# Breathless tags: #game/rpg/breathless ![[Breathless - Frightmare Edition (cover).jpg]] *Breathless* is a survival horror TTRPG that boils the undead apocalypse down to its most stressful components: looting, shooting, and somehow surviving. Rather than empowering you to be a post-apocalyptic action hero, the game ensures you constantly teeter on the edge of total collapse. You play as amnesiac survivors fending off hordes of the "Breathless"—ravenous zombies—while scavenging for whatever rusted katanas or pitchforks you can scrape together. It’s a system expertly engineered to remind you that stamina is finite and you are, ultimately, highly disposable. ## Core Resolution Mechanics The real cruelty of *Breathless* lies in its core dice-degradation system. Characters rely on six basic skills: Bash, Dash, Sneak, Shoot, Think, and Sway. Players assign a d10, a d8, and a d6 to their best skills and dump a pathetic d4 into the rest. - When a character faces a challenge, the player rolls the relevant skill die. Rolling a 5 or higher yields a full success, a 3 or 4 yields a success with a reduced effect, and a 1 or 2 means you fail and suffer the consequences in full. - Here is the catch: after every check, the player must step down the skill die they just used by one size. A d10 becomes a d8, a d8 becomes a d6, and so on. You actively become worse at surviving every time you try to accomplish something. - Items offer a slight buffer, possessing their own die ratings. However, if a player rolls a 1 or 2 when using an item, the item's die also steps down, pushing it closer to breaking entirely. - To restore your rapidly diminishing skills, a character can "Catch Your Breath". This resets all skills and Grit to their initial ratings. Naturally, the game punishes you for this momentary relief, as the GM immediately introduces a new consequence to the scene. ## Edition Changes The original *Breathless* arrived in 2022 as a highly efficient, minimalist two-page pamphlet. It functioned perfectly for one-shots where you expected half the table to die horribly by midnight. Recently, Fari RPGs and publisher Mythworks decided to prolong the suffering by launching *Breathless: Frightmare Edition*. While the new edition preserves the brutal dice-degradation mechanics, it expands the humble two-page format into a sprawling twelve-pamphlet "Storypak" housed in a nostalgic retro-VHS case. The *Frightmare Edition* adds the necessary scaffolding to run long-term campaigns rather than single-session meat grinders. This includes rules for establishing and upgrading "Havens," structured "Journey" phases for overland travel, and a memory track that allows characters to gradually remember who they were before the world ended—assuming they live long enough to care. # References - [Breathless Core Rules and Store - Fari RPGs](https://farirpgs.com/breathless/ "null") - [Breathless Digital Copy - DriveThruRPG](https://www.drivethrurpg.com/en/product/399932/breathless "null") - [Breathless: Frightmare Edition Kickstarter Review - Sprites and Dice](https://spritesanddice.com/features/breathless-frightmare-edition-kickstarter-zombies-storypak/ "null") - [Breathless: Frightmare Edition - The evolution of VHS survival horror - Geek Native](https://www.geeknative.com/231385/breathless-frightmare-edition-the-evolution-of-vhs-survival-horror/ "null")