Work In Progress Preview

I have something exciting to share. 

I decided to expand the original MHR to include a setting. I realized without any sample characters that the game is a little confusing to grasp. Examples are great for establishing the intended outcome and gives you a model of what to make when doing PCs and NPCs. As such, I began working on a few samples and this expanded into a setting.

The idea slowly ballooned. I realized it would be a good resource for when MHR finally releases to have a setting and characters on the CC-BY. Unlike Fantasy, Sci-Fi, and many other TTRPGs, the licenses for Superhero TTRPGs often exclude the stat blocks of same PCs and NPCs. Because the characters are intellectual property, the OGL and ORC exclude them from duplication. Unlike Fantasy, Sci-Fi and other genres, there isn't "generic" monsters. You don't just have "orcs" or "goblins" or "dragons that can be put in the SRD and third-party developers can just use for their projects. It puts third party devs in the spot that they'd need to make their own setting and characters to do a lot of third party work, which is the opposite the environment you want if you want to build a community.

The "Magnificent Heroic Universe", when finished, will be open to anyone to use for any purpose personal or commercial.  Third party products, actual plays, etc. That would be good to help foster the environment when MHR is eventually fully released. I also think it can be nice for developers who don't want to make their own heroes and lore for their superhero games (possibly even art, as I have considered doing the "Kevin Crawford" thing and put the KS art up for license with the artist approval) to be able to just use this universe. This is a luxury that fantasy RPGs and SciFi RPGs have, to a degree, that Superhero just do not have. 

I wanted to give this INCOMPLETE and UNEDITED work-in-progress preview to show what I'm cooking up. It hasn't been given to a sensitivity reader yet so there could be things here that need fixing. I've just been toiling away for a while and a part of me wanted to share.

A lot of worlds still need to be made -- like Fantasy Earth, Shaper Earth, and Martial Artist Earth -- and I kind of got sidetracked with the multiverse stuff and I need to go back and finish expanding the main earth. I also plan to give a setting to MSR, which will be more drama focused. MHR is more inspired by comic book properties while my plans for MSR are more for TV and movie inspiration.

Technically, if there is any confusion, this release does put a lot of the setting and characters into CC-BY already. Just so there is no confusion, this release does activate the CC-BY license included in the document for what is already released here.

Hope you enjoy!