Overview: What is Steel Horizons?
“Steel Horizons” is a discord based Tabletop RPG that is set in the far, far, future after the events of a terrible magical disaster that ravaged most of the known world. It is one part “Shadowrun”, one part “Horizon: Zero Dawn”, and one part “Kids on Bikes”; the current setting being a couple hundred years after the founding of a central megacity where the characters live and a culture that has advanced ‘back’ to the cultures and technologies more or less on par with the mid to late 1980’s - all sprinkled with lost technology from the past that blends in elements of science fiction and cyberpunk themes.
How do you play this game?
Steel Horizons is played exclusively via Discord with occasional forays into map programs like Roll20 or OwlBear Rodeo. It is done entirely via text roleplay format using digital dice rollers. Individual games, that allow you to earn experience on your character, are posted in the labeled channels for game announcements; however, roleplay can happen at any time people are on in any of the public channels.
Get started by opening a ticket in the Help section in order to discuss character generation.
What books do I need?
We use the following books in our custom setting.
A Brief History of the Future
The year is 326 since the Day of Founding - the day the City of Olympia was established at the base of the Eastern Mountains. No one is certain about the periods before Founding - and what little is known has been hard fought and hard won.
At some point, the world of the Ancients came to an end, not in the fiery apocalypse some of the ancient texts warned about, but in a magical plague of monsters called the Horrors. No one is certain when, but at some point, magic returned to the face of the earth and with it those creatures of ancient legend - fire breathing birds and bulls, dragons with many heads, and the like. All was not lost, however, as along with the monsters came a return of magic to the world - stories tell about the day magic returned and people changed - where once humanity was a species of its own, now they walked besides elves, dwarves, orks, and trolls.
A fledgling metahumanity was unprepared for these changes and monsters, and in their return, the Horrors frenzied across the globe consuming as much magic as they could. The Ancients, in their wisdom, realized that those newborn hunger pangs would eventually fade, and so created the Arks.
The Arks were vast underground places where humanity could survive until the hunger frenzy of the Horrors subsided. What the Ancients could not have planned for, however, was how much humanity would become a plague unto itself. Following their release from the Arks, enough of the normal social order had been disrupted, as much due to the fledgling magic that certain people showed as well as new racial divides, that the planet fell into a strange sort of “wasteland period” where roving tribes of people eked out a hardscrabble survival - often at the cost of others.
Much knowledge of the ancient world was lost during this wasteland period and stories conflict about just how long that period lasted. Tiny fiefdoms of tyranny and tribalism rose and fell without anyone to mark their passing while the Horrors continued to be a threat to people everywhere. While no longer in the birth throes and hunger frenzy of their creation, the monsters continued to prey upon humanity and the magic that was now carried within them.
The Founders, however, realized that metahumanity had once thrived. Even with the threat of the Horrors, marauding savage tribes, and dangers of the Wilds itself, they felt a city could be built out of the ruins of the former world.. What started as a small walled town at the base of the Eastern mountains became the City of Olympia - a vestige of society, culture, and security for the over two million members of metahumanity. These eight founding tribes came together in an unprecedented spirit of cooperation that was not normal for the wasteland period. Agreeing to set aside prior differences, the founding tribes began to build the central hub of what would later be called Olympia. After raiding a surprisingly untouched Ark found underneath the ruins of the city, they decided to build the city according to the patterns of the Ark - using the lessons that the Ark taught them about how to rebuild. What were once eight tribes with their own culture became one city with eight divisions, called Octants, as each group devoted themselves to the rebuilding of something bigger than themselves.
The remains of those cultures can still be found in present day Olympia, though time, distance, and the development of the city have shifted things around considerably. Whereas the Octants of founding were both culture and career, the present day city is far more cosmopolitan where one tends to work in the Octants but live in one of the outer districts, either following one of the old cultures or one of the newer ones that have sprung up since the days of Founding.
The Aesthetic of the Past
Steel Horizon combines the general themes of Shadowrun and Cyberpunk Genres with a “RetroFuture” vibe. The city of Olympia has progressed to a rough technological equivalent of the late 1980’s or early 90’s. Payphones dot the sidewalks and pagers are the main means of getting ahold of someone unless you happen to possess a cyberdeck and are riding the ‘bleeding edge’ of technology through the use of LOStech. No online matrix of devices exist to quite ‘ride cyberspace’ as of yet, but once your decker proclaims that “They’re in!”, all bets are off when it comes to digital mayhem inside that network.
So make sure your walkman has some fresh batteries, mount your ‘steel horse’, and get ready to look hella fly as you race along back streets and hardwired networks in the last great city on earth.
The City of Olympia…
What makes the city run?
As the city of Olympia has grown over time, scavenged technology from various raided arks have been cobbled together to establish basic utilities throughout the city, though some parts of the Barrens out in the Districts may not have consistent access to the power grid and some boroughs, such as Lud, often actively eschew it due to cultural forces.
In the early days of the city, a generation or two ago, shortages were common and life was hard; however, in the last decade or so the city has hit a turning point where power, water, and utilities are a common element. While still ages away from any kind of interconnected matrix of devices, local networks and hard wired servers have become commonplace in many businesses and municipal locations.
Cyberware of ages past
The specific techniques of building cyberware, the things where a person and a machine become one have long since been lost to time. If those records exist in some long forgotten Ark, they have not yet been discovered. Medical science has advanced to the point where doctors are able to take recovered LOStech and integrate them into the body to great effect.
In the last few decades it has become more and more common to see cybereyes, chromed arms and legs, and all the rest.
Magic in the City
If there was one thing that the wasteland period had any kind of benefit on was the development of magic. Hard times created a need for people to learn how to sort their magical abilities and that is just what they did. Since the days of founding, magic has been studied to the point where there are certain known variables - types and schools of magic, common abilities, and the like.
In general, magic has fallen into three large categories - mystic adepts who can use magic to enhance their body, shamanistic spellworkers who contact and commune with the natural spirits of the world that were likewise returned when the Horrors did, and full mages who exert their sheer will over the arcane flow of energy.
Working in Olympia
While many people live in the Inner Ring Octants, the focus there is clearly the work of keeping the city running. Regardless of the type of work being done, there is a seriousness that undertones it all - a knowledge that the city is a place of hard won peace. In the last few years, there has been an increasing social push for people to work in the Octants while living in the Districts, causing some new communities to pop up, but there are plenty of people who refuse and remain buried in the heart of the city.
Work hard, play Hard
If there is one thing that unites all Olympians, it is the fact that the Horrors sit outside the walls waiting for the careless or the brave. As such, every day is a celebration of sorts that the great Founding of the city has continued for one day more. While there are exceptions, of course, this has created a culture where for as hard as everyone works, they play even harder. Living under an ever present threat of the Horrors outside and the knowledge that at any wrong turn the great Founding could fail, creates a culture where ‘eat, drink, and be merry for tomorrow we all may die’ is a rule of life.
The Stories of Gods and Monsters…
Horrors are living stories. They are tales told around campfires, monsters used to frighten children, and legends whispered in darkness.
Each Horror has a Legend; the story that gave the Horror life. That story isn't always the version you (or your character) knows, and sometimes the story changes with each retelling. You can't always know for sure which version of the story you're in, even if you recognize the tale's pattern. You may even encounter some Legends that are new or you can't recognize.
A Horror's Legend will give you hints about its strengths and weaknesses and can tell you how it might act, but you can't truly defeat a Horror until you find its Bane. A Horror's Bane is the one thing that can finish the story according to Legend and defeat the Horror - or at least until the story gets told again. Bullets and knives and lightning bolts will work perfectly fine to drive most Horrors away, but they don't always stop the Horror from quickly coming back.
When a Horror first appears, it manifests out of nothing. Before a Horror manifests, there aren't hints or clues unless it's a part of the Horror's Legend. A manifested Horror can be flesh and blood, a spirit, or something else. When you finish a Horror's story, it will fade away and return to nothing, leaving behind victims and damage in its wake.
There isn't logic or a pattern for when or how a Horror manifests, but the walls of Olympia were built and are defended to this day to keep most dangerous Horrors outside of the city. Inside the city, Horrors are quickly dispatched by the Gatewardens, who are trained experts and have been dealing with them since before Olympia's founding.
If you ask the average person on the street what 'The Horrors' were, they'd be able to tell you the history lesson they learned in school about creatures that destroyed the world.
If you asked people to explain what Horrors are, you'd get blank stares, shrugs, or tall tales of monsters passed from generation to generation.
Nobody today truly knows what the Horrors that broke humanity actually were. At some point in Olympia's past, that information was lost. We do not know if those Horrors still exist today, but they have not been seen since the Arks opened, over three hundred years ago.
If you asked people to tell you the stories of Horrors that are around today, they'd tell you to buy a round of beers, grab a chair, and listen to stories of fiction bleeding into fact.
The leading magical theories speculate that these creatures are a form of natural spirit that have fed on the nightmares of humanity or perhaps magic itself gaining a rudimentary sapience, but try explaining that to the Horror while it's clawing at your face.
… and the story of you
Within this world, how do you go about making your way? Are you the freshest Decker to hit the streets of the Octants, a street shaman tending to the spirits and crops in the furthest reaches near the Wardwall? Were you born in the Octants or did you come up with one of the countless raider tribes that prowl the untamed wilds beyond the walls?
Are you a criminal or cop, a doctor or politician? Within the Walls of Olympia, you can be anything your mind can dream. So strap on the walkman, ready your cyberware, and summon your spirits to make your way inside the Last City on Earth.
And never, ever, trust the Horrors.
