ALTERNATIVE, NON-COPYRIGHT-INFRINGING TITLE: OH NO ROBOTS!
DISCLAIMER
I obviously do not own the rights to Metal Gear and this is a fan production. Also some of the rules are missing? Anyway, let’s play and work it out together.
BASIC PREMISE
A solo infiltrator must get inside a base and destroy the weapons prototype known as Metal Gear. The infiltrator has fifteen minutes to destroy Metal Gear before the nukes launch and the world ends. If they die, the infiltrator must return to the start of the game, and guards must reset as much as they are able, but their time keeps ticking down.
(For the examples Snake is a dude, but Snake can be of any gender in the game)
MORE DETAIL
AESTHETIC
Deliberately shit. Everything is cheap and messy. Guards get balaclavas, snake gets a headband.
HIDEO
Each Snake has a Hideo – a personal GM – that follows them around. Hideo carries all their stuff and helps them perform certain actions. Hideo dresses entirely in black, like a stagehand, and cannot be seen or interacted with by NPCs.
COMBAT
The infiltrator, known as [Something, pick it yourself, two syllables though] Snake is given no equipment to start with – it’s all left on-site. Snake can tap guards on the shoulder to stun them. If Snake taps a guard without them seeing him, he can grab the guard and choose to interrogate or kill or knock them out. There’s no mechanical difference between lethal and non-lethal takedowns in this LARP.
Guards should play along with whatever Snake does. They’re props, not real threats.
Guards are very slow and very stupid – think vision cones, think patrol routes. Try to act as though you are an enemy in a stealth game. Make your speech sound like game barks. They will always react to and investigate noises.
They have rifles and submachine guns that, inexplicably, Snake cannot pick up. (This also helps to keep the crew armed for when they respawn).
One shot will kill guards, no matter where it hits them. Dead guards should excuse themselves (when Snake isn’t around) and go to the GM room.
Snake can take four shots before he dies. If he’s hit multiple times in the space of a few seconds, it only counts as one hit because he has a few flashing invincibility frames.
When Snake eats a ration, he can restore one of his health slots. The ration is haribo or some shit, idk
ALARM
If a guard spots Snake and isn’t immediately taken out of action, they can raise the alarm. They do this by yelling “ALERT!” as loudly as possible. Nearby guards should come to check out the alarm, and any dead guards immediately respawn as a clearing team to go and check out the area where the alert was raised. The clearing team should search the area, and if they don’t find anything, the alarm is called off.
EQUIPMENT
Here is some of the equipment and what it does:
A cardboard box (you can hide in it; Hideo will lug it around for you)
A NERF pistol (you can shoot people with it)
A bigger NERF gun (you can shoot people with it slightly faster)
Ammo magazines (you put it in guns to make them work)
A grenade (you can throw it and yell BANG! and anyone who can see the grenade is taken out)
A magazine (which will distract guards when left open, I’m not buying porn though, maybe I’ll just draw some tits on a notepad and be done with it)
Cigarettes (which reveal hidden laser traps? Idk how to set this one up, probably not worth it)
Rations (restore one health slot)
Nikita (a rocket launcher that fires rockets you can steer. Tell Hideo where you want it to go, and he’ll carry it over there for you, making whoosh noises. Explodes like a grenade, guards do not react to incoming Nikita missiles for some reason)
A lab coat (makes you look like a scientist, but not if you’re carrying weapons; if you do weird stuff, guards will discover your true identity)
DIALOGUE
When Snake meets a named NPC, they must attempt to talk for as long as possible about one of the following subjects:
Metal Gear
The Arms Economy
Genetics
The Digital Era
What It Means To Be A Soldier, Snake
Their Elaborate Backstory
Snake can’t just shoot them and move on. Snake can, at any point, repeat back the last few words the person said to him. If he does that, they have to go into more detail. There is a resolution mechanic in this somewhere I’m sure, maybe they have to keep talking until they slip up? Maybe they have to talk for a full minute? I dunno
CODEC
Snake! If you’re confused, you can call up your support team at any time to ask for advice. Do this by touching your ear and making the codec noise. All NPCs freeze while you’re on a call. During this time, your Hideo will impersonate people from your support team and offer information.
Hideo might also interrupt play to deliver important rules information to Snake.
Hideo can also save your game for you. Unfortunately there’s not a lot of space on your memory card, so you can only do this once. When you establish a save game, you can revert to it at any time, even if you die. Because of reasons, your equipment is not restored when you save.
NAMED CHARACTERS
Most (all?) named characters are bosses. When Snake ends the conversation minigame with them, a fight begins in earnest. Bosses have four wounds, just like Snake, and just like Snake, they have a few frames of invulnerability after they’re hit.
Bosses always have some weird quirk about them, because they’re like that. They enjoy talking about their stupid quirk, and have some sort of pithy nickname that refers to their fighting style. Here’s a selection:
PSYCHIC: Can see (and talk to) your Hideo, making it harder for you to hide and outsmart them
TOUGH: Takes no damage from the front, but moves slowly.
SNIPER: Uses a laser pointer as a weapon. If your Hideo notices it on you and you don’t, you lose a hit point. Probably needs to be there for a few seconds though?
INVISIBLE: Can move around the battlefield unseen. Able to yell “I’M GOING INVISIBLE SHUT YER EYES” and go anywhere they want within ten seconds, during which time Snake must shut his eyes. At the end of ten seconds (Hideo will count) Snake can open his eyes again.
EXPLOSIVE: Has a load of grenades. Unlike Snake, they must throw them and count aloud to five, at which point the bomb explodes.
DESTROYING METAL GEAR
Once you’ve killed the boss, it’s time to take their keycard and move through to the final bit – the destruction of Metal Gear! During this time, the boss will come back to life and pilot the fucking thing because, well, it’s inevitable, really. Their old power is replaced with the fact that they are in a giant robot.
How do we represent a giant robot? I have no idea. One option is to make a shitty Metal Gear costume, ban the player from approaching it too closely, and just claim it’s further away than it actually looks. (That… works.) Give the player a new weapon to fight it, too, something rocket launchery. (Or the anti-materiel NERF rifle?)
Anyway the Metal Gear has a load of guns on it so it’s kind of a pitched battle, and there are bombs and things too, and I figure the boss has some assistants in there to work heat-seeking missiles. Once the boss is hit X times, they have another dialogue minigame, and then they die. Snake has one minute to get out of the base and back to the GM room before it explodes!
RINSE, REPEAT, TRY AGAIN
Once the fifteen minutes is up, one of the players who was a guard takes over the role of Snake. Once everyone has had their fifteen minutes, the game is over!
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