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, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics	Tag-Based, Fiction-First, Cinematic, Pirates, Ship-Based, Heroic
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 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
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 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 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.	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 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 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.