Mage: The Ascension vs R'lyehwatch
Compare Mage: The Ascension and R'lyehwatch side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mage: The Ascension | R'lyehwatch | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Modern, Horror | Horror, Modern |
| Tags | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics | Rules-Light, Comedy, One-Shot Friendly, Short Sessions, Player-Only Rolls, Weird |
| 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. | Players roll a pool of 1–3 d6s against a target difficulty (4 for easy, 5 for average, 6 for hard). Every challenge starts with 1 die: add a second if the challenge matches the character's stat (Agile, Brawny, or Crafty), and a third if their role applies (The Veteran, Rookie, Medic, Gizmo, Detective, or Weirdo). Success means at least one die meets or beats the difficulty. Players spend luck tokens to invoke a perk and lower the difficulty by 1, and recover luck by letting their quirk cause a problem (raising the difficulty by 1). Grit tokens absorb failure consequences; a character who runs out of grit is removed from the scene. The referee never rolls dice during a challenge: they choose the stat and difficulty, then narrate the outcome. Extended challenges (chases, fights, infiltration) deplete a shared pool of effort tokens, one per success. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | d6 dice pool |
| Complexity | Very High | Very Low |
| Accessibility | High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Low |
| License | All Rights Reserved | Proprietary; third-party license and SRD permit derivative works |
| 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 | Hedgemaze Press / Third Chair Games |
| Year | 2015 | 2023 |
| 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 a quick, comedic cosmic-horror RPG that pairs Baywatch-style melodrama with the Cthulhu Mythos. Tuned for pickup play and 2-4 hour sessions, with three tonal modes (Casual, Standard, Horror) that retune lethality without changing the core rules. |
| 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. | Three difficulty targets and a 1–3 d6 dice pool make up the entire resolution system. Three tonal modes (Casual, Standard, Horror) adjust grit recovery rate, retuning the same rules from sitcom-style play to deadly survival horror without changing any mechanics. All heroes share a universal Slow Motion quirk: narrating a slow-motion moment recovers a luck token but raises the current challenge's difficulty. Adventure generator combines random Objective, Location, and Complication tables for pickup scenarios; also includes an Elder Gods & Cults table, a Monster Maker, and a mapped Sunset Hills setting. |
| 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. | Mechanically minimal: no advancement track beyond optional luck and grit cap increases, no gear lists, no tactical combat structure. Pacing assumes 2–4 hour sessions rather than multi-arc campaigns. Setting is anchored to Sunset Hills, California; running the game elsewhere requires reskinning the included cult, NPC, and location tables. Three difficulty values and a maximum 3-die pool give coarse resolution: granular skill differentiation is not the design. |