Metahumans Rising
A downloadable game
When Super-science, Metahumans, and magic come together the possibilities are limitless. Create a rich comic book world uniquely your own. Protect the world from mad mutants, evil organizations bent on world domination, corrupt government groups that seek to control Metahumans or have them neutralized, and intergalactic conquerors seeking to harvest the Earth for their own reasons.
Using the Open Action System, players can create virtually any hero they can imagine. With guidelines for running individual heroes or creating their own world-class super team, the Open Action System is designed for fast, creative play that rewards characters for their backgrounds, talents, and creativity.
- Build a shared super setting with guided collaborative world building and team origin, or jump into the action with the world of Metahumans Rising.
- Create heroes with customizable arrays and flexible powers based on keywords, or pick from over 25 sample powers from absorption to water control, with hard light constructs and invulnerability in be-tween.
- Never feel limited to just what’s on the sheet as heroes push themselves beyond their limits with Willpower, a measure of one’s determination that grows as misfortunes mount and heroes struggle with their own motivations.
- Easy to use rules for background characters and disasters allows GMs to create threats on the fly, from radioactive mutant gerbils to a tidal wave large enough to wipe out a country.
- Find out about villainous organizations like Chimera, a genetic cult seeking to force start the next stage in human evolution, and the Bureau of Metahuman Affairs, a secretive arm of the US government tracking Metahuman activity worldwide.
- Burning the Midnight Oil, an introductory adventure, gives you everything you need to get started, including: a story to help define a campaign city, a cadre of super villains known as the Brood and a sample starting super team, the Steel Aces.
* Note: Radioactive gerbils sold separately..
System Overview 1: The Basics
System Overview 2: Character Creation
System Overview 3: Background Characters
Steel Aces web comic
Updated | 2 days ago |
Status | Released |
Category | Physical game |
Rating | Rated 4.8 out of 5 stars (11 total ratings) |
Author | House Dok Productions |
Genre | Action, Adventure, Role Playing |
Tags | Female Protagonist, Story Rich, Superhero, Superpowers, Tabletop role-playing game |
Average session | A few hours |
Languages | English |
Links | Homepage, Web Comic, Patreon, Kickstarter |
Purchase
In order to download this game you must purchase it at or above the minimum price of $15 USD. You will get access to the following files:
Community Copies
Support this game at or above a special price point to receive something exclusive.
Metahumans Rising - Community Copy
With each purchase of Metahumans Rising, we'll match it with a free copy that's available for someone else. We will also do this each time tips total $15.00, beyond the normal price. These copies are there for the community so if you are interested in the game, but can't purchase it at this time, please enjoy this copy.
Development log
- September Reduced Posting Schedule2 days ago
- Meet The Rejects, Part 1: Breakthrough30 days ago
- The House of Steel Kickstarter is live!37 days ago
- Overwhelming Force I: The Basilisk44 days ago
- House of Steel Preview47 days ago
- Light And Reflection, A Team Origin Part 551 days ago
- Diversionary Tactics - A Metahumans Rising One Shot58 days ago
- Martial Arts In Metahumans Rising Part 26: Balintawak (Street) Eskrima65 days ago
Comments
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I picked up this game a couple months back and I'm going to run it for a few friends soon. I'm so excited!
But I'm running into a bit of an issue that I'm not quite understanding how exactly the character creation process goes (mostly the part about assigning stats based on the arrays you've chosen). It's probably just my brain, but do you maybe have a video or a dumbed-down step by step document that I could consult? Any help/advice would be immensely appreciated!
Putting together an explainer video is a great idea. Not sure I could put one together any time soon, but I can try to help with how arrays work. For this walk through, I'm going to use the values from Classic Power Level, as shown on Pg. 19 of the Metahumans Rising core book. Characteristic Levels used to describe Attribute Values are then found on Pg. 21.
How to decide what goes where?
Other than History, nothing is preselected where things have to go. Players choose what attribute their Power(s) is linked to , this means they have the freedom to decide what's important and what makes narrative sense. Revising the example above, let's say instead of being a traditional tank that derives their power from their body, they are a psychic that weaves a telekinetic construct around themselves in battle. Functionally, the power might change only very little* but instead of Constitution being the Parent Attribute, now we want Intelligence. In this scenario they might have their array lined up like this:
Here we use the same array, but in a very different order. This casts a very different light on who the character is as a person, and how they might play at the table.
I hope this helps you and your friends as everyone makes characters. If you have other questions, or want to dive into something here, let us know.
* Very Little Change: Both characters might start with the Invulnerability sample power, Pg 71, but our psychic adds the Unique Drawback: Activation Required to Passive Defense, and Locks the rest of their Defensive Boons to this to represent activating the construct.
This helps so much! Thank you!
This is such a great game, and even free at that! I've been having such a blast within the past hour by just building the vast world with all kinds of insane stuff like magic, aliens, and metahumans, obviously. And of course, I have to talk about the art, too. I love the art style; it reminds me of all the comics I stealthily read at the bookstore when I was small... Setting up the table right now, gonna call my buddies over for a session, who I'm sure would love the game as well.
Seriously, this is one of the best finds I've come across recently on Itch.io.
I can't believe this book has gone under my radar for such a long time.
Thank you so much for your kind words. Hopefully, Metahumans Rising can provide you an expansive toolset to craft your worlds. Community copies were a bit thing for us as it removes barriers for people wanting to try new games. This is also why most of our adventures are PWYW, it helps to keep everything accessible. (The material that isn't has come from our now completed Patreon, for the Steel Aces comic, we wanted to still be able to offer it, but didn't want to minimize the aid our patrons provided as we brought the Aces to the page.)
Here's to your adventures to come, we hope you enjoy.
How many players is this game?
Metahumans Rising can facilitate most game tables, typically 2 to 6 players, with 3 or 4 being a kind of sweet spot. At conventions I've run one on one games, and once a table of 12 people. At that size though we got a bit wild and woolly to keep things moving.
looks like lots of fun
We hope you enjoy playing!
I really enjoy the fluid way that characters can utilize their abilities in this rule set. The ability to spend session resources of your character to think of creative ways to add extra skills/power/abilities to your role as long as it is in a way that makes sense it pretty awesome.
Thanks for the callout r0wntree! The ability to adapt powers and tactics is something we felt was an iconic aspect of comics and superheroes. It's also something we wanted to make sure was represented in Metahumans Rising. We're glad you enjoy the game and the ways we tried to encourage creativity.