Adventures in Middle-earth vs Mage: The Ascension

Compare Adventures in Middle-earth and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Adventures in Middle-earth	Mage: The Ascension
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy, Modern, Horror
Tags	Journey, Corruption, Licensed IP, Low-Fantasy, Lore-Heavy, Social Intrigue, Character Building	Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics
Core Mechanic	Uses the Dungeons & Dragons 5th Edition engine: roll a d20, add an ability modifier and proficiency, and compare the total to a difficulty number. Advantage and disadvantage, rolling two d20s and keeping the higher or lower, are the main swing on that roll.	Build a d10 pool from an Attribute plus an Ability and count each die that meets or exceeds the difficulty, usually 6. Each rolled 1 cancels a success, and a roll with no successes and at least one 1 botches. Magick uses Arete instead: the highest Sphere plus coincidence or vulgarity and witnesses establishes the base difficulty, with situational modifiers applied afterward. Successes determine the Effect, and vulgar casting risks Paradox.
Dice	d20	d10 dice pool
Complexity	High	Very High
Accessibility	Very Low	High
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	OGL 1.0a; Middle-earth Enterprises license	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	Unavailable	$$
Publisher	Cubicle 7	Onyx Path Publishing
Year	2016	2015
Languages	English	English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish
Best For	Groups who already know 5th Edition D&D and want a low-magic, Tolkien-faithful campaign built around travel, reputation among the Free Peoples, and slow-burn corruption instead of spellcasting and dungeon loot. It suits a long campaign that plays out the Journey and Fellowship Phase cycle across in-game years more than a single one-shot.	Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world.
Highlights	The Journey subsystem resolves overland travel through assigned companion roles and branching event tables, so a trek across Wilderland produces its own hazards and pacing rather than being skipped over. Shadow points replace alignment with a tracked corruption economy that climbs from the Miserable condition to permanent madness, giving each character a mechanical moral pressure tied to their class. Audiences resolve encounters with lords and elders through an eleven-culture attitude chart and an introduction check, so a hero's standing among the Free Peoples is a concrete mechanical fact rather than pure GM judgment.	Nine Spheres combine to build open-ended Effects, allowing the same capability to emerge through different paradigms, practices, and instruments. Coincidental and vulgar classifications make subtlety a tactical choice because conspicuous magick raises difficulty and accumulates Paradox. Focus ties belief to procedure, so a mage's worldview determines the tools and rituals used to alter reality.
Considerations	None of the six classes cast spells, so a group wanting a traditional wizard or cleric has to import one from another 5e game. Combat is essentially unmodified 5th Edition, so groups already tired of standard tactical D&D combat will find the same core fight rules here. Shadow adds a second per-character failure economy alongside hit points, with permanent points that never heal and must be tracked across an entire campaign.	Improvised Effects place frequent adjudication on the Storyteller, who must apply Sphere permissions, focus, required successes, and consequences consistently. Vulgar magick generates Paradox even on success, so overt power can punish a mage through injury or metaphysical breakdown. Faction choices can make a cabal internally hostile, so character concepts need shared motives before play.