# MSG™ *Created:* 2024-01-06, *Modified:* 2026-11-06 ![[MSGtm (cover).jpg]] **MSG™** is Wood Ingham's self-published corporate satire wearing a roleplaying game as a disguise. You play a Rep, a sometime employee of a Brand, and the question the game keeps asking — under the memos, the perks and the branding — is whether you have what it takes to succeed, and keep your soul. ## Setting The future that already happened. MSG™ looks like science fiction but isn't, really: the 21st century worked out fine, the cars still run, the training shoes are still ugly, and the children still have to get a job. Reps work for a Brand without being employed by it, because that isn't how the Brand does things. You are either a **Freelancer**, working for Brand U — freedom, no holidays, no sick pay, benefits are for losers — or an **Asset**, with NuSB™ ports and psycho-surgical enhancements implanted directly in your heADspace™ (they used to call that a brain, before they trademarked it). The Company owns 45% of your brain. Statistically, very few Assets get their heADspace™ repossessed. ## Mechanics There are no dice. Every Rep has a pool of **Resources**, and the one central rule is called **the Risk**: to decide what happens next in the story, each side secretly risks some points, then both reveal. Whoever risked the most wins, throws their bid away, and takes what the other side bid in its place. At the end of the game, the player with the most Resources wins. Each round, one player takes the part of the **Company**, trying to crush the Reps or get the Reps to crush other people; the Reps can go along with it or find a way around. Who your Rep is depends on the CV: a **Status** (Freelancer or Asset, each with its own speciality — Marketing or IT Solutions) and two **Expertises** from the company menu, with **Perks** covering the rest. Freelancers can Cheat outrageously and Get away with murder; Assets can Edit their memory and Change the facts to suit them. ## Editions - **MSG™: Executive Edition** (2009) — the first edition. *In the library.* - **MSG™ Beta Playtest Edition 2.0** (2009) — two builds of the pre-release playtest, 88 pages each, differing on four pages; build 2-1 is the later of the two. *Both in the library.* - **MSG™: The Deoffensified Edition** (2015) — the second edition, retitled and revised: same corporate hell, with the sharper edges taken off. *In the library.* ## References - [MSG™: The Deoffensified Edition - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/152079/msg-the-deoffensified-edition)