Iron and Liberty - Midnight at the Arsenal quickstart adventure

1854.

The Compact Has Broken.

For seventy-six years, the Colonial Compact of 1778 held together a truce nobody believed in. Then, on March 15, 1854, a labor dispute at the Colt Factory in Hartford became a massacre — and the massacre became a revolution. Five days later, the Continental Congress declared independence, binding the industrial United Northern States and the slaveholding Confederate Southern States into an alliance neither one trusts, against a Crown that would rather see the colonies burn than let them go.

Iron & Liberty: The War of the Three is an alternate-history tabletop RPG built on the 5th Edition System Reference Document — no spells, no magical healing, no fireballs. In their place: the Gambits system, a set of trained tactical and social maneuvers powered by Resolve, and a world where a well-placed rifle shot matters more than a spell slot. There is no faction in this war that's purely heroic, and that's the point.

This free quickstart includes:

* The setting's premise and the Colonial Compact's collapse
* The core Gambits & Resolve system, with sample maneuvers across six categories
* Six ready-to-play Level 3 pregenerated characters — Sharpshooter, Provocateur, Spy, Rail Rider, Liberator, and Gunfighter — each with full stat blocks, gear, and personal hooks
* Full weapon stats for every firearm and melee weapon the pregens carry
* Midnight at the Arsenal, a complete one-shot mission: infiltrate a Crown arsenal before dawn, secure a powder magazine, and make a choice with no clean answer — playable in a single session, map included
* Full, ready-to-run stat blocks for every NPC in the mission — nothing to look up in another book

If you've ever wanted a Civil War that's actually a three-sided war, a revolution where the good guys and bad guys aren't sorted by uniform color, or a D&D-compatible game where your gunslinger doesn't need a spellbook to matter — this is the introduction.

The full Iron & Liberty: The War of the Three core rulebook — six classes, nine prestige classes, the complete Gambits system, 27 colonies, and a GM's toolkit for running the three-way war — releases soon from Meridian Worlds.

This product is compatible with the 5th Edition System Reference Document (SRD 5.1), released under the Open Game License. It is an independent production and is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by Wizards of the Coast.