So, here's what happens...note
- You die, I win.
Roll to Breathe is a Tabletop RPG podcast playing games using the Powered by the Apocalypse engine, focusing heavily on character relationships and drama.
The first season is played using Masks: A New Generation. The plot centers on The Final Hazard, a ragtag group of teen superheroes as they learn who they are and deal with ever increasing superpowered threats. Members range from robot boys to powerless teens to amnesiac eldritch beings, banding together against destructive supervillains, antagonistic press, and the evil conspiracy headed by tech company Arch.rr.
The second season, named Steel City Rhapsody, is played using the Urban Shadows system. It focuses on a group of "friends" both normal and supernatural as they solve mysteries, make dirty deals, and live life in the city of Pittsburgh. If Pittsburgh was inhabited by faeries, werewolves, demons, ghosts, and wizards that is.
There is also a Patreon-exclusive season played using Epyllion. The adventure follows young dragons exploring a magical world, fighting the Darkness, and learning about the power of friendship. Uniquely, the players are divided into two groups (the Onyx Clutch and the Opal Clutch) running simultaneous campaigns in the same world.
You can find episodes here
or download them on iTunes. The Patreon and Epyllion episodes can be found here.
Roll to Breathe contains examples of:
- Bad Powers, Good People: Black Cavalier specializes in nullifying powers, which supposedly are statistically likely to belong to villains, and heroes who turn evil.
- Combat Tentacles: Davey Doomzone's right hand is a tentacle which he can lengthen at will.
- Energy Absorption: Reversal's superpower. He can absorb any sort of energy and then direct it anywhere else at will.
- High-School Dance: The Spring Fling, which acts as a breather for the heroes from constantly worrying about escaped supervillains and Arch.rr looming over their shoulders.
- Improvised Weapon: As a superhero without superpowers, Shibuya takes advantage of whatever happens to be lying around for her fights. This leads to her defeating villains with weapons ranging from wooden baseball bats to flamethrowers to a stool.
- Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Black Cavalier is stand-offish at best and a bully at worst, but she never intends to hurt people and really does care for whatever relationship she has on the team.
- Killer Game Master: Averted. Despite the name of the show being a reference to such GMs, there is actually no way for players to die without a plot-induced heroic sacrifice. Doing poorly in combat simply makes the characters injured emotional wrecks and results in very bad things happening in the story, which may include NPC deaths or immense collateral damage.
- Logical Weakness: While Lightningrod drains electricity to fuel her powers, this manifests itself as a bolt of electricity flying towards her. She is not immune to this electricity and without her special suit this hurts a lot.
- Must Have Caffeine: Reversal doesn't have an addiction to coffee, he just drinks such a high amount due to being lucky if he doesn't pull all-nighter. His record is 18 cups in one day.
- Nebulous Evil Organisation: Arch.rr, this universe's equivilant to Apple, is secretly evil and out to get the protagonists. They have connections to AIGIS, supervillains, and the criminal underworld, although the nature of CEO Archer Fletcher's plan isn't revealed until late in the first season. It turns out Archer was simply acting under orders of an even deeper conspiracy called The Suits, which the protagonists know next-to-nothing about.
- Offscreen Romance: While the cast searches for dates to the Spring Fling, Reversal's best friend Beckett is mentioned to have already found a date out of character. When the dance finally arrives, Beckett is surprisingly dating Prism, a member of a rival group to the Final Hazard, who is thereafter referred to Beckett's girlfriend. The specifics of this relationship are never mentioned.
- Power Incontinence: Getting especially injured can lead to a character losing control of their powers in a terrible way. This happens a lot to Lightningrod, Davey Doomzone, and post-Max Machine Black Cavalier, who all get blamed considerably and lose a lot of self-esteem for the damage they cause.
- Power Nullifier: Black Cavalier can nullify powers with concentration and skin contact, which helps in many combat scenarios. After Black Cavalier enters the Max Machine, this power becomes a lot more chaotic and can be used at ranged. With concentration Black Cavalier can even steal someone's powers permanently.
- Putting the Band Back Together: Concerned for Hal's mental health, Epoch attempts to do this for his mentor. When Hal finds out, he is incredibly offended that Epoch would interfere with his life, and even threatens to kill his robot son.
- Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: The Final Hazard consists of a walking superhero database, an overworked intern, an unintentionally destructive rich girl, a girl with no powers or training, a bullied Japanese delinquent, and a sweet eldritch boy. Also, they're all teenagers. Together, they defeat villains several times their size with many years more experience.
- Retired Badass: Epoch's mentor, Hal Monroe, used to be Dr. Watt, a powerful Bronze Age hero with nanomachines for blood, but a death among his team turned him cynical and paranoid and caused him to retire. However, when he does fight he's shown to still be as strong and capable as ever.
- Diamond Joe, the mayor, is a Silver Age hero-turned-politician. When the team bodyguards him he is an endless source of support, and while he doesn't have as much endurance as he used to, he is still incredibly strong and his skin can still turn to diamond.
- Rules Lawyer: Shibuya combs through metahuman law and manages to legally free an imprisoned teammate using only her AIGIS connections and a law over 50 years old.
- Shapeshifter Weapon: Davey Doomzone can change his body shape and grow extra hands, mouths, eyes, and who-knows-what-else at will, which he uses in fights regularly.
- The Reliable One: Reversal is one of the most kind and responsible characters in the show. His responsibilities include getting good grades, doing all of the cooking and chores at home, being an intern at a tech company right before an app's release, and being a superhero. This results in him being constantly overworked and tired.
- The Speechless: Olivia is mute, although she is surprisingly literate for a little girl.
- Walking Armory: When Shibuya is in an armory and needs to decide which weapon to take to combat a superpowered mercenary, she takes every single weapon in the room.
