Horrors

In Age of Steel, Horrors are the giant snakes. The carnivorous man-apes. The blasphemous wossnames from the underbelly of the world.

The monsters.

Every Age of Steel adventure needs a Horror. The "weird" elements were a big part of the appeal of sword and sorcery tales (hence "Weird Tales", I guess). If you want the Sword, you need the Sorcery.

In the first draft, I just treated them as standard Adversaries (NPCs), but I've been rethinking that. Partly because how Adversaries work in the game has changed, and partly because Horrors serve a different role to the Adversaries in the source fiction. Even sinister manipulators like Nabonidus (in 'Rogues in the House') are terrified of the Horrors (Thak the man-ape, in that story).

So now Horrors get their own set of rules. They get access to special qualities that are more potent than heroes' Tricks, they get a big buncha dice in all their roles, they aren't dependent on the GM spending Adversity to make them tough (as is the case for Adversaries), they cause Terror, and they each have a weakness that cunning heroes can exploit. The idea is that a Horror can be avoided, but that overcoming them will require a lot of resources and potentially concerted effort on the part of the heroes. The single, hapless Horror in the playtest got utterly smushed. It will not have died in vain.

I think balancing their qualities is going to be the tricky bit. A couple of them look like they could combine in some deeply nasty ways.

A thought: Can a Horror be an Adversary? This might that be a way to handle truly nasty figures like Xaltotun. (Despite his importance in the Conan mythos, Thoth-Amon would definitely be an Adversary in Age of Steel, not a Horror. Or he'd be a PC).

Oh, and I know There's a Lot of Capitalisation Going On, Here. I'm tinkering with how it should work in the game text but I'm thinking each of the components used in adventure building - Places, Adversaries, Horrors, and Treasures - should always be capitalised for clarity. Still deciding what other bits should be.