500 Playtesters in the Rattle and Rend Facebook Group – Plus a Brief Update

The Rattle and Rend Facebook Group recently crossed over 500 members.

In the immortal words of Theodore “Ted” Logan: Woah.

A Brief Update (aka What Update?)

Over the past few months, I’ve run the occasional playtest game of Rattle and Rend to find edge cases and determine what needs to be added or edited. The good news is the core gameplay feels pretty damn solid.

Looking at the Rattle and Rend Beta, I see three primary additions:

1. 1pt “Dregs” Group – to enable horde-style warband lists.
2. Powerful Terrain Type – grants benefits to Groups within it (mechanics TBD), thereby encouraging more of the forced movement game
3. Drives, a warband-level mechanic – adds narrative flavor and impacts pre-game setup and deployment.
4. Simple campaign system – nothing complex, nothing that requires careful bookkeeping, nothing that expects players to make changes to individual minis – focused on giving players options with a growing (and changing!) campaign-level warband roster

My focus has been on another tabletop gaming project, my TTRPG of Minimalist Monstrous Roleplaying, Hexingtide (also available on Itch). I’ve recently finished a major and long awaited playtest update of those rules. Once I finish the marketing plan for that update, I’ll be returning to Rattle and Rend.

A Request for Playtest Feedback