Mage: The Ascension vs METTLE Core

Compare Mage: The Ascension and METTLE Core side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Mage: The Ascension	METTLE Core
Genre	Fantasy, Modern, Horror	Universal, Modern
Tags	Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy	Pulp Action, Toolkit, Hackable, Rules-Light, Classless, Fast-Paced, CC-Licensed Rules
Core Mechanic	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.	Roll a pool of d6s equal to the Attribute being used. Dice showing 1, 2, or 3 are summed as the Score; dice showing 4, 5, or 6 are counted as Edge. The Check succeeds if Score meets or exceeds the Difficulty (Routine 1 to Nigh Impossible 15), and Edge measures how well it went. On a failure with Edge, the player may call for a Twist: accept a complication proposed by the rest of the table, then reroll the Edge dice for a second chance. Initiative passes from the acting character to the target of their Action, who becomes the next to act. Mettle (Motive + Nature) acts as a combined morale and damage track, and characters may Surge by spending Mettle for bonus dice on critical Checks.
Dice	d10 dice pool	d6 dice pool
Complexity	Very High	Low
Accessibility	High	Very High
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	All Rights Reserved	CC BY 4.0
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault	Not yet researched
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	Free
Publisher	Onyx Path Publishing	Planarian Games
Year	2015	2021
Languages	English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish	English
Best For	Groups who want long modern occult campaigns about conflicting beliefs and the consequences of reshaping reality.	Groups who want fast pulp action-adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones, James Bond, or Tales of the Gold Monkey, with a hackable toolkit they can bend toward detective stories, wild-west gunfights, post-apocalyptic survival, or grounded science fiction.
Highlights	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.	Score-and-Edge dice pool reads two outcomes from the same roll: whether the action succeeds (Score meets Difficulty) and how well it went (count of 4–6 dice). Player-invoked Twists let a failed roll be reframed as a messy success in exchange for a fictional complication chosen by the rest of the table. Six-attribute character sheet (Calling, Culture, Frame, Motive, Nature, Poise) replaces classes and skills with player-written Descriptors that justify which Attribute applies to a given task. Initiative passes from the acting character to the target of their Action, eliminating turn-tracking and tying combat order to who is acting on whom.
Considerations	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.	Toolkit framing means the book provides scaffolding (factions, NPC seeds, sample castaway adventure) rather than a fleshed-out setting: groups expecting a defined world will need to build or borrow one. Mettle does triple duty as morale, hit points, and a spendable resource for bonus dice, which can take a session to internalize. Twist resolution depends on the rest of the table proposing complications, which slows play if the group is hesitant to add fiction.