I'm going to be running a game for my local group, set in a fantasy version of Colonial America...

I'm going to be running a game for my local group, set in a fantasy version of Colonial America. I was hoping that some history buffs could provide some information to me about the British army (Redcoats) in particular what sort of kit they would be issued, what sort of training they had, and what sort of danger they might pose as law enforcement to a party. We're using your standard 3.5 rules.

Other urls found in this thread:

d20pfsrd.com/
d20pfsrd.com/equipment/weapons/firearms/
telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/11011316/Military-kit-through-the-ages-from-the-Battle-of-Hastings-to-Helmand.html
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Bess
youtube.com/watch?v=SJMbxZ1k9NQ)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle)
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookson_repeater)
twitter.com/SFWRedditGifs

Pro-tip: Delete this thread, wait an hour or so, then make a new thread. Use the same OP--same text, same image--but leave out the last sentence. Your thread will be one billion times better.

If someone asks "what system," lie.

If you're going to be running fantasy Colonial America, then please for the love of god switch over to Pathfinder and make sure you use the "Guns Commonplace" rules. Pathfinder is newer, better updated, and basically 3.75.

You're shooting yourself in the foot if you don't do it.

Everything ever released for pathfinder can be found here:
d20pfsrd.com/

Gun rules here:
d20pfsrd.com/equipment/weapons/firearms/

I didn't realize that people were so picky. We're perfectly familiar with Pathfinder.

telegraph.co.uk/history/world-war-one/11011316/Military-kit-through-the-ages-from-the-Battle-of-Hastings-to-Helmand.html
the waterloo section is probably close enough

>He has not shaved this morning. And from the look of things he shaved neither yesterday nor the day before. Ginger stubble sprouts from a sun tanned face, with red-rimmed blue eyes and a mouth whose teeth stand anyhow, like a line of newly formed militia. Bushy sideburns, ending in a forward sweep just below the ear, emerge from a battered black shako fronted with an oval brass plate and topped with white over a red pom-pom which has seen better days, and many of them. His red coat, waist-length in front, with short skirts at the back, is closed by ten pewter buttons, grouped in twos, with a broad oblong of white worsted lace framing the button holes. Its high collar and deep cuffs are yellow, and trimmed with more white lace. The effect is not improved by the fact that collar and coat-front alike are flecked with small burns made by gunpowder. Around his neck is knotted a piece of material which is now unquestionably black, though it might be that it started out much lighter. Grey trousers, knees and seat patched cloth which has an uncanny resemblance to that worn by Franciscan friars, hang loose, without benefit of gaiter, over square-toed black boots.

His name is Ezekiel Hobden, Hobden to officers, NCO's and most private soldiers but Zeke to a favoured few. On his attestation form he signified his intention 'to serve His Majesty until I be legally discharged' with a bold cross, alongside which a Justice of the Peace and another witness (who has helpfully included Esquire as part of his signature to make the point) have appended their names. He used to be a plough-boy from the gentle downlands above Alresford in Hampshire, but a row with his master and an evening's drinking saw him take the King's shilling in Winchester. Now his old calling is like some half-remembered dream, although when he sees Portuguese peasants ploughing their red soil he still recalls the plodding team in fron and the rich dark earth rolling from the coulter behind. Had he ever heard of Shakespeare he wold agree that' things without remedy should be without regard', but today it will be enough for him to be alive come sunset.

>He stands 5ft 6ins talle - taller than many of his comrades - and now he himself is a beast of burden. Broad buff-leather cross belts meet on his chest, with an oval plate at their intersection; thinner buff straps run down from his shoulders and across his chest, and a brown leather strap lies across his right shoulder with the thick canvas belt of a haversack alongside it. We can see, even from the front, the edges of his black canvas pack, and the grey greatcoat strapped on top of it stands well above his shoulders. A black cartridge box hangs at his right hip, amd bayonet-scabbard and round wooden water bottle at his left. His hands have the same worn-leather hue and texture as his face, and their short finger-nails are black-edged. They bear a dozen new cuts and old scars, and his right thumb is thickened with a mighty callous. His left hand hangs loosely by his side, while his right - thumb and forefinger apart - rests liftly on the bright steel barrel of his upright musket. Its 39-inch barrel is tipped with a bayonet, sixteen inches of triangular steel, its point level with his shako-plate.

Check the historical wargames thread for links to painting guides, etc, for the period as those usually include some details of general equipment.
Also note that the Hessians were probably the most feared of the British troops employed during the war of independence, due to their reputation for savagery.

>his knees are weak and his arms are heavy. There is vomit on his uniform already, A meal of spaghetti.

>There is an animal tang about him which even that fine natural deodorant, the pervasive wood-smoke, cannot conceal. In part, it stems from the fact that he has worn the same jacket for six months and it smells powerfully of old sweat laved with the bad-egg stink of black powder, the muddy odour of the pipe-clay which whitens his belts, and the sharper nip of the brick-dust which, dampened by water, brings the metalwork of his musket and the brass of his accouterments to a shine. It must be said, although, that not much polishing has gone on of late. he has only worn his heavy linen shirt for a week, and so may hope to get another week or more from it yet, but our nose tells us that it is already past its best, and is not much helped by the fact that, long tails tucked in between his legs, it doubles as underwear. Even when clean it was not entirely sweet: the soap used to was it was made from mutton-fat, and the gentlest scent of roast lamb mingle with the other smells. He cleaned his teeth this morning, using the well-chewed end of a green twig as a brush, but these efforts cannot conceal the facts that there were onions in his supper and rum after it.

>We're using your standard 3.5 rules.

Serious question, have you thought about taking your own life?

ignoring all these system supremacists

the biggest dangers were local diseases, the next one was incredibly harsh discipline with flogging being incredibly common and at one point they had to limit the punishment to "just" 40 lashes
there were a hundred ways to die, and most of them did not involve being shot or stabbed

their daily life was simple and they had few provisions for daily life, and they spent most of their camp time drilling and training with their muskets, firing, formations, discipline, etc
their drills were the reason for their effectiveness, they would be made to go through all the motions endlessly until they could form a formation at the sound of a whistleblow and fire twice as fast as their foes

In terms of actual Equipment Red coats would've used the Brown Bess musket

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_Bess

If you care about weight I think a fully kitted out soldier would have been carrying around 40-60 LBS of equipment but don't quote me on that.

I'm assuming you'll probably have the party become part of the Revolution so just know that the early revolutionaries were really unorganized, suffered from equipment shortages, and were usually militia harassing the British.

Don't quote me on this though I am no real expert on this period.

make sure you make the Quartering of soldiers play into it somehow. Its mentioned in the bill of rights for a reason.

>redcoats
>law enforcement
The Second and Third Amendments exist specifically because of redcoat dickbaggery. Just shoot them.

I probably should have just said D20, but I had this sad little hope that I was being helpful by going with the system I thought people would be most familiar with.
Examples of dickbaggery would help.

Okay this ended up pretty long so [1/3]:

As someone who's looked a great deal into the firearms rules in pathfinder, I'm not sure I'd recommend using them without modification. The "early firearms" category of pathfinder (which is roughly the type you'd be using though the more primitive matchlock) have really short range, slow (yet still freakishly fast) reloads, and a misfire mechanic which all together makes guns pretty mechanically weak against traditional ranged weapons such as the bow. The bow/gun disparity can make any encounters with the natives dicey, since even early on guns get outperformed by bows except at extremely close range vs armored targets. If you want to make them better choices, I think you need a few adjustments (if you need an excuse to modify the rules, say that flintlocks are improvements over the matchlocks in the rules).

The default range of only five range increments of 40ft for a musket is pretty terrible, only slightly better than a thrown weapon. While getting to resolve as a touch attack within the fist range increment is really neat and thematically appropriate (thus removing armor as a useful thing), it's so short ranged that in any ranged fight you'll be getting shredded long before you can even shoot back. Other weapons in 3.PF use more historically accurate, though perhaps optimistic, ranges so it makes sense to boost the range of a musket. The brown bess musket that the British used in this era had an effective range of 525ft, so I'd use 10 ranged increments of 50ft. You'll still be out-ranged by bows at 1100ft, but at least it's not 200ft so you have a chance. Because everyone isn't going to wear armor due to setting you probably don't need to modify the armor penetration rules, but if you're going include lots of armored enemies or monsters you should consider using the "advanced firearms" rules and extend AP to 5 increments. Use this adjustment as a guide for altering all the other gun ranges.

[2/3]

Looking at the musket again for reloading, the reload rate is actually super fast compared to the real world (5 shots a minute compared to the historical rate of about 3-4) which is fine since all other 3.PF weapons also have fast reloads (a real life arbalest crossbow could only fire 2 shots a minute compared to the 5 shots a minute a 3.PF heavy crossbow can dish out). However, it's still slower than crossbows: even with rapid reload, it takes a move action to reload a pistol and a standard to reload a musket. This means you can't make iterative attacks, so mechanically you're weaker than bow users. This is fine if you want to try and keep it a lower power campaign, but your players might go full native and abandon guns for superior bows. Paper cartridges, which were standard equipment at the time, reduce the reload rate even further allowing pistols to make iterative attacks and finally giving muskets one shot a round (which is pretty ridiculous when you compare it to youtube.com/watch?v=SJMbxZ1k9NQ) but now you butt heads with the new mechanic for guns: misfires.

While early guns did misfire, 3.PF makes the misfire rate a tad crazy. We're talking at least a 5% chance of every shot being a complete dud, and with paper cartridges this rate jumps up to a minimum of 10%, 15% for the common musket. That's just crazy; you shouldn't be that unreliable unless you've literally been firing nonstop until your cartridge case was empty. At the very least I'd remove the penalty for paper cartridges; you might want to go further and drop the misfire rate for all guns (for the weapons that are already 1, have a coin flip to confirm the misfire or even a d4 or larger dice) or just ignore the mechanic because crossbows and even bows malfunction but nobody ever tracks that.

[3/3]

With the mechanical bullshit out of the way, you're probably going to want to add some more weapons to the list to fit the era. You're going to want an early rifle for sharpshooters (increase the range, price, and possibly reload time), a shorter carbine for cavalry (there's a bunch of ways you can treat this mechanically, just remember that it's between a pistol and musket in size and used for cavalry), and you'll probably want to add some of the fancy, one-off gear that didn't have wide distribution like the Girandoni air rifle (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girandoni_air_rifle) and Cookson repeater (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cookson_repeater) for fun and variety.

3rd amendment sums up one of the common complains pretty well:
>No Soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the Owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
The British army in the colonies didn't have that much of a support structure so they ended up taking over private homes and converting them into barracks. Other activities included the usual "asshole guard" behaviors, though obviously that was less institutional and more case-by-case.

The 4th amendment also covers another grievance:
>The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated
Really you should just read the bill of rights and the history behind them, it will give you a good idea of the sort of things that pissed off the colonists so much that they wrote it into the Constitution.

Well, for one they weren't "red coats". More maroon jackets. All recently retrained as light infantry, and damned good at it.

The British forces in the colonies were comprised of several different groups. Redcoat regulars were professional soldiers and gentlemen who fought not in wild melee but in ordered battle formation. But there weren't enough of them to fight the war. Most of the war was fought with Hessian mercenaries. They did not speak English, were poorly trained and equipped, and their morale was low. Supporting these units were colonial Loyalist militia and native Loyalist tribesmen, local forces that did not travel far from their counties and often fought using guerilla tactics. The militia had fair weapons and did things like seize bridges and materiel. The natives were undisciplined, used native weapons more than muskets, fought like berserkers, scalped the dead, and committed atrocities.

Law enforcement activities leading up to the war revolved around tax evasion of the Stamp Act and investigating sympathizers and inciters. When war loomed, they added curfew enforcement, seizing blockade runners, and checking for contraband such as rum and weapons from the Dutch colony of St. Eustacius in the Carribean.

The quartering in homes that previous posters mentioned only occurred when the military seized control of a city. Most of the time they operated out of stockade forts strategically positioned to control trade points.

Before the war, the Redcoats' strongest hold was on the Canadian provinces straddling the St. Lawrence river, and the provinces on the Gulf coast of Florida. They also controlled the Atlantic and eventually seized control of the Dutch colony of St. Eustacius in the Caribbean to control weapons trafficking.

The region around the St. Lawrence river was dense forest with sparse and poorly maintained roads. It was easy for groups to hide if they knew the terrain, but movement was slow. The region was arduous in the winter, and the clothing of the day wasn't up to the task- frostbite was common and serious.

The southern provinces had several swamps that were hideouts for malcontents, natives, and rebels, and later for rumrunners. A hot and extremely humid climate where most people operated with as little clothing as necessary. The southern provinces had more Loyalist militia groups than the northern ones because of the influence of the powerful economy of Boston and successful PR campaigns through the newspapers. Although Boston itself was divided, most of the upcountry folks in places like Portsmouth and Montpelier were dependent on Boston merchant houses for trade and tended to see things their way, as the Stamp Act wreaked havoc on their livelihoods.

The terrain of the middle colonies was split between hilly Appalacian backcountry and forested coastal plain with a few ports of call.

Transportation most of the year was a serious problem, as the roads were unpaved and ungraveled, and rain and melting snow made routes impassable with mud. People who could get letters and supplies through the ruck and past government forces were paid handsomely.

The Crown regiments were trained for fighting wars in Europe. These were heavily choreographed affairs, where units fought in ranks, and advantage went to the troops with the greatest fire discipline. Entrenchment was considered cowardly and the sapper forces who carried it out would be shot dead instantly if captured. Fire discipline was a joint matter of maintaining formation under fire while working quickly through the difficult minute-long reloading process for the muskets. Only gradually did they adapt to the guerrilla tactics of the long riflemen of the colonies. The British musket came with a 7 inch long ring bayonet, a stabbing weapon that could be used to carry out or repel a charge on their position. But the muskets weren't long enough to allow the bayonet to function as a proper spear, so they sometimes wielded the butt of the rifle as a club instead. Colonial forces lacked the ring bayonet because they were weapons for hunting and personal defense rather than military affairs. They devised a plug bayonet that could be fitted into the nozzle to repel a charge, but the gun could not then be fired. Muskets were suitable for normal fighting against formations because their inaccurate fire was likely to strike someone to either side or in the ranks behind. Long rifles were far more accurate because they were used for hunting, but were useless for affixing bayonets and were often badly damaged when used as a club in melee. Swords were a weapon for officers and cavalry along with pistols. Sailors carried a long knife and pistols and also used belaying pins as clubs. The knives of the time were for personal defense and were not great weapons for battle.

Colonial Gothic has done this, maybe 6 books.
Osprey books will give you all the data about specific armies.

This user gave the best advice.

Here's the Horse & Musket trove link from the /hwg/ thead:

m3di@f1r3
/folder/w6m41ma3co51e/Horse_and_Musket

The Osprey folder there is crammed full of colonial, F&I war, and AIW stuff. You'll get all the info you need regarding kit for various forces, battles, tactics, etc. Ignore the shit posted here by fuckwits like & .

OP here, great stuff, thanks! I was planning on modifying a few details for the sake of gameplay, namely making firearms operate more like single-barrel shotguns with the shell to match, having them serve as a trade-off with bows with the idea of accuracy/power and pierce/bash.