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A member registered Sep 30, 2025 · View creator page →
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24 foes for the roads, hollows, ruins, wild places, and forgotten dead.
A grim-folklore regional setting of uneasy mysteries for Mettle 2d6™: Roads & Hollows.
A rules-light 2d6 fantasy RPG of hard roads, dark hollows, desperate fights.
A complete printable character booklet for Mettle 2d6™
Six grim-folklore archetypes for Mettle 2d6™: Bord, Queller, Wyrd, Troth, Tregetour, and Reaver.
Create a grim-folklore Delver.
The Foe Quire is a 16-page collection of twelve dice-driven adversaries for Mettle 2d6™ Delvers.
Delvers is a compact fantasy tabletop role-playing game built for dangerous delves and decisive combat.
Six ready-to-play, print-and-fold character booklets: Bord, Queller, Reaver, Tregetour, Troth, and Wyrd.
Build your own Delver, mark your fate, and step into the dark.
A grim one-shot adventure for Mettle 2d6™ Delvers
An Introduction to Mettle 2d6(tm) Game Engine and Hollow Below Adventure
A lean solo engine for overland travel and dungeon delves.
Recent community posts
itch.io Community » General » Release Announcements · Created a new topic Mettle 2d6™ Delvers Core Rules & Characters Released
https://barryleewentz.itch.io/mettle-2d6-delvers-core-rules-reference-characters
Mettle 2d6™ Delvers Core Rules & Characters Released
The Mettle 2d6™ Delvers — Core Rules & Characters packet is now available.
This is the player-facing rules set for grim, printer-friendly folk-horror adventures using only two six-sided dice.
Inside the packet you’ll find:
- the core Delvers rules
- skill checks
- melee combat
- hit location and severity
- Mettle, Marks, and Burn Mettle
- conditions
- foe types
- boss weakness rules
- four ready-to-play Delver archetypes:
- Wyrd
- Bord
- Queller
- Troth
The goal was to make a rules packet that is fast to learn, easy to print, and immediately playable with adventures like The Hollow Below.
What Makes Delvers Different?
Mettle is not just health.
Mettle is endurance, grit, determination, pain tolerance, and fighting spirit. You spend it to activate powers, survive terrible situations, and push past your limits.
When you spend Mettle, you gain Marks. Marks let your Delver grow stronger by gaining skills, powers, and traits.
But when your Mettle falls to zero, you Burn Mettle.
You survive, but you are changed forever.
A scar. A fear. A lasting weakness. A strange mark from the deep.
Your Maximum Mettle is reduced by 1.
That means Delvers can become more capable over time, but also more worn down by what they survive.
Built for The Hollow Below
This rules packet was built alongside The Hollow Below, a complete folk-horror mine adventure for 1–4 players, with or without a Game Manager.
The Hollow Below sends Delvers into Blackstone Hill, where miners vanished, livestock disappeared, and a child named Ezra has gone missing beneath the old mine.
The rules and adventure are designed to work together:
- light rules
- meaningful tactical choices
- dangerous foes
- fast combat
- printable black-and-white pages
- grim consequences
- no wasted table time
Printer-Friendly Design
Every page is designed for home printing in black and white.
The visual goal is simple:
Useful. Old. Fearful. Playable.
The rules should stay on the table. The character sheets should carry the marks of play. The adventure pages should guide discovery without requiring constant page flipping.
Thank You
This release represents a lot of design, testing, rebuilding, and refinement.
The system is small, but it has teeth.
Stand firm. Strike hard. Endure. Survive together. Delve deeper.
itch.io Community » General » Release Announcements · Created a new topic The Road To Blackstone Primer to Hollow Below
https://barryleewentz.itch.io/the-road-to-blackstone-primer-to-hollow-below
On the Road to Blackstone — A Mettle 2d6™ Primer
Forty-six years ago, when I was eleven, I played my first game of D&D.
The Game Master was a friend of a friend — an older teenager who seemed much cooler than anyone I knew. After that first introduction, I never managed to make contact with him again.
So I spent the rest of that summer trying to make my own solo version of D&D.
I had graph paper. I had imagination. But the only dice I owned were borrowed from the family Monopoly box: a pair of six-sided dice.
That childhood desire — to build a tabletop roleplaying game that could run on two six-sided dice and be played by one person — eventually became Mettle 2d6™.
On the Road to Blackstone is a short primer for the Mettle 2d6 system and an introduction to the upcoming one-shot adventure, The Hollow Below.
It is designed to teach the core ideas quickly:
Use two different colored six-sided dice.
Designate one die for Location and one die for Severity.
When you roll, you immediately learn where the blow lands and how serious the result is. Combat is fast, dangerous, and narrative by design.
The primer is slightly streamlined, but still asks players to make meaningful choices. Mettle is both your endurance and your edge. Spend it to survive. Risk it to win.
Each player character begins with 8 Mettle. Each archetype has its own Mettle power and doubles ability. Foes have their own Mettle starting amounts and quirks, giving them simple but dangerous attack abilities.
The goal is fast play, minimal rolls, deadly combat, and strong story results built directly into the dice.
I’d love for you to try On the Road to Blackstone and let me know what you think.
The full one-shot adventure, The Hollow Below, along with all four archetypal characters, will be posted later next month.
Thanks for taking a look.
— Barry