Bits Missing From IRREPRESSIBLE!

When I originally planned out IRREPRESSIBLE! I was going to expand on it a bit with some other ideas. I wanted to include some ideas for playing other stories that are similar in character and feel to Monkey, such as Water Margin and even Big Trouble in Little China. I still think the game would be a good fit for these sort of things with a little modification.

I also wanted to cover taking the Monkey story to other genres, spaces and times. Inspired in no small part by Enslaved: Odyssey to the West.

I decided, in the end, not to include these things in the original book as I wanted to keep it fairly pure to the original story (I know, ironic given my second-hand source) and that including all this extra stuff would just get in the way.

Here’s a quick whirlwind tour though.

Important themes

• Travel
• Action
• Comedy
• Redemption/Enlightenment
• World in Chaos

Everyman Heroes

If you’re doing something where your characters aren’t so strong then I’d drop the Curse and only give them three traits. I might also drop the points for Virtues/Demons to 12 rather than 15. This is the sort of level you could run a Big Trouble or Water Margin game at.

Other Settings

You can move the story frame to practically anywhere in space and time. The themes are timeless and wonderful. You might need to play fast and loose with the Curse section – or eliminate it – and instead of magic special abilities (the ones that drain karma from the Six Demon Bag – would be technological advantages.

Personally I think that post-apocalypse probably makes the best mirror for the story, but an empire in decline would also work extremely well.

Peak Actor Looming

Production of British People

There is an environmental and entertainment crisis looming for the entire world in our near and immediate future. A crisis that has gone largely unnoticed in wider circles and is virtually unknown outside of the UK. A crisis against which climate change and ice-cap melting seems like nothing.

The world’s voracious demand for British character actors threatens to strip the globe of its entire supply by 2050.

While the discovery of rich fields of Patrick Stewart and Ian McKellen have staved off the end for a while and lulled some into a false sense of security the fact remains that the production and discovery of British people has been declining at the same time that their use has been increasing in leaps and bounds.

We have become too used to there being a plentiful supply of British character actors for the world to use and as such their over-use has become the norm. If the entire world were to use British character actors at the rate that the United States does, we would need three whole Britains to sustain the supply.

Already we are starting to see the beginning of the problems that we will all soon face. British comedians are being pressed into service as dramatic actors to make up the shortfall and there have been many, disastrous attempts to create synthetic British using Australians, Canadians, South Africans and even, misguidedly, Americans.

Projected British actor usage to 2020

We all need to slow down, take a breath and start looking into sustainable, authentic and organic sources of British character actors and not to make such a foolish waste of this scarce and precious resources. We can all do our part to help:

1. Stop using British actors for non-British parts (especially villains).
2. Lobby American Entertainment companies to use cheap and plentiful alternatives, such as Irish, Germans or Scandinavians.
3. Sponsor a Brit-Breeding Program in your area.
4. Caution your friends and neighbours about the dangers of Synthetic British people. 

It is also of vital importance that we impress upon our politicians and media moguls that this is a real and impending crisis. There are many Peak Actor deniers in the Media-Industrial Complex who insist that Peak Actor is merely a scare put out by conspiracy theorists and scientists who want to force an agenda for change upon the world. Research companies have been bought up and interfered with by the Royal Shakespeare Company and HBO have lobbied hard to have this issue belittled and ignored by the United States Congress.

We all need to work together, to raise awareness and to ensure this nightmare scenario never comes to pass.

Thank you for your assistance.

Caution: Synthetic British people may be toxic.

IRREPRESSIBLE! – Released!

Diceless, mythic adventure stories in a China that never was.

This game isn’t for you if you’re painfully serious about Chinese mythology, or Buddhism or… anything. If you like playing comedy monsters struggling for enlightenment in a mythic China/India (in a hapless fashion) and failing as much as they succeed, then you’re in for a treat.

This game is best played ‘poorly dubbed’.

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