# Running Breathless Sees Release tags: #thoughts #game/rpg/running-breathless ![[Running Breathless Cover (Hi Res).png]] I suppose it's time to actually show people my work. *Running Breathless* is a game about being chased and dealing with problems along the way, sometimes not even your own. https://squidlord.itch.io/running-breathless Maybe you're a psychic kid who's escaped from the hospital or the school for unusual talents. Maybe you've made the heist of your life. Maybe you're the worst kind of criminal scum. Maybe they're right behind you. Catch your breath when you can. Go to ground if you find someone you can trust or a big enough sucker. The one thing you're guaranteed to do? Run. *Running Breathless* is a TRPG for one to five players, GM optional, based on the *Breathless* SRD. Check it out. It's pay what you want, which means you can pay absolutely $0.00, and I won't be mad. In fact, I encourage you to do so. It runs pretty quickly, so you can even throw it up on the table while waiting for other players to arrive for your main game. It's fast, a little bit cruel, and you should have about 50-50 odds of getting away with it. Whatever it was you did. The chasers know. --- For extra comedy value, it's actually located in a hidden directory on this very website. So if you want to read it in HTML/on the web, you can check it out right over here: - [[Projects/Running Breathless/Running Breathless]] I've been banging on this thing on and off for somewhere around a week, and the original plan was to release it only as Markdown and HTML to make it maximally compatible with everyone, along with screen readers and translators. But somewhere along the way, I got the wild hair to lay it out in A5 just to see what it would look like. That led to two days of wrangling with being really completely out of practice in making book covers and doing text layout. By that, you can imply that I've laid out at least twice because the first time I screwed up and didn't check the page format and ended up laying it out for 6x9 rather than A5. Changing the master pages caused everything to reflow, but not always in the best way. It has a functional table of contents! I did remember to do that! This thing has been a real departure in terms of games that I write and things that I do. I'm usually much more comfortable being an assistant in these things, a consultant. I'm happy to have a contributing byline, but I've generally avoided being "the guy" on the cover. This time I really didn't have much choice. It's a game jam. Nobody else was going to ask me to help them with something like that. Is *Running Breathless* narrative? Yes, but it's also strangely like a board game in some ways. Mechanically, it's about playing the odds and hoping that you get enough successes before your failures catch up with you in a very literal sense. Tell a story, but tell a story within the context of a mechanical token closing in from behind that will end your game if it catches up and you screw up one more time. It's a very odd thing, is what I'm telling you. If it's the sort of odd thing that you like and want, [go over to the itch.io page and pay for a copy](https://squidlord.itch.io/running-breathless). You don't have to. It's Pay What You Want and it will always be. But I will certainly take contributions to the "buy more ridiculous food" fund. If you want to go through your pockets and send me some crypto commodities instead, [[donations|we have the means to take those too]]. --- Also, as an aside, have I ever mentioned how much I **hate** doing self-promotion? I really hate it. It is perhaps my least favorite thing ever. I would much rather just do things and set them loose in the world and then walk away, hands in the air, thinking that the job is done. Yet here we are, doing that thing that we do. I don't want to be the guy that is trying to sell you something. I'm not trying to sell you something. I am trying to give you something that you might enjoy. So let's keep it at that level. If you think I deserve something for it, whether it be a couple of dollars in the tip jar or a good swift kick in the ding, let me know. We'll work something out.