Breathless is a survival horror role-playing game featuring dreading mechanics. Every skill check brings you one step closer to more dangerous situations. Characters are talented and proactive, but the path that lies in front of them is perilous. They will face difficult tasks, try to catch their breath, scavenge what they can find, and try to get through in one piece.

To allow everyone to make games using similar mechanics, I've released the Breathless System Reference Document. This SRD is a free and open licensed  version of the game that includes the mechanics along with insightful designer notes for you to copy/paste/hack/adapt into your own Breathless games.

The goal behind the Breathless Jam is for you to take this SRD and make it your own! You can use it to make another survival horror type game, or anything else you have in mind. There is no theme for this jam.

The Breathless SRD is both a great entry point for new designers, while also offering tons of flexibility and hackability so that more experienced designers have lots of fun using it.

Your Game

To participate, you need to submit a game that uses the Breathless SRD during the month of June. If you already have designed a Breathless game, or fall short on the deadline, it's totally OK! Just contact me and I will send you a custom submission link to add your game to the list!

Price

You can price your game as you wish. You could use a "Pay What You Want" model, or make it a paid game. Use the model that you are the more comfortable with. If you submit a paid game, consider providing community copies!

Promotion

To make your game reach as many people as possible, use the #BreathlessJam hashtag on Twitter, and don't hesitate to tag me @RPDeshaies so that I can do help you boost it!

Size

You can release a Breathless game in any size or format you desire. Breathless was released in a half-fold brochure format, which made it very accessible, since people could print it at home and use it as is. That being said, if you want to make a book sized game using this SRD, go at it!

License

The Breathless SRD is released under Creative Commons Attribution CC-BY 4.0. That means you are free to use the content of the SRD for your own game, provided you give proper credit. To do so, just copy the text below in your game!

This work is based on Breathless, product of Fari RPGs (https://farirpgs.com/), developed and authored by René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas , and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/)

Here a couple of resources that you can use to make your own Breathless game!

The Breathless SRD

Free, and open licensed, this is the place to start to make your own Breathless game. It features all the core mechanics of Breathless, plus tons of great designer notes.

The SRD also includes an Affinity Publisher, a Google Docs and a Canva template for you to get started as quickly as possible!

https://fari-rpgs.itch.io/breathless-srd

Breathless

This is the game that the SRD is based off. Players play as survivors in a walled city full of zombies. You can use this as an inspiration to help you glue in your setting on top of the SRD using nice descriptors or rolling tables.

https://fari-rpgs.itch.io/breathless

Community

There are tons of other designers who are creating content using this SRD. Come and talk with us in the Fari Community either on Discord or Twitter!

https://farirpgs.com/discord
https://farirpgs.com/twittercommunity

Breathless Games

This is collection plays host to all the Breathless games to date! Check it out if you want to know how others have tackled the main design challenges in making games with this SRD!

https://itch.io/c/2381440/breathless-games

Videos

Here are a couple of videos of people reviewing/playing Breathless that you can use if you need some inspiration for your game!