Swords & Wizardry vs The Lost March

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

	Swords & Wizardry	The Lost March
Genre	Fantasy	Fantasy
Tags	Classic Fantasy, Dungeon Crawl, Deadly, Vancian Casting, Hexcrawl, Random Tables, Resource Management, Sandbox, Domain Management, Strong GM Support	Classic Fantasy, Sandbox, Exploration, Hexcrawl, Dungeon Crawl, Faction Play, Domain Management, Random Character Creation, Vancian Casting, Inventory Management
Core Mechanic	Roll a d20 with attack modifiers and meet the target number for the chosen Armor Class system. Ascending Armor Class allows a direct roll against AC; descending Armor Class uses attack tables. Saving throws use a single class-based d20 target number with bonuses against particular hazards.	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	Paid	Free core rules
Runnability	4 of 5 book tools	4 of 5 book tools
License	Swords & Wizardry Compatibility-Statement License (CSL)	Proprietary
Third-Party Publishing	Commercial publishing allowed — Swords & Wizardry Compatibility-Statement License	No verified route found
Summary only, not legal advice. Check current terms before publishing.
Publisher	Mythmere Games	Fausto Botta
Year	2023	2025
Languages	English, German	English
Best For	Groups seeking dangerous dungeon expeditions and open wilderness campaigns. Higher-level characters can establish strongholds and govern surrounding settlements.	Groups who want a long old-school sandbox campaign that turns treasure into faction rank, training and eventually conquered land.
Highlights	One class-based saving throw target replaces separate hazard categories. Treasure grants experience points, rewarding successful expeditions even when monsters are avoided. Stronghold construction and settlement taxes support campaigns that grow into territorial rule.	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	Low starting hit points and death below zero make early combat dangerous. Damage during casting interrupts a prepared spell and expends it. Nonhuman ancestry restricts available classes and level advancement.	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.