Mantic Games has launched its crowdfunding campaign for The Ghost in the Shell Tabletop Roleplaying Game, bringing the corporate espionage, cybernetics, and existential mystery of Shirow Masamune’s seminal manga to tabletop roleplaying games. Developed in official partnership with Japanese publisher Kodansha Ltd, the bespoke system is co-designed by veteran creators Alessio Cavatore and Zak Barouh. The project smashed its initial £10,000 target within its first 24 hours and has raised over £309,000 from more than 3,300 backers.
The release lands alongside a broader wave of high-profile anime and manga adaptations entering tabletop roleplaying games, providing a dedicated structural home for sci-fi investigations and squad tactics. Set within the sprawling metropolis of Newport City, players take on the roles of Section 9 trainee operatives navigating political cover-ups, black-market weapons trades, and covert counter-terrorism operations.
Mechanics Built for Cybernetic Operatives
Rather than relying on rigid class structures, character creation centres on personal traits, specialised skills, and dynamic internal conflicts. Operatives are built around a central mechanics engine known as Synthesis Conflict, which tracks internal friction across opposing Aspects such as human versus machine or duty versus family. Invoking these internal struggles grants bonus dice during high-stakes tests, though pushing a character past their breaking point risks triggering a personal crisis or an operational failure.
Combat and action scenes operate on a lethal flow: attacks roll to hit, check target defences, determine localised hit locations, and apply immediate operational penalties. In digital environments, hacking rules allow agents to bypass target Barrier ratings to extract memories, manipulate perceptions, or forcibly control cyberbrains across the ghost line, balancing substantial tactical power against the threat of counter-hacking and physical vulnerability.
When consciousness can be programmed, when memory can be edited, when people can be hacked and controlled, how do you define humanity? When the lines between human and machine blur, when the body is detached from the self, what binds you to reality?”
Expanding Operations and Collector Rewards
The core system includes an eight-part inaugural scenario, Lost Patriot, following Section 9 through high-level political negotiations. Mantic Games has expanded the baseline offering to include three additional digital bonus scenarios—Puppets on a Wire, The Cruise, and Cell Island Syndrome—offered across all pledge tiers.
Backers looking to secure a copy can choose from a range of physical and digital reward tiers:
- Pledge £15 (approx. £15): PDF Rulebook. The full digital rulebook PDF, unlocked immediately following the completion of the pledge manager.
- Pledge £25 (approx. £25): STL All Miniatures Bundle. Digital PDF rulebook combined with 3D-printable STL files for the Section 9 miniature collection.
- Pledge £35 (approx. £35): Hardback. The standard physical hardback edition of the core rulebook alongside the digital PDF.
- Pledge £55 (approx. £55): Collector’s Edition Hardback. Premium hardback featuring full-height cover art, silver page edging, an integrated bookmark, and all three bonus scenarios bound directly into the volume.
- Pledge £85 (approx. £85): GM Bundle. The Collector’s Edition hardback, PDF, a nine-panel GM screen with original Shirow Masamune illustrations, custom polyhedral dice set, and a 25-sheet character pad.
- Pledge £160 (approx. £160): Collector’s Bundle. Includes the GM Bundle inside a magnetic-clasp presentation box, a six-piece MasterCraft Resin miniature set, an exclusive optical-camouflage Major Kusanagi miniature, and a 250mm x 250mm art print created by Shirow Masamune.
The crowdfunding campaign operates on an all-or-nothing funding model, with the campaign closing on Thursday, 13 August 2026. Digital rulebook PDFs will be distributed shortly after pledge manager completion in late 2026, while physical fulfilment from regional hubs is scheduled for completion in May 2027.
