‘Ascension X: Session 0’ Attempts Cyberpunk Spectacle in a Digital Era (Review)

“Cyberpunk” has had a bit of a year as a genre, hasn’t it? With the rocky release of Cyberpunk 2077, fans of the genre might find equal parts solace and horror in the fact that reality has come to more and more resemble a William Gibson novel. Mega-corporations control our lives; deepfakes and Vocaloids act as harbingers of the entirely virtual idols of tomorrow; and technology has become a force for both liberation and oppression as our lives have become entirely tethered to our online presence. What was once a niche genre is now our daily reality. As such, a cyberpunk-themed live action roleplaying (LARP) game seems pretty appropriate at present; we’re all online all day anyway right now, why not play pretend that we’re empowered while doing that?

Ascension X: Session 0 by Sinking Ship, rebooting their “Ascension” universe of LARPs into an ongoing episodic series, seeks to fill that niche. Part of the joy of LARP is discovering the fantastic selves you get to become in each world; discovering a facet of myself that could find connection, fulfillment, and growth within cyberspace was too good an opportunity to pass up. And, so, with the help of the game facilitators, I constructed a total body prosthesis cyborg popstar, totally devoid of memory of his previous life, who moonlit as the hacker “EIDOLON.” (Think Total Recall meets Blind Mag from Repo! The Genetic Opera and you get the picture.)

While I dove into this character with a great deal of enthusiasm, I don’t know if I’m going to be bringing a lot of EIDOLON back with me to the real world.

Ascension X is an admirable attempt in its current (prototyped) form, and has extensive, well-constructed safety mechanics, yet, it’s hampered by a lack of cohesion that makes it difficult to recommend in its current state.

To start, I do like the game system itself. Ascension X runs on a light, flexible, roleplay-heavy system that suits itself well to a large group of people. Character creation is easy, yet still allows you the space to flesh out a rich persona who’s still defined by their central motives. In particular, I liked that each character needed a central question and a central reason for hanging on when the going got tough. In my case, these were a need to discover why I had allowed myself to be transformed into an amnesiac corporate drone and a joie de vivre and desire to retain my current post-amnesia consciousness respectively. Whenever a quandary presented itself, it was good to have these central guide stones informing my character’s actions.

The most glaring problem, though, is that those quandaries so rarely came around. With a large player base, and yet no formal subdivisions or factions, plus limited gamemaster availability, most of Ascension X was spent in unstructured conversation. While some unstructured time makes an in-person LARP feel rich and gives players an opportunity to define their own path, it just doesn’t work to the same degree online. Occasionally, six or so of the dozens of players would be able to enter a “black box” scene, which was akin to a “rules light” round of a tabletop roleplaying game (albeit one with costumes). These were primarily mission-based scenes, and, as such, didn’t allow a lot of space for character building. Outside of these specific scenes as well as the full cast finale, nothing of particular interest happened during Ascension X.

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Even under normal circumstances, balancing character development and plot is a daunting task. The black box vs. unstructured time division is a decent enough idea, but without clearly defined goals and factions, the freedom to improvise felt aimless.

I wandered into one of the breakout rooms, desperately seeking some action between my scenes.

“Heya, everyone, what’s going on in here?” I exclaimed upon entrance, trying to affect EIDOLON’s party boy veneer despite the tense (albeit sparse) plot.

“Meh,” said a resistance leader. “Just vibing, I guess.”

On the flip side, these design decisions left the black box scenes textureless; without more formal methods of connection and character building (outside of optional pre-game sessions), they felt like fairly rote dungeon crawling. I’ll reiterate, though, that the game system here is “rules light” enough that even rote dungeon crawling isn’t procedurally interesting or complex. Out of the fridge, and into the freezer, so to speak.

This would have been bad enough in a shorter experience, but stretched out over a six hour session, the tedium was… definitional. The lack of structure also reared its head in the experience’s finale. Without any guidance, the one moral dilemma that was presented to us—for this session, it was whether to free or kill a potentially, but not definitely, malevolent AI—devolved into endless bickering, resulting in the session timing out without a solution and canon having to be determined through post-game discussion. This isn’t entirely the fault of Sinking Ship Creations, but it presents an unavoidable concern about scalability. While I’ve played a number of delightful online LARPs during the pandemic, they’ve been attempts to replicate small scale parlor LARP, the kind that might be developed for Golden Cobra (an annual contest and festival celebrating short form LARP design). Attempting blockbuster LARP levels of engagement and player size on a platform as unwieldy as the (in this case quite appropriately named) Discord seems a complete non-starter.

The safety features, as well as they worked, also threw the tone of the entire evening off. Pre-game safety workshops were helpful; specialist moderators were present for any player needs; content warnings were ample; and areas were “zoned” for any potentially sensitive subject matter such as violence or sexual content. Despite these safeguards, though, I observed an unintended effect: without much difficult-to-engage-with content, the entire player base was on edge. After constantly being warned about the possibility of character death, or through setting aside spaces for sexual and violent content, the expectation of that content being present in Ascension X was omnipresent. When that content never arrived, the non-resolution served only to needlessly raise player anxiety; counterintuitively, the brilliant safety mechanics that would have been needed for more daring content ended up only serving to hurt player mental health overall. Maybe this won’t be a problem in more content-heavy, main season play, but here it put a damper on the entire mood.

After the game, I asked my friend whether or not they would be returning for the main season. Probably, they replied, but not for the game itself. They just really loved wearing their costume. Fair enough, I thought. I love my own weird cyberpunk shades and chalk white wig from a cosplay long forgotten. At the end of the day, though, I have to wonder if I’d have more fun just throwing them on and curling up with my old battered copy of Neuromancer than sitting through another six hours of Ascension X: Session 0.

Ascension X: Session 0 has concluded.

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