Mage: The Ascension vs The Black Hack
Compare Mage: The Ascension and The Black Hack side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, cost, and more.
| Mage: The Ascension | The Black Hack | |
|---|---|---|
| Genre | Fantasy, Modern, Horror | Fantasy |
| Tags | Freeform Magic, Character Building, Crunchy, High-Power, Roll to Cast, Skill-Based, Lore-Heavy, Fear & Stress Mechanics | Rules-Light, Dungeon Crawl, Hackable, Beginner-Friendly |
| 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. | Players roll d20 under their attribute scores to succeed at actions. Advantage and Disadvantage (roll 2d20, pick best or worst) modify difficulty. Armour provides a pool of d6 Armour Dice that absorb damage. Consumable resources use a Usage Die chain (d20→d12→d10→d8→d6→d4→gone): roll 1–2 to downgrade. |
| Dice | d10 dice pool | d20 + d4–d12 |
| Complexity | Very High | Very Low |
| Accessibility | High | Very High |
| Runnability | Very High | Medium |
| License | All Rights Reserved | The Black Hack Open Game License |
| Third-Party Publishing | Commercial publishing allowed — Storytellers Vault | Not yet researched |
| Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing. | ||
| Cost | $$ | Free |
| Publisher | Onyx Path Publishing | Gold Piece Publications |
| Year | 2015 | 2018 |
| 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 wanting a fast, hackable OSR dungeon-crawling game with modern design sensibilities: roll under attributes, abstract distances, and usage dice that track resources without bookkeeping. |
| 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. | Highly hackable: spawned an entire subgenre of 'X Hack' games, core rules fit in about 30 pages, Usage Die tracks resources without inventory math, armour-as-dice-pool adds a tactical layer, conversational writing style makes rules easy to learn |
| 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. | Only 4 classes (Warrior, Thief, Cleric, Wizard) in the core, limited character customization beyond class and background, no setting included, light on GM guidance compared to larger games, may lack depth for long campaigns |