adjustments for a morph would be frustrating and painful. I feel like it could be handled with each animal morph getting a number of basic, generic traits rather than actually altering stats.

If the alteration of stats could be avoided by using the Eclipse Phase principle of "driving" the morph, then I it would be better to use that than a typical stat system.

On a brief hypothetical, which dice system would work best for this?

>>49661025
Dicepool, modifiers on morph usefullness?

>>49661497
Could be. A d10 dice pool is a simple mechanic.

Either that or use a d% system, which could work better for a roll above/roll below thing as discussed for the various morality and sanity mechanics discussed above.

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>>49657312
The advantage is actually called Morph. With a bunch of modifiers you could make it work like morphing from Animorphs. Except that you would always have a cap on how powerful your morphs could be, depending on how many points you sunk into the advantage.

>>49661634
>>49661497
>>49661025
Eclipse Phase is d%, though with contested rolls you want to get as close to your trait without going over as possible.

>>49647246
Guy who posted this here, just thought of an idea for this potential Sanity vs. Humanity thing. Perhaps take it out of the player's hands at a certain point?

Like, if your Humanity is low enough, you don't get to pick whether or not you do something monstrous, the GM makes you roll AGAINST doing it. Like at a 4 or below, you have to consciously fight against doing The Wrong Thing as a basic character reaction.

I promise I'll read the rest of the thread, but I just thought of this and NEEDED to get it down.

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>>49661676
>Morph
I forgot that existed.

Maybe I should take this over to /gurpsgen/ but what kind of limitations would be needed to represent the initial contact to obtain DNA and the 2 hour time limit?

So I have not read the books, so I have to ask what tactical advantage does turning into an animal gives you againts alien parasites?

>>49662147
A lot of stuff. Transportation, strength, combat capability, underwater mobility, espionage (small things like insects), enhanced senses, hell you can even morph into one of the parasites if you wanted to.

>>49662147
Infiltration, readily available combat forms that require no separate equipment, all terrain movement (land sea and air). As far as basic benefits.

>>49662147
They enable the protagonists to fight a gorilla war against the alien parasites. Not to mention the telepathy you get while morphed.

>>49662236
>Gorilla war
Hah!

>>49640446
Alienation

>>49661759
I totally forgot about the contested rolls mechanic in Eclipse Phase. It's kind of an interesting one.

>>49662147
At it's most basic level, morphing provides un-interceptable communicative telepathy and the ability to heal any non-genetic injury. Arm disintegrated? Turn into a dog and back again

Then there are the animalistic advantages. You can become a fly to infiltrate/spy. A wolf to follow scent trails. A hawk for vision, or a goose to cross international boarders unnoticed. A polar bear or an elephant when you need to charge through laser-fire and stomp whoever's firing it into paste. And that one time they turned into a venomous snake, to bite an alien that was basically roadrunner (fun fact: the fastest animal over short distances is not the cheetah or peregrine falcon).

Finally, you can turn into other humans and infiltrate anywhere you like. This is considered... not kosher for most of the series. Because you're creating a human life from nothing, dominating its will for two hours, and then killing it again. But they did do it occasionally, for instance to steal a plane carrying nuclear warheads.

>>49663040
>to bite an alien that was basically roadrunner
What was with that thing? If I remember correctly, it was somewhat similar to an Andalite or something at least in appearance, but was just super fast. Was it a controller or just working with the Yeerks?

>>49663040
I totally forgot that they could change into other humans. That's terrifying. Probably fucks you up in the head, too.

>>49663040
>for instance to steal a plane carrying nuclear warheads.
Well that's insane.

>>49663104
That's insane? They routinely do weirder shit, like raid an Arctic base guarded by hammer-headed ski aliens that were able to use weapons that are normally mounted on spaceships. Once, they morphed into mosquitos and that ended them up putting them into Z-space (hyperspace) where they nearly splatted against a spaceship's windshield. One time, the leader wakes up and finds that he's 20-something and that he lost the war. Then, he sees his friends in their places in the society but all of a sudden he gets woken up by the entity that sent him there, which is never mentioned again or explained in any capacity. ONE TIME, THEY GO BACK TO DINOSAUR TIMES AND LEARN THAT BROCCOLI IS AN ALIEN VEGETABLE BEFORE DOOMING TWO DIFFERENT ALIEN COLONIES TO DEATH BY METEOR, REVEALING THAT THEIR ENTIRE EXISTENCE IS WITHIN A STABLE TIME LOOP THAT IS CLOSED BY THEM LETTING A METEOR STRIKE THE EARTH. This is just the beginning.

>>49663140
No, stealing nukes is insane, the rest of this is just standard issue Animorphs weirdness...like absolutely everything that happened when they morphed into lobsters.

Hell didn't they get sent back to the invasion of Normandy during WWII?

>>49663163
>like absolutely everything that happened when they morphed into lobsters
What happened there? I remember Marco morphing into some sort of fucked up chimera involving lobster parts, but not the part where they had to actually morph lobsters.

What about where there a gladiator team for
their android friend from a rip off "predator" alien race
Predator as in "Arnie yelling Get to da choppa!!!!"

>>49663040
>At it's most basic level, morphing provides un-interceptable communicative telepathy and the ability to heal any non-genetic injury
Oh, right, I forgot that was a thing.

>>49663173
If I remember right, whoever was narrating nearly got boiled alive and demorphed while the old woman was holding him.

That was also the book with THOSE FUCKING ANTS

>>49663182
>rip of predator race
Not quite, the Howlers were way weirder. They were most comparable to dolphins because they were having fun and thought that genocide was just playing. With all that in mind, the Animorphs are abducted by the Ellimist and are sent to an unknown time and place in the galaxy where they have to do a 6v6 with those Howlers and dispatch the entire Howler race by projecting the idea of kissing into their collective consciousness.

>>49663203
>whoever was narrating nearly got boiled alive and demorphed while the old woman was holding him.
What happens to the old woman?
>THOSE FUCKING ANTS
NOPE

>>49663217
>NOPE
Indeed. Between the fact that they nearly got their individuality blattered by the ant collective and the second sudden demorph of the book (while they were underground being ripped apart, no less), it's a wonder they ever decided to morph invertebrates again.

>>49663217
well i read those books a decade ago so
my memories kinda fuzzy
they were still cool though

>>49663248
Then there was that time that an ant touched the cube.

>>49663270
Whut? How the fuck did that go?

>>49663291
It partially morphs into Cassie and starts screaming.

>>49663074
The garatron. Never seen before that book, never seen again. Kind of like a not!Andalite.

Shame he couldn't have done something about Esplin before they got rid of him, but hey.

>>49639923
Have you actually READ any of the books? Because that's not how being a controller works. AT ALL.

>>49663349
For reference, it basically turns you into an NPC, except you can periodically make yourself fumble a roll under extreme pressure (Eva and Chapman did this a couple of times). But you don't get to control your character if you've got a yeerk in your head.

>>49663318
>Never seen before that book, never seen again.
Like so many things in Animorphs. Especially the weird ass aliens.

>>49663411
How many one-off aliens were there?

>>49663420
I haven't even read any of the books since I was 15, much less read all of them. But there were a lot of weird shits.

I really need to marathon the series.
http://animorphsforum.com/ebooks/

>>49645984
Jake and Rachel by the end were the most fucked in the head.

>>49662147
The biggest advantage is for most of the series the alien parasites had assumed that the morphers were just a group of the aliens that they were fighting which had survived the battle over earth and who had crash landed and\or bailed out and went into fighting commando style.

They did all sorts of operations trying to flush out the aliens they had assumed them to be.

Basically the paranoia was on both ends, the parasites were left just as paranoid of them as they were of the parasites.

Even when they figured out the morphers were human for the longest time they could never figure out who they were. It was only after their secret identities were revealed that the shit truly hit the fan.

>>49663515
>The biggest advantage is for most of the series the alien parasites had assumed that the morphers were just a group of the aliens that they were fighting which had survived the battle over earth and who had crash landed and\or bailed out and went into fighting commando style.
Well, Visser Three did, anyway, because he's an idiot who got put in charge of an infiltration mission (whereas Visser One, the master infiltrator, was put in charge of an open combat mission, when they'd have been so much more successful if they'd switched jobs, but I digress). A bunch of other yeerks, including Visser One, basically figured out that the "Andalite bandits" were actually humans before too long into the series, but given that Visser Three is the "kill you if you look at me funny" kind of boss, no one really said anything about it.

>>49663660
I forget, what happens if a Yeerk is in a human who dies? Can Visser Three slice someone's head off and then pull the Yeerk out?

Also, was there like a Yeerk high command that the Vissers reported to?

I really need to reread it, but I'm so busy not doing other things I need to do.

>>49640564

It has been shown that the yeerk-host duo can have a surprisingly number of variables:

They can become a symbionte (the strange merchant race that was later found out to be a splintered sect of yeerks, and the psycho girl that had no longer 2 distinct pesonalities)

They can have a mutual respect relationship, like in the Yeerk's resistance members, in which the yeerk is simply a passenger that can experience life has it could never be possible to him

They can eb straight up controllers

>>49663708
I forget, but I think a yeerk could crawl out of a severed head.

>>49663708

It can crawl out of its host, but it can also suffer a feedback shock from the host abrupt death and get killed.

So, if the host gets a traumatic death, it gets gibbed, if the host is dying slowly, it can get out

>>49663171
>Hell didn't they get sent back to the invasion of Normandy during WWII?
The time travel book was fucking nuts. It really managed to get right the whole "history is complex, and both prey to small accidents and huge factors" thing. By the time they got to Normandy, they'd already changed enough stuff that the war made no real sense. Hitler was a NCO driving a jeep.

>>49647493

>as is when you do something like Tobias and run off to experience the sensation of being a hawk instead of your shitty depressing life.

Also a good metaphor for TTRPGs.

Haha... ha...

I need a drink.

>>49663515
>Basically the paranoia was on both ends, the parasites were left just as paranoid of them as they were of the parasites.
That moment in the final book when Rachel goes into bear morph, and the Yeerks finally scream out "Animorph!" was so satisfying.
>"That's right, genius: Animorph."
>MASSIVE BEAR VIOLENCE

Does anyone remember the last thing that happens in the books?

>>49664905
Jake, Marco and Tobias go into space to find Tom, who fled after the war ended, turns out he's aboard a Blade Ship under the control of some heretofore unknown alien species, they prepare for ramming speed.

>>49665072
>Tom

You mean Ax, right?

>>49665125
I thought Tom was connected to it, but it's been forever so my memory is probably faulty.

>>49663420
iirc, Applegate had some ghostwriters for those weird one-offs.

>>49665233
Pretty sure Rachel killed Tom.

>>49664905
It's three years since the war ended. Cassie is advisor to the president on alien stuff, Jake works for the military, Marco is a celebrity and stunt man, Tobias has flown away, and Ax is a full prince and has been in deep space hunting down the last yeerks from Tom's group of morphing yeerks (Tom is dead, but they got away in the Blade ship).

Ax goes missing, so Jake gets Tobias (Cassie finds him) and Marco along with some US marines he's been training in morphing and go looking for him. They "steal" (the human and andalite governments let them but need deniability) a prototype yeerk ship which they name the Rachel and sail off into space.

After about 6 months searching, they find the Blade ship. But the yeerks are worshipping something called The One Who Is All, and The One has possessed Ax. The One isn't Elimist-tier, but it's definitely more demon than a normal alien. Staring down this awful thing, Jake issues the final line of the books: "Full emergency power to the engines: Ram the Blade ship."

And that's where it ends.

So let's talk about Dice Systems.

I'm a huge fan of the One Roll Engine, which has been thrown around in this thread. It's super fast, super easy to use and it rewards character advancement not just by giving better odds of success but by allowing characters to execute harder and more complex actions without hurting their chances of success.

For those unaware, ORE uses a d10 dice pool of a size between 2 and 10. You roll your dice and your goal is to find at least one Matched Set (like 2,2 or 5,5,5). The number of dice in the set is called its Width, and the value of the dice themselves is the Height, A Set is written as Width x Height, so a set of 5,5,5 is written as 3x5.

Width describes how fast and intense an action is, while Height describes how careful, precise and difficult to stop it is. Most of the time you only need a single set of any Width and Height to succeed in an action; if an action is particular Difficult, you may need to beat a given Height, and if speed is a major factor, you may need a minimum Width.

It's called the One Roll Engine because you only ever need to roll once to gather all the information you need from your action. This is particularly useful in combat. When you make an attack roll, your Width tells you how fast your action is and how much damage it does, and your Height (in most versions of the system) tells you where on your target you hit. A Height of 1 is a foot, a Height of 10 is your head or other vital areas. In a fight, all combatants declare their actions, usually based on a Sense stat, with higher Sense allowing you to declare later in the round so you can react better to everyone else. Then everyone rolls their dice at once, and actions are resolved in order of Width, so an action with a Width of 4 goes before an action with a Width of 3, which in turn goes before an action with a Width of 2. The result is that combat is lightning fast and can be pretty deadly if you want it to be.

>>49659730
So how would fighting against hive mind mentalities fit in? These seem to require an immense amount of will that most simply cannot fight or overcome even after the first morph.

And can morph prodigy fit into this system? Cassie at one point to make a plan succeed held a morph in mid transformation which Ax considered a very rare feat.

Should morphing into people require any penalties? I remember the group not exactly being a ok with turning into humans.

Finally is there a system in play to stop players from just sharing all animals they get? Was always a bit dumb to me that the characters rarely acquired the same animals. Perhaps the morph flu could play a role as a limiter of sorts?

>>49663140
Don't forget the time they had to abort that time jumping controller by distracting his parents in the 70s.

Or the evil earth timeline where cassie is an uppity slave, Jake, Tobias, and Marco are NAZIs and Jess is in reeducation camp.

I'm sure I'm remembering parts of that wrong but fuck what a messed up kids book. Shame it jumped the shark.

>>49663726
Yeerks are also terminally addicted to oatmeal. To the point that it allows them to escape the yeerk bath requirement but at the cost of the yeerk+host's sanity.

>>49663660
Huh. Never thought of it like that. 3 was just a general fuck up who only got anywhere cause of his host in my mind.

>>49668057
>Yeerks are also terminally addicted to oatmeal. To the point that it allows them to escape the yeerk bath requirement but at the cost of the yeerk+host's sanity.
I'd play a game about a group of Yeerk Controllers getting their friend an intervention for his oatmeal habit.

>>49668057
>Yeerks are also terminally addicted to oatmeal.
>"You know, from the point where Edelman said "maple and ginger oatmeal", I should have known this was going to end stupidly. "

Should there be a difficult rating related to acquiring Morphs? And if so, how difficult should it be to acquire a duck?

>>49668313
In the books there is no difference between acquiring an Ant or an Elephant. The challenge is in actually getting yourself into a position to touch the thing without being horribly killed.

>>49668313
I can practically TASTE the magical realm.

>>49641592
SAY BANE ONE MORE FUCKING TIME AND I'LL KILL US BOTH

>>49668440
Wait
so you're saying, the next step of your plan is
crashing this brain... with no survivors?

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>>49668313
I think it would be a problem if the players got too many morphs, so they should should be able to use about 5 at a time before going to the home base and choosing their loadout with the Cube or something.

>>49668535

>>49668422
I was asking because Ax, Tobias and Marco try to Aquire ducks at one point and they fail miserably.

>>49668892
I think it was because the ducks were really fucky or something. But it's been a long time, and I never read all of them.

>>49664556
>Hitler was a NCO driving a jeep.

Wait, so how the fuck did WWII happen in the first place? I don't think I've read that particular book.

>>49669634
The war was a product of economic factors much bigger than any one person. If it wasn't Hitler it would have been someone else.

>>49669634
The weirder thing is how was he still an active ground trooper at the time? Hitler wasn't exactly young when WW2 kicked off, and by all accounts, he was a competent soldier in WW1. Should have at least made lieutenant if he had stayed in the army.

>>49667826
Sounds interesting. Especially for an Animorphs style thing. It's much simpler than calculating ACs and whatnot for hundreds of different morphs.

>>49670248
Pretty much. The way that combat works means that any attack you declare will hit as long as you get a Set, unless something intervenes. There's no passive defense system; if you attack someone, you WILL hit them unless:

>you fail to roll a Set
>they perform a defensive action like Dodge or Block
>they hit you first, which knocks 1 Width off your highest set

This last one is pretty significant, because it's one of the biggest advantages of having high stats and therefore a big dice pool. If you declare an attack and roll 2x10 and 2x5, but your target rolls a 3x1, they'll hit you first and knock 1 off that 2x10, which breaks the set. But since you also rolled a 2x5, you can choose to attack with that instead. So you can still deal damage, though not as critically as you would have had you gotten off that 2x10. So having a good offense is frequently as good as having a good defense. It's great.

>>49665608
She still wrote the outlines and did final edits, and the first half of the series was all her.

>>49667826
>For those unaware, ORE uses a d10 dice pool of a size between 2 and 10. You roll your dice and your goal is to find at least one Matched Set (like 2,2 or 5,5,5). The number of dice in the set is called its Width, and the value of the dice themselves is the Height, A Set is written as Width x Height, so a set of 5,5,5 is written as 3x5.
This is why I don't like ORE, though.

>>49670564
>This is why I don't like ORE, though.
Care to elaborate on what you find wrong with it?

>>49669634
>>49670176
They didn't stick around in that timeline long, after they realised they were so far from their original it was pointless changing things because they no-longer understood what was important. I think England was the Fascists maybe, invading Europe? And the war started earlier, or was just the later-half of WW1?

But really, the whole point of the story is "history is complicated, and time-travel doesn't make it simpler."

>>49670654
It just feels tedious to me. It's one roll, but a lot of fiddling to find out what that roll means. I also tend to find comparing targeting charts really annoying, and unsatisfying. I'll admit I haven't actually played it, but it reminds me of a lot of systems I don't like. In fact, I think Dogs in the Vineyard is the only one like that I do like.
Although it isn't as bad as Framewerk.

>>49663708
The leaders of the Yeerks were the Council of Thirteen and their Emperor who as part of their position lived incognito as a member of the Council with their identity know only to the other 12 members for security reasons.

>>49668211
instant maple and ginger oatmeal

>>49670392
>any attack you declare will hit
Hmmm... something just doesn't feel right about that.

>>49671642
Unless you fail the roll.
Or they block.
Or they hit you first.

I mean, I don't like the core mechanic, but "you always hit unless your roll fails, they block/dodge, or you get the wind knocked out of you" isn't that big a problem.
I mean, you ever try to punch someone in real life when they're not moving or trying to stop you. Or, shit, something like a pillow or a wall or something? It's not like they have an AC for you to hit.

>>49638244
>be young me
>go to the library all the time to read books
>find animorphs
>they have like ten books
>read all the books in the library
>small town, i know the librarian
>speak her into ordering more
>and more
>i don't know anyone else who read them
I think that I'm personally responsible for there being tons of barely read Animorphs books in some dusty children's section in my local library.

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>>49663708
If the host dies while the Yeerk is still connected to its brain, the Yeerk dies. If the host takes awhile to die, the Yeerk can bail out.

>>49668599
That's not how morphing works though. For most of the series they didn't even have access to a cube.

The limited factor that actually existed in the books is that morphing several times without rest is exhausting.

>>49670985
Eh, that's fair enough. You really owe yourself to at least try it because it's nowhere near as complex as you're thinking. I play with my wife whose never played a tabletop game in her life and she grasped the concept within like 30 seconds.

However I will applaud you for your good taste in calling out Dogs in the Vineyard, which is indeed brilliant. If you're interested in actually checking out ORE I'd suggest A Dirty World, which is ORE for noir crime stories and is amazing. It does away with a lot of stuff that you said you dislike like hit charts in favor of a system that is 100% character focused.

>>49673888
Other limits include having to go back to your natural form between shifts, having to directly touch a thing before you can shift into it, and having a very strict time limit on shifts with very harsh consequences if you pass it.

You know who hasn't been mentioned once in these threads? David. Remember him?

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>>49663420
Do you mean sentient races, or just any alien creatures?

>>49674368
Any of them. I remember the Leerans (they were used more than once, though), the fast thing that was already mentioned, that Andalite bird, those transparent ones from the book where Jake wakes up in the future, that one flying morph that Visser 3 used in a hangar once, the crazy strong arctic ones, the ones that metamorphosed and that were responsible for the flying saucer phenomenon, the Ellimist, Cryak, the race that created the Hork-Bajir and the monsters on their planet, and the Howlers. I remember that there were a lot more, but not any details about them. I know the bird in your picture, but what are the rest?

>>49674300
That guy was a cunt.

>>49647452
>Marco was orchestrating massacres towards the end of the series.
I don't recall this. Though I never read all of the books. My school library as a kid had most of the early books and only a smattering of the later books in the series. I did read the final one though, and it was a bit jarring since the last one I read was something like ten or so books before the final one.

>>49663097
>hey sis, hold my hand for a sec

>>49663097
If I recall correctly there was no real issues with morphing into humans for them. It's not like they suddenly were in control of another person's mind, since it was just their DNA they were copying. I think it's mostly that they didn't do it very often for purely moral reasons. Though I'm sure you can bet that Jake was morphing Cassie for late night fapping sessions.

>>49666862
That ending really got to me as a kid.
The Elimnist couldn't have just maybe worked his space voodoo a bit and at least given a better end to the heroes? They deserved better.

>>49675078
>The Elimnist couldn't have just maybe worked his space voodoo a bit and at least given a better end to the heroes?
That would break the rules of his game.

>>49674880
>not morphing into your hot blonde cousin instead
You'll always be in my heart, cousin. and I'll be in a genetically identical copy of your body

>>49675877
>not being literally any other animorph
Jake is great, but the best thing about him is the way the others all use him to shirk responsibility and his acceptance of that as a leader.

>>49675121
Yeah, I know. I guess once you get up to Elimnist-levels of 'being' the whole galaxy is basically just petri-dishes shaped like planets anyways. Sacrifice the few for the many and all that.
Still, I wouldn't have minded a second series about an Earth-Andalite alliance fighting the underlings of the space-monster that possessed Ax.

>>49674265
It's less complicated and more just not fun. I might be more interested if Width was more than just hitting areas of the body. What does A Dirty World do in that regard?

>>49676251
I honestly never understood what was up with the Elemist, and I read The Elemist Chronicle.

>>49675914
Such is the role of the leader.

>>49676343
>I honestly never understood what was up with the Elemist, and I read The Elemist Chronicle.
He basically wanted to play Spore with reality, and Crayak wanted to burn it all down.

A straight fight would be a draw, and with one creating as fast as the other destroyed neither was satisfied.

So they decided to basically play Civilization against each other.

>>49676343
>I honestly never understood what was up with the Elemist, and I read The Elemist Chronicle.
Oh, yeah, I have no idea either. Well, I can't really figure HOW he went from being a normal critter to a space critter. As far as I can make out, the Elimnist is some crazy high-power level entity that likes to think they don't directly influence the course of events in the universe among lower life-forms. He has a rival, whose name I can't recall, and the two of them engage in multiple competitions to determine the fates of entire species and the universe at large.

>>49676451
>HOW he went from being a normal critter to a space critter
I think it was him getting eaten by that planet thing and absorbing tons of minds/souls. His rival is Cryak, a being from another galaxy that may have been chased out.

>>49676451
>I can't really figure HOW he went from being a normal critter to a space critter.
Nah, that I know. This happened >>49676476 and when he was a weird bird person, he played a video game that was basically Civilization, where you tried to grow a species and not have it get eaten or whatever. Then Cryak came along and somehow now they're playing the game for real I guess??

>>49676664
Him and Cryak are waging a war with carefully set rules because an all out engagement would be futile and messy with no clear victor. By establishing rules, there can be an actual winner at some point.

http://princesswod.wikia.com/wiki/Crossovers
>Beasts, on their side, are intrigued by Princesses. To them, the Hopeful are something a big enigma, at the same time very similar to them, and yet their complete opposite: like them, they definitely are supernatural creatures. And like them, they struggle with their dualistic nature as a human and as a being intristically linked to human emotions. However, unlike them, they embody Humanity's hope rather than fear. [...] Overall, two theories have developped among the Begotten to explain what Nobles are. The first is that they actually are a long lost family representing myths about benevolent monsters, such as abgal, nymphs and the more benevolent despictions of angels; the Dark Mother's white sheep, so to speak. The second is that they started out as a regular kind of Beasts, but at some point found a way to reverse their Hunger, resulting in them discarding their need to feed on fear and replacing it with a need to bring hope. Obviously, Princesses aren't pleased by any of these two theories, but regardless of what the truth is, Beasts still perceive them as kin, if a distant one. Because of this, they usually treat them as friendly enemies, with more sympathy than Heroes.

.

>The first is that they actually are a long lost family representing myths about benevolent monsters, such as abgal, nymphs and the more benevolent despictions of angels; the Dark Mother's white sheep, so to speak. The second is that they started out as a regular kind of Beasts, but at some point found a way to reverse their Hunger, resulting in them discarding their need to feed on fear and replacing it with a need to bring hope.
I really hope an actual Beast supplement allows for something like that. I get that they're big spooky monsters, but feeding on only fear is so fucking bland and dumb.

>>49676691
And we're the pieces.
I'd be kinda pissed at the Elimnist if I were an Animorph. I'd like to think I wouldn't mind dying for the greater good of the Earth and the galaxy, but one could at least be sporting and upfront about it.

>>49674460
http://animorphs.wikia.com/wiki/List_of_alien_species

>>49677431
>first race is named 333
hoo boy

>>49677451
That's one of the many species that's mentioned by name but never actually makes an appearance in any of the books.

The Yeerks are supposed to have enslaved at least three other species that are never shown or described at all. The Mak, Nahara, and Ssstram.

>a Yeerk dying in your head causes you to glimpse the most evil being in the universe for a brief moment
Metal

>>49677790
Explain.

>>49677790
What being is that?

>>49677832
You see Crayak at the end of a Yeerk's fugue, when it starves to death in your brain and you get flashbacks of its life.

>>49677832
When a Yeerk dies it's controller gets to see why it want's a human body, then they see the guy created the Yeerks called Crayak...and hes looking right at them personally.

>>49677854
>>49677841
I didn't know Yeerks even knew about Cryak.

>>49677835
Crayak.

Think Sci-fi Sauron and you should be half way there.

>>49677832
>>49677835
When the Yeerk inside of Jake's head died from Kandrona starvation, Jake had a vision of the being Crayak. For the unenlightened, Crayak is a sower of genocide on a galactic scale in opposition to the being known as the Ellimist, who sows life. They have a grand cosmic game that is going on, and involves the Yeerk conflict as a significant point.

>>49677854
>the guy created the Yeerks called Crayak
I don't think he made them, he just sort of pushed them into the point where they would conquer for a bit and come into contention with other stuff so that he could create an apex species to rule.

>>49677862
They don't.

>>49677862
They generally don't, I think, it's just some weird bullshit. And technically Crayak isn't pure evil, kinda the point of the series, just super social-Darwinist and supposedly sadistic.

>>49677872
>just super social-Darwinist and supposedly sadistic
>supposedly
While I definitely exaggerated in calling him "the most evil being in the universe," he's definitely a sadistic asshole.

>>49677883
Fair point.

>Windows OS and possibly the Mac were both created by Elfangor
wew. What other oddities like this are in the series?

>>49677994
the fact that the piece of tech in Area 91 is a primitive Andalite toilet.

>>49678026
I remember that. The Yeerks also started to infest horses in that book.

>>49678041
>"HORSES! ABOOOOUUUTTT FACE!"

I'll be honest, I just think the Yeerks were infesting horses to get their oatmeal fix.

>>49678103
>"Dude. Imagine. Imagine how much oatmeal we could eat...if we were horses"
>"but we're Yeerks we can't morph bro"
>"no dude we go in the horses"

What was the actual reason, if any, for the Yeerks using horses as hosts?

DUDE OATMEAL LOL

>>49678143
God help us if one of the Yeerk Peace Movement is travelling with an Andalite ambassador to Earth. The ensuing foodgasm whenever they eat anything would probably level a city block.

>>49677994
>Start rereading
>Marco: "Maybe we could get on Letterman"
Showin' its age...

>>49678247
Yup. The references to arcades should have cued you into that from the very start.

>Jake suggests being a stuntman as a possible career in book 2
>Marco becomes a stuntman after the war
It's like poetry; it rhymes.

>>49678256
Arcades still exist.

>>49678340
Not where I live, they don't. The last one in the mall went poof like two years ago.

>>49678238
>Oatmeal cinnabuns
Not even Crayak could have created such devastation.

>>49678320
A human stuntman or does he basically market himself as the best animal actor on the planet?

>>49678424
I think both.

>>49678041
>>49678103
>>49678143
Actually, I think they infested cattle, not horses (unless that was in another book). If I remember it correctly, the idea was that the patrolling soldiers let the cattle roam around as they please, so it was the best way for both the Yeerks and the Animorphs to sneak around the base.

>>49675078

He did for rachel.

>>49676664

He was a bird person, of a race precariously linked to their environment. Their planet gets destroyed, and they become space pilgrims, only to fall on a planet that is basically Ego.

Ellimist is kept as a jester by Ego, whose main weakness is that he can't learn something new, he can only do it from memory. Over time, Ellimist learns how to hijack Ego's parts, and ultimately kills him, gaining his ability and an entire world of biomass.

He then proceeds to built himself a fleet of biomachines, all extension of itsle,f and goes on trying to be space Jesus.

After a while, he encounters Cryak, who tells him that he was following him for a while, killing all he saved.

Cryak starts to do sadistic games with Ellimist, which initially accepts, but just to buy time and ramp up biomass to kill him.

The actual fight starts, worlds burn by the tons, and Cryak manages to throw ellimist main ship into a black hole.

Throwing Ellimist into a black hole makes him godlike, and he starts throwing whenches in Cryak plans, engeneering the Andalites and various other aliens. Cryak realized that and finally manages to up himself to Ellimist's level.

They agree to not fight all out, Ellimist because it would be apocalypse, and Cryak because the Ellimist is the only thing he met that is something of an equal

>>49678424
He becomes a stuntman for the movie of his own life. The irony is not lost on him.

>>49676343
In a Dirty World, all interactions between characters is basically combat, and your attacks are basically directly affecting your opponent's stats, which are laid out on a continuum and can change dynamically from one scene to another.

For example, in a fist fight you'd roll Vigor + Courage (if it's an even match or if you're the weaker combatant) or Vigor + Wrath (if you're better armed or are otherwise stronger than your target). What you're attacking depends on what your goal is. If you're trying to beat the fight out of someone, you can attack their Courage, or you can attack their Wrath if you're trying to knock sense into them. If you hit with a Width of 2, you can slide a stat point from the Stat you're attacking to its brother (so hitting Courage with a Width of 2 moves 1 point from Courage to Wrath, making your target less in control of himself as you attack). Width 3-4 actually erases a point from the quality you're attacking, and getting above a Width of 4 starts lets you directly affect the Stats governing your opponent's qualities, like Vigor. Deplete someone's vigor non-lethally and they're out cold. Deplete it with deadly force and you kill them.

It works exactly the same with social interactions. To appeal to someone's better nature you roll Persuasion + Purity, and you try to attack their Corruption. Succeed and you can slide a point from their Corruption to their Purity, which encourages them to act less like a selfish jerk and more like a decent person. Or you can do the opposite to convince someone to act deceitfully or sleazy. Do it well enough and you affect their Social Stats (Understanding and Persuasion), essentially draining their will to oppose you or put up a fight. It's extremely cool and fits the noir setting like a glove.

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>>49676930
Realizing that you are just a pawn in some cosmic dick measuring contest is never fun.

Tobias was the best character

>>49680702
Tobias was the earliest animorph to get fucked up. Remember the scene where he's in a room with Visser 3 who's morphed his cousin, and he's getting read his dad's will and realizing it's Elfangor? And the only reason he avoids crying and showing any emotion on his face that could give the game away and endager the whole operation is because he's spent so long as a bird that he can't even make human facial expressions?

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>>49677841
That happened to Jake. That doesn't mean every host who's Yeerk dies inside them sees Crayak.

>>49677872
Crayak isn't a social-Darwinist. He doesn't want to make life stronger through conflict. He wants to end all life that isn't him. He's not like a cosmic embodiment of the concept of evil, but he is pretty much as pure evil as a being can be.

>>49680702
It's funny that the publisher mandated Tobias and Ax share a spot in the narrator rotation, because they thought kids would have trouble relating to a bird and an alien. When in reality they were the two most popular characters.

>>49681091
Well their adventures often involved them together, so they got a similar amount of focus, I'd say.

>>49681050
>Crayak isn't a social-Darwinist. He doesn't want to make life stronger through conflict. He wants to end all life that isn't him.
No, he specifically wants for all races to fight to the death, so he can rule the surviving, 'perfect' race.

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>>49681517
And what if the final race is more powerful than him?

>NOTHING CAN POSSIBLY GO WRONG WITH THIS PLAN
t. Crayak

>>49681050
>Elimnist is a fucking wizard nerd with model ships of every species
>Crayak is a fatass grognard BOFH
10/10

>>49683095
He even has the Pemalite snoopy-ship!

>>49683061
Well, he's godlike and has another godlike being as a servant, so I guess he doesn't think it's likely.

>>49683095
I've seen that pic like a dozen times. Just now noticed the Howler webcam on Crayak's monitor.

>>49680485
>Extend Arm
That was the best part of Asura's Wrath

>>49684582
>Not "(X): Shut Wyzen Up."
>Or his entire speech to Chakravartin.
Shame on you.

Could there have been another series with new characters? I need more of Applegates wack as all fuck sci-fi.
Or a tv series that doesn't suck. My dream is something with the production quality and time slots of a Netflix series.

>>49680485
As much as I'll forever give the Elimnist shit for basically maneuvering Jake into a position to take out the One, I can understand it.
The Elimnist has done this possibly thousands of times. The alternative is worse.

>>49684817
Never gonna happen.

#1 problem is that there's probably no way to ever get the animal fights to look anything other than the height of hokiness, and on top of that you've got the issue of your stars being offscreen whenever the action money shot happens.

>>49685119
Doing it live action would probably never work well. Too much money spent on actual animals or CG that wouldn't look that great, and the actors would be offscreen too much for it to work. However, having an animated feature could go over pretty well. No need to pay for animals, and no hokey half-CG transformations. Everything would be in the same medium. Plus it could go over as a "kid-friendly" thing despite being nothing of the sort.

>>49685183
God I want this.

>>49685298
>>49685183
>>49685119
If I ever win the lottery, my dream would be to get the original team of Clone Wars together and make Animorphs : then animated series.

I'm torn as to whether or not I would make it about the book series, or see if Applegate would be onboard for new stuff.

>opening scene is Jake giving the order to ram the Bladeship
>subsequent action is the ships smacking into one another
>Elimnist shows up and says "your story isn't over yet." and does his stuff
>the two ships are stuck together, but life support is stable
>cue subsequent battle between Jake with his surviving original team and the Mighty Morphing Marines vs. the One
>the One gets away and becomes the new antagonist

>>49685477
>not making it as the ultimate in ultraviolent anime
It'll start out pretty normal, but then get increasingly bloody once they start doing the "morph to remove injuries"

>>49685503
And that's not forgetting EVERYTHING about the Taxxons and THOSE DAMN ANTS!

>>49685576
>>49685503
See, now, here's where it would get tricky from a marketing standpoint. It wouldn't matter how much money I had if I came to a network with an IP that's aimed at kids with gore. I would absolutely love to put in all the grisly shit but it probably wouldn't be feasible.
If I had today's tech and the cinema industry attitude of pre pg-13 ratings, then I'd be set.

>>49685659
Just gotta convince HBO that HBOKidz would be a great idea.

Either that or release it on an online network somehow.

>>49685708
Or on Toonami. It's supposedly for adults, but we all know kids watch it too.

>>49685659
But it's not aimed at kids, it's aimed at nostalgic 20-somethings.

>>49685848
Children, manchildren, what's the difference?

>>49685183
>Doing it live action would probably never work well.

You might want to strike the 'probably' from that line. Although it did work well enough to get 26 episodes, the results were pretty horrible.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animorphs_(TV_series)

>>49685929
I remember being really hyped for that when I was younger. It wasn't as good as I had hoped....

>>49685761
Totally forgot that was a thing again. Heck someone like Toonami would probably buy it for a fistful those sweet 90's nostaligia dollars. If it does well, they'd have plenty of merch to sell.

>>49685873
The manchildren demographic has a lot more cash to pry from their grasp.

I'm starting a reread of the series, and holy shit, it gets really fucking heavy really fucking fast. Tobias even tries to kill himself in book 3.

>>49688468
He did? This I don not recall, but I also do not doubt in the slightest.

>>49689044
He tries to dive straight into a glass door at the mall, but it gets opened in front of him and he shoots into the mall floor and messes up Rachel's gymnastics performance. He then tries to smack into a window, but Marco "happened" to be there with a baseball and broke the window before he could splat. He also briefly falls completely into the mind of the hawk and lives in the wild. Book 2 also got feelsy with the Melissa character and her parents. This is honestly really great so far.

Wow. Starting to read this again is a trip. I remembered more about all the cool stuff then the way it's written.
What age are they all again?

>>49689202
Early high school, I think. So maybe 14-15 or so.

>>49689215
They're that old by the end of the series, actually
They've just become teenagers in the beginning, I think

>>49689412
Oh shit, Jake does say "junior high basketball team" in the first book, so they have to be like 13 at most. That's pretty fucked.

>>49689443
>That's pretty fucked.
Not by Andalite standards. Start 'em young. They'll be warriors worth a damn then.

>>49689803
The Andalites themselves are pretty fucked. They hide behind that ideal of honor but then do shit like release genocide viruses to not destroy their enemies, but to just reduce the number of hosts for their enemies. Fuck them.

I feel like all of you are completely unfamiliar with how marketing and demographics work.

Not four years ago the biggest summer blockbuster was literally about teenagers killing each other.

>>49689202
The way it's written is really weird and awkward. But it's also simple as fuck, so it's not like it matters.

>>49689993
The prose is so stilted that it makes me want to just do a simple line-by-line rewrite. Not going to do so, but it makes me want to. It's still readable, but having read many other books, I've seen good prose and this isn't it.

>>49676431
>I understood that reference: the post

5 stars anon.

>>49690064
Well, it's for 13 year olds.

>>49689993
>Not four years ago the biggest summer blockbuster was literally about teenagers killing each other.
That was riding the "Young Adult Dystopia" wave. This doesn't have a pop-cultural wave to ride.

>>49690575
Hunger Games made the Young Adult Dystopia wave

>>49690316
Good point. Most 13 year olds weren't forced to read Chaucer, King, Joyce, etc. by their professors and told that they make up the finest examples of literature in existence. Mostly because they don't have professors.

>>49690575
Please tell me a young adult dystopia that came before Hunger Games, because >>49690582 is right.
Hunger Games came off the back of Harry Potter would be more accurate to say.

>>49638244
I never read these.

Thought they were cringe as fuck even though I was the correct target age and audience.

And now here I am, with my RPG group talking Animorphs just last week since apparently the series was actually kind of cool, we were being nostalgic, and apparently everyone but me was into that series.

So I read some of this thread yesterday and ended up reading the first 10 animorph books

The bits where they're fighting a guerilla war are great but I'm not a fan of the Elimist or that race of androids who created dogs, they feel too science fantasy to me

Also, I didn't like Cassie's character at first because it felt like the authour's soapbox for 90's tree huggery, then after the termite chapter when she realised the true nature of, well, nature she became one of my favourites

>>49690913
Cassie is one big take that at hypocrite hippies.

>>49641592
It worked, too. He literally only went to Agincourt to screw with his host.

>>49668440
...that would take a pretty big guy, Aslin -345

>>49689833
And had the Andalites not been created by the Elimnist the Yeerks would never have been defeated at Earth.

>>49691068
If the Andalites had never been created, then the Yeerks would not have got off of their planet for a long, long time.

>>49690316
Written for 13 year olds "by" 13 year olds as well.

>>49691081
Oh right fuck me I forgot about Seerow.
What the fuck Elimnist? What were you smoking when you made this race?

>>49691135
He was smoking his good intentions. Then he went down onto the planet and fucked his good intentions and made five (5) babbies, of which three survived. All of this happened while Crayak was tearing the galaxy a new asshole.

>>49676343
He was once an alien neeeeeerd who got selected for a space mission. His people got wiped out by another species who mistook their spore-like video games for them playing god. The Ellimist and the other survivors spent years in this exploratory ship looking for a world suited to their unique ecological needs. An exploration of a moon saw them get trapped by a horrifying sea sponge that could integrate the minds of its prey into its own and had absorbed it's entire planet as well as various space farers lured in. It kept the Ellimist alive for one reason - it was bored, and it wanted novelty. It made him play games, and when he refused it tortured him with his dead friends. Eventually he figured out how to beat it, then absorbed it's mind (and consequently, all of its victims).

Ellimist used their collective knowledge to build himself a star-faring body and explore the cosmos, seeding and helping worlds. Eventually he encounters Crayak, a being like him who was a refugee from another galaxy, chased from it by something even worse. Crayak was basically a /b/tard with God powers. He broke shit, Ellimist fixed it. They fought. Learned. Transcended matter. Both concluded that their stalemate was permanent and their goals irreconcilable, so they decided to change things - there would be rules. There would be a game.

>>49677872
He's the kid with the titular magnifying glass.

He rather liked Rachel.

>>49691233
>titular

Holy christ RIP in pieces Elfangor.
This shit gets fucking metal in the first 20 pages.

>>49691202
>they decided to change things - there would be rules. There would be a game
I wonder if at some point they both just decided playing the game was more fun than either one winning.

>>49690886
You know what they say about judging books by their covers. :^)

Seriously, though, I almost missed out on the awesome insanity of this series when I was a kid because that cover art was SO SHITTY.

>I nuzzled her hand with my cold nose and she patted my head.
Kinky.

>>49651821
He chose the wrong asteroid.

>>49668057
To be fair, Alloran was a military genius and amazing warrior. Visser 3 would get pretty far just coasting on his mind.

>>49666862
Yeah, for me, that wasn't the ending. Blade Ship was destroyed over Earth and the Animorphs have to deal with the wrecks of their lives. Well, except Ax. Dude was perfectly fine.

>>49691871
Alloran also seems to have been mentally ill. Certainly Visser 3 became much less stable mentally after acquiring him.

>>49689412
They're 17-18 by the end of the series.

>>49689833
That was all Alloran and he was disgraced for doing that. Elfangor thinks he's a monster when it's brought up.

>>49690913
>So I read some of this thread yesterday and ended up reading the first 10 animorph books
Goddamn, people read so fast.

Here I'm only reading it when I take a shit

>>49691158
Seerow was exiled to the Hork Bajir homeworld. Not much he could do about it.

>>49691484
Some of them made me really uncomfortable.

>>49691914
>Alloran also seems to have been mentally ill
Well wasn't the only reason he was captured in the first place because Tobias' mom knocked him out?

>>49692388
Ellimist was the one who decided to be an Andalite for a few decades.

>>49692402
No, that was Seerow. I was just looking it up on the Seerowpedia the other day because I couldn't remember why it would be called the Seerowpedia.

>>49647730
>>49692401
>Tobias's Mom

That's a pretty sad story too when you think about it. Andalite Chronicles shows her as a badass chick who kicks plenty of alien ass, even going toe to toe with the Yeerk who would become Visser Three.

And then, years later, she's a blind amnesiac working as a secretary. She can't remember Elfangor and doesn't even remember she had a son. The closest thing she has to family is her guide dog. Sure, she gets superpowers and regains her sight but what's lost is lost.

You'd think Ellimist would have stepped in.

>>49692435
The post you were quoting was talking about the Ellimist, who spent time as an Andalite and had a bunch of kids.

>>49692443
Did he?

>>49692462
Yep. Ellimist Chronicles is pretty bonkers.

>>49692487
Nerdy gamer becomes the slave of some eldritch thing-from-the-deep, takes over said eldritch thing's mind, constructs a multi-ship fleet that's actually one ship, fucks with the galaxy, becomes godlike, fights with a similarly godlike being, falls into a black hole, and gains even more godlike powers.

You could totally remove all the direct Animorphs references and it'd be a hell of a regular sci-fi book.

>>49692388

Most of them are only 100 pages long so it's pretty easy to slam through them

I really felt the age of the books when they went to a fucking offspring concert

>>49693386
The bits where Jake needs to get off the internet because someone else wants to use the phone always take me off guard.