Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Holmes) vs The Lost March

Compare Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Holmes) and The Lost March side by side. See differences in complexity, dice, genre, and more.

	Dungeons & Dragons Basic Set (Holmes)	The Lost March
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Tags	Classic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Exploration, Resource Management, Random Character Creation, Deadly, Vancian Casting, Descending AC, Tactical, Map-Drawing	Classic Fantasy, Sandbox, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Dungeon Crawl, Faction Play, Domain Management, Random Character Creation, Vancian Casting, Inventory Management
Core Mechanic	Attacks and saving throws use a d20 roll that must meet or exceed the relevant table target. Attack targets depend on the defender's descending Armor Class and the attacker's level or hit dice. The referee resolves other actions through specific d6 or percentile procedures and rulings.	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	Medium	Low
Availability	Out of print	Free core rules
Runnability	3 of 5 book tools	4 of 5 book tools
License	Proprietary	Proprietary
Third-Party Publishing	No verified route found	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	TSR Hobbies, Inc.	Fausto Botta
Year	1977	2025
Languages	English	English
Best For	Groups who want low-level dungeon expeditions built around mapping, cautious resource use, and treasure recovery.	Groups who want a long old-school sandbox campaign that turns treasure into faction rank, training and eventually conquered land.
Highlights	Ten-minute turns tie searching and rest to the risk of wandering monsters. Recovering treasure grants experience, rewarding expeditions that secure loot without fighting every monster. Reaction rolls let encountered creatures respond with negotiation or offers of help.	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	The core covers only the first three character levels and refers higher-level play to Advanced Dungeons & Dragons. Magic-users must spend at least a day studying to regain an expended spell. Poison can kill on a failed saving throw even when the initial hit is survivable.	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.