Escape from Dino Island vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Escape from Dino Island and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Escape from Dino Island | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Modern, Scifi | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | One-Shot Friendly, Survival, Mystery, Playbook-Driven, Rules-Light, Fiction-First, Low-Prep, Strong GM Support, Cinematic, Exploration | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy |
| Core Mechanic | Most moves call for a roll of 2d6 plus the stat or modifier the move names, usually FIT, CLEVER, or STEADY. A 10+ is a full success, a 7–9 succeeds with a drawback or hard choice, and a 6 or less is a miss that hands the Dino Master a move. When several Heroes act together, one rolls for the group: the one worst placed during Peril Moves, or the one best placed during Safety Moves. | 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 | 2d6 | 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 | Sam Tung & Sam Roberts | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2019 | 2015 |
| Languages | English, French, German | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish |
| Best For | Groups who want a one- or two-session survival thriller in the vein of Jurassic Park, where escaping and solving the island's mystery matter more than fighting. | Groups who want long modern occult campaigns about conflicting beliefs and the consequences of reshaping reality. |
| Highlights | Overcoming the first of two Obstacles triggers an Extinction Event that adds new Dino Master moves and gives every Hero their one advance. Peril and Safety Moves let a single Hero roll for the whole group, so the worst-placed Hero rolls in danger and the best-placed Hero rolls in quiet moments. Several moves require telling a story from the playbook's list, and each story told adds +1 to the closing roll that decides that Hero's epilogue. | 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 | Fight! rolls with no stat bonus and a miss triggers the Casualty move, so combat is rarely a workable answer to a dinosaur. The fixed arc ends with the escape attempt, and each Hero gains only one advance along the way. Injuries carry no fixed penalties, so how much a wound hampers a Hero rests on the Dino Master's judgment. | 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. |