Private/Locked Forums w/ Membership Functionality

Hello,

I am trying to do something very specific with my site, and I am hoping for a bit of direction on how to achieve my specific goals.

Ultimately, I am hoping to somehow have a basic membership site comprised of forums only (no other community features), where I can assign individual members access to specific forums.

On top of that, I would like for the ability to be able to integrate it into the membership registration process somehow, but realize that might be outside of the scope of limitations.

Ideally, however, functionality would be seamless and look like this:

1) I’d have a member’s area that is hidden from logged out users/visitors.

2) Visitors would need to choose either a free membership or a paid membership for joining site.

If they choose free membership, they can access the standard blogs on my site. If they choose paid membership, they can access private blogs (using categories) as well as pages within the defined “paid” member’s area.

3) One of the pages in the “paid” member’s area would be a list of assigned forums that would be hidden from visitors/logged out users as well as FREE members. However, if the user is a PAID member, they would be able to access their assigned forum, and not that of another paying member.

I am not interested in all of the features of Buddypress- only a forum type system. I have tried to make BBpress work for me but all of the additional plugins seems to be outdated. I have recently heard of Simple:press and am looking into it, but I am wondering if anyone has any suggestions on what to consider.

Any help is appreciated!