Blood, Wyrd & Glory - Designer's Notes

Adapting Breathless for Sword & Sorcery

The Vision

Blood, Wyrd & Glory began with a simple question: “What would happen if we took Breathless’s elegant resource depletion mechanics and applied them to the world of Conan, Elric, and Fafhrd & Gray Mouser?” The answer became a game that captures the brutal heroics and cosmic horror of sword & sorcery literature.

I wanted to distill the core of sword & sorcery—the pulp DNA of Howard, Leiber, Moorcock, and Wagner—into a playable structure. That meant not just tone, but stakes, tropes, and structure.

Sword & sorcery is a genre of mercenary protagonists, local conflicts, dying civilizations, and magic that always exacts a toll. So rather than building a setting, I built assumptions: crumbling empires, haunted ruins, dubious alliances, and glory earned one blade-swing at a time. The rules needed to imply this world, not spell it out. Mechanics had to enforce what the genre teaches: success is costly, corruption lurks in every corner, and your name—your reputation—is your greatest weapon.

Core Genre Elements

• Protagonists are antiheroes: Thieves, sellswords, and rogues seeking personal gain
• Civilizations in decline: Ancient empires crumble while heroes carve out their fortunes
• Magic is dangerous: Sorcery corrupts the soul and attracts cosmic attention
• Gritty realism meets cosmic horror: Mundane concerns (food, shelter, coin) clash with otherworldly threats
• Individual agency: Heroes forge their own destiny through steel and cunning
• Moral ambiguity: Right and wrong blur in favor of survival and personal codes

Why Breathless?

The original Breathless SRD provided an excellent foundation with its core philosophy: resources deplete under pressure, forcing meaningful choices.

The SRD offered the exact tension cycle I needed: temporary skill degradation (step-down dice), simple but potent checks, and the idea of catching your breath (here renamed licking your wounds) as a way to reset—at a cost. It’s brilliant for a genre where every encounter, win or lose, leaves you scarred.

But Breathless was post-apocalyptic. I had to surgically adapt it for a heroic fantasy engine:

• Skills were rethemed for sword & sorcery idioms: Prowess, Grace, Vigor, Cunning, Will, Guile.
• The loot die became fortune & plunder, emphasizing the adventuring loop rather than scavenging.
• Stress became Peril, and its function expanded: not only a danger track, but a way to spotlight heroic sacrifice and doom.
• Stunts became heroic deeds, retaining their mechanical footprint but better reflecting the genre’s language.
• I built out Corruption and Madness as separate, cumulative systems—one for sorcery’s price, the other for cosmic dread—reflecting the dual narrative poisons of the genre.
• The Catch Your Breath moment was kept intact mechanically, but narratively emphasized as a tension-builder, a moment that always draws fresh danger.

Expanding the Frame

Where Breathless stops, Blood, Wyrd & Glory begins to stretch the frame. Once the genre’s shape was clear, I needed it to do more than resolve combat and skill scenes. I introduced:

• Reputation, to simulate fame and infamy across city-states.
• Sorcery, built atop the check structure, but retooled to always invite risk—even on success.
• Hirelings & Loyalty, which added personality to followers and friction to leadership.
• Wealth, tracked in tiers rather than coinage, simplifying gear access but complicating social position.
• Dueling, Carousing, Divine Favor, and Usurpation—all lifted directly from narrative tropes, mechanically tied to peril, reputation, and ambition.

Each addition served a single question: What tension does this introduce? If it didn’t ratchet up risk, story, or player agency, it didn’t make the cut.

Why The Oracles?

Solo play was never a side goal—it was foundational. Sword & sorcery often feels solo even when you’re in a group: the lone sellsword in a city of liars, the sorcerer probing forbidden ruins alone.

The Oracles, built for Breathless, were already a perfect fit. I embedded the Question Oracle and Risk Oracle directly, integrating them into a solo loop where dice answer the unknowable:

• Will the demon keep its word?
• Is the relic guarded?
• Does the rival already know I’m here?

These aren’t things a player should decide. They’re things the genre demands be rolled.

The Oracles also framed the Game Loop structure. Instead of scenes being GM-framed, they arise organically: ask, act, roll, interpret, advance. Each new table—Carousing Mishaps, Rival Adventurers, Complications—was built to feed this loop, ensuring the world moved whether the player liked it or not.

Sword & Sorcery as Structure

At the core, this isn’t a universal system. It’s a genre machine. Every mechanical choice is in service of tone:

• d4 as minimum, and step-downs on failure, force attrition and risk.
• Heroic deeds are big dice, but you get one—until you lick your wounds and pay the price.
• Magic is possible but never safe.
• Reputation opens doors but paints a target on your back.
• Madness is not a quirk—it’s a threat to your very identity.

The goal is that when someone picks up Blood, Wyrd & Glory, they’re already in the story. The rules whisper: you will suffer, you may triumph, and either way you will be remembered.

Design Lessons

Genre First, Mechanics Second

Every mechanical decision started with the question: “How does this serve the sword & sorcery genre?” If a rule didn’t enhance the genre experience, it was cut or modified.

Embrace the Implied

Don’t over-explain your world. Trust players to understand genre conventions and fill in appropriate details. This creates collaborative worldbuilding that feels authentic to the source material.

Make Failure Interesting

In sword & sorcery, setbacks create opportunities for dramatic reversals. Every failed roll should push the story forward, not simply block progress.

Resource Management as Drama

The core Breathless mechanic of degrading resources creates natural story arcs. Characters start capable, face mounting challenges, reach crisis points, then recover to face new threats.

The Adaptation Process

Step 1: Genre Analysis

• Read extensively in your target genre
• Identify recurring themes, character types, and story structures
• Note what makes the genre distinct from adjacent genres

Step 2: Mechanical Mapping

• Identify which Breathless mechanics serve your genre well
• Determine what needs modification or addition
• Plan how new mechanics interact with existing systems

Step 3: Language and Terminology

• Rename elements to fit genre expectations
• Ensure all text reinforces genre atmosphere
• Use evocative language that immediately establishes mood

Step 4: Playtesting and Refinement

• Test how mechanics feel in play
• Verify that random tables generate appropriate content
• Ensure advanced systems integrate smoothly with core mechanics

Step 5: Implied Setting Development

• Create random tables that reinforce genre elements
• Build mechanical systems that tell stories about your world
• Trust players to fill in appropriate details

Closing Thoughts

This game isn’t about balance, or about fairness. It’s about the rhythm of peril and triumph, about scars that matter, and about walking into the dark with a blade and a grin.

I owe much to Breathless, to The Oracles, and to the dusty tomes of pulp that never stopped bleeding inspiration. If you find yourself scribbling bloodstained legends between the margins of your notes, then the game is doing exactly what it was made for.

Most importantly, the adaptation process revealed that successful genre games aren’t about comprehensive rules coverage—they’re about creating systems that inspire the right kinds of stories and giving players the tools to tell them memorably.