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.
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