Here are the main characters from this project. The game was about bounty hunters in a futuristic Martian colony-city setting. The idea is that there are a bunch of "bad guys" that are the bounties players encountered and captured, and these are the nine main characters you could use to play - each has a different motive and win condition as they move around the city and engage the bad guys :)

We started by sorting out a concept grid for the characters:

• (orderly -> chaotic) going across
• (high tech -> low tech) going down

and then designing into those characteristics. Also trying to hit some typical sci-fi genre tropes.

I already posted up some stuff about this. The two blanks are characters that A. (my partner in this) designed, so those will get filled in later.

At the top row across are the highest tech characters, going across from orderly to chaotic:

• The effete, precision oriented, "matador" assassin guy who is all business. His main weapon is a highly customizable pistol that can reconfigure into anything he needs. I think of him as having only a few, small, elegant gadgets of couture design and high lethality: gilded Gucci disintegrators and such. He's the most exposed, scrawny and visibly unprotected, but that's also a sign of his skills. He's supposed to be the kind to collect his reward for bringing them in Dead (not Alive), so he would get bonuses for overkill, the biggest critical hits, and penalties for pulling punches and live capture, etc. Some bounties are specifically for live capture, so his approach is not always an advantage. He wins by collecting enough single strike kills against worthy bounties.

((The next two characters are not my visual design, but we sorted out the concepts together. I asked A. to add to this image when he can.))

• The next is a young catgirl, golden age, pulp-scifi sort of character; in the bubble-helmet Buck Rogers style. She's supposed to be a "reality tv" celebrity who is in it for the fame and glory and is followed constantly by a swarm of small camera-bots who record her every adventure. She packs a theatrical cliche raygun and is always playing to her fans. She has the corporate backing to do whatever she wants really, but isn't so serious about the job and will make decisions based on good drama and ratings; perhaps letting the target get away or putting herself in "peril" to produce a cliffhanger situation she could otherwise easily escape from. She would get reward bonuses for how close she gets to dying before capturing her target, and penalties for making it look too easy. She wins by bringing in a certain amount of cash for her show.

• The top right character is an escaped slave who was made into an unwilling cyborg being, sort of like the Borg, etc. So she doesn't use tech as much as she is tech. Lots of cybernetic, Giger imagery and weird implants and so on. A. has a better grasp on the character's motivations, but I think she is trying to piece back her memories or something of her former life. Her win would come from collecting certain software rewards to complete a set of upgrades (basically reclaiming her memories).

Next row across are all the middle tech characters, from orderly to chaotic:

• The mercenary, paramilitary, space marine type. He has the best ranged attack, and carries the biggest gun that shoots low from the hip, so it's kind of a penis substitute. Wanted him to be hunkered down and armored. His strength is in his gear, not his physical body, so he's not muscular but instead has bulky protected joints, that sort of thing. It weighs him down though, so even though he might be tall if he stood up, he's hunched and heavy under the full kit. He's just as dangerous as the matador, but not as nimble. I'm thinking his gear has that matte black, faceted, stealth technology imagery. He wins by fully outfitting and upgrading all his gear, which isn't trivial since it's modular and has lots of parts that need constant managing.

• This is supposed to be the middle of the road character and is the only human. She's a fan of the old washed-up NASA style and her gear should look like used astronaut/junkyard stuff. Modified shuttle craft and obvious nuts and bolts and that sort of thing. Helvetica font and aspirational names on things (Discovery, Challenger, Apollo, etc) that are obviously held together with scrap and gum and tape. Carries a big ass wrench and should seem like a mechanic, half-dressed in a bulky old astronaut uniform. Her motivation is that she's stuck on Mars until she saves up enough cash and scrap to get off the rock back to Earth. Character starts off in debt and with poor initial resources, but can use any hardware and software rewards, and generally has no real drawbacks nor other advantages. She wins by doing a little of everything: collecting cash, hardware, software upgrades, local favors to the city, etc.

• The rough and tumble, tribal warrior novice. Who visually is the biggest and naturally strongest, but is meant to be slow and unsophisticated and is just a kid really. He has the lowest tech advantage, but gets high bonuses for close range fighting to represent melee prowess and his fancy family heirloom gear, like all that crazy Klingon/Wookie weaponry. He has to defeat a set number of baddies to win as his adult rite of passage, so any capture is a good capture. He doesn't really need the rewards, and that could make him a useful ally for other character/players who are busy trying to collect stuff.

The bottom row are the low tech characters:

• The drone from a robotic hive. It's not a uniquely special character like the rest, but more like a single ant from a swarm of ants. It is simply out to collect raw material for the good of the hive and gets hardware rewards from captures. It has unusual stats that let it temporarily shift attributes or bulk up offensively or defensively or for speed, but at a cost of life points. However this character can never really be defeated, since if it falls, the player simply loses a turn and then another drone replaces it (starting over with base stats). Because this character is basically an animal, it doesn't make use of financial rewards or other bonuses that the other characters can get from the city setting.

• This character is an old professional; the only one who is an actual bounty hunter in the traditional sense. He is from an insectoid alien race and their tech level is John Carter of Mars/steampunkish: gears and cogs and Tesla tech, raw electricity and combustible fuels. He uses a mancatcher and knows his way about the city better than anybody, getting unique bonuses in certain game locations and discounts on upgrades. His goal is personal: to secure his local reputation by getting the most difficult capture in every sector of the city to win (so he can "retire" as the best).

• The last is the "witch", I showed her ship already. She is meant to be a little crazy and impulsive, and has abilities in the "Jedi" way of doing things, so technology is sort a side concern. This is also the character in touch with all the loopy, cosmic, cthulhu, elder god, azathoth at the center of the universe stuff... so, yeah. Her motives are to pull together components for a grand spell that will wake the sleeping Martian gods and destroy everything in this orgy of nihilism. So some random portion of the bounties will be tied into this and marked as rival cult member or necessary sacrifices or whatever, her motives will bring her into specific conflict with the other players often for limited resources. Much like her ship design, I wanted her to be a gradient of materials; so she is a monkey down below, more human through the middle and like an alien Grey as you go up, and mutant as you go out along h