Barbarians of Lemuria vs METTLE Core

Compare Barbarians of Lemuria and METTLE Core side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Barbarians of Lemuria	METTLE Core
Genre	Fantasy	Universal, Modern
Tags	Rules-Light, Pulp Action, Sword & Sorcery, Beginner-Friendly, Fast-Paced	Pulp Action, Toolkit, Hackable, Rules-Light, Classless, Fast-Paced, CC-Licensed Rules
Core Mechanic	Roll 2d6 + attribute + career (or combat ability), 9+ to succeed. Four attributes (Strength, Agility, Mind, Appeal) and four combat abilities (Initiative, Melee, Ranged, Defence) rated 0–5. Careers replace individual skills: if your career is relevant, add its rating. Boons roll 3d6 keep best two; flaws roll 3d6 keep worst two. Hero Points fuel dramatic escapes and heroic feats.	Roll a pool of d6s equal to the Attribute being used. Dice showing 1, 2, or 3 are summed as the Score; dice showing 4, 5, or 6 are counted as Edge. The Check succeeds if Score meets or exceeds the Difficulty (Routine 1 to Nigh Impossible 15), and Edge measures how well it went. On a failure with Edge, the player may call for a Twist: accept a complication proposed by the rest of the table, then reroll the Edge dice for a second chance. Initiative passes from the acting character to the target of their Action, who becomes the next to act. Mettle (Motive + Nature) acts as a combined morale and damage track, and characters may Surge by spending Mettle for bonus dice on critical Checks.
Dice	2d6	d6 dice pool
Complexity	Low	Low
Availability	Paid	Free core rules
Runnability	4 of 5 book tools	5 of 5 book tools
License	All Rights Reserved	CC BY 4.0
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	Not yet researched
Publisher	Beyond Belief Games	Planarian Games
Year	2015	2021
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want fast, pulpy sword and sorcery in the vein of Conan: career-based characters, boons and flaws, and combat that resolves in minutes.	Groups who want fast pulp action-adventure in the vein of Indiana Jones, James Bond, or Tales of the Gold Monkey, with a hackable toolkit they can bend toward detective stories, wild-west gunfights, post-apocalyptic survival, or grounded science fiction.
Highlights	Career system is intuitive and fast, combat resolves in minutes, Hero Points enable pulp heroics, simple to learn and teach, spawned the Everywhen universal toolkit	Score-and-Edge dice pool reads two outcomes from the same roll: whether the action succeeds (Score meets Difficulty) and how well it went (count of 4–6 dice). Player-invoked Twists let a failed roll be reframed as a messy success in exchange for a fictional complication chosen by the rest of the table. Six-attribute character sheet (Calling, Culture, Frame, Motive, Nature, Poise) replaces classes and skills with player-written Descriptors that justify which Attribute applies to a given task. Initiative passes from the acting character to the target of their Action, eliminating turn-tracking and tying combat order to who is acting on whom.
Considerations	Tightly coupled to its Lemuria setting, limited character advancement, combat lacks tactical depth	Toolkit framing means the book provides scaffolding (factions, NPC seeds, sample castaway adventure) rather than a fleshed-out setting: groups expecting a defined world will need to build or borrow one. Mettle does triple duty as morale, hit points, and a spendable resource for bonus dice, which can take a session to internalize. Twist resolution depends on the rest of the table proposing complications, which slows play if the group is hesitant to add fiction.