News

12 October 2024

Imagine a platform where players worldwide can connect and participate in adventurous, organized play events, and that is Warhorn. Warhorn, an event management platform for roleplaying and tabletop gamers, was founded by Brian Moseley over 20 years ago. Brian poured countless hours and passion into creating Warhorn to be free, open, collaborative, and safe, which is why Warhorn plays a uniquely central part within the organized play community.

The number of community events of all sizes arranged on Warhorn demonstrates its impact on the community at large in connecting gamers. Warhorn has had nearly 73,000 users since 2020 and 200,000 all time. Also, thus far into 2024, over 15,000 games have been scheduled. Given its expanse and importance to our community, the Organized Play Foundation (OPF) is honored to become responsible for Warhorn’s operations.

The OPF shares Brian’s values and is a volunteer-run, newly registered 501c3 nonprofit. Our mission is to support the gaming community of volunteers and players by providing resources and experiences that are fun, safe, and inclusive. We will foster inclusivity by never charging players for using Warhorn and will remain a platform-neutral site. Any player who uses Warhorn or wants to join in the future will have their data protected and will never be monetized for corporate interest. The OPF intends to keep Warhorn an accessible and safe place for our community to connect.

We appreciate that Brian has entrusted Warhorn to us and is “happy to have this opportunity to hand off Warhorn to an organization that will sustain it in a way that matches [his] values.” We at the OPF thank Brian for creating such a fantastic community gaming resource. We’re excited to start building upon his legacy but will need help. Generous support from our community is pivotal to the fulfillment of our mission.

If you’d like to support Warhorn and the OPF, please donate here. We need you to help us create a community of roleplaying gamers who are encouraged to play, form friendships, and have adventures.

Role on! Roll on!

10 October 2024

The Organized Play Foundation supports the gaming community of volunteers and players by providing resources and experiences that are fun, safe, and inclusive. OPF aims to serve as a global leader in volunteer advocacy within the organized roleplaying space. The values we try to operate by, and ask our volunteers and publishing partners to operate, are: transparency, honesty, inclusiveness & non-exploitation.

Our initial programs include:

• Stewardship of Warhorn, the preeminent web application since 2002 for hosting and joining Organized Play games. Warhorn has been used for hundreds of thousands of games, from local groups to game store play to large convention play.

• To serve as a 'volunteer union', to ensure that gaming volunteers and players are protected. We work with our game company partners, like Paizo, to harness our volunteer community for good.

• Volunteer Valhalla, to memorialize and remember honored gamers who have passed on.

The only current or planned source of funding for OPF is donations. OPF is a 501(c)(3) organization. We are independent and agnostic about games and publishers, and being funded only by donations helps us remain so. Currently donations pay for hosting and related fees for Warhorn and the OPF website. They also allow us to manage our legal contracts with gaming companies and with volunteers. We have no paid staff nor do any board members get compensation. All donations go only into funding these OPF operational costs.

It is in support of the organization’s mission and work, of our volunteers, and of hundreds of thousands of Warhorn games that we are putting out our first call for donations.

If you’d like to support our work, please visit the Donations page on our new site.

Thank you!

Role on! Roll on!

04 October 2024

The Organized Play Foundation supports the gaming community of volunteers and players by providing resources and experiences that are fun, safe, and inclusive. OPF aims to serve as a global leader in volunteer advocacy within the organized roleplaying space. The values we try to operate by, and ask our volunteers and publishing partners to operate by, are: Transparency. Honesty. Inclusiveness. Non-exploitation.

As part of our mission, we are publishing this call for volunteers, knowing how many contribute to and participate in organized play around the world. Volunteers are the lifeblood of organized play programs. They have historically been the driving force behind them, and most could not function without them. Healthy, longstanding programs are created through publisher support of volunteers and organized play programs, shared resources, non-exploitative practices, and by fostering non-discriminatory spaces to play games in.

Volunteers are not employees or contractors, and should not be treated as such. Publisher support of volunteers may take the form of, e.g., providing adventures, paying for printing of pre-generated characters for game days, or comped convention tickets, but volunteers will not be paid wages, salary, or stipends for fulfilling the duties of the volunteer role they've taken on. If a task or role is one normally undertaken by paid employees or contractors, it shouldn't fall on a volunteer's shoulders. 

If you’d like more information on how you can volunteer through us in support or organized play games see the volunteer page on our website, our social media profiles, the volunteer channel on our upcoming Discord server, or email us. Our privacy promise to volunteers is also there. We hope to hear from you!

Role on! Roll on!

 30 September 2024

The Organized Play Foundation supports the gaming community of volunteers and players by providing resources and experiences that are fun, safe, and inclusive. OPF aims to serve as a global leader in volunteer advocacy within the organized roleplaying space. The values we try to operate by, and ask our volunteers and publishing partners to operate by, are: Transparency. Honesty. Inclusiveness. Non-exploitation. OPF operations have previously been rather murky, and we're working to change that. Toward that end:

Board

OPF’s non-profit board is currently composed of seven long-time gamers—also volunteers—who believe in and implement the organization’s mission, vision and values. 

Eric Brittain (President)—former Paizo Org Play VO, longtime OPF boardmember, experience with coding
David Baker—published RPG author, experience with accessibility advocacy and anti-abuse tech
Marty Godsey—former Paizo Org Play VO, experience with data privacy
Steven Lee—former Paizo Org Play VO, experience with financials
Jess Miller-Camp—former Paizo Org Play VO, experience with data management and workflow creation
Rand Montoya—experience with non-profit fundraising
Jon Schwartz—former WotC employee, experience with tech and team management

With the "rebooting" of OPF, we have each signed on for two years terms of service. As our terms end—or as our needs change—we will be putting out calls for new boardmembers. We look forward to OPF's board becoming more diverse in backgrounds and knowledge bases!

You can find out more about each of OPF's current boardmembers, and email us individually or as a group, here.

Website

OPF’s new website is now up, sharing: 

• More details about our programs and our people

• A call for donations to support the gaming community

• Gathered announcements

Other Communication Venues

We have also set up various social media accounts for those who prefer to receive news that way. Communications will be the same across all sites, so you can choose the one that works best for you.
Facebook | Bluesky | Mastodon | Discord

Program Expansion

We are in the process of expanding from our initial program, the Venture-Officer Corps with our first partner, Paizo. If you might also want to partner with us, please email us to start a conversation!

We hope to hear from you via OPF's existing avenues, or on our upcoming Discord server.

Role on! Roll on!