D&D General The American Crisis: War In The North - Third Party 5E Review

[Sparky McDibben]

Hello friends! I've been running Cyberpunk RED pretty much since the OGL Crisis, but every now and then something 5E related catches my eye. In this case, it's The American Crisis: War In The North from the team over at Flagbearer Games. It's designed to work with their 5E Early Modern Era system: Nations & Cannons. I've reviewed that book on here before, which I greatly enjoyed.

I like what I've seen so far, and I wanted to walk through and evaluate this work in total, so let's dive in!

The American Crisis: War In The North is half campaign setting, half adventure path, with some character options sprinkled on for extra nutritional goodness. The PDF clocks in at 354 pages, and covers the entire spread of the 13 colonies prior to and during the American Civil War, along with seven adventures running from levels 2 to 5. It has roleplaying profiles of 21 actual historical characters (generally the ones who don't get a lot of spotlight time in the histories), although they are blessedly not statted up. There are two new subclasses, a bunch of backgrounds, and a whole passel of languages, not to mention "magnificent items" that are definitely not just magical items with the magic taken off.

There is one thing I want to note before I get into the meat of the review. If you've been around the Internet before, you might think that this sort of product is either "pure American chest-pounding" or "nauseating liberal guilt trip." It's actually neither. The authors delve into the margins of the world, presenting people who aren't the great heroes I grew up with, and showing them as people, with all their messiness. In fact, there's a fantastic section where the authors give advice on how to handle prejudice in the past: "Place prejudice in the same mental category of play as visiting the latrine. Everyone understands NPCs do it, yet it rarely—if ever—comes up in play, and is definitely never described in detail." That's great context, because they're prioritizing your fun at the table, instead of making a value judgment about how you play. Honestly, I love how non-preachy this book is. The goal of the authors is for you to have a good time, not for historical pedantry. Good. On. Them!

The opening is a great introduction, stressing that the team wants to bring to life the world these people inhabited, that you can have revolutionary adventures from any side of this conflict, and that they aren't just focusing on the battles but everything else, too. I like it when a book has the cojones to tell me what they're aiming for; it makes it much easier to decide if they've succeeded! While the text is written for 2014 5E, the designers give several options throughout for converting the book to 2024 5E.

Chapter One is character options, including two new subclasses. The first is the Jager, a barbarian subclass that has a ton of options for ranged combat (which is great for a game that has guns) and mobility. Personally, I feel like this would have worked better thematically as a ranger subclass, so I'm curious why they went with barbarian here. That note aside, the result is impressive. You can add your Strength modifier to ranged weapon attacks, make any save a Strength save (while raging only), and even get Evasion (as a rogue, but only while raging and it doesn't come online till 14th level). There's a lot to like there.

The second subclass is the Drummer for the Firebrand class (a new class from Nations & Cannons intended to replace support casters for a non-magical setting). This is basically a bard, but in 18th-century New England. This actually works out really well. You don't get full spellcasting, but you can do a version of heroism for a bunch of allies at second level, for example. I've not played a Firebrand at the table, but this design looks solid, if finicky (lots of moving parts). The biggest gripe I have with this is that they didn't reprint the Firebrand class here, but the book is already over 350 pages, so that's a very minor gripe.

Also, the art in here is great. Here's some of the art for the Drummer:

That's right, Timmy, they're pointing those cannons this way, so you just keep BANGING THAT F***ING DRUM.​

There are five new backgrounds as well, from a Surveyor (better than you'd think) to my absolute favorite: Freemason. I mean, technically it's a variant subclass of Colonial Agent, but you get Insight proficiency, $5, and well-connected friends you have dirt on. Looking forward to dropping one of these into my games.

Past that, we have heritages, where the authors summarize different communities in about a page and a half each. There's hardly any mechanics attached except starting languages, but this whole section (all 12 pages of it) is a great reminder that there was a lot going on early New England, and that you have a shocking number of options for characters you can play. They give background on Acadians (who you might recognize as Cajuns), Haitians, Sephardim, and of course plenty on English Colonial subjects as well. A surprisingly thorough and engaging read! Past that, we get into magnificent items. Several of these are effectively minor magical items that grant you a small bonus (such as the Franklin Almanac, that, among other things, gives you a 50% chance to correctly predict the weather on a given day). There's also the Turtle (world's first military submarine), and a handful of new weapons. These are neat, but aren't really gamechanging unless you're a firearms fanatic and really want to see what a swivel-breech rifle looks like in 5E.

Moving into Chapter Two, there's a brief (12 page) precis of the American Revolution, but it cleverly avoids doing a blow-by-blow of it. Instead, it focuses on the broad groups of people involved, categorizing them as Loyalists, Neutrals, Insurgent Committees or noncombatants, and then breaking that down further. It's history from a role-playing perspective, and I actually found it refreshing to read. One thing about the book is that while it does make value judgments, those judgments are not political, but rather moral. It'll condemn war crimes on both sides, but without making the reading experience about those crimes. It doesn't shy away from the fact that there is a lot of really bad stuff going on, but it's not going to rub your nose in it, either.

Chapter Three is a 42-page gazetteer of the 13 Colonies and points west. Now, I loathe gazetteers. My eyes just glaze over trying to read them. But this is chock-full of interesting adventure ideas, neat little bits of trivia (that you can actually build an adventure around!), and other stuff that's just cool. Examples include that time that Ben Franklin sent three ships to steal 100 barrels of gunpowder from the British in Bermuda, or the Battle of the Five Armies...

NO. Wrong one.
​

Which of course refers to the battle outside St. Louis in 1780. Full-color, fully keyed maps are given for Boston, Ft. Niagara, New York, Philadelphia, and Quebec City, making my job in running a tense espionage campaign much easier.

All in all, I didn't enjoy the gazetteer, but it is the least offensive one of its kind I have seen in a while!

Past that, we start to get into the really fun pieces that the authors included. Chapter Four is Historical Figures. There are 21 people presented, 7 Patriots, 7 British, and 7 "Outsiders" (really neutrals). These are really good character sketches, frequently with watercolor portraiture, that lay out a person, why you should care about them, and what they want that your players might be able to help with. Some of them were people I'd heard of, but didn't really know well (Molly Pitcher, for example), and some are just plain out of left field. Seriously. Google "The Public Universal Friend." Yeah. The 18th century had some wild folks running around that somehow history class completely missed. These are fantastic NPCs, and really just great characters to drop in and watch your players go, "Wait, they want what now?" My personal favorite here is Colonel Tye, a slave who freed himself and fought for the British as a cavalry commander in New Jersey, raiding plantations to both help the British cause and also free more slaves. Like yeah, the guy's not fighting for the side I think is right, but damn does he have style.

Alright, I think that gets us through the front matter, so I'll leave it there for now. Next time I'll dive into Chapter Five: Gamemastering Tools, and the first adventure: The Spy & The Hill! Can The American Crisis withstand my adventure critiques? Does it stumble out of the gate? Is it any freaking good? Tune in next time to find out!

 

[Sparky McDibben]

Alright, let's get into the next couple of chapters!

Chapter 5 is titled Gamemaster's Tools and it does what it says on the tin. It's a great chapter, and one of the most-valuable chapters in the book, for my money. It starts with outlining a few basic requisitions packages that the PCs can ask for at the start of their missions - these are a frequent source of pain for me when I run any kind of game centered around a large faction. "Do they have any neat stuff for us?" is an often-asked question, and a solid logical point for the PCs. Now, since the Continentals are basically operating on a shoestring, you'd be justified in saying, "No," but this book gives you options for "Yes," that won't break game balance and won't make your life difficult.

That kind of forethought is very useful! From there, we get rules for what happens to gunpowder when you get it wet (don't), freezing water, some alternative morale rules, and a somewhat complicated system for determining the value of the Continental dollar by year. Now, my degrees are in finance and economics (which makes current events just absolutely infuriating), so I love stuff like this! You can see the effect of hyperinflation on a currency's buying power along with a plot hook for countering British counterfeiting (one of the first instances of economic warfare in the Early Modern Era)! If you're a sad person and this doesn't excite you, you can entirely skip this - it's about half a page. I'll feel bad for you, but it's OK.

Past that, we get some Campaign Mechanics. These include the Trappings system (optional treasure parcels embedded in the game for meeting certain actions), group checks, and Crescendo Challenges. I really like crescendoes, as I found them novel - I assume they've been done somewhere else and I just haven't seen them - but they're basically a twist on the group check. If you have something that requires more weight than a group check, but doesn't require a whole adventure, you can use a crescendo. Basically, everyone rolls a check pertinent to the goal, and the GM adds them all up. Then, you roll in the open a d100 - if you roll under the sum of the group's checks, they pass! Simple, elegant, effective. Brilliantly done, and the adjustments for group size are a well-thought-out addition. No notes!

After that, we get the Alert System. This is somewhat overwritten - it takes up 2 1/2 pages - but it's good advice for mechanizing an enemy response. Basically, it breaks up the enemy response into three sections, and gives the GM triggers for when to deploy those sections. It's a good example of how to take video game design (it feels very Assassin's Creed) and translate it into RPGs. I genuinely might steal this for my Cyberpunk games.

Past that, we get three key campaign NPCs, including Benjamin Tallmadge and Carl von Donop, and then we get a few pages on how to run the War In The North campaign. This includes a paragraph on each adventure, where it fits in the timeline, and what the adventure is about. It has advice for handling key NPCs while maintain player agency (always good), and reminds you that if your players do weird naughty word and throw history into the trash, you can still use the information presented in the first half of the book to make your own adventures. This advice is elevated in the section on "Failure & Consequences," where it literally advises the GM that the Declaration of Independence doesn't have to happen. Oh man. Can you imagine screwing up an adventure so badly that the 4th of July doesn't go off? That's a real kick in the nuts for your players, and I love it. It also gives advice that most historical figures are probably replaceable (including George Washington), but still offers a "here's what happens if the Brits win" scenario.

Pictured: Literal art from the book (public domain, yo!)​

And now we get into the action! Chapter 6 is the first adventure in the book. It's titled The Spy & The Hill, and deals with the players handling some odd jobs in the wake of Concord and Lexington, before taking center stage at the Battle of Bunker Hill. It's designed for an average party level of 2. The PCs get recruited by Dr. Joseph Warren, a Boston-based activist, but first....

It's time to bag these turkeys!

Yes, there's a small scene to that lets you get new players accustomed to making an attack roll by letting them hunt some wild turkeys. Afterwards, they get a quick intro to Dr. Warren. Warren's an interesting character. The chapter opens with one of his more famous quotations, "These fellows say we won't fight! By Heaven, I hope I shall die up to my knees in blood!" See Nathaniel Philbrick's A City, A Siege, A Revolution for more on him, but the point is that Warren is portrayed here as someone who is a diehard believer in the Patriot cause, and a flashy, over-the-top character. In my head I'm definitely using my "Macho Man" Savage impression:

His Britannic Majesty can suck on deez nuts!
- Dr. Joseph Warren (probably)
​

Warren recruits the PCs to help him burn down a British supply depot. The adventure gives some decent advice about plot hooks to pull the PCs into this, but it's a simple premise. "Hey, y'all wanna shoot some redcoats?" The encounter shows off a few new things about the Nations & Cannons opposition design (I can't legally call the Brits monsters, despite the fact that they came up with blood pudding), like volley firing, the importance of cover, etc. It's a good introduction, and lets the players "touch the stove" as it were by screwing up in an encounter unlikely to TPK the party.

As they escape, they are chased by a British ship that ultimately runs aground. Warren asks for the PCs' help in getting aboard and recovering the vessel's cannons.

After some downtime to heal up, the PCs are again approached by Warren for the next mission: keep a rebel spy safe by disrupting a British counterintelligence effort. See, the wife of General Gage is spying for the Patriots, but the Brits are closing in on her. She doesn't want to defect, she just needs to lay low for a while. Unfortunately, the Brits are sending a search party out to discover her with damning correspondence, and she's going to get sent home to England in disgrace!

My biggest problem with this setup is that Warren won't tell the PCs who the spy is they're being sent to keep safe, which rather hampers their efforts to keep the spy safe! Now, the scene is set up in such a way that the PCs don't actually need to know that; they just need to create a disturbance among the searchers and let Gage slip away. But damn, that is maddening. It's going to raise the hackles of your PCs unnecessarily, too. "Dude, we just shot up a bunch of redcoats, and now you don't trust us?" You can always come back with, "You can't reveal what you don't know," but it's still kind of a jerk move.

The actual encounter is admirably free-form, and advises the GM to be flexible when allowing PC plans to disrupt the search party. However, it does raise one question about character knowledge: if they don't know who the spy is, how will they know when the spy successfully escapes? The GM is sort-of advised to let the players know, "OK, you're good now," but I find that to be a weak-sauce solution.

Finally, the PCs get to fight it out at Bunker Hill! There's no time for a long rest after rescuing a spy, because the Brits are preparing to storm Bunker Hill*, where the Patriots have set up some defenses. They get snagged by a nearby Continental major named Andrew McClary, and immediately have to shore up the defenses at the base of the hill. These are mostly group checks, but I want to draw attention to this little vignette: "While few on the hill wear uniforms, Warren is especially oddly-dressed: a short white wig, a satin waistcoat, and a fine banyan bed robe all in white. Sword and pistol are buckled to his waist." I'm sorry, but I cannot find it in me to criticize a man who upgrades the dress code for a war.

The PCs can jump in and man a cannon (one of the ones they stole from that ship they ran aground), and then ultimately they have to fall back. In one final act of derring-do, they watch as Joseph Warren is cut down, and they have the option of going back and retrieving his body.

Alright, so there's a lot going on in this adventure. Let's talk pitfalls. I've already noted the issue with the spy mission, and the raid on the British storehouses is fine as-is. But assuming the players are going to charge the British army to recover the body of the plot hook NPC? That's a stretch. It would be helpful if the adventure did more to make Warren a more sympathetic character. My biggest problem with this adventure is that it feels disconnected from itself. I think it really just needs time to breathe, for the players to feel how insane this all is. The other problem is linear the adventure is:

​

I get we are dealing with space constraints, but if your adventure is a line, you can probably do better. Fortunately, this expands drastically in later adventures.

So, how would I run it?

Well, I'd probably do something similar to Dragon of Icespire Peak, where the PCs got to choose which side missions they went on for Warren. I'd also expand the timeline from two days to a week.. I'd keep the rebel raid as the intro, but strip out the bit with seizing the guns from the ship that chases you. I'd have a roster of three missions, and the PCs have to choose which ones they go on.

• Cracking the Diana - Recover the cannon from a British ship that ran aground (we're just moving this out and making it its' own mission). If the players don't take this one, they don't have any cannons to use at Bunker Hill.​
• Miss Direction - Save a pair of Patriot spies from British counterintelligence. If the players don't take this one, the Patriots don't get a warning in time about the British counterattack on Bunker Hill, reducing the number of Patriots manning it.​
• These Men Need Help! - Warren is still a physician, and he's doing his best to tend wounded soldiers, but he's running out of medicine; he needs the PCs to raid one of three doctors' offices around Boston and retrieve some supplies. If the players don't take this one, there are no sources of healing available outside of resting or character abilities for the rest of the adventure.​

I would then add some downtime scenes, especially focusing on Warren. Have the PCs meet him when he's tending the wounded (especially if the PCs are wounded). Have him invite the PCs to meet him and his kids for dinner. Have him confide privately in the PCs that he fears his courage will fail him when war finally breaks out, and that he would not be able to live with the shame of it. I'd also include at least one scene where someone points out how utterly batcrap crazy this whole thing is: Guys, are we really about to start shooting each other over taxes? JFC!

Finally, I'd rework the Battle of Bunker Hill in the same way. Give the PCs more toys to play with. Literally. Give them a bunch of equipment, and a time limit, and see where creativity gets them. Let them go full Ewok on the redcoats, complete with homemade incendiaries, punji sticks, and more. Let them roll flaming debris down on the British, etc. This breaks the first British advance. The PCs watch the second British advance nearly break through the American line, and give them a chance for a desperate countercharge to repel them. That finishes off the second British advance.

But as the Brits form up, word goes around: there's little ammunition. They've got enough to maybe - maybe - break the British attack again. But it'll take courage. Warren orders the wounded evacuated, and has the PCs handle it. He won't leave. As the PCs finish evacuating the wounded, they look back at the redoubt. The British are upon it! They see Warren and any other friends they've made battling bravely - do they just leave their companions to die?

If they return, Warren thanks them (while bleeding out) for their bravery. He asks them to take his ring to his eldest boy, braces himself against a tree, and gives them one final request: help him delay the British advance and buy time for the other troops to retreat. The PCs need to last three rounds while you throw the book at them, and on the last one, Warren orders them to withdraw.

Leave the rest of the adventure's conclusion alone, but cut out McClary.

As written, this is a great example of a period-appropriate adventure. It contains some interesting ideas and some solid execution, but I think misses the thing that would really elevate this to excellent work: player choices. I'd give The Spy & The Hill a 6.5/10 if you take it as-written. If you do some light editing as described above, I think this goes up to a strong 7.5 or even an 8.0. If 6.5/10 sounds harsh, just know that 90% of the adventures I read don't crack 5.0 on my scale. This is a cut above the rest.

Next time, we're going to come back for Henry "Hard" Knox to make the world's greatest Sneak Attack check...with cannons!

*It actually wasn't Bunker Hill, but that's a long story, and we're not going to get into it.

 

[Sparky McDibben]

Hey friends! I'm so sorry that I haven't done much with this thread over the last few weeks - there was some illness, a birthday, and a Comic-Con in there, and I got a little derailed.

This week, I'd like to take a look at the next adventure in this book, Guns of Dorchester. So, right after Bunker Hill, the Continentals settled in to siege Boston. But without artillery, they had limited effectiveness. Once Fort Ticonderoga fell, they suddenly had a bunch of artillery...but it was on the wrong side of several rivers and mountain ranges. Some poor schmucks had to drag all that iron 300 miles from upstate New York all the way to the Dorchester Heights overlooking Boston.

Also, those poor schmucks are your players, led by Henry Knox.

The intro here nicely establishes the stakes - the PCs are about halfway through the return leg, and Knox is getting desperate. He's running low on oxen (which you need to pull the wagons carrying the artillery, gunpowder, and shot), and his men are demoralized, and he's running out of options. This problem is fairly open-ended, with several suggestions for the GM so that the action doesn't stall out. In addition, the more the PCs do to help out the wagon train, the fewer checks they need to make to avoid exhaustion, thus linking their efforts to tangible consequences.

The next scene, however, involves the PCs surveying a frozen river, which is suddenly interrupted by a pack of wolves chasing a huge moose (and her moose baby) onto said frozen river. This can crack the ice and make it impossible for the artillery to get through...but also presents the PCs with the option to bag moose meat for dinner! Or, y'know, freeze to death in a Massachusetts river in winter. My only complaint here (and this will be a theme) is the lack of cartography - a small map with the surveying setup already drawn there would have dramatically helped my ability to grok this situation.

The next section happens after the PCs are back at Boston, having arrived with the guns and Knox in tow. There is a small bonus scene where the PCs can run an optional side quest to bring Lucy Knox to visit her husband back at the siege HQ. She needs an escort because there are some Tories who will absolutely kidnap her and use her for leverage. However, because Lucy's 19, she tends to avoid thinking things through. I actually like how Lucy's written in this - she comes across as determined but not overbearing, and passionate without being completely naïve.

After a couple days to rest up and get some hot chow, Washington's spymaster (Alexander Clough) pulls them aside and asks for their help. See, if the Continentals try to get those guns in place, the Brits will see it and launch a sortie to stop them. So they've come up with a plan - they need a diversion...helpfully provided by the PCs. Are they up for it? Basically, Clough wants them to keep Boston on high alert for an entire night. They can't just slip in, start a fire, and withdraw. Oh no. They need to keep poking the bear at least once an hour for eight hours to keep the Brits distracted.

The PCs have some meaningful choices to make about how they provision themselves, and how they try to slip into Boston. The supplies are abstracted in a Blades In The Dark sort of style, though neatly avoiding the problem with flashbacks in D&D (the authors actually credit a Robin D. Laws game, Esoterrorists, as inspiring their design). All this means that the infiltrate Boston / cause a ruckus / leave Boston scenes only take up about 6 pages, which is not bad for 5E books, though horribly overwritten by OSR standards. There's a great little "Escape From Boston" scene where the PCs can steal a ship and try to run it upriver to the Continental camp while dodging cannon fire. Good stuff.

This has several suggested targets with some great suggestions on how the PCs could infiltrate them and start a ruckus. These are all great as far as they go...but again, a lack of cartography means that the GM is going to have to improv a lot of maps during this hullabaloo (old words are great).

Overall, it's got decent stakes, relatively tight writing, and a lot of character choices. I really like this adventure, but the lack of cartography puts it at an 8.5 / 10 for me.

 

[TiQuinn]

The next scene, however, involves the PCs surveying a frozen river, which is suddenly interrupted by a pack of wolves chasing a huge moose (and her moose baby) onto said frozen river. This can crack the ice and make it impossible for the artillery to get through...but also presents the PCs with the option to bag moose meat for dinner! Or, y'know, freeze to death in a Massachusetts river in winter. My only complaint here (and this will be a theme) is the lack of cartography - a small map with the surveying setup already drawn there would have dramatically helped my ability to grok this situation.

A wagon train with artillery is going across a frozen river but it can’t withstand the weight of a moose and pack of wolves?