Counting down to the RPG Society Kickstarter!  Sign up for our email list on the right and be sure to follow Stan Shinn on Google+ to get updates on the RPG Society, our Kickstarter’s launch and other RPG news.

 _____

Be a part of RPG history! Join the RPG Society, an organized play society for the OSR currently under development. We have several projects and special announcements planned. Our road map currently includes three main areas: organized play, a new lightweight fantasy setting, and one sheet scenarios. These products can be used independently of each other, so the setting and one sheet scenarios will be ideal for home campaigns whether or not you participate in organized play.

SOCIETY

Organized Play

The RPG Society will sponsor an organized play network. Like other organized play networks, we will make your character sheet portable between different gamemasters.

System Neutral

Unlike other organized play groups, our approach will accommodate multiple game systems. Whether you play Swords & Wizardry, Labyrinth Lord, Pathfinder or any edition of popular game systems, our simple conversion tools will let you port your character from gametable to gametable for continuous play. Initially our society will be focused on organized play for Fantasy settings, but in time we have a vision for expanding to other genres as well.

Community & Contests

We also plan on having robust community features. Society members will be able to contribute custom content such as stat blocks  unique magic items, rumors, adventure seeds, NPCs, and new monsters. Members can rate and vote on content, allowing quality contributors to be recognized for their fan works. We have some special rewards in mind for our top contributors as well as special contests — more on this later in the year!

SETTING

New Fantasy Setting

We are producing a very lightweight, sandbox-oriented Medieval fantasy setting available for use in home campaigns or in organized play. If you like City State of the Invincible Overlord or early Greyhawk editions, you should love our new setting! The fantasy setting will be a system neutral edition, with stat blocks for the most popular rules systems available as separate downloads.

Compact Enduring Canon

The setting will have just enough setting detail to feel coherent and real while remaining an open-ended canvas for gamemasters to improvise, design, and build their own setting details and stories. Our general outline of the world will provide sufficient detail to be evocative and playable, but we will purposefully stay away from setting bloat and obsessive detail. Our goal is to never expand the setting in a way that is not backwards compatible or that interferes with the goal of keeping the setting concise and easy to pick up!

SCENARIOS

Below are some of the key features of our adventure scenarios. Let us know which are your favorite.

One Sheet Adventures

If you like ‘one page dungeons’ or Savage World’s one-sheet scenarios, you’ll like our One Sheet Adventures!

Both One Shots and Story Arcs

While many scenarios will be one shots, some seasons will feature a linked series of one-session modules. No railroading, but a story connection that leads to a satisfying conclusion with a thematically connected series of easily modifiable adventures.

Zero Prep Time

Short, tightly edited content that a gamemaster can scan and start playing with, requiring only a few minutes of prep time. For those in a time pinch, a ‘Quickstart’ section allows you to read some block text and jump right in and run the scenario on the fly!

Playable in 4 Hours

These adventures will be evocative, concise and designed for a satisfying story arc which you can complete in 4 hours of play.

Expandable to 8 or More Hours

We will have optional content, seeds for extended adventuring, random encounter tables, and other tools to easily extend the one sheet adventure to eight hours or more.

Scalable to Different Levels

The one sheets would give guidance on levels and include multiple tiers (for example, a scenario may say “The Amulate of Shinkara: A wilderness adventure playable at character levels 1-3 and 3-5”). Note: How tiers work and port between different games systems (some of which don’t have levels) is something we are currently studying. We will be anxious to get community feedback on this important topic once our forums are open!

System Neutral

The adventures will be system neutral with community-contributed stat blocks for the most popular systems.

Replayable & Adaptable

One interesting observation from other organized play societies is that many players and gamemasters actually run or play in the same scenario more than once. Our scenarios account for this and spice things up: we will have multiple endings and twists included so that gamemasters can easily pick from different options to make subsequent sessions unique and interesting.

Contests

We plan on holding contests for much of our content. Want to break into RPG writing and showcase your talent? This will be a new opportunity to develop new talent from within our own RPG Society!

Source Files

In addition to beautifully laid out PDFs, when you purchase our scenarios you will also receive source files including high-resolution images of any maps. This will allow you to easily re-purpose and adapt the content for online play with virtual tabletops like Roll20 or Google+ Hangouts.

Future Innovations Underway

We are also entertaining new delivery mechanisms such as ePub (eBooks), as well as having a compilation of each season’s adventures (packaging up what will amount to a book of ‘one page dungeons’).