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Breathless Creator Kit and SRD

Introduction

Introduction to the Breathless Creator Kit, including licensing, attribution text, and how to start building your own Breathless game.

Written by René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas
Published by Fari RPGs

Reference

In here you will find everything you need to make your own game based on Breathless, or to create third-party material made for use with it.

Introduction

This Game is Breathless

This document is a mix of guidelines and system reference documents (SRDs) to help you design your own tabletop RPG built on top of Breathless, the zombie survival horror RPG.

Since Breathless came out in 2022, over 300 Breathless Games have been published on itch.io and talto.cc (in Japanese), with more on the way.

The engine behind the original game has inspired a lot of people, and my goal since day one has been to make it as easy as possible for creators to design their own Breathless games.

Breathless in a Nutshell

Breathless is a survival horror RPG where you play a survivor trying to stay alive in a world overrun by the living dead. The whole game fits on two sides of a letter-sized sheet of paper.

It’s light on rules, heavy on tension, and built to generate stories with real stakes.

The heart of the game is a single mechanic that creates a constant push and pull between risk and recovery.

When you face a risky situation, you make a Check. You pick the Skill that best fits your approach and roll the die that matches its rating, anywhere from a d4 to a d12.

  • On a 1-2, the action fails. When facing a Complication, it lands in full.
  • On a 3-4, the action succeeds, but with reduced effect. When facing a Complication, it is lessened.
  • On a 5+, the action succeeds. The higher the roll, the greater the effect. When facing a Complication, it is fully avoided.

Here’s the catch: every time you roll a die, it steps down one size (d12 > d10 > d8 > d6 > d4). The only way to reset it is to Catch Your Breath, but every time you do, the GM introduces a new Complication for the group.

That one rule is the core foundation behind almost everything in Breathless.

This Creator Kit

Since publishing Breathless, I’ve released several other Breathless Games under Fari RPGs, each one pushing the original rules into a new genre or theme.

This design document collects all of those games’ SRDs in one place, alongside guidelines and resources to help you build something of your own.

The document is split into three parts. The first covers the toolbox as a whole and the resources available to you. The second contains the rules of the original Breathless. The third has the SRDs for each sibling game.

A New Kind of SRD

Traditionally, an SRD is just a block of rules you copy, paste, and adapt. That’s useful, but I think the format can do more.

For me, an SRD has two parts. The first is the rules themselves: the actual words you can lift and use as a foundation for your game. Coming up with the right phrasing for mechanics is hard work, especially when English isn’t your first language. I’ve already done that work, so I’m making it available for you all.

The second part is the design points: short, conversational notes that explain the thinking behind each rule. They’re there to help you understand not just what a rule does, but why it works the way it does, and what questions you should be asking as you adapt it. Design points won’t be repeated across games; if something is explained in the Breathless SRD, you won’t see it again in the Nomadic SRD.

This is a living document. I’ll keep updating it as new games come out and as the community tells me what would help them.

Where to Start

Start by thinking about the game you want to make. What does the world look like? Who are the players going to be? What themes matter?

Once you have a rough idea, read the Breathless SRD. Then create a new text document and start writing.

You don’t need to read this whole thing cover to cover; the original SRD is enough to get you moving. The sibling games like Nomadic (solo space exploration) and Stoneburner (demon hunting and community building) are worth reading eventually, but don’t rush it. They take the rules in bigger, more complex directions. Getting a solid feel for the core first will save you a lot of confusion later.

Open Licensed

All the mechanics and setting details across every game in this document are available under an open license. You can distribute and modify the text as long as you provide attribution and share your adaptations under similar terms.

You can use this to build your own game, or to create supplements: backgrounds, adventures, NPCs, monsters, tables, setting material, whatever you can imagine.

Attribution Text

If you use our Licensed Material in your own published work, please credit us like this:

This work is based on Breathless, product of Fari RPGs (https://farirpgs.com/), developed and authored by René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas. This product is licensed under the ORC License available online at various locations including www.azoralaw.com/orclicense. All warranties are disclaimed as set forth therein.

Logos

Download the “This Game is Breathless” high-resolution images and vector assets to identify your game as part of the Breathless family.

► Download the Breathless Creator Kit Assets

Fari RPGs’ Breathless Games

Here are the Breathless games published or in development by the Fari RPGs team:

  • Breathless — A zombie survival horror RPG, and the original game.
  • Renegade — A sci-fi space opera set in the used future.
  • Nomadic — A solo sci-fi RPG of exploration and survival.
  • Stoneburner — A solo-friendly sci-fantasy RPG of demon hunting and community building.
  • Tales of the Burned Stones — A solo-friendly dark-fantasy RPG of journeying and dungeon delving.

License

This product is licensed under the ORC License available online at various locations including www.azoralaw.com/orclicense. All warranties are disclaimed as set forth therein. The following elements are owned by the Licensor and would otherwise constitute Reserved Material and are hereby designated as Licensed Material: all the details about the setting, the non-player characters, the rolling tables, and the adventures.