Asilo vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Asilo and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Asilo | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Deadly, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Improvisation, One-Shot Friendly, Random Tables, Roleplay-Heavy, Rules-Light, Strong GM Support | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics |
| Core Mechanic | When an action warrants it, a Patient rolls a d6 and succeeds by equaling or exceeding the difficulty the Caretaker sets. Traumatic events add a d6 result to the Sanity Clock, and completed stress sectors reveal new Behaviors. | 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 | d6 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | Very High |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Medium | Very High |
| License | Proprietary | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | No verified route found | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Newborn Games | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2025 | 2015 |
| Best For | Groups prepared to establish firm safety boundaries before a one-shot clinical-horror descent driven by character-specific stress. It suits Caretakers who want prewritten scenarios and prompts for tailoring Asilo to a table's chosen limits. | Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world. |
| Highlights | Stress Rolls fill each Sanity Clock until new Behaviors alter how that Patient is played. Goals and discovered Secrets can remove or add Stress Dots, making personal history affect whether a Patient deteriorates. Destroying a signed Liability Waiver sacrifices one Patient to clear another's Behavior, turning a physical table ritual into a final rescue. | 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 | The game centers clinical abuse, trauma, and other extreme material, requiring explicit group boundaries and active comfort tools. Each Patient's stress mitigations become Manias after three uses, making the downward pressure difficult to reverse. Asilo is designed for individual sessions, so it does not provide campaign advancement for recurring Patients. | 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. |