A survival horror RPG, the creator of Blades in the Dark, and crowdfunding all collided this week, resulting in two new games in the works.
Crowdfunding is a tricky prospect these days – you have to find the right audience. Find the right project. And then also navigate all the hurdles of basically being terminally online for a month while you’re also still trying to make the thing you’re trying to crowdfund. All that while hoping you’ll hit your goal.
Sometimes, though, worlds collide in the best of ways, and the end result is both a heartwarming tale about the RPG community and two new games to satisfy the ever-growing hunger for horror that the 2020s are leaving upon us all. Because if you have to live through the horrors, you may as well make it a horror of your own design.
How Breathless: Frightmare Edition Sparked A Deathlands From Blades In The Dark Announcement
It all starts with a survival horror RPG Kickstarter, Breathless: Frightmare Edition. B:FE is a revamped and upgraded version of Breathless, a survival horror RPG where you play as survivors in a zombie apocalypse with three goals: “LOOT, SHOOT, SURVIVE.” That holds true in the new edition, where the Breathless (because we’re not saying the zed-word) have risen this time with a retro-VHS style format, new rules, and dozens of potential spin-offs, including as we’ll get to, a survival horror set in the Deathlands of Blades in the Dark.
As the creator RP Deshales describes it in a post on reddit, Mythworks had reached out to do a new edition of Breathless. Despite initial sign-ups being bold, the crowdfunding campaign was struggling. You can (and should) read the whole thing here.
But, in a nutshell, after making a video about the ongoing struggles and creative complications facing Breathless: Frightmare Edition, the ttrpg community – and more particularly – John Harper, creator of Blades in the Dark, rallied around the game with a Bluesky post, that simply read “If Breathless: Frightmare Edition Funds, I’ll make this.”
That, as you might imagine, got a flood of reactions from the tabletop RPG community online. Including a couple of responses that amounted to, “I want this but don’t want to play another RPG than the one I already know and like” – which is kind of comforting in a way. No matter how innovative or how much you change things, there’s always going to be someone saying “but I have the one I like already, make this about me.” It’s like a fundamental law of the universe, the way protons and neutrons cling together in the nucleus of an atom.
The underpinnings of reality notwithstanding, Breathless: Frightmare Edition funded not long after John Harper’s post. Because yeah, who wouldn’t want to see something set within the Deathlands. If you’re unfamiliar with Blades in the Dark, the setting is surprisingly bleak. The game takes place in Doskvol, a city surrounded by a wasteland of petrified trees, ash, and a choking miasma. The only thing holding hordes of supernatural horrors at bay are the lightning barriers that protect the city. Everything outside of it? The Deathlands.
So, John Harper’s Requiem for the Wretched Dead: Breathless Survival in the Deathlands will take place in said wastelands. And there’s even teasers of some of the stuff you might see, including a snapshot of a Deathlander character sheet.
Anyway, this whole saga is a decent reminder that sometimes the internet can do a good thing. And it’s actually nice to see some smaller RPGs find a lot of success. Especially since, Breathless itself seems like quite the bite of survival horror.
Breathless: Frightmare Edition – Survival Horror With Condensed Mechanics So You Can Get Right To Blasting Zombies
So what then, is Breathless: Frightmare Edition? What does survival horror mean? You can glean some idea of what the game is like by looking at its inspiration touchstones (worn handily on its sleeve in this cool VHS tape display):
- 28 Days Later
- 28 Years Later
- Left 4 Dead
- The Walking Dead
- The Road
- The Last Town on Earth
- The World Without Us
You know, good apocalyptic fiction where the undead have piled upon the world. The game bills itself as “rules-bright”, which in this case means that the rules are streamlined, but that every rule is meant to sharpen the focus of the game, and make it more intense.
Players are defined by a set of skills. Whenever you try to do something, you make a roll from a position that’s good, standard, bad, or dire and you roll one die and try to get a 3 or higher. It’s gradients of success, so a 3-4 is success with a consequence/reduced effect, while 5+ is a full success, with a higher roll being better. Skill dice range from the d4 to the d12, with the added wrinkle that whenever you make a skill check, you reduce your die by one step. And that lasts until you have a chance to rest and “catch your breath.”
So the game can quickly leave you feeling desperate, despite the skill. Of course, you can also find items that give you different dice to use, every character has some resources they can call upon – the whole system is designed to push you forward at every turn. No time to stop, there is only looting, shooting, and surviving.
You can actually find the core rules for free on Itch.io but you should absolutely back the Kickstarter. It’s in its final 48 hours and has surpassed its funding goal – there’s still a few stretch goals to hit. So why not celebrate the forthcoming VHS edition, or the slightly more distant Requiem for the Wretched Dead by hopping on the backer train before it’s gone.
Check how much ammo you’ve got – those Breathless are endless!
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