Ghost in the Shell TTRPG: Preview Designer Chat With Alessio Cavatore
Designer Alessio Cavatore teams up with writer Zach Barouh for a plum assignment: Make Section 9 playable and faithful to the setting.
How does your first day as a Section 9 agent play and feel?
Designer Alessio Cavatore and writer Zach Barouh had to answer that question when Mantic Games acquired the license to translate one of manga’s most beloved franchises into a TTRPG: Shirow Masamune’s Ghost in the Shell.
Alessio Cavatore’s extensive track record in miniature and skirmish games — and his love for the original material — prepared him well to tackle Ghost in the Shell’s fast, lethal world of combat and ideas
Breakup Gaming Society’s resident indie TTRPG curator Walton Wood leads a talk with the disarming Cavatore, who talks about the thrill of being able to use all-original art from the manga and the collaborative challenge of making a system that was true to the beloved (and very dangerous) setting.
The toughest design conversations for Cavatore and Barouh yielded some of the most interesting fruit for GMs and players: Formalized tools for developing agents’ inner conflicts and richer storylines; bringing the original work’s philosophical underpinnings to the fore while quantifying the mix of augmentation, tech, and weapons that make combat fast and lethal.
Any firefight could be your last. Any mission could render your agent a burnout.
Cavatore’s depth of field in design, his giddy enthusiasm for the source material, and how he reveals himself as both a maker and a player made this one of our best recent talks. Check it out in the player above.
The Ghost in the Shell Tabletop Roleplaying Game launches in Summer 2026 from Mantic Games. Learn more and subscribe to updates here.