City of Jerry vs Mage: The Ascension

Compare City of Jerry and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	City of Jerry	Mage: The Ascension
Genre	Modern	Fantasy, Modern, Horror
Tags	Comedy, Fiction-First, Gonzo, Improvisation, Low-Prep, Mystery, Noir, Playbook-Driven, Random Tables, Rules-Light	Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics
Core Mechanic	When an outcome is uncertain, roll a d12 plus Heal or Harm and read the result on a five-tier scale: 12+ is a Critical Success, 9–11 a Success, 5–8 a Mixed Success, 2–4 a Failure, and 1 or less a Critical Failure. Natural 12s and 1s are always critical. Good or Bad Luck adds d12s and keeps the highest or lowest result.	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	d12	d10 dice pool
Complexity	Low	Very High
Accessibility	Medium	High
Runnability	High	Very High
License	Made for Mischief Third-Party License	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Made for Mischief Third-Party License	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$	$$
Publisher	Drimbus	Onyx Path Publishing
Year	2026	2015
Best For	Groups who want low-prep noir mysteries with body-pun humor, player-created connections, and fast conflicts inside a human body.	Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world.
Highlights	Challenges, combats, and conversations share a Conflict framework, so one procedure supports objectives, fights, and persuasion. Matching results on multiple Luck dice trigger the Twist table, turning stacked advantages or disadvantages into an unexpected complication or benefit. Five biological Roles provide curated Abilities and Traumas, giving each Agent a distinct way to help or harm Jerry.	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	Agents choose from five biological Roles, so concepts outside the Immunization Task Force require reskinning. Each Wound adds a penalty, and a third Wound triggers a Death Roll, making dangerous conflicts costly. Investigations use general Challenge Counters rather than a clue or deduction subsystem, leaving evidence details to the Jerry Master.	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.