Welcome, Tactician
Standing Orders is a game about winning battles you are not allowed to watch.
You play a Tactician — the mind behind a kingdom's squads. You never swing a sword yourself. Instead, before a squad marches, you inscribe each soldier with their Standing Orders: a short stack of rules, read from the top, that tells them exactly whom to strike, whom to mend, and when to hold. Once the squad is past the treeline, no order arrives. Your writing is the only command they will ever receive.
Then the battle plays out on its own — and either your doctrine was good enough, or the mess hall has opinions about whose writ put someone face-down in a bog.
The world in three sentences
The continent of the Reach is fading, one failed harvest at a time. What holds the dark back is Glim, a luminous essence drawn from monster-haunted wells deep in the wild — and there is not nearly enough of it for everyone. Every crown on the map is drawing from the same shrinking light, and skill decides whose fields fail first, never whether fields fail.
The reliquary does not open for the worthy. It opens for the patient, which the worthy so rarely are. — From the Codex
What you actually do
- Keep a hold. Manage your city — the garrison, the barracks, the ledger — and decide who is worth hiring, promoting, and equipping.
- Write doctrine. Give every soldier a writ of Standing Orders: if this, then that, aimed at whoever matters most. This is the heart of the game.
- Read the outcome. Battles resolve on their own. You watch the replay, read the Verdict, and take your Glim home — or count your bruises and rewrite the rule that failed.
No battle is ever fought twice differently. The same squad, with the same orders, on the same field, always fights the same battle — which is why the Chronicle, the kingdom's instrument of foretelling, can read a battle before it happens. If your plan is bad, the Chronicle will say so. It is very patient about it.
Where to start
If this is your first march, begin with Getting Started — it walks your first hour, from the Muster Yard to your first Verdict. When a battle surprises you, the Battle chapter explains what happened; when a soldier surprises you, the Standing Orders chapter explains why they did what they did — and how to make them do better.
The Reference holds every skill, reaction, status, class, and condition in the game, exactly as they appear on your writs.