Roles for Historical Adventurers: Renegade, Scout, Officer (18th century D&D)
Roles are a new Origin feature designed to replace the standard Human (and 2014 variant Human) options when creating a human character. Built for historical black powder roleplaying, these Roles replace fantastical species for a 5E game set in a real-world 18th century campaign with new traits and gambits (replacements for magical spells). The example characters are historical heroes from the American Revolution, that show how Roles can apply to different adventurers!
Importantly, Roles are meant to define a human character’s education, skillset, and military training—they do not signify game statistics of real-world ethnic groups. Players choose a Heritage in addition to their Role, which represents their cultural upbringing and their first language, but has no mechanical benefits. Some Roles have suggested Heritages from the history of Colonial America, but players should feel free to use a different Heritage or create their own.
When you create your character, think about how you can complement your party’s strengths or shore up its weaknesses. Your Role represents your training, history, and abilities, shaping the type of comrade-in-arms your character will become. Are you a battle-hardened warrior? An opportunistic intelligencer? An idealist, fighting for liberty and equality? Or something else entirely?
The example characters are all playable pre-gens for Revolutionary adventures! You can download their character sheets from the Nations & Cannons website.
GMBinder Link: Renegade
GMBinder Link: Scout
GMBinder Link: Officer
Nations & Cannons is a D&D campaign setting for historical adventures! Straight from the pages of history, our ruleset offers new backgrounds, feats, and character options for living and fighting in the Age of Revolutions and beyond. For the next 3 months, our revised firearm rules supplement called Flintlocks & Fulminates—including much of the new content in this post—is available for free! This project’s educational goals means that the Nations & Cannons quickstart rules will also always be free to download.
If you want more long 18th Century and American Revolution content, join our Discord server. We’re launching our second Kickstarter campaign this summer called The American Crisis: Dark and Bloody Ground, a Revolutionary War sourcebook and adventure campaign covering the war in the South and West, from the French intervention to the climactic showdown at Yorktown (1778-1781). You can follow the project on our prelaunch page!
