IRREPRESSIBLE! — Print Edition

Diceless mythic adventure in a China that never was.

IRREPRESSIBLE! is a light, character-driven roleplaying game of comedy monsters struggling towards enlightenment across a mythic China and India.

The heroes are powerful supernatural beings burdened with thoroughly human failings. Their pilgrimage brings peril, spirits, demons, magic, hard lessons and frequent opportunities to make a complete mess of doing the right thing.

They may fail as often as they succeed.

Enlightenment was never supposed to be easy.

Mythic Adventure Played for Fun

The game draws upon the exuberant comic-adventure tradition associated with Monkey and Journey to the West, favouring colourful action, troublesome demons, trickery, humour and moral lessons over solemn historical or religious simulation.

It is designed for groups who enjoy:

• Mythic Chinese adventure.

• Comedy monsters and supernatural pilgrims.

• Broad characterisation and friendly play.

• Peril mixed with laughter.

• Characters attempting to overcome their own faults.

• Adventures best performed with enthusiastically poor dubbing.

This is not a game for treating Chinese mythology, Buddhism—or very much else—with painful seriousness.

It is meant to be fun.

A Light, Diceless System

IRREPRESSIBLE! uses a simple diceless system built around drawing coloured beads from a bag.

Characters are defined through paired positive and negative qualities, such as Charity and Selfishness. These qualities express personality rather than merely measuring physical ability, and they can form the basis of skill checks during play.

A character seeking enlightenment must move away from negative qualities and towards positive ones. This can initially make them less effective as they struggle to unlearn their old habits before developing better ones.

Self-improvement, therefore, carries a mechanical cost.

Nobody said becoming a better person would be convenient.

Tools for Mythic Improvisation

The book also includes material to help sustain its comic, mythological tone, including:

• A list of proverbs for use during play.

• A random table for creating magical-item descriptions.

• Guidance for adventures involving supernatural threats, treasures, trickery and lessons.

• A lightweight system that keeps attention upon the characters and their behaviour.

One contemporary reviewer praised the way the paired qualities focus play upon a character’s personality and found that the system suited the game’s deliberately light-hearted style. The review awarded IRREPRESSIBLE! four stars out of five.

Seek Enlightenment—Haplessly

Demons must be confronted.

Treasures will be misused.

Good advice will be ignored.

The pilgrim who complains most loudly about virtue may eventually learn something despite themselves.

Gather your companions.

Prepare the coloured beads.

Practise speaking slightly out of time with your own mouth.

The road to enlightenment is IRREPRESSIBLE!

This listing is for the physical print edition of IRREPRESSIBLE!, written by James Desborough. It is a 64-page A5 paperback. A bag and coloured beads are required for its diceless resolution system and are not included.