Children With Wands vs Mage: The Ascension

Compare Children With Wands and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Children With Wands	Mage: The Ascension
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy, Modern, Horror
Tags	Rules-Light, Family-Friendly, Beginner-Friendly, Cozy, Collaborative, Comedy, One-Shot Friendly, CC-Licensed Rules	Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics
Core Mechanic	To cast a spell, the player says what they want it to do, and the Narrator sets a Spell Range from two values. Effectiveness rates how well the spell suits the task from 0 to 3, and Strength rates how much magic the goal needs from 1 to 20. The range runs from Strength minus Effectiveness up to Strength plus Effectiveness. The player then rolls a d20, and a result inside the range casts the spell cleanly. A roll outside the range still fires the spell, but mis-scaled into a complication. High rolls overshoot with too much power and low rolls fall short.	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	Very Low	Very High
Accessibility	High	High
Runnability	Medium	Very High
License	CC BY-SA 4.0 (core rules text)	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	$$	$$
Publisher	Dinosaur Pirate Games	Onyx Path Publishing
Year	2026	2015
Languages	English	English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish
Best For	Families introducing younger players to tabletop roleplaying, and convention one-shots where everyone needs to be making characters and playing within minutes. The cooperative, low-stakes structure suits mixed-age tables more than groups after tactical depth or character builds.	Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world.
Highlights	Players roll to determine a spell's power rather than its success, so a high roll overshoots the intended band just as badly as a low one. The Narrator announces each spell's range before the roll, letting the table weigh a clever but risky idea against a safe one as an open choice instead of a blind gamble. Spells that miss their range still go off and spawn fresh problems, turning failure into the engine that drives the session rather than a dead end.	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	Setting each Spell Range is a real-time Narrator judgment of a spell's fit and power, so the game leans heavily on a confident improviser to run well. Casting a spell is the only way to resolve a real challenge, leaving groups who want to settle problems through mundane skill or social play without a subsystem for it. Every child shares the same resolve pool, single die, and short perk list, so characters distinguish themselves mainly by which spells they know.	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.