Flying Circus vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Flying Circus and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Flying Circus | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | Crunchy, Combat-Heavy, Atmospheric, Character-Driven, Sandbox | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics |
| Core Mechanic | Roll 2d10 + stat: 10 or less is a miss, 11–15 is a partial hit, 16+ is a full hit. Moves are triggered by fiction. Air combat uses energy management, altitude, and speed on instrument panels. Stress accumulated in missions is relieved between flights through vices and relationships. | 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 | 2d10 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | High | Very High |
| Accessibility | Medium | High |
| Runnability | Medium | Very High |
| License | Proprietary (PbtA) | 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 | Newstand Press | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2020 | 2015 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish |
| Best For | Groups who want a deeply detailed aerial combat game wrapped in a rich, character-driven story about mercenary pilots in a post-war fantasy world. | Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world. |
| Highlights | Highly detailed air combat, setting blends WWI aviation with Miyazaki-esque fantasy, character-driven downtime system, free aircraft builder tool, 10 diverse playbook backgrounds | 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 | Dense and intimidating to learn, very niche aerial-combat focus, requires printing instrument panels and component cards, limited to its specific setting | 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. |