Welcome to the Heroes Universe

[Originally posted 27 May 2016]

Did you follow a link straight to this blog without seeing the site first? Ok, you probably ought to at least look at the home page first, or you won't have a clue what I'm talking about: www.dmheroes.co.uk.

This site has been a long time in coming.

The Heroes Universe started as a game in the summer of 1987. Me and a group of friends playing out the adventures of a group of colourful heroes, inspired by the comics we were all reading at the time. I started it, I created the world background and the basic plot, and I thought it might keep us amused for a few weeks.

Over the years our group has played, and still play, a variety of different games. But when we say the Game, we all know what we're talking about.

Three decades later, we're still playing it, and I have no idea how. My simple ideas just... grew... and grew...

I wasn't just running a game, I was writing stories. Whenever I introduced a new character to the Game, I had to have a backstory. Half the time the players would never be aware of it, but I needed to write it. So I wrote, and I wrote, and...

This is what some of those three decades of writing looks like:

I have no idea how many pages or words that is. But it has grown amorphously into an unorganized mess. Many times over the years I have tried to put it into some kind of publishable format. Sometimes I've even succeeded (which is why parts of this site may be familiar to some people). But it has always defeated me in the end.

So this site is my new attempt, and this time I shall win. I am committed to eventually putting every bit of documentation (even the parts that only exist in my head) into a readable format, logically organized, cross-referenced, and available to anyone who wants to read it. And hopefully it will be interesting enough to make people want to read it.

But what is it? And why should you care?

It's a work of fiction. Simple as that. But I've tried to present different elements in different ways. Parts of it will be written in story form, parts of it will be pseudo-factual histories and character biographies, and parts might be whatever else I think up as an interesting way to document the universe. You can read the stories by themselves, but hopefully the supporting articles will be interesting in their own right.

As to why you should care, that depends entirely on my ability as a writer. I hope I can portray the characters and the universe they inhabit well enough that you will come to love them as much as I do.

And if it's not your cup of tea, that's fine. Thanks for giving me a chance and for reading this far.

I'll keep writing this stuff even if I'm the only one reading it. After all, that's what I've been doing for the last three decades.