I don’t know why I don’t announce my Kickstarters on this blog. It’s not like I’m putting out content so dense that a post talking about one of my actual main-job projects would require me to push something else back. So let’s talk about Tactical Doctrine: Rat King! Tactical Doctrine is a series where I try to build an expanded Monster Manual one month at a time, with an emphasis on creating complete armies for different enemy factions. Tactical Doctrine: Troll King focused on goblins, orcs, and trolls, and Rat King is focusing on ratlings and sewer monsters. The Rat King doesn’t just have a ratfolk and a boss ratfolk, he has a ratfolk heavy and shaman and rat swarm and they all fight together. There’s different units with different roles who work together, following a tactical doctrine, hence the name. Heavies and rat swarms hold the line, skirmishers shoot from afar, and the shaman throws on debuffs.
You might wonder why, and the answer is because the Rat King is the guy who gets the Rogue class, and I want to get three tactical classes out as fast as possible so you can have an absolute bare minimum size tactical party. Troll King had the Barbarian, so Rat King has the Rogue. Tactical classes come with paired abilities where using one also exhausts the other, which means you have a lot of options but using them comes with more consequences than just attrition, so you need to put some thought into which one you pick. The goal is to add decision making into individual combats, a place where D&D has usually struggled (D&D is really a character building game, and even more really than that, a party building game).
There’s also rules for solo play. A lot of people have characters and adventures they can’t find a group for, and solo play rules are meant to finally make those dreams come true. It’s a smaller audience, but I feel like I’ve pretty much completely mined out standard D&D 5e content. I basically never get players wondering about a character concept that’s not already playable in Chamomile’s Guide to Everything. Rat King’s solo rules is for mysteries, which give instructions on how to turn a city gazzeteer (standard in most sourcebooks) into an Arkham Horror board to gather up clues, catch serial killers, and thwart conspiracies.
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