Dread vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Dread and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Dread | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | Atmospheric, CC-Licensed Rules, Character-Driven, Deadly, Diceless, Experimental, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Fiction-First, Narrative, Rules-Light | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy |
| Core Mechanic | The host calls for a pull when a character attempts something uncertain, outside their experience, or under aggravated conditions. The player removes one block from a shared tower and places it on top: a stable tower means success, while refusing means failure without character removal. Collapsing the tower removes that player's character. | Roll an Attribute-plus-Ability pool of d10s and count dice meeting the difficulty, usually 6. Each rolled 1 cancels a success. A roll botches only when no die meets the difficulty and at least one die shows 1. Magick instead rolls Arete, the mage's enlightenment rating, against a difficulty based on the highest Sphere used and whether the effect violates ordinary reality. Successes determine the effect's extent. |
| Dice | Diceless | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Very Low | Very High |
| Accessibility | High | High |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 2.5 | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Noncommercial only — Open license | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | The Impossible Dream | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2005 | 2015 |
| Languages | English, German, Italian | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish |
| Best For | Groups seeking focused horror where improvised character drama and irreversible risk matter more than tactical combat | Groups who want long modern occult campaigns about conflicting beliefs and the consequences of reshaping reality. |
| Highlights | Successful pulls leave the shared tower increasingly precarious, turning prior success into mounting risk for the whole table. Questionnaire answers establish capabilities and vulnerabilities, giving the host material that directly shapes rulings and scenarios. Deliberately toppling the tower converts character removal into one final dramatically appropriate success. | Nine Spheres combine into improvised magical effects beyond a fixed spell list. A mage's beliefs determine the practices and instruments that make those effects possible. Concealing magick within plausible events reduces the risk of reality's backlash. |
| Considerations | The intended tower-based experience requires a physical block tower, a stable surface, and manual dexterity. A collapse removes a character from play, so players can lose their original role before the session ends. Creating original scenarios asks the host to prepare tailored questionnaires and make frequent pull judgments. | Improvised magick requires the group to agree on what an effect can accomplish before rolling. Accumulated Paradox can injure a mage or trap them in a distorted reality. Cabals need shared motives to keep incompatible faction loyalties from pulling the campaign apart. |