How would you run an Animorphs game?

How would you run an Animorphs game?

Call of Cthulhu, with some extra mechanics.

Serious childhood trauma, war is hell, etc

The fact that HP doesn't matter because they recover any damage when transforming means you might as well do rules light or just straight RP.

make sure none of the interesting things about the setting involve the party

Make everyone fish out a piece of paper. One of the papers says they're the traitor, a yeerk. But also make it so that none of them could be a traitor.

Run the campaign as normal. If there's a traitor, they get a secret victory condition. Whether theres a traitor or not, the players will have fun guessing and testing other players. Paranoia is fun.

It needs low HP levels, to offset transforming recovering HP.
It needs to be a skill-heavy system, as conceivably all other "advancement" happens by getting better animal morphs.
Avoid allowing players to set a new base form and regain their morphing, it seems potentially awkward.
I don't recall if this was a thing in the novels, but set a limit on how many morphs each player gets probably from 6 to 10, to both avoid having a morph for every occasion, but also encouraging players to be better or worse suited for particular tasks. One person isn't going to want to be the guy with all of the useless, situationally crucial morphs.
Have fun splatting your favorite monsters and characters in to be transformed into, or be forms of morph-capable bad guys.


This could work particularly well, if handled right.
>Everyone draws Yeerk, nobody knows anyone else is a Yeerk, every Yeerk has a plan to screw over the other Yeerks
Delicious.

I really thought that was Todd Howard turning into a wallet from the thumbnail

First mission would require the players to take the form of a subterranean animal of some kind.

I could never play one. I never saw or read the series, so I don't know the tone, but I do know I would class completely with the tone of a YA series as I try to be some ass kicker with my animal power