OutsideRPG — Platform Vision
Domain: outsiderpg.com (acquired 2026-04-02)
The Idea
OutsideRPG is the real-world MMORPG platform. Every indie shop is a guild hall. Every customer is a player. The real world is the game world.
This isn’t a metaphor layered on top of a loyalty program — it’s the actual structure. /r/outside (1M+ subscribers) has been joking about this for over a decade. We’re the first to build it for real.
Brand Split
| OutsideRPG | dungeon.club | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | The platform / game world | Our shop’s guild page |
| Scope | Every indie shop that joins | Dungeon Books, Jersey City |
| Analogy | World of Warcraft | A single guild within WoW |
| URL | outsiderpg.com | dungeon.club (guild subdomain or vanity URL) |
| Audience | Players everywhere, shop owners | Our members specifically |
dungeon.club becomes our guild’s home — the first guild in the OutsideRPG world. Other shops join and get their own guild pages. The platform is the connective tissue.
Why This Works
For players:
- You don’t “join a loyalty program.” You join a guild in a real-world RPG.
- Your character persists across guilds. Visit a bookstore in Brooklyn and a game store in Portland — same character, same XP, same level.
- The /r/outside vocabulary is already in people’s heads. Zero explanation needed.
For shop owners:
- “Join the real-world MMORPG as a quest hub” is a wildly more compelling pitch than “sign up for our indie shop CRM.”
- Network effects: players discover new shops through the game world, not through ads.
- Collective bargaining power scales with the network (per the guild-manifesto).
For virality:
- The concept is inherently shareable — “this platform turned real life into an actual MMO” writes itself.
- /r/outside, gaming press, indie retail press, local news — multiple viral vectors.
- Every new guild that joins is a new local community that discovers the platform.
How It Maps to Existing Architecture
The dungeon-club-game-design-document already describes a single-guild instance. OutsideRPG is the multi-tenant version:
- Player accounts → cross-guild identity, one character sheet across all guilds
- XP/levels → global progression, earned at any participating guild
- Quests → guild-local (set by each shop’s “DM”) + platform-wide (exploration quests across guilds)
- Classes/factions → global identity
- NFC cards → work at any guild’s kiosk
- Marty → per-guild Discord bot instance, connected to global platform
- Network layer → the guild-manifesto Layer 3/4 (collective purchasing, shared demand intelligence)
The Metaverse Angle
Everyone else’s metaverse pitch was “put on a headset and enter a virtual world.” Ours is the opposite: the real world IS the game world. Go outside. Visit real places. Meet real people. Level up by living your life and supporting local businesses.
OutsideRPG is the metaverse for people who go outside.
Domains
- outsiderpg.com (acquired 2026-04-02)
- outsidemmo.com (acquired 2026-04-02)
Possible brand split (spitballing, not committed):
- OutsideMMO — the multiplayer platform. Guilds, cross-shop play, network, factions, leaderboards. The full vision.
- OutsideRPG — a single-player version. Personal quest log, character progression, no guild required. Solo mode.
The solo RPG could be an onramp for players without a nearby participating shop — level up by going outside, doing quests, reading books. When a shop joins the network in your area, you bring your existing character into a guild. Skyrim → WoW pipeline.
This is a second product though. Park it, don’t build it yet.
IP / Trademark
Do not publicly discuss the OutsideRPG / OutsideMMO concept or branding on social media until trademark is filed. Public disclosure before filing risks someone else filing first or squatting on the mark. Talk to an IP attorney before any public-facing use of the name.
Checklist:
- Consult IP attorney re: trademark filing (OutsideRPG, OutsideMMO, or both)
- File trademark application before any public announcement
- Check for existing marks in relevant classes (software, retail, gaming)
- Decide primary brand name before filing
Creative References
- Dungeon Crawler Carl — regular people thrust into a game system, keeping their real-world identity but now everything has stats and levels. Same energy, except ours is opt-in and fun instead of apocalyptic.
- /r/outside — the original “real life is an MMO” meme community (1M+ subs)
- FFXIV — Role/Class/Job progression system
Marketing / Poster Concepts
Poster 1 — Guild recruitment: call-to-arms style, recruiting for the Dungeon Books guild. First poster, immediate use.
Poster 2 — “Are you a Tank, DPS, or Healer?”: cryptic, no branding explanation. Photos of real people in their IRL jobs holding fantasy gear:
- Nurse in scrubs holding a glowing staff (Healer)
- Accountant in a suit wielding dual daggers — “tax DPS” (DPS)
- Gym bro with a massive shield (Tank)
No context. No explanation. People who get it get it instantly. People who don’t are curious enough to look it up. This is the teaser campaign for OutsideRPG before the platform launches.
Timing / Launch Window
The Dungeon Crawler Carl TTRPG Backerkit campaign launches mid-April 2026 (Renegade Game Studios). Record-breaking pre-launch followers — on track to be the biggest Backerkit campaign ever. The DCC community will be at peak engagement.
Target: get OutsideRPG teaser material (poster 2: “are you a tank, dps, or healer?”) out around the same window to ride the wave. Same audience, adjacent concept — IRL version of what they’re already hyped about.
Depends on trademark filing happening first. Do not publicly launch branding before IP is secured.
Open Questions
- Does dungeon.club redirect to our guild page on outsiderpg.com, or stay as a standalone brand?
- Multi-guild XP: is all XP pooled globally, or do guilds have local + global XP tracks?
- Naming: do shops pick their own guild names, or does the platform assign them?
- Revenue model: SaaS fee per guild? Transaction cut? Freemium with premium guild features?
- When to rebrand: do we launch as OutsideRPG from day one, or prove the model as dungeon.club first and expand?