Dolmenwood vs The Lost March

Compare Dolmenwood and The Lost March side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Dolmenwood	The Lost March
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Tags	Hexcrawl, Dark Fantasy, Faction Play, Lore-Heavy, Vancian Casting, Classic Fantasy, Deadly	Classic Fantasy, Sandbox, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Dungeon Crawl, Faction Play, Domain Management, Random Character Creation, Vancian Casting, Inventory Management
Core Mechanic	Roll d20 + modifiers vs. ascending AC for attacks and vs. save targets for saving throws (five categories: Doom, Ray, Hold, Blast, Spell). Skill checks and ability checks use d6 + modifiers vs. a target number. Characters choose a kindred (breggle, elf, grimalkin, human, mossling, or woodgrue) and one of nine classes. Three distinct magic systems: arcane (memorized spells), holy (daily prayers), and fairy (glamours and runes).	A skill check rolls a pool of d6s equal to the skill level: one to five dice, plus a die for some class bonuses. Normally a 6 is a success and a 5 is a partial success. An Ability adjustment either widens the success range or adds a critical-failure range on the lowest faces. Settlement, wilderness and combat checks are opposed by the referee's dice, where equal results cancel and a partial success downgrades a full one. In combat, successes and partial successes are assigned to attack or defend. A hit deals the weapon's maximum damage on a success or its minimum on a partial success.
Dice	d20	d6 dice pool
Complexity	Low	Low
Availability	Paid	Free core rules
Runnability	5 of 5 book tools	4 of 5 book tools
License	All Rights Reserved	Proprietary
Third-Party Publishing	Not yet researched	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Necrotic Gnome	Fausto Botta
Year	2024	2025
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want a deeply detailed fairytale-dark fantasy setting with OSR mechanics, hexcrawl exploration, and rich faction play in an enchanted wood full of fairies, monsters, and intrigue.	Groups who want a long old-school sandbox campaign that turns treasure into faction rank, training and eventually conquered land.
Highlights	Richly detailed fairytale-dark setting with competing factions and deep lore, hexcrawl travel system with Travel Points and terrain-based encounters, six unique kindreds including cat-folk grimalkins and fungal mosslings, three distinct magic systems each with their own spell lists	There are no hit points: wounds lower Ability scores directly, so an injured character can carry less treasure home. The lawful factions sell ranks and months of training for gold, so treasure replaces experience as the advancement currency. Each exploration turn, the referee secretly rolls hazard dice sized by difficulty (1d6 on plains, 3d6 in swamps), and each 5 or 6 adds a complication or an encounter.
Considerations	Full experience requires three core books (Player's Book, Campaign Book, Monster Book), setting-specific: not a generic OSR toolkit, GM needs the Campaign Book and Monster Book which are sold separately from the Player's Book	Dice resolve only a set of defined checks, so players usually get past traps and puzzles by describing what their characters do rather than by rolling a skill. Wounds normally heal at one Ability point per day of rest, and ten or more days of healing cost a month of training. Characters begin as agents of a supremacist colonial reconquest, a premise the book states openly and asks the referee to expose through play.