Mage: The Ascension vs NewEdo

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

	Mage: The Ascension	NewEdo
Genre	Fantasy, Modern, Horror	Cyberpunk, Fantasy
Tags	Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics	Cinematic, Character Building, Crunchy, Classless, Faction Play, Heroic, High-Power, Urban Fantasy, Tactical
Core Mechanic	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.	Contests use a dice pool combining Core Trait d10s plus Skill dice (d4, d6, d8, or d12 depending on Focus) against a Target Number, with d10s exploding on 10s. Before each contest, the player Rolls their Fate on a d100 and resolves any matching lines on their personal Fate Card, which fills up with triggered effects as the character develops through Path abilities and in-game choices. Legend is the character's reputation and acts as a resource pool: spending up to 5 points of Temporary Legend per Round adds that total to a dice pool for cinematic stunts, and Legend is regained by doing memorable things.
Dice	d10 dice pool	d4–d12 dice pool
Complexity	Very High	High
Accessibility	High	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Very High
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault	Not yet researched
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	$$
Publisher	Onyx Path Publishing	Salty Games
Year	2015	2022
Languages	English, French, German, Italian, Russian, Spanish	English
Best For	Groups who want long-form modern occult campaigns about reality-shaping power, ideological conflict, and the consequences of imposing belief on the world.	Groups who want deep character customization across magic, cybernetics, and skills in a near-future city drawn from Japanese folklore and samurai fiction, with heavy factional politics and larger-than-life heroes fueled by their growing reputation.
Highlights	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.	Priority Buy character creation distributes uneven resources across Backgrounds, Magic, Augmentations, Skills, and Core Traits so that no two builds share the same shape. Ten playable Lineages are drawn from Japanese folklore (bakeneko, kappa, karasu, kitsune, oni, saru, tanuki, usagi, human, and the cybernetic half-machine hisanaka), each with two Cultures. Seven Factions and their Paths tie every character to a political stance in the Empire. Magic is built around Shinpi and Rotes granted by tiers of kami: casters negotiate with spirits rather than memorizing spell slots.
Considerations	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.	Dense interlocking subsystems (Legend, Fate Card, Trait Noise, Shinpi, Priority Buy, Derived Traits, Wound tiers, and four Soak types) take significant time to internalize before first play. Core rulebook runs over 300 pages and is paid only, with no free quickstart or SRD. The setting mixes cyberpunk, samurai fiction, and yokai folklore in a single package, which may not suit groups looking for a pure take on any one genre.