Glory Road Roleplay is alive on DriiveThruRPG

No Kickstarter; It's already written and available.
Forward by C.J. Carella to the Core Rules

Foreword
*A long time ago, in a little burg by the name of New Haven, Connecticut, I joined a gaming group led by one William Reich, who ran a game using a system of his own creation – Glory Road. At that point, I'd been playing tabletop RPGs for some time, and had published a few supplements for Steve Jackson Games. Even though I was a GURPS addict, I found myself enjoying Bill's Glory Road weekly sessions a great deal. The combat system was deadly and exciting, the magic had a unique flavor that made it stand out, and some of the rules were a refreshing change from the usual fare of the time. I even shamelessly stole the exploding-dice mechanism from Glory Road and adapted it to the home rules that eventually became the Unisystem.
Glory Road is concise but complex, and as such may not be to the taste of those who prefer minimalist rule systems. Contrary to what many designers seem to think nowadays, I think there are a lot of gamers who enjoy complexity for the sake of realism (or at least a realistic/coherent tone) in their rules set, and GR should satisfy the needs of people who want their katana to work differently than their pickaxe or spear, who want to figure out the tradeoffs between chain mail and boiled leather armor, and who want their sorcerers to have access to a wide variety of specializations. If that is your cup of tea, you are in for a treat.
So arm yourself with dice of many values, paper and pencil and the power of your imagination, and embark on a heroic quest. You will enjoy the trip.
*
- C.J. Carella

https://www.drivethrurpg.com/product...lay-Core-Rules

Some More Information

A Quick Look at the Rationale Behind the Combat Rules   Overall, I have not sought realism as much as a feel of solidity or reality, even if it is a very different reality than our own. That is true of the game as a whole but I admit that my thinking about this started with the combat system. The other thing I sought to create was a game environment where a character's or even an NPC's choices matter and are not merely cosmetically appealing.   As a combatant gains training and experience, he or she does not gain in the ability to withstand damage. What is gained is the ability to avoid being hit. The combatant, without thinking about it much, shifts and flinches and otherwise avoids blows and his or her weapon, without making a conscious parry, is sometimes in the way of the foe's weapon. That results in the character's Target # going down. Armor does not prevent one from being hit but it does keep some damage from occurring. Armor can also slow you down and make it easier for foes to hit you. There was an incident in a campaign several years ago, when the characters knew that they would be facing giants very soon. Since a giant's blow, if it connects, isn't likely to be impacted much by even good armor, they decided that they would not wear their armor and rely on their quickness and agility to avoid being hit. This worked pretty well. Being damaged in some other systems includes near-misses that cause fatigue and possibly loss of morale. Being damaged in this system always means palpable damage. If a character loses Hit Points he or she is bleeding or burned or at least badly bruised. Fortunately, both clerics and magicians have a great deal of healing ability. So, this is a high-casualty, low-fatality system, although the Game Master can influence a campaign a great deal in those respects.
Early on I decided that it would be fun to play a mage who invested time and effort in learning his or her spells. And I thought it would seem more interesting if one needed to learn lesser related spells in order to learn more powerful spells. I thought that Mana, magical power, could be accumulated but an individual would have a limit to how much power she could accumulate without artificial aid. That limit is based on the mage's talent, an attribute, and his level of training. Devices to store power could be very, very rare, perhaps nonexistent, in some campaigns and fairly common in others. That way, a GM could design a campaign where mages were extremely powerful or one where they tended to be short on power.