What This System Is For

Ascent Core is an engine, not a setting. You cloned it because you want to build a superhero or supervillain game and you would rather not design a resolution system, a power framework and an escalation curve from scratch.

Here is what you have inherited, and what you are expected not to break.

The four contracts

One resolution mechanic at every power level. d10 pool, 7+ is a hit, 10 is two. It does not change from street level to orbit. If you find yourself adding a second resolution system for high-Scale play, the design has failed and you should back out of the change.

Scale carries the escalation. Power growth is a single number, 0–6, not a new subsystem. Everything that would normally be a tier — a power level, a threat rating, a gear grade, a district's police response — is that same number.

The GM adjudicates from principles, not lookup tables. There is deliberately no exhaustive power list and no skill list. Resist the urge to supply one. Every list you add is a thing a player has to read before they can play, and a thing you have to balance forever.

Powers are described, not selected. Players write them. The GM rules on them with one question — does an Aspect cover it? Your job as a builder is to supply examples good enough to imitate, not a catalogue to shop from.

What is actually in this project

The rules live in two places: the gm-instructions files, which the AI GM holds during play, and the Player's Handbook, which is what a human reads. Ascent Core Rules is the complete always-on ruleset; the four short triggered files fire at specific moments and are capped at 500 characters each on purpose.

The system lives in the file type schemas. Scale, Strain, Wounds, Heat, the Identity Clock and the Ascension count are real fields with real constraints, and the layouts make them tappable during play. That is what makes the mechanics executable rather than documentary.

The setting — Verge City, its three Fronts, four districts, four threats and three pregens — is a reference implementation. It exists to prove every rule works at a table and to give you something to imitate. It is meant to be deleted. Nothing in the engine depends on it.

The one number to respect

Scale gap 2 means no roll. Not a hard roll, not a penalty — no roll.

Every other design decision in this system is downstream of that rule. It is what lets one ruleset span a rooftop vigilante and an orbital paragon without a rebalance, because it guarantees the dice only ever come out between near-peers. If you soften it into "roll at a big penalty," you will get a system that needs a difficulty chart per tier, and then you will need a second one, and then you have written a different game.