OSINT-6 Supplement by OSINT-6
The Petrosino Society investigates Mafia organizations and the people who protect them. Its members take up cases that have been buried, witnesses who have been abandoned, and threats that official agencies have been ordered to ignore. This sourcebook gives your OSINT-6 group a fictional secret society to join and a campaign built around the work it undertakes.
The society takes its name from the real-life Joseph Petrosino, also known as Giuseppe or Joe Petrosino. An NYPD lieutenant, he investigated Black Hand extortion affecting businesses and residents in New York’s Little Italy. He traveled to Sicily on an investigative mission in 1909 and was assassinated in Palermo on March 12 of that year.
Petrosino led the NYPD’s Italian Squad, which investigated crimes affecting New York’s Italian community. Before he was killed, newspapers had published reports of his planned journey to Sicily. The disclosure exposed an investigation that was meant to be secret.
The Petrosino Society is a fictional modern organization founded in his memory. Its members choose his name because they want to continue investigating criminal power when the people doing that work are isolated or obstructed. They aren’t his successors by appointment, and the society’s decisions belong to its founders and members. Its history begins with their cases, disagreements, and commitments.
The Campaign Premise
Society members work where a criminal organization has secured enough protection to keep doing business. A superior can close an inquiry, a patron can discourage scrutiny, or an intermediary can make a threat sound like an ordinary commercial dispute. Police corruption is one source of that protection. Honest officials may also find their authority restricted, their resources withdrawn, or their work redirected.
The player characters belong to a local chapter or work alongside it. They bring professional skills, personal connections, and reasons to care about the people involved. A serving investigator, a former journalist, a financial specialist, and a business owner can all contribute to the same case. The society gives them a reason to cooperate and some assistance, though it can’t supply all they need.
The society keeps its membership and unfinished casework confidential because a compromised official can pass information to the people being investigated. Publicly identifying a member can also put their family, employer, or sources under pressure. A completed case may lead to publication or official proceedings; the society chooses what to disclose with the affected people, and it can’t assume that its own involvement will remain hidden.
Each case begins with a problem and enough information to pursue it. Characters establish what happened, check accounts against other sources, and trace the relationships that allow the crime to continue. People who approach the society can be mistaken, frightened, or withholding. Treating an allegation seriously means investigating it before turning suspicion into a conclusion.
The team then chooses what it’s trying to accomplish. That might mean reaching an authority able to pursue a prosecution, helping a witness get out of immediate danger, publishing a substantiated account, or supporting people who want to resist extortion together. The shopkeeper might need the next payment stopped before she can risk giving a public account. The characters decide what they can accomplish now and what further work the case requires.
The society has no general police authority. Membership doesn’t make a search lawful, compel someone to cooperate, or protect a character from arrest. An honest official may help within the limits of their position, and a sympathetic lawyer may explain what a plan would jeopardize. Characters decide how to act with those limits in view.
Force can enter the campaign when an adversary threatens someone, an intervention becomes a confrontation, or a member decides that waiting is intolerable. Use the OSINT-6 rules to resolve the resulting danger. Violence can also damage a case, expose a source, or leave another organization ready to claim the same territory. A defeated enemy is one outcome to consider alongside what happens to the people the team came to help.
Success changes life in the district. A business can refuse a payment, a witness can speak without abandoning everyone who depends on them, or an investigator can resume a case with reliable support. Those gains can be contested: another collector may arrive, a witness may need continued assistance, or a patron may challenge the inquiry. The team returns to the people involved to learn what held and what still needs work.
Using This Book
The Petrosino Society is an agency sourcebook for the OSINT-6 Core Rulebook. Use the core’s character creation, operations, equipment, and conflict rules throughout the campaign. Characters advance through levels 1 through 6 and can continue earning qualifying feats at level 6 under the core’s advancement rules. This book supplies the agency, setting, cases, and campaign guidance needed to bring those rules into the society’s work.
Players should read this introduction and the membership description and character guidance the GM selects from Chapters 2 and 3. The GM withholds private dossiers, concealed relationships, and mission information until the characters discover them. Local chapter resources and contacts become available through membership and play. Knowing that an official has influence isn’t the same as knowing what that official has done.
Chapter 2 describes the society, its local chapter, and the members and associates who support its work. Chapter 3 helps players connect their characters to the organization and one another. Chapter 4 presents the district, including places where people work, gather, and seek assistance. These chapters establish the relationships that make an assignment more than a list of targets.
Chapter 5 gives the GM the criminal organizations and their protectors. Chapter 6 explains how to prepare investigations and handle interventions through the core rules. Chapter 7 offers six connected missions, each with an entry point for independent use. Chapter 8 supports continuing campaigns and provides records for cases, relationships, and follow-up work.
A new campaign can begin with recruits taking their first assignment, established members receiving a fresh complaint, or independent investigators asking the society for assistance. An existing OSINT-6 team can encounter a chapter as an ally whose information comes with obligations. Decide which connection fits the group, then begin with a concrete case. The characters can learn the rest of the society through the people who help them and the decisions that divide them.
The Petrosino Society is available through DriveThruRPG in PDF.
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