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, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics	CC-Licensed Rules, Playbook-Driven, Resource Management, Fiction-First, Strong GM Support, Base-Building, Journey, Character-Driven, Worldbuilding, Exploration
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.	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
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 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 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.	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 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.	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.