Manhattan is the origin place of Tab Creations, the creators of the Saga Machine table top role playing game. Tab Creations started years ago as a group of friends making comics, and in high school they started to create their own pen and paper RPG. Despite several of them moving away from Kansas they've continued creating and growing since then, with the Saga Machine system and its related settings being their most recent line of games.
Game developer Thorin Tabor describes the company's ideals best, saying "We're really focused on making games that are fun to play and allow players to be creative. Our games are particularly noteworthy in that they are fast and flexible. Story-telling in our culture goes back to the dawn of civilization, and tabletop role-playing games are just one modern evolution of that tradition."
One of the things that I find so uniquely appealing about Saga Machine is that it's an RPG with as many options as there are styles of gamers. The game's core system combines a variety of rules essential to getting started, but even the "class" system typical to games like this is presented as a grouping of available skills rather than a rigid set of abilities that must all be accepted, making it easy to make a unique and personalized character from the very start. Currently there are three Saga Machine settings, each in a different genre. Tab's oldest setting is "Trystell:Reborn", a fantasy themed game of knights and magic influenced by fantasy literature like The Lord of the Rings or A Game of Thrones. Because the setting has been developed and refined since the group's early days, the world of Trystell has it's own rich mythology of gods, monsters, and organizations each vying for control. The developers at Tab Creations have also been influenced over the years by comic books and science fiction, and they've created two new settings that reflect those genres as well. One is a superhero themed setting called "The Zeotis" that invokes themes of brightly colored heroes, cartoonish villains, and a sense that narrative flexibility errs on the side of exposition. The other is a darker game with a theme of futuristic horror (think of movies like Aliens or Event Horizon) called "Shadows Over Sol". Each have their own additional rules that are added to the Saga Machine system to evoke that extra flavor. In addition to these setting source books, the mix and match philosophy behind Saga Machine has led to the development of different "modules" which group rules together. These modules allow Saga Machine to accommodate a variety of optional rules to make the game fit the needs of the players- if epic wars on the field of battle is what they want the Combat Modules include rules for mass battles, and if the players would rather focus on individual stylized duels the same module includes rules on fighting stances as well. Mental Modules add options for fear or insanity for a game with a "Call of Cthulhu" style of paranoia, and there are even Social Modules that offer rules to account for the fame (or infamy!) of the heroes.
Despite their humble beginnings right here in the Little Apple, Tab Creations has seen significant success, being featured nationally at events like Intercon and internationally at New Zealand gaming conventions KapCon and Chimera Con. If your gaming group is looking for a new and flexible game to try, previews and occasional free supplements like custom rules can be found at their website at http://www.tabcreations.com. If you like what you see there, you can show your support for these local storytellers through the Tab Products page on their website or through their publisher at http://www.lulu.com by buying one of their books to use the next time your gaming group gathers around the table to create their own tales.
Posted with Blogsy
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