Roleplaying Games

Adaptation Quest #4: Metal Gear Cypher

“Adaptation Quest” is an ongoing series of game design experiments about what certain tabletop adaptations would look like. Inspired by countless discussions in Dungeons & Dragons Facebook groups about how to adapt this or that property to the world’s most famous TTRPG, I hope to actually break down what a tabletop adaptation might be like, without having to write a 100-page document or playtest the thing. In this edition, we’re translating Metal Gear Solid using the Cypher, or should I say Cipher, system.

Over the last two months, I’ve finally been catching up with the Metal Gear series. I never got into them as a kid, and by the time I was curious, the whole thing seemed too big and dense to get into. You need to play or at least have knowledge of each entry in the series to understand the next, and the previous games weren’t easily available to me. So I waited until Metal Gear and the first two Metal Gear Solid games appeared on GOG and I dove in. It was a perfect distraction from the beginning of 2021 and a helpful pop culture lens through which to view what was going on.

I thought it might be fun to adapt the series using Monte Cook’s excellent and extremely flexible Cypher System. By the end of this article, your gaming group will be using a d20 to sneak, shoot, and monologue your way through…