That said, the idea of a martial artist who becomes drunk and then fights in a stylistically drunken fashion is not something incredibly common in wuxia. For example, you can find it in the Everway supplement Spherewalker Sourcebook from 1996 or in the 2017 DnD 5e expansion Xanathar’s Guide to Everything, in which there is a Monk subclass literally called “ Way of the Drunken Master. And it found its way into tabletop roleplaying games. For instance, it appeared in Virtua Fighter 2 in 1994, in Mortal Kombat: Deadly Alliance in 2002, and in Jade Empire in 2005, to name a few.

Although ‘drunken boxing’ does appear in other non-Chinese media before Drunken Master II (including Dragon Ball, Yu Yu Hakusho, and others), it wasn’t until the mid-1990s and later that it grew widely popular in the West. Jackie Chan’s 1992 film was a loose followup to the original Drunken Master movie from 1978, and there are plenty of other movies that portray it. Of course, that was not the first time drunken boxing was portrayed on screen. In my opinion, its popularity in Western media stems primarily from its portrayal in the 1992 Jackie Chan classic Drunken Master II. ‘ Drunken boxing ’ is a real-life type of martial art that imitates a drunk person’s movements. Specifically, in my observation, there is a considerable emphasis on ‘drunken boxing’ or ‘drunken fist.’ However, the way drinking is portrayed in classic wuxia differs slightly from how it’s perceived by many in the gaming community, at least as it relates to kung fu and Chinese martial arts. For that reason, we included mechanics governing alcohol consumption in Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades, including Signature Abilities related to drinking. It’s especially prominent in the wuxia genre. The drinking of alcohol plays an important role in Chinese culture, and it has for thousands of years.

Some background about the cultural and genre inspiration for Righteous Blood, Ruthless Blades.

Jade empire drunken master