Honey Heist vs Mage: The Ascension
Compare Honey Heist and Mage: The Ascension side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Honey Heist | Mage: The Ascension | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Modern | Fantasy, Modern, Horror |
| Tags | Rules-Light, One-Shot Friendly, Comedy, Heist, Random Character Creation, Random Tables, Low-Prep, Gonzo, Fast-Paced, Theater of the Mind | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy |
| Core Mechanic | When a bear acts and the outcome is in doubt, the player rolls 1d6 against the relevant stat, Bear or Criminal: a roll equal to or under the stat succeeds, and a roll over it fails. Using the bear type's skill or doing something covered by the character's role rolls 2d6 and keeps the lowest. When the lowest die rolled is a 6, the GM introduces a twist or unseen complication. | 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 | d6 | d10 dice pool |
| Complexity | Very Low | Very High |
| Accessibility | Very High | High |
| Runnability | Medium | Very High |
| License | RR&D Community Licence v1.14 | All Rights Reserved |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — RR&D Community Licence (Grant Howitt's One Page RPGs) | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | Free | $$ |
| Publisher | Rowan, Rook and Decard (Grant Howitt) | Onyx Path Publishing |
| Year | 2017 | 2015 |
| Languages | English | English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish |
| Best For | Groups who want a silly, low-prep one-shot as a crew of bears pulling a heist at a honey convention. | Groups who want long modern occult campaigns about conflicting beliefs and the consequences of reshaping reality. |
| Highlights | Greed moves a point from Bear to Criminal when the plan goes off without a hitch, and Frustration moves one back when the plan fails and the bear runs into difficulty. A player can shift a point toward Criminal by playing a flashback scene of the bears planning the heist, or toward Bear by eating a load of honey. The GM sets up each heist from random tables, including two security features and a complication kept secret from the players. | 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 | There are no experience, advancement or campaign rules. Bear covers shrugging off damage, but the rules track no damage or injury. The sheet gives no rule for what a player does after their bear betrays the party or flips out at 6. | 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. |