Mage: The Ascension vs Stonetop
Compare Mage: The Ascension and Stonetop side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mage: The Ascension | Stonetop | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Modern, Horror | Fantasy |
| Tags | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, Fiction-First, Character-Driven, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics, Urban Fantasy | CC-Licensed Rules, Playbook-Driven, Resource Management, Fiction-First, Strong GM Support, Base-Building, Journey, Character-Driven, Worldbuilding, Exploration |
| 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. | Describe what your character does; when it meets a move's trigger, roll 2d6 and add a stat from -1 to +3. A 10+ is a strong hit and a 7-9 is a weak hit: partial success or success with a cost. On a 6-, PCs normally mark XP and the GM makes a hard move unless the move says otherwise. Advantage or disadvantage normally adds a third d6 and drops the lowest or highest; damage rolls instead roll damage twice and keep the best or worst result. The GM does not generally roll during play. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | 2d6 |
| Complexity | Very High | High |
| Accessibility | High | Medium |
| Runnability | Very High | Very High |
| License | All Rights Reserved | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault | Commercial publishing allowed — Open license |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | $$ |
| Publisher | Onyx Path Publishing | Lampblack & Brimstone |
| Year | 2015 | 2026 |
| 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 a long-running hearth-fantasy campaign centered on a village as much as its heroes. Play alternates dangerous expeditions into a darkening iron-age world with homefront scenes of courtship, harvest, and community projects. |
| 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. | The steading playbook tracks the village's Fortunes and Surplus, so projects and disasters change what Stonetop can withstand. Seasons Change generates or consumes Surplus and grants seasonal gains, so the village's resources change with each passing season. Expeditions make preparation matter by weighing load and supplies against GM-presented travel challenges. |
| 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. | The game is built around defending one village, so rootless or wandering parties leave its homefront engine behind. Combat relies on spotlighting, abstract range tags, and fictional positioning, which may not suit groups that want a detailed tactical combat procedure. Supplies, load, provisions, and village Surplus are tracked in several places, adding steady bookkeeping to expeditions and downtime. |