Big Picture Thinking - and a Picture

When I was in Middle School, my friends Matt and Mark had this deck of cards filled with silhouettes of military vehicles. I loved these cards - the simple, clean black and white images communicated so much to me about each vehicle. When I designed my first RPG (which was a military mission simulator where you could basically play GI Joes), I used the cards as the visual references for each vehicle as I statted them out. I still love these iconic designs, so I continue to use them for vehicles. Above is the design for the ship I shared a few days ago... which is now called the Madrygal Escort Ship.

Also, as I write, I have found a sweet spot for myself with technology. All of the really good technology is thousands of years old. In the game world, you're coming out of a dark age, and are re-discovering the starships and bots that belonged to the Naru, who are long-since dead. This keeps some of the vibe of 'finding old stuff' that sort of makes fantasy my favorite genre. It also makes it easy to include starships and bots into the game for new players. I always struggled with the idea that you are level 1, but you also have a few million credits to buy a starship. However, ancient starships are just sitting around in junkyards, buried in the wastes, and secreted away in old cave systems. You happen to find one, and bingo, instant ship. Bots work under a similar idea - they are all thousands of years old, and are programmed to find and attach to sentients. If you roll well at level 1, a bot found you and bonded. Congrats, you have your own R2-D2 or C-3PO. However, I also left an opening for bots to get total independence and go all Ultron, so that opens up some possibilites as well. You cannot buy a bot - it has to find you.