Ironwood Omnimedia

Ironwood Omnimedia Company (IOC) is a multimedia company whose stated mission is to "connect artists with diverse audiences through innovative, creative and broad avenues." Their first major project involves creating and publishing role-playing games for the E-RPG System, a generic role-playing game system designed by one of its founders. It was founded in 2006 by Willie Santana & Ruel Knudson.

History
After 8 years of developing the Saga Series Ruel Knudson enlisted the help of former soldier and old friend Willie Santana. During an interview with RPGBlog Mr. Santana said; “I had only minimal participation in the design of the core rules, as I was away in the military much of the time when the game was developed.”  That leads to the conclusion that IOC’s creation, as a multimedia company instead of a gaming company is Mr. Santana’s doing.

IOC’s free release of the core E-RPG System Fantasy Rules (the Fantasy Sagas and the Game Master Lodestar) was met with resounding support by the role-playing community receiving a combined 1000 downloads in its first week.

At a glimpse at IOC’s official website one can see a virtual library of upcoming products.

''*It should be noted that, according to reports, IOC's Fantasy, Modern, and Sci-Fi Sagas are unique in the feature that they are interchangeable. Once all three genres are released, it should be seemless for a GM using the GameMaster Lodestar to incorporate features from any or all three of the other Genre Sagas.''

“Sagas is the name of the game while e-rpg is the name of the rule set. Initially there was only Sagas. For me, having developed the game for almost 8 years as Sagas I can sometimes forget the two different aspects. We decided to differentiate the two to allow for better licensing agreements. This would allow someone to purchase publishing rights to use the E-RPG system for their own setting or to publish with us a game in their own setting. Alternatively one could opt to publish content specifically for Sagas which would have a separate publishing or development agreement.

The differences become more apparent once we start opening up development to everyone (which is a big plan for the future after we get the other core books finished). In that scenario anyone can develop content for E-RPG or Sagas which we can publish for them (provided certain standards are met). In that event E-RPG will refer to the entire scope of products developed with the same basic rules while Sagas will remain our primary product for RPGs."''