Mage: The Ascension vs Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies

Compare Mage: The Ascension and Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.

	Mage: The Ascension	Swashbucklers of the 7 Skies
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	Tag-Based, Fiction-First, Cinematic, Pirates, Ship-Based, Heroic
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.	Roll 2d6 and keep the best two, then add the Modifier of a relevant Forte, a descriptive Quality ranked from Poor (−2) to Master (+6), and compare the total to a Difficulty Rank's Target Number. Players narrate their own successes and failures, and may invoke Techniques to add dice or a flat +1 even after seeing the roll. Combat is resolved as a Duel, with each side splitting a 3d6 pool between attack and defense and the winning margin lowering the loser's Forte Ranks as damage.
Dice	d10 dice pool	2d6 / 3d6
Complexity	Very High	Medium
Accessibility	High	Medium
Runnability	Very High	Medium
License	All Rights Reserved	Proprietary
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	Evil Hat Productions
Year	2015	2009
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 swashbuckling campaign of sky-pirates and musketeers in an original floating-island world, are comfortable with a light narrative meta-currency, and want skyship battles that give four to six players distinct crew roles.
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.	Players earn Style Dice by narrating their actions with flair and by leaning into their character's Foibles, then spend them to add dice, recover from damage, or assert new facts, tying mechanical advantage directly to dramatic play. Character abilities are broad descriptive Fortes such as "Colronan Musketeer" or "Sha-Ku Ruqrider," so a single Forte covers every related action at the table instead of a skill list while rooting the character in the setting. Before play the group sets explicit dials for firearm lethality, level of magic, and tone, letting the same setting run as cape-and-sword intrigue or deadly piracy.
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 Style Dice economy only drives play if the GM actively seeds and awards dice each session, and the genre-reward loop that powers the game stalls when it is left unmanaged. Starting koldun can take all seven Gifts cheaply and the magic stays deliberately open-ended, so it can overshadow other characters unless the GM sets the mysticism level beforehand. Skyship combat layers a multi-step crew sequence and a separate dice pool on top of personal combat, a sharp jump in table overhead from the otherwise light core.