Fear and Panic vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Fear and Panic and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Fear and Panic | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Horror | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | CC-Licensed Rules, Classless, Deadly, Fast-Paced, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Low-Prep, One-Shot Friendly, Rules-Light, Skill-Based, Theater of the Mind | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics |
| Core Mechanic | Roll d100 equal to or below the relevant skill. In opposed tests, a success beats a failure, the higher success wins, and the higher roll wins if both sides fail; doubles are critical. | 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 | d100 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Low | Very High |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Low | Very High |
| License | CC BY 4.0 | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $ | $$ |
| Publisher | Lyme | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2025 | 2015 |
| Best For | One-shots and short horror campaigns about ordinary people, especially groups converting existing d100 scenarios and wanting lethal conflict without tactical maps. | Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world. |
| Highlights | Player-triggered Fear turns frightening moments into a resource for desperate actions such as rerolls or rapid investigation. One opposed Violence roll compares Fight or Flee against Menace and Escape, producing injuries, displacement, capture, or death without hit points. Scars persist between adventures and exchange one capability for another, making survival change characters mechanically. | 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 | Fear gain relies on players deciding when their characters are scared, so the economy depends on shared genre judgment. Violence can end in death after one opposed roll, with simultaneous resolution, no tactical maps, and no hit points. Traits and campaign-specific skills are open-ended, leaving their scope and balance to GM adjudication. | 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. |