Mage: The Ascension vs Smallville Roleplaying Game

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

	Mage: The Ascension	Smallville Roleplaying Game
Genre	Fantasy, Modern, Horror	Superhero, Modern
Tags	Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics	Licensed IP, Superpowers, Character-Driven, Drama, Narrative, Collaborative, Worldbuilding, Roleplay-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Strong GM Support
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.	Roll a d4–d12 pool built from one Value and one Relationship, with an Asset die if applicable. Add the two highest dice. Dice showing 1 are Complications and never count. Plot Points can add dice to the pool before the roll or include more rolled dice in the total afterward. Tests normally pit your roll against the GM's Trouble pool. Ties go to the GM. Contests exchange action and reaction rolls until someone Gives In or fails to beat the previous total and takes Stress. Giving In concedes the opponent's demand but avoids Stress.
Dice	d10 dice pool	d4–d12 dice pool
Complexity	Very High	Medium
Accessibility	High	Very Low
Runnability	Very High	Medium
License	All Rights Reserved	All Rights Reserved
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Cost	$$	Unavailable
Publisher	Onyx Path Publishing	Margaret Weis Productions, Ltd.
Year	2015	2010
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 superhero stories driven by relationship drama, where the player characters' convictions and loyalties clash with each other as often as they face villains.
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.	Challenging a Drive triples its die for one roll but steps it back for the episode, turning a crisis of conviction into Growth. Group character creation builds a shared map of people and places that supplies material for later episodes. When an opponent fails to beat your action result, they take Stress rather than concede your demand, making Giving In a separate choice.
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.	Creating an original cast through Pathways takes a few hours of group work before the first episode. Episode preparation centers on conflicts between player characters rather than a unified party's shared objective. Winning a Contest cannot kill a character by itself, because killing in a Contest requires that character's player to Give In and accept death.