Ascendant - Mercenaries and transhumanism (English edition)

We are in 1993, and it is the hour of the ascendancy.

Ascendant is a minimalist role playing game based on the Breathless system. In it, one player plays the master of the game while the other participants take the role of agents who work on behalf of the Ascendant group.  Using the technology of the same name, Ascendant agents transport their consciousness into the bodies of different individuals, in order to complete missions of espionage, assassination and sabotage.

The game is set in an early 90's uchronistic universe. The cold war never stopped, and scientific discoveries in the field of neuroscience and transhumanism have made a huge breakthrough.

The Breathless system, created and designed by Fari RPGs, allows for short and punchy adventures. The mechanics use a set of polyhedral dice, and a chain of dice is used to determine the difficulty with which the characters perform their actions as the game progresses. Reminiscent of Black Hack's utility die concept, the characters' characteristics progressively decrease as the game progresses.

Ascendant was created with this premise in mind. The missions are short, intense and violent. Everything can be easily replayed, destroyed, modified or even made more complex as you see fit. As a mission unfolds, agents lose control of their host, having to spontaneously change envelopes in order to get the job done. Thematically, the game is directly inspired by the movie ''Possessor'' by Brandon Cronenberg.

A big thank you to René Pier for the design of Breathless, a beautiful, simple and efficient tool. You can find this product at the following address: https://fari-rpgs.itch.io/breathless-srd

This work is based on Breathless, a product of Fari RPGs (https://farirpgs.com/), developed and written by René-Pier Deshaies-Gélinas, and licensed for our use under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https:// creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).