A Conversation with Thomas Marrone

[00:00:00] Halfling: Thank you for tuning into the Halfling and the Spaceman. If you're new to our show, we welcome you and hope you're entertained and inspired to start your own journey into active fandom if you're a returning listener, thank you for choosing to spend some more time with us today. We're excited to be talking with Thomas Marrone.

[00:00:16] Halfling: Thomas will be talking about his activities and Star Fleet online as a ship designer and his work at Cryptic Studios. Thomas, welcome to the show.

[00:00:26] Thomas Marrone: Thanks so much for having me. I'm really excited to talk about, the intersection of creativity in fandom. I think that's a really great topic, and so many people, harness their passion for whatever fandom they're in a creative way. So I think it's great that you all celebrate that.

[00:00:40] Halfling: Oh, awesome. We appreciate your time and your contribution to that conversation and those topics. Let's jump right in. Tell us a little bit about yourself and your background.

[00:00:50] Thomas Marrone: Yeah, so, I'm the art director for Star Trek online. It's a officially licensed massively multiplayer game. And then we'll talk a bit more about, STO kind of later. But, as far as me, you know, I grew up, I've been a Star Trek fan as long as I can remember. It was very much a family thing for me where my mom watched the show in the sixties, and then when I was younger she started watching it, when it was syndicated in the afternoons on Sundays after church or whatever.

[00:01:16] Thomas Marrone: And so we watch it together and. Kind of when you're young and you watch something like that. I just really imaginative, colorful, and exciting. It really kind of sparked something in you. And then of course, star Trek Next Generation, premiered in 1986 and, I was only three at the time, so I started watching more of that as it got syndicated and I got older and older.

[00:01:37] Thomas Marrone: But that was really my star Trek growing up. And so, I also like to draw and so watching Star Trek and drawing, was very quickly, I just sort of, everything I drew was Star Trek one way or the other, you know, the ships, the characters, aliens, all that stuff. So, uh, that kind of snowballed into a career of graphic design.

[00:01:56] Thomas Marrone: I got my degree in graphic design and went on to work on, websites for university and eventually parlayed that into a career in the video game industry. And I've been working on star Trek online for the last, um, let's see, 2010. So last, uh, in November, 2010, so the last, uh, 12 years, I guess. Um, and yeah, and it's, it's been a long road, as they say, in the enterprise theme song, getting from there to here,

[00:02:26] Spaceman: Don't make me sing the enterprise team song,

[00:02:29] Thomas Marrone: I, I love the enterprise theme song. I'm one of the people, I'm one of the few Star Trek fans who actually like that theme. But, I really like how it coupled with the visuals, I think the visuals are a big part of it, of the early space program evolving

[00:02:43] Halfling: Oh absolutely,

[00:02:44] Thomas Marrone: and showing humanities progression in the space.

[00:02:47] Halfling: I always found it kind of inspirational almost, and it was, it is very moving

[00:02:52] Thomas Marrone: yeah, absolutely.

[00:02:54] Halfling: yeah. 

[00:02:55] Halfling: That's wonderful.

[00:02:56] Spaceman: It has that hope and optimism that Gene Roddenberry wanted to portray about the future. That we weren't there yet, but we were working on it

[00:03:05] Thomas Marrone: Right. Right. And that's, that's what's kind of special about the premise of enterprise is the transitional period from where we are now to where we get in Star Trek and you know, we can go back and forth on how well that was executed, but the premise itself, was really good. And there's some, I think there's some gems, not to go too far down a rabbit hole, but I think there's some really cool things they did early on that I, if they, I wish they had kept doing.

[00:03:29] Thomas Marrone: Right. There's an episode where they're answering, letters from school children about the, what's it like to work in space, what's it like to go warp five, all that stuff like real NASAs astronauts do, right? And that kind of thing was, was really cool cuz it, it showed that what they were doing was new and nobody had done it before.

[00:03:50] Thomas Marrone: And really underscored that point of this is, this really is the final frontier for these people. And space travel wasn't mundane for them. So I wish they had injected more of that into the show cuz that was a really special, special element that set enterprise apart. So anyway, sorry. , we can, 

[00:04:07] Halfling: No, 

[00:04:07] Thomas Marrone: we're, could go

[00:04:08] Thomas Marrone: down 

[00:04:09] Spaceman: a whole show talking about enterprise because I, I'm not ashamed to admit it. Enterprise is my favorite Star Trek. Um, I love the 1960 show. I mean, I really love it. I love the, okay, sorry. I was, I misspoke myself. The animated series is my favorite Star Trek, but Enterprises is a very close second, and so we could spend the entire hour talking about enterprise

[00:04:33] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. Absolutely. There's a lot of interesting stuff in there.

[00:04:36] Spaceman: There is, there is a lot of stuff to be unpacked.

[00:04:40] Thomas Marrone: Oh, yeah.

[00:04:40] Spaceman: So you've talked a little bit about your earliest, remembrances of Star Trek and how that influenced you and how you became a fan of Star Trek. What did you do after the Next Gen? Um, you said you, you started watching the Next Gen when you were three in 86.

[00:04:55] Spaceman: Um, 

[00:04:55] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. So, 

[00:04:56] Halfling: way to, way to to make us feel old, by the way.

[00:04:59] Thomas Marrone: sorry. Uh, I mean, you know, it's funny, I mean, he started working with people who were born in, you know, the nineties and the aughts, and that's just, I can sympathize in terms of feeling old when, when people say they're, you know, their first Star Trek experience is the Kelvin Timeline movies or even Discovery.

[00:05:19] Thomas Marrone: Uh, you know, it's interesting. It's an evolving, it's an evolving franchise. An evolving fandom, but that's good, that's healthy. Um, and, you know, we can embrace the things that we enjoy and be excited that more people are getting exposed to it. So, I think that, you know, looking back, there was next generation and then DS, started up and back then it was all over the air.

[00:05:42] Thomas Marrone: Right. My family didn't have cable, so we're just a local antenna network. And I think it was syndicated on a non-affiliated station that was an independent station in St. Louis. So we'd watch, DS9, whenever it came on, usually it was actually late start Trek aired late, like at 10:30 at night.

[00:06:00] Thomas Marrone: So that was past my bedtime, so I would have to record it, and watch it, you know, but I got to fast forward through commercials at least. But, uh, you know, DS9 was interesting because as it matured, they got into the story arcs with the Dominion War and then it became more appointment viewing, not just cause I like Star Trek, but also I just wanted to know what was gonna happen.

[00:06:22] Thomas Marrone: And that was the kind of the first taste for me of a broader story arc and a TV show. And that was really cool. And, then Voyager and Enterprise were a little tougher cuz I was going away to college around that time. Enterprise, I did watch kind of the finale of Enterprise when it happened, and that was right after I graduated college, I think in 2005.

[00:06:44] Thomas Marrone: Right around then. But, uh, it was fun with Enterprise. I watched it with my college roommate. He and I bonded over Star Trek and we would watch Enterprise together, uh, every, I think Sunday night or whenever it came on, and we would order, it was like a tradition where we ordered like Domino's Pizza and Hot Wings and watched Enterprise and, and uh, and that was, that's a special memory I have.

[00:07:06] Thomas Marrone: So, I mean, I just followed the franchise, you know, through that whole time and, graduated college, got my job at, Southeast Missouri State University, working as a web designer for that school. That was a lot of fun. I had nothing to do with Star Trek, but it was a good early career job.

[00:07:22] Thomas Marrone: And then in 2009, I guess, um, uh, we were jumping ahead a bit, but I mean, you know, eventually it got to the point where I had the opportunity to go work on Star Trek online and, but Star Trek has always been present in my life. Um, I, when I was in high school watching DS nine and Voyager, um, I was also working on a mod for computer game called Home World and turning that mod into a Star Trek theme game.

[00:07:51] Thomas Marrone: The original game is a 3D space tactics game. It's a real-time strategy game, but, unlike most games that are isometric view top down, where you're controlling tanks and soldiers in home world, you're controlling spaceships and it's full 3D because in space it's full 3d. So you have like fighters and capital ships and things.

[00:08:09] Thomas Marrone: So concurrent with DS nine Dominion War, uh, I'm working with these guys that I found on a forum just online who played Home World and wanted to make, we wanted this experience, but with Star Trek. So we learned how to make 3D models and textures and then replace the ships in the home world with Star Trek ships.

[00:08:28] Thomas Marrone: And that was a really exciting time for me and that was actually a foundational, really important foundation for the career that I would go on to have.

[00:08:38] Halfling: Wow.

[00:08:40] Halfling: Hi. You know, I have to say, and Spaceman can back me up on this, we know some very intelligent people, which I think is awesome because I hear these stories that I'm thinking, okay, good for you. You know, I, I put my pants on today, you know,

[00:09:02] Thomas Marrone: That's still a struggle for me too. Don't worry,

[00:09:07] Halfling: No, that, that's awesome. That's awesome.

[00:09:10] Spaceman: Well, outside of Star Trek, do you have any other, franchises or fandoms that you really enjoy?

[00:09:16] Thomas Marrone: Well, I'm pretty high on the horse with Star Wars right now cuz, Andor that, you know, the Andor just recently came out and I'm really, really enjoying that show. It's a very political, thriller, ba inspired by a lot of real revolutions in history. And it's all about establishing the early days of the rebellion against the Empire.

[00:09:35] Thomas Marrone: But it's a very adult to tonally an adult show in the sense of, uh, you know, it looks at what, what does it take to execute a revolution against an all powerful fascist government, right? And, uh, so, and, Andor it doesn't shy away from all. You know, the main characters are revolutionaries and terrorists, right?

[00:09:56] Thomas Marrone: And that kind of thing is, uh, it looks at that with a pretty honest eye, which is kinda refreshing for a property like Star Wars, which is typically very family friendly, black and white, you know, that kind of hero's journey kind of thing. Andor is very against type for a lot of Star Wars media and very mature, nuanced look at the struggle of trying to topple an all powerful fashionist regime, which is really cool.

[00:10:22] Thomas Marrone: So I've been getting, back into Star Wars. I've been playing the Star Wars, X-Wing tabletop game. It's a dog fighting game that's a lot of fun. And, other than Star Wars, which is, an easy answer. Everybody loves Star Wars. But, I also really enjoy, Babylon 5. That's one of my favorite TV shows of all time.

[00:10:41] Thomas Marrone: Um, and I would actually rank it as much as I do love Star Trek. And Star Trek is kind of my intro, introduction to science fiction. I would say the Babylon 5 is, you know, better than most Star Trek as far as a TV show and the writing and plotting.

[00:10:56] Halfling: not, not to interrupt, but important question here. Old, Babylon five, or, oh, wait, no, I'm sorry. We're talking Babylon five. I

[00:11:05] Halfling: apologize. We're not talking we're not talking about,

[00:11:10] Thomas Marrone: I, I do enjoy. Yeah, I do enjoy Battlestar Galactica I haven't seen it in the original. I, you know, I enjoyed the reboot, um, I any space opera. So, uh, you know, another thing that came out recently that I really got into was the Expanse. Um, really, really love the Expanse. So, and then there are a couple, um, I'm not a huge anime person, but there are a couple space opera animes that I also really enjoy, like, uh, Space Battle Ship Yamato, um, Legend Galactic Heroes, at least the remake.

[00:11:40] Thomas Marrone: I haven't been able to watch the original yet. But, um, a anything, you know, just a sucker for space opera, what, whatever the flavor of it is.

[00:11:48] Spaceman: Did you get a chance to see the live action Yamato they did a couple of years back?

[00:11:52] Thomas Marrone: I did, I actually own that dVD . 

[00:11:56] Thomas Marrone: I had 

[00:11:56] Spaceman: We, we do too, but I sadly broke it when I was taking it out of the DVD V

[00:12:00] Thomas Marrone: Oh, 

[00:12:00] Thomas Marrone: no. .

[00:12:01] Halfling: Yeah.

[00:12:02] Thomas Marrone: I, I, that's an interesting one because I, I think, I feel like they really nailed the first half, but as soon as they got really far away from some of the original ideas and the, you know, and the original show, uh, I feel like they kind of strayed.

[00:12:18] Thomas Marrone: But I did like the, the reboot, they made the, Space Battleship Yamato 2199. That's really, really good. I don't know if you've seen that. 

[00:12:26] Thomas Marrone: Um, it's an, 

[00:12:27] Spaceman: second person who has recommended that we 

[00:12:29] Spaceman: watch that.

[00:12:30] Halfling: Yeah.

[00:12:30] Thomas Marrone: yeah. Uh, it's fantastic. You know, it's kinda like, um, it's another example of getting a fresh take on something that still feels like the original, but is also new in good ways, you know? Um, So, yeah, I mean, there's a lot of fantasy science fiction stuff. You know, I, of course I should mention, because our connection was through Joelle Presby.

[00:12:55] Thomas Marrone: Um, I feel like I should mention the Honor Harrington novels that I did a lot of work for, uh, I mean the, the organization BU9, I think Peter Gold is also one of your previous guests. He's in BU9 too. And, I illustrated the Honor verse companion, for David Weber and Tom Pope, and that's a very, you know, very established military science fiction space opera series, uh, for main books.

[00:13:18] Thomas Marrone: So, um, I, yeah, I love, Horatio Hornblower, you know, um, uh, master and Commander, the film. I need to read the books, but, the film is one of my favorite films of all time. So we could go on and on about anything with ships Blowing up other ships, I think is the the story,

[00:13:35] Halfling: Who doesn't like that?

[00:13:37] Thomas Marrone: right. .

[00:13:40] Halfling: Well, speaking of ships, what actually got you interested in ship designs or, you know, designing ships? I mean, uh, you mentioned like trying to, you know, create Star Trek ships for this other video game, turning it into a Star Trek video game.

[00:13:59] Halfling: How did you even, where did that come from,

[00:14:04] Thomas Marrone: Uh, that's a good question. I think ... I don't know if I know the answer to that. I mean, you know, if I wanted to really think philosophically about it, you know, when I was a little kid, when I was really small, I was fascinated by trains.

[00:14:20] Thomas Marrone: And I think, there was this documentary, national Geographic documentary about trains that I would watch over and over again.

[00:14:27] Thomas Marrone: And I think maybe it tickled my baby brain. Those old locomotives with the giant wheels, the steam locomotives, and they had the levers on the wheels that would like go, I, I know your listeners can't see me. I'm, I'm motioning my hands in a circle. But there are these levers that I guess they're, they connect the different wheels together so that one, one wheel moves, it moves the other wheel.

[00:14:50] Thomas Marrone: Um, and they're, they have this really kind of mesmerizing pattern because they go up and down and intersect with each other in really wild ways. And I think that seeing that as a kid and you don't know anything about it, you're, you know, you're just like looking at shapes and patterns and movement. I think that just imprinted on me.

[00:15:07] Thomas Marrone: And so when I was growing up, I was huge into trains. I had a little conductor outfit, you know, we'd go to the zoo in St. Louis and ride the train. Um, I rode the train to, I think it like Texas one time as a kid, and that really stuck with me. So, uh, so when I started watching Star Trek and Star Wars, when I got a little older, I think the fascination though, that I learned about trains, the mechanical, you know, these complex mechanical machines, uh, transferred over to, you know, things like the enterprise and X-Wing and I, uh, I really got into them because it was the, these really cool, complex machines with really interesting visuals to them.

[00:15:48] Thomas Marrone: And today, to me, they were just as much characters in these stories as the actual people. Right. To me, the Enterprise is my favorite Star Trek character, um, and, you know, the Luke's X-Wing, R2, you know, like all these things, they are really important parts of those stories and that's just what I latched onto.

[00:16:09] Halfling: Okay. Yeah. You're not the first person that I have heard say that the ships are also characters that they feel like the ships are characters as well. So, you're definitely not alone in that kind of thought. I wanna talk a little bit about. Cryptic Studios, tell us a little bit about Cryptic Studios and what your role is in it.

[00:16:31] Thomas Marrone: Sure. So Cryptic Studios is a video game developer. We run, let's see, star Trek online. Never Winter and Champions online, and they are all massively multiplayer online role playing games. They're all free to play. So what a, uh, massively multiplayer game is, it's a video game that is persistent and is online.

[00:16:56] Thomas Marrone: So you have to log on to a server where you play with other folks, who are, you know, experiencing the same world that you are at the same time. So, there are many different categories of online game and Star Trek online is 13 years old, , so it's been around for a while and it's kind of an older style of MMO.

[00:17:15] Thomas Marrone: We could, you know, go in the weeds here about the type of game it is. But essentially, if you think about it, like you're exploring a persistent version of the Star Trek universe with other people. The way the game is built though, you can play a lot of the missions by yourself. If you're not a very social gamer, you don't have to be social to enjoy Star Trek online.

[00:17:33] Thomas Marrone: And the general premise of the game is that it's set, 10 years after Star Trek Picard originally. You know, the game actually predates Picard by about 10 years in real time. But in timeline, Star Trek, timeline wise, Star Trek Picard starts in 2399 and Star Trek online starts in 2409 and so we used to say that it takes place like 30 years after Star Trek Voyager.

[00:17:59] Thomas Marrone: Because, you know, Voyager ended in like 2378 or 2379. Yep.

[00:18:05] Spaceman: Just a quick question. Have you guys had any problems with lore? Not the character Lore, not the character, 

[00:18:11] Thomas Marrone: Uhhuh. 

[00:18:11] Spaceman: the lore of Star Trek? With Star Trek online and the introduction of the new series, Star Trek Prodigy, Star Trek, Picard, Star Trek Discovery, introducing new things to the lore that weren't there before.

[00:18:25] Thomas Marrone: Yes, there's the short answer to that, there is, especially with Picard. Picard takes place, like I said, pretty close to where our game takes place. So if they make big, sweeping, world building decisions that we didn't know they were gonna make, right, that can impact us and we have to pivot.

[00:18:42] Thomas Marrone: Um, seven of nine is a good example of this where we had seven of nine in Star Trek online, voiced by Jerry Ryan. We got Jerry Ryan to come in and play her character in the game.

[00:18:53] Halfling: Oh wow.

[00:18:54] Thomas Marrone: But our version of seven of nine is obviously based on what she looked like and sounded like in Star Trek: Voyager, because that's why we wanted her in the game to represent, you know, this is seven of nine from the TV show, Star Trek, Voyager, of course, when they brought seven of nine into Picard, they wanted to show that the character had been through a lot in the intervening years, and that she was a very different person with very different mannerisms, a very different costume.

[00:19:19] Thomas Marrone: So we had to , you know, we, we actually ended up bringing her back after she appeared on Picard, and we had to do a whole new model for her based on the Picard version. And then, you know, she had to rerecord dialogue with her new Picard intonations and everything. So yeah, it's definitely has caused us to pivot in some ways.

[00:19:39] Thomas Marrone: But, but it's also, I mean, it more than a problem. It's definitely an opportunity because, what Star Trek online, and I haven't really gone into this too much yet, but essentially, star Trek online is a big Star Trek theme park, right? It's this big universe you can explore. But we have the Gamma Quadrant, which is all about the Dominion, and we have the Delta Quadrant you can go to and visit the Talaxians or the Vaadwaur, all these other, uh, the Voth, for example.

[00:20:05] Thomas Marrone: All these races from Voyager and then we have, the alpha and beta quadrants with the Klingons and the Rolins. So we have all these, story threads that we pick up from the shows and spin out what are the consequences of this thing, and how can we tie in, the thread from Enterprise about the time traveling, you know, Crewman Daniels, uh, the Temporal Cold War.

[00:20:28] Thomas Marrone: What if we tie that into the Krenim from Star Trek Voyager, right? And so we do a lot of, we do a lot of really cool stuff like that. That's a lot of fun. But ultimately, the game of Star Trek online is, About you, you create a character, you create your own Star Trek character, and you create your own bridge officers.

[00:20:46] Thomas Marrone: You can customize 'em, you can pick different alien species. You can play a Star Fleet captain, a Klingon captain, a Romulan, even a Jem'Hadar. And you can also create a captain in the 2409 era that I mentioned before. Or you can even create a character in the 1960s version of Star Trek, the original series.

[00:21:08] Thomas Marrone: Even, all the maps that you go to, all the ships are very styled after the original series. Right? So that's our original series, ride . Right? If you think about the theme park analogy, we have a ride you can go on if you really love that era of Star Trek. And after Discovery came out, we created another. Experience, starting experience based on Star Trek discovery. So if you, if discovery was your entry point, you could make a Discovery Era captain with that visual style for the ships and the uniforms and everything. So we try to cover pretty much all the bases with Star Trek online. And then we give these story missions that you experienced and we brought in like about 40 Star Trek actors have come and reprised their roles. Including, you know, we were really lucky to get Aaron Eisenberg before he passed away, René Auberjonois, before he passed away. and they're doing new dialogue for Nog and Odo. We have a big deep space nine story arc with them in it and we're very blessed to have their participation.

[00:22:08] Thomas Marrone: You know, right when the game launched back in 2010. Leonard Nemoy did some audio recording for us as well. So it's a lot to talk about cuz it's a big game, especially, you know, in the game keeps changing and improving over the last 13 years.

[00:22:20] Thomas Marrone: Our 13th anniversary for Star Trek Online is actually coming up in February and I'm very excited about that and I've been with the game for most of that time. And so, you know, my job as art director is, um, Is kind of shepherding that visual style for all those eras of Star Trek and making sure that we're faithful to that, but also trying to offer things to people that maybe they haven't seen before, while still feeling like it belongs on a Star Trek show.

[00:22:48] Spaceman: Have you ever had a chance to work with Michael Okuda?

[00:22:51] Thomas Marrone: So I've met Michael Okuda. Yeah, and I got a preview of some of these questions. We were talking about. I think there is one here about, you know, who would you love to work with, or who would you like most like to meet? And he is the answer to that question. I have gotten the chance to meet him.

[00:23:06] Thomas Marrone: We haven't really worked together on something we've worked. I did do some work for Picard. The Star Trek Picard Show, season two and I know that Dave Blass brought Mike in to do some stuff on that, but we didn't work together on the same thing. So we have worked together in the sense of we have worked on the same project, but not at the same time on the same thing.

[00:23:25] Thomas Marrone: Um, but yeah, I don't know if we want to answer that question now, but, I have so much respect for Mike Okuda, uh, and you know, me, when I got my first computer, one of the first things that I did was, open up Corell Draw and I learned how to make the little LCARS elbow, right? The LCARS is the graphical user interface that they use on the next generation DS9, Voyager.

[00:23:49] Thomas Marrone: And learning to do that kind of sparked my interest to graphic design, which sort of the unlocked my ability to make textures and models for home world, which kind of helped me pick my career path in college, which got me the web design job, which eventually got me my job at Cryptic, which eventually , you know, like, let me work on Star Trek.

[00:24:08] Thomas Marrone: And so it's, uh, it's all very threaded. I owe a lot of that. So much of that to the inspiration of Michael Okuda and Denise Okuda. I wanna mention her too, because they really are a team and they've done so much great work together. And when I was a kid, one of the books that I read the most was the Star Trek encyclopedia.

[00:24:26] Thomas Marrone: I would just page by page, go through it and just, soak that stuff in like a sponge. And of course I loved little articles about the ships, but it's a beautiful book, the original edition and all the other additions since then. They're beautiful and richly illustrated.

[00:24:40] Thomas Marrone: And we can thank the Okudas for a lot of that.

[00:24:42] Spaceman: Oh, good deal. Good deal. 

[00:24:44] Halfling: You must hate your job. I mean, it, it sounds, it sounds totally boring and just, you

[00:24:49] Thomas Marrone: I love my job. I feel so lucky to be doing what I'm doing. It is hard work. It's still a job, right. In the sense of there are sometimes there are very high pressure demands to get something right or to do it within a certain amount of time and I also work hard because I understand as a very passionate Star Trek a fan, I understand what kind of opportunity it is and I wanna make sure that I'm doing right by people like me who do play the game.

[00:25:15] Thomas Marrone: So sometimes that means I work a little harder than I might necessarily have to, but that's because I just want to do a good job and I wanna, do right by Star Trek. Yeah.

[00:25:24] Spaceman: I'd like to swing back around to LCARS for a bit. A couple of years ago I read a great book.

[00:25:30] Spaceman: "Make It So" it was about, UX design and science fiction. It's a great book and LCARS was part of it. And how we can pull design cues for good UX design into the real world from science fiction.

[00:25:46] Thomas Marrone: Interesting. I'm gonna have to read that book. I have another book that's kind of similar, Typeset in the Future, which is a great book about fonts and the use of typography in science fiction. But I haven't heard of this. Make it so book, 

[00:25:58] Spaceman: Yeah. What is, what is the god awful font they use in Space:1999? You know, the one with the fat, you know, the ones that were back in the sixties was associated with computers.

[00:26:09] Thomas Marrone: Oh,

[00:26:09] Spaceman: There are things that I'm glad that have faded off into the dust bin of history and that font is one of them.

[00:26:15] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. I don't know. I know, I mean, I, I know the logo that you're talking about, but I don't have that font in my brain.

[00:26:21] Spaceman: It's like all the characters are wearing 

[00:26:23] Halfling: bell bottoms, 

[00:26:24] Thomas Marrone: yeah. and they've got the, you know, the connector lines between the, like the A and stuff. They've got some really, it's super heavy, but then there's some really thin parts too. It's not very balanced, is it? Um, okay. I found the, I found that, interaction design lessons from science fiction. I'm gonna have to read that.

[00:26:45] Thomas Marrone: Uh, 

[00:26:45] Spaceman: It's a great book.

[00:26:48] Thomas Marrone: yeah. I think it's really interesting, Doug Drexler, who was another Star Trek art department of veteran and a great artist in his own right. I recommend following him on Facebook if you don't, because he has a lot of write-ups about working on Star Trek and working with Michael Okuda and talking about, Mike's intentions on a lot of these things.

[00:27:08] Thomas Marrone: And I think one of the geniuses of LCARS is that it looks functional without actually being, without being distracting. It adds a lot of big shapes and colors, so it creates this sense of oh, that's something that I could do. There's a visual hierarchy to it, which is really important when you're designing these things.

[00:27:30] Thomas Marrone: And it's probably the only example that I can think of where kind of the set dressing becomes ingrained in the brand, right? You see LCARS and you immediately know, oh, this is from Star Trek. I can't think of any other example where the computer design in a movie or TV show, is as recognizable as LCARS,

[00:27:51] Spaceman: Right, and it seems practical,

[00:27:54] Thomas Marrone: right?

[00:27:55] Spaceman: you know, you look at it and you think, oh, this is an iPad

[00:28:00] Thomas Marrone: Yeah, exactly. Yeah. It is crazy how much Mike anticipated all the touchscreen revolution. , you know, and part of that, the genius of that is that it was a cost saving measure, but it, he did it because, he didn't want to have to build sets with hundreds or thousands of switches and buttons,

[00:28:19] Thomas Marrone: So it's like, oh, we'll just make a back lit flat glass thing, and that'll be cheaper, but it also feels more futuristic and streamlined. So it's really brilliant,

[00:28:28] Spaceman: Well, if you go back and you watch the original series and then you watch Star Trek the motion picture, you wonder how in the world do people know how to use these controls?

[00:28:38] Thomas Marrone: right? Yeah. Well we're talking about video games in Star Trek. There was a game that came out a few years ago called Star Trek Bridge Crew, which was a virtual reality game. It was officially licensed, just like Star Trek online and the way they did there were you could basically, you had a point of view of a character on the bridge and you work with other players.

[00:29:01] Thomas Marrone: So obviously you had the captain sitting in the captain's chair and then you had the science officer and the tactical officer wherever they were sitting. And they had a Kelvin timeline ship and then they had the enterprise D Galaxy Class Bridge and then they also had the original series bridge.

[00:29:15] Thomas Marrone: And, how they incorporated that into the game was they essentially had like augmented reality labels that kind of hovered over the buttons so that you knew what you were pushing. So maybe all the characters in the original series, they have little contact lenses that tell them with little readouts that they can see that are invisible to us cuz we're not looking at the, looking through their eyes.

[00:29:39] Halfling: Well, yeah, I guess you adapt , to however you need to, in order to work with the technology that's there at the time,

[00:29:48] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. for sure.

[00:29:50] Halfling: That's pretty cool. That's pretty cool. I do have a question about conventions, because, Star Trek puts on, or, well, I shouldn't say Star Trek, but they're huge Star Trek conventions, you know, every year. I'm assuming that you're part of that, right or wrong? 

[00:30:09] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. Yeah. I've been to Star Trek, Las Vegas almost every year since 2011. I didn't go in 2000 in 2021 cause I was still a little nervous about covid. I did go last year and that's really my main convention. It has been for a long time.

[00:30:26] Thomas Marrone: I went to shore leave last year, which was a lot of fun.

[00:30:29] Thomas Marrone: Uh, I hadn't been to shore leave yet, but, it's a really fun, smaller convention, but I really liked the atmosphere there. A lot of science fiction writers. Go to that convention and I really enjoyed myself there. It wasn't overwhelming and it was, a lot of thoughtful people.

[00:30:43] Thomas Marrone: A lot of the panels were very thoughtful about, you know, a bit more involved in topics about science fiction. So I definitely recommend Shore Leave. Uh, but yeah, star Trek, Las Vegas is my main one. Last year I also went to Star Trek Mission Chicago, which was the official Star Trek convention they had last year.

[00:31:01] Thomas Marrone: And they were gonna have one in Seattle, but they canceled it. So I'm not sure what the future holds for official Star Trek event, but we'll keep an eye out for that.

[00:31:09] Halfling: Oh, 

[00:31:10] Spaceman: okay.

[00:31:10] Spaceman: Have you ever been a part of any of the Star Trek fan groups like Star Fleet or Star Fleet Command? 

[00:31:16] Halfling: or

[00:31:17] Halfling: Klingon Assault 

[00:31:18] Spaceman: Group 

[00:31:18] Spaceman: Yeah, the Klingon 

[00:31:19] Spaceman: on

[00:31:19] Halfling: Assault 

[00:31:19] Halfling: Group. 

[00:31:19] Halfling: Let's not 

[00:31:20] Halfling: forget those guys.

[00:31:21] Thomas Marrone: I was in Starfleet, a Starfleet affiliate club for a little bit, but there was some drama and so that club left Starfleet and started its own, larger organization. And then there was some drama, so the club left that organization. So, I think when you get a good mix of people, I really enjoy being in a club like that, and I had that for a little while, but it's tricky.

[00:31:45] Thomas Marrone: It reminds me of growing up I would go to church with mom, but it was a non-denominational church, which meant essentially that it was a personality thing where if people didn't like the pastor, they would just leave. They didn't, you know, there was no appeal process or if somebody did something to upset people, there was no higher authority.

[00:32:03] Thomas Marrone: Right. And the club structure kind of reminded me of that. It was almost like a church in the social dynamic of, well, we're, you know, we don't like this, so we're just gonna leave. And there was a lot of drama and fallout. So I've had some mixed, frankly, mixed experiences with fandom clubs.

[00:32:18] Thomas Marrone: But I think if you have a good group, it can be a really great, a really great part of your life. And I, I did have that for a while and I miss it.

[00:32:25] Spaceman: Yeah. You might find this a little surprising, but the Halfling and the Spaceman were part of Star Fleet Command when we were younger.

[00:32:31] Thomas Marrone: Mm-hmm. 

[00:32:32] Halfling: Yeah. With

[00:32:32] Spaceman: names like the 

[00:32:33] Spaceman: Halfling and the

[00:32:34] Spaceman: Spaceman. Yeah. 

[00:32:35] Thomas Marrone: yeah,

[00:32:37] Halfling: We actually put on a sci-fi fantasy convention ourselves, called Conspiracy

[00:32:42] Spaceman: back in 1992, I think.

[00:32:44] Halfling: Yeah. 

[00:32:44] Thomas Marrone: Oh wow. That must have been a lot of work. 

[00:32:46] Halfling: Yeah. Putting on a convention is a lot of work and you can't do it alone. So we actually did have a lot of support. From the star fleet group,

[00:32:54] Spaceman: Right. Star Fleet Commander, the local chapter really, you know, they did the heavy lifting.

[00:32:59] Halfling: They they did. It was great. It was awesome to work with them and it was a lot of fun just to hang out with them too, you know? Uh,

[00:33:06] Thomas Marrone: Was that generally themed or Star Trek themed 

[00:33:08] Thomas Marrone: or what was the 

[00:33:10] Halfling: gen general. It's just that we knew some people who were associated with. We were looking for, we were looking for support and just people that would help make this happen.

[00:33:20] Halfling: And they said, oh great, let's do this. And stepped in, in a big way. so, 

[00:33:25] Halfling: so, uh, yeah. Um, but putting on a convention is definitely a lot of work.

[00:33:32] Thomas Marrone: did you do anymore, or was that just that one?

[00:33:35] Spaceman: Well, okay. We were planning to do the second one, and I had the deposit for the hotel

[00:33:42] Thomas Marrone: Mm-hmm.

[00:33:43] Spaceman: We decided to hold off on giving the hotel to deposit, and then they jacked the price up on us, so we didn't get the deposit in. But at the same time, I actually met my business partner for many years ago, and we started a magazine dedicated to tabletop role playing games, which we did for several years.

[00:34:01] Spaceman: So, 

[00:34:01] Thomas Marrone: awesome. What was that magazine called?

[00:34:03] Spaceman: it was called the Familiar, 

[00:34:05] Spaceman: the, there is a magazine out there now with that same name, but it's about the occult.

[00:34:11] Thomas Marrone: Oh, okay.

[00:34:12] Spaceman: no, no relation.

[00:34:14] Thomas Marrone: No

[00:34:14] Thomas Marrone: relation. 

[00:34:15] Spaceman: no, relation. 

[00:34:16] Halfling: no relation well one of the things that we wanna do with our show is to have our listeners really get an idea of what it takes from your starting point, to where you really wanna be. And in terms of say, ship designing or getting a job such as yours, like with a gaming company or anything like that.

[00:34:44] Halfling: Do you have any advice for our listeners who might want to get started on a career like 

[00:34:48] Thomas Marrone: that?

[00:34:49] Thomas Marrone: Uh, yeah, I mean, I'm really glad you asked this question. I have a very, I feel very strongly anytime this question comes up because I don't. I don't hear a lot of people, you know, a lot of professionals get asked this, especially in fandom, and I very rarely hear what I think is a good answer.

[00:35:07] Thomas Marrone: Um, that is a succinct answer. And the real succinct answer is you have to work really hard and you have to do the thing that you want to do before you have to do it for free before you ever get paid for it. And there's the proverb, you know, never work for free. Um, which is true once you're good enough that people are willing to pay you

[00:35:30] Thomas Marrone: But ultimately the only way you're gonna get that good is by doing, by practicing. There's a great recording from Ira Glass who does, this American Life for Public Radio, or I don't remember the network exactly. It's on public radio and he talks about when you're young and you have good taste, and you are like, oh, I'm into cartoons, for example, and I want to become an animator.

[00:35:55] Thomas Marrone: So you start drawing and drawing and drawing. And you, if you have a certain level of discernment, you realize that what you're making is not good enough. That it's not hitting the quality bar of the stuff you're like, you know, you're not, you're not Chuck Jones, right? It's not hitting the quality bar of the things that you enjoy.

[00:36:13] Thomas Marrone: And so the only way to get to where you are that good is by just doing it over and over and over and over again, doing a tremendous amount of work. Um, I was drawing Starships since I was a kid, right. And I kept doing that. It takes 10,000 hours, they say, to be, become an expert in something, at least.

[00:36:36] Thomas Marrone: And so you have to just keep working and working and working. If you want to be, uh, a game designer or game artist, you have to make game art. You have to design games. And I'm not talking about, making like, oh, I made a little outline in a Word doc somewhere. I'm talking about downloading the Unreal Engine, which you can do for free now.

[00:36:57] Thomas Marrone: It's easier than ever, by the way, to do any of this. There's so many free tools, professional industry standard tools for 3D artists like me. There's Blender, which is a great tool. It used to be really, Crappy, for lack of a better word, but it's really, it's really evolved now and a lot of studios are using it because it is very, very high quality and free.

[00:37:16] Thomas Marrone: There are alternatives to the Adobe, 2d, image creating software, like Inkscape and it's called Gimp. I think they need to find a new name for it, but, but there,

[00:37:28] Thomas Marrone: yeah, , but, but the moral of this story is there are if, uh, I mean, you need a computer. That's the one thing that you can't get for free is you need a computer powerful enough to do this stuff.

[00:37:40] Thomas Marrone: But ultimately, uh, the Unreal Engine or Unity, those are both free to download and you have to, there's this perception that some people have when they want to get into, a field like game design, whether it's tabletop or video games where they want to be, they wanna be the idea person, right?

[00:37:58] Thomas Marrone: I wanna be an idea guy. I have so many great ideas, but everybody in the games industry has great ideas. I idea, like ideas are worthless. Execution is the only thing that will actually get you hired or get you into a career, or get you noticed by people who want to hire you. And if you're looking for a job in an industry like, video games, that is very competitive, then you have to demonstrate very conclusively that you can solve a problem or that you can create an asset that is professional quality.

[00:38:31] Thomas Marrone: And the only way to get there is just do the work. So, I think you. You have to, you know, there, there are so many great ways to do that, with steam, steam workshop, like I mentioned earlier, how I learned how to do Photoshop and 3D modeling by modding that game home world, right? There are lots of games out now that have a steam workshop where you can upload mods or download mods, user created content, um, is this game called Tabletop Simulator, which is a great way to design a tabletop game.

[00:39:01] Thomas Marrone: You can download this game and it's essentially a virtual tabletop, and you can import 3D models and images to make custom cards or tokens or whatever you want to do. If you want to do a tabletop game design, that's a great, canvas to work on. But ultimately it's just, it's sitting down and doing the work.

[00:39:17] Thomas Marrone: And that's, that's the most important part. Of course, the other important part is being lucky, which I can't really help you with, but, but ultimately, you know, you have to have both. You have to. Be lucky to get the opportunity, but you have to have done the work so that when you're ready for the opportunity, you can seize it.

[00:39:36] Spaceman: right. Yeah. Success is where preparation meets opportunity, so

[00:39:39] Thomas Marrone: yeah, exactly. Exactly. Um, my friend Chris, he says something like that where it's in his experience, most of the people who have been lucky were prepared to be lucky. Which I think is a great, you know, a great way to put it. So I feel very, very strongly about this because I do see a lot of people, a lot of young creative people online who kind of, um, bemoan the fact that they don't know what to do with their lives, or they wish they could be in a creative career, but they're not.

[00:40:08] Thomas Marrone: They're not just grinding out the work that they need to, to get to the point where they can show that they can do it. You know, that nobody, uh, you know, it, it's a kind of a harsh thing to say, but nobody owes you an exciting, fun, cool job, , right. You have to do the work to show that you can create something that inspires other people or interests other people, and the only way to get there is just by doing that work.

[00:40:32] Thomas Marrone: So, yeah. I think it's really important that people just buckle down and do it.

[00:40:37] Spaceman: Well, I'm gonna add just a little something and please correct me if I get any of this wrong.

[00:40:42] Spaceman: A lot of people who go into game design or want to get into game design, don't realize that there's a lot more to game development than just creating assets or writing scripts. There's project management, there's sound design, you've gotta have people that manage your budget. So there are opportunities outside of just very, very specific, artistic skills.

[00:41:08] Spaceman: And those might not be the coolest jobs, but sometimes you get to work with the coolest people. I've been lucky enough to have an opportunity in my career to maybe not always work with the coolest people, but I've helped people do some of the coolest things. So there's a side issue so, I don't want people to forget that there's opportunities outside of just, you know, well, I'm gonna create art assets.

[00:41:34] Spaceman: You know, may maybe you would like to create arts assets, but maybe your gift is project management. And that was kind of my gift.

[00:41:41] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. No, and thank God for people like you. I mean, we're, artists need project man. Engineers need, everybody needs the adults in the room to, to make the trains run on time. Right. Like it's, that is an, it's an incredibly, incredibly important part, especially for video games, which have so many moving parts and so many elements.

[00:42:01] Thomas Marrone: Exactly like you said, there's sound design, there's narrative, there's art, there's engineering, and all of that needs to be wrangled by someone who can think beyond what's in front of them. Which is not something most artists or even engineers are good at. And so all of that stuff is the glue that holds these things together and takes it from that idea that I talked about, right?

[00:42:24] Thomas Marrone: Like the producers, we call project managers at, cryptic, we call them producers. So those are the people who, manage the schedules and they, you know, they track issues, track bugs and assign work to people. But it really is the backbone of the team because they're the ones who, kind of manage the execution.

[00:42:42] Thomas Marrone: So it can get from, oh, this is a cool idea to, here's an actual thing that our players can enjoy with all these elements that are made by dozens of different people. But bringing that together is definitely a ballet or like an air traffic controller, 

[00:42:57] Spaceman: I'm just curious, do you guys have like a daily standup or a daily scrum? 

[00:43:01] Thomas Marrone: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. We do daily standups with. All of our different, a couple of cross discipline standups. So we have our standups with our content designers and environment artists, and we have a different standup with the people who do like character art and items and ships and all that.

[00:43:16] Thomas Marrone: That's a separate thing. But yeah, it's important. Do you need daily communication to say like, this is what's going on today. This is what I'm doing, these are issues I have, or this is what I need from you? Especially now that Cryptic is a fully remote company now. Before the pandemic we weren't, we all worked in an office together, but yeah,

[00:43:34] Thomas Marrone: But now because of the pandemic, we decided to go fully remote in perpetuity and so we have to be very intentional about our communication. And having project managers on top of that, you know, is crucial, especially in a remote environment.

[00:43:48] Halfling: Yeah, I would imagine communication is extremely important because again, there are so many, so many moving parts and you don't want a situation where the right hand doesn't know what the left hand's doing,

[00:44:00] Thomas Marrone: yeah. 

[00:44:01] Halfling: Where I work, unfortunately, our team, we can't really do that. As it should be.

[00:44:09] Halfling: We have little mini huddles every once in a while, but that's not really the same thing. I think you need to have a chance to break it down a little more because there's all these little steps along the way for your projects. So I think that's good.

[00:44:25] Halfling: That's really good. Are there things that you know now that you wish you had known when you were younger in terms of getting into the business?

[00:44:37] Thomas Marrone: Yeah, I mean, speaking specifically to any of your listeners who might be in college especially, I'll speak for artists cuz that was my experience, but, take your art , take your art project seriously and when you're building, you know, you, if you're in school, it's so precious to have an amount of time where all you're really supposed to be doing is learning.

[00:44:58] Thomas Marrone: Because once you get out into the world and you have a job, , you're supposed to be doing your job, but also you have to find time to learn about the things that are changing your field and the new methods that are coming up. And that's really hard to do. It's really hard to balance just producing the work against also career development.

[00:45:19] Thomas Marrone: And, you know, if you're lucky to work at a company that values career development enough that they're, they give you time for that. I mean, there are some companies that do, but not, not many, or not all of them, at least. Uh, really being in school for a particular trade is an incredibly valuable time.

[00:45:39] Thomas Marrone: And just take advantage of it. Do your best. You're not doing your, I think it's a, when you're in college, at least for me, it was a weird transitionary period where I had to sort of realize I'm not doing this for my parents or my professors. Like I'm transitioning into an adult now, and this is for me, this is for my future, and I'm doing these things to learn from myself and nobody cares if I, you know, It's not about like my report card or whatever that like, I need to be learning tools and techniques that I'm going to use to become an employee that can get, you know, that is hireable.

[00:46:15] Thomas Marrone: So especially for, you know, there are a lot of assignments that I don't necessarily wanna say I phoned them in, but I didn't treat them with a care that maybe looking back, I could have to say, oh, here's a piece that's gonna be in my portfolio and it's gonna be really good and help me land a job.

[00:46:31] Thomas Marrone: So, just, treat that time with respect because you're never gonna have that much time to just learn again. And learning is something that is crucial to, you know, to stay relevant in your career.

[00:46:44] Halfling: Well, I'm really glad to hear you say that because once you get older and you get outta school, life happens. And it's a rare opportunity that you have to get like that continuing education because all of a sudden you're working and maybe married, maybe you got a kid on the way, 

[00:47:02] Thomas Marrone: Yep. 

[00:47:03] Halfling: know, and the thought of like grad school just kind of goes out the window cuz you realize, there's just no way it's gonna happen.

[00:47:10] Halfling: So yeah, I would definitely echo that sentiment that, Do your best and treat it seriously because this is the foundation of your career and you wanna learn as much as you can and take that opportunity, like you said, like in the field, that you're specifically in, there's changes all the time, changes in tools and thoughts about what, the markets are gonna be like, and you know who's gonna want what.

[00:47:37] Halfling: All of that changes. And so you have an opportunity to kind of, keep up with that to a certain degree. Whereas once you get out and you get that job and life starts happening, , it's gonna, yeah. It's gonna be hard.

[00:47:52] Thomas Marrone: that's a lot harder. 

[00:47:54] Halfling: Yeah.

[00:47:54] Spaceman: Well, we've talked about the opportunities you have in school, and earlier we touched briefly on Mike Okuda and the people who influenced you and the people you would like to meet. So, let's go back and explore that for a bit.

[00:48:06] Spaceman: Who has inspired you the most and who would you like to meet? Who is your fan crush?

[00:48:15] Thomas Marrone: Well, you know, I'm very lucky that I have gotten to meet Mike Okuda a few times. He's a huge inspiration for me. Rick Sternbach is another one, another Star Trek artist, space artist that I really hold in high regard and would love to, I mean, these guys, I've had a few small conversations with them, but I would love to just like, go out to dinner for three or four hours and just sort of, pick their brain and learn from them.

[00:48:40] Thomas Marrone: I think, you know, John Eves is another guy. There's just been some so many amazing and clever artists who've worked on Star Trek over the years that have been so inspirational to me. John Eves,, is a really, he's a really sweet guy, but he has this enormous career, very accomplished illustrator, designed three enterprises, like, you know, incredible, incredible guy.

[00:49:04] Thomas Marrone: So, I would just love to. Be able to interact with them more and spend some time with them. I mean, we can talk about, you know, unfortunately he's passed away, but, Matt Jeffries, who designed the original Starship Enterprise, I would love to just sit at his feet for a while and listen to everything that went through his head as he's designing the Starship that's sort of gonna revolutionary science fiction.

[00:49:29] Spaceman: man who gave us the Jeffries tube.

[00:49:31] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. Yep. 

[00:49:33] Spaceman: I love the Jeffries two design element because when you've got something as big as the enterprise, you're gonna need to get to all the inner workings.

[00:49:41] Thomas Marrone: Right, exactly. And, Okuda, when talking about Jefferies talks about aircraft logic, which Jefferies applied to the enterprise when he was designing it, and a lot of that came from. Both, Gene Roddenberry and Matt Jeffries were in the Army Air Force during World War ii. And so they had experience around these, you know, like B-17s, and I think that's what they flew.

[00:50:05] Thomas Marrone: And they were in the military, so they knew how the military worked. And so you can see some of that bleed into how star fleets portrayed. But they also had been around machines that the military used. And so there was a logic that Jeffries learned that he applied to his designs on Star Trek.

[00:50:21] Thomas Marrone: And I think people really underestimate how much thought went into those original sets in the original ship.

[00:50:27] Spaceman: I used to have a copy of the Franz Joseph original series Blueprints,

[00:50:31] Thomas Marrone: Mm-hmm.

[00:50:32] Spaceman: As a teen, I went over them and over them and over them. So yeah, I have a deep respect for Matt Jefferies work.

[00:50:39] Thomas Marrone: Yeah, absolutely.

[00:50:40] Halfling: Well, this is sort of an off the wall question, and maybe not even particularly related , but have you ever considered, or even been approached by the government to do any design for them?

[00:50:56] Halfling: I know that a lot of times NASA looks at like Star Trek for inspiration. You think about like the communicators and there's various other technologies depicted in Star Trek that you know, that you have these NASA engineers and other engineers looking at going, hmm.

[00:51:15] Halfling: you know, maybe we can do this and then we get something like the iPhone

[00:51:21] Thomas Marrone: Yeah.

[00:51:22] Halfling: you know,

[00:51:23] Thomas Marrone: Yeah, I haven't been approached for anything like that. I mean, I try to get a lot of inspiration from the NASA and the United States Navy, and I try to look into why were things done this way, what are the naval traditions that sort of inform a lot of things in science fiction.

[00:51:39] Thomas Marrone: That's important to me to have that heritage because I think if you can build that into your science fiction, and not just Star Trek, but in general it creates this world that feels lived in, that feels like it existed before your story started, which I think is really cool. And anytime I see that in a story, I get really fascinated and interested and I wanna learn more.

[00:52:02] Thomas Marrone: That's one of the things about like the Expanse that is really cool. We're talking about other science fiction shows. The Expanse has amazing world building where they create this history where, Actions have consequences and there's all these ripple effects for this thing that happens that inform why people are the way they are in the show and why certain governments are the way they are and why the Martian Navy is so advanced versus the, United Nations navy, which just sort of has a lot of people but isn't as good, all this stuff.

[00:52:33] Thomas Marrone: It makes for a compelling story moment to moment in the plot and I have a phrase I use, and it sounds pejorative, it's not really meant to be, but things like Star Trek and Star Wars, they have sort of janitorial world building where. They write a script and they have, you know, we're going to the planet with the half white, half black people and we're gonna tell a story about racism, which is cool.

[00:52:54] Thomas Marrone: Like, that's, that's great. That's one of the cool things about Star Trek is the allegorical storytelling. Right? But, but we don't know any, like the existence of that alien species doesn't really inform the rest of the story of Star Trek in any way. They're a one-off. Right. Um, they're not something that was considered at the beginning of the show.

[00:53:14] Thomas Marrone: Um, even Staple Star Trek races like Klingons and Vulcans are an outgrowth of a specific story need, but all the world building for those races was retroactively bolted on. Right. And that's why I say janitorial versus foundational world building with a thing like The Expanse, where they sort of built the world before they released the story or as they're writing, but the world they created was a foundation to the story. I think Tolkien is another great example of this, where he had a good idea of how the world worked and who everyone was before he actually created the story and I think there's a, the tones of those two different, you can kind of tell if you're looking at one versus the other. And I just really enjoy when we do get a story with foundational world building, I really enjoy seeing how organically the story evolves from the world around it.

[00:54:06] Spaceman: You know, it's funny, this is really kind of ironic that we're having this discussion because, the Halfling and I were coming home from work the other day, and we got to talking about the difference between implicit world building and explicit world building and how sometimes both can be organic and sometimes neither can be organic.

[00:54:28] Spaceman: And, talking about functional world building or now janitorial world building, 

[00:54:32] Spaceman: I think that's what you called it. 

[00:54:33] Spaceman: Star Trek, Voyager used to aggravate the living. 

[00:54:37] Spaceman: You know what outta me? ? 

[00:54:39] Spaceman: Yes. 

[00:54:39] Spaceman: The beep outta me because every week they would find some cool new technology. They would use one time

[00:54:48] Thomas Marrone: Right.

[00:54:49] Spaceman: I mean, they should have come back with Voyager being like five tech levels above the federation.

[00:54:55] Thomas Marrone: Right,

[00:54:56] Spaceman: single-handed leaves, swoop into the alpha con quadrant and defeat the borg.

[00:55:01] Thomas Marrone: right.

[00:55:04] Spaceman: Uh, but don't get me started.

[00:55:07] Halfling: Consistency matters. 

[00:55:09] Spaceman: But, but, halfling. I think that's, you have to serve the story.

[00:55:15] Spaceman: We have not watched The Expanse, but from everything that everyone has said about The Expanse, the Expanse is a lot like an anime in that it has very great internal consistency.

[00:55:25] Spaceman: It is serialized. So there are arcs that go on, but when you're doing a weekly show, you know, even if you have a good show Bible, it's hard to, remember to have thing that happened in Week One Effect thing that happened in Week 20

[00:55:39] Thomas Marrone: right? Yeah. Unless you're J. Michael Straczynski and you're doing Babylon 5

[00:55:44] Halfling: yes. I was, I was actually thinking about him when you were, when you were talking about that a minute ago. I was thinking, you know, he's the perfect example of someone who took his idea, built the world, knew who everybody was, what they were all about, and just created this wonderful, wonderful show.

[00:56:04] Halfling: Um, 

[00:56:04] Halfling: we're 

[00:56:04] Thomas Marrone: yeah. 

[00:56:05] Halfling: big 

[00:56:05] Halfling: fans. 

[00:56:05] Spaceman: Yeah. Please don't, please don't hit me for saying this, but of all the things that have been rebooted or reimagined, I wish that somebody would give Michael Straczynski like a hundred million dollars to do like a seven season, 10 episode per season, HBO O Max or, Amazon Prime Series of Babylon 5.

[00:56:27] Spaceman: I mean, I've heard that there's gonna be a version on the cw and I'm frightened

[00:56:32] Thomas Marrone: Well, well, I don't know what the situation is cause there's been a lot of shakeups at WB lately. But the thing about that is, yeah, I know, I mean the, the CW has a certain brand to it, but he was still gonna be the showrunner and he was still gonna be writing it. So I had faith if it happens, as long as he is doing it, I have faith that he's gonna do a great job.

[00:56:53] Thomas Marrone: I actually think. You know, the Babylon five was expertly plotted and it had great theatrical dialogue, but I think he's gotten a lot better at writing naturalistic dialogue. And, you know, like shows these more recent show, Sense Eight. The characters in Babylon five, they are operatic characters, everything is pretty elevated in terms of the way that they talk and act generally.

[00:57:18] Thomas Marrone: There are a few moments of like what feel like genuine humanity, but a lot of them is responding to these larger than life circumstances, right? Get the hell outta my Galaxy, you know, like kinda thing, but I think that over the years, I think JMS, you know, like all of us who are creative people, you get better at your craft.

[00:57:34] Thomas Marrone: And while he was great then I think he's incredible now and the characters in Sense eight were super fleshed out and, but also the way they talked felt very natural. And so I think if you blend that. His plotting expertise with now, the way he can en craft characters like that. I think the new battle on five could be really, really, really special

[00:57:56] Spaceman: It could be. I'm willing to give it a chance.

[00:58:00] Thomas Marrone: Sure,

[00:58:01] Halfling: well, let's just hope that it actually comes about so we 

[00:58:04] Thomas Marrone: yeah. 

[00:58:04] Halfling: chance. 

[00:58:06] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. I'm crossing my fingers, knocking on wood. Everything I can do. Salt over the shoulder, the whole nine.

[00:58:11] Halfling: Well, you know, they've been talking about bringing, Stargate back as 

[00:58:15] Thomas Marrone: well 

[00:58:16] Thomas Marrone: Hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, that was another one I didn't mention. I binge Stargate during the pandemic from front to back, and I had a great time. I really,

[00:58:25] Halfling: funny because we did the same thing 

[00:58:27] Halfling: we did 

[00:58:27] Thomas Marrone: Oh, great.

[00:58:28] Spaceman: did.

[00:58:29] Halfling: and we

[00:58:30] Thomas Marrone: had you watched it before or,

[00:58:31] Spaceman: Yeah. We watched, Stargate before we lo well, Stargate sG-1 in the, of course the original movie. 

[00:58:37] Spaceman: And I only watched part of the first, season of universe. And I hated it. And then we watched all three seasons. I said, oh, okay. By the third season it's getting good. Oh. Just like the fourth and fifth seasons of Enterprise 

[00:58:50] Thomas Marrone: Yep. 

[00:58:51] Spaceman: the 

[00:58:51] Spaceman: show. 

[00:58:51] Spaceman: But 

[00:58:52] Thomas Marrone: right? 

[00:58:52] Spaceman: by 

[00:58:53] Spaceman: then it was too late.

[00:58:54] Thomas Marrone: Yeah.

[00:58:55] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. It was perfect cuz I think I was working on something at work where I just needed, I needed to focus and I just needed to have something on all the time. Cuz I'm a very, like, left, my left and right brain are pretty divided where I'm doing something creative, I'm creating a, some art I need to have like a show on in the background with some people talking to sort of help me focus on the art, you know?

[00:59:18] Thomas Marrone: So my left brain is distracted, which I know that's not really, I don't know if, how much. A thing that actually is, but it's how I work anyway. So Stargate was perfect, where I just like, I need something that's hundreds of hours of content , so I'm just gonna start watching Stargate. And I did, I did all of it from SG-1 through Universe and Atlantis in between.

[00:59:39] Thomas Marrone: It was a great time. I really enjoyed it. I think I always had this, I'll admit to having a really bad, like, misconception that it was like some kind of knockoff or lesser than, but you wanna talk about world building. Stargate has some pretty good world building that I think a lot of, if, if people aren't familiar with it.

[00:59:56] Thomas Marrone: I certainly underestimated how interesting that world was and how thoughtful they were about it and how. even I don't know how much they pre-designed with Stargate, but they definitely did think a lot about if something happens, what are gonna be the consequences of this in a way that I think Star Trek doesn't do a lot of.

[01:00:14] Thomas Marrone: So I think the writing on Stargate is really good.

[01:00:17] Spaceman: You know, one of the things that I wish that Star Trek would do that they've touched on a couple of times, but they've never really done is get into the precursor civilizations.

[01:00:26] Spaceman: I'd like to know about all the precursor civilizations,

[01:00:30] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. Well, I can tell you that in Star Trek online we have a story arc about the Iconians and they'd be their pretty big part of the games lore and a big, event happens for them. so 

[01:00:42] Spaceman: Okay. 

[01:00:42] Thomas Marrone: for what that's worth

[01:00:44] Spaceman: Now, the next time we start up a tabletop RPG group, I'm gonna have to dust off my copies of some kind of edition of the Star Trek role playing game, whether it's the old FASA one or the current one, and run a game where people play Star Fleet archeologist.

[01:00:58] Thomas Marrone: Oh, that'd be cool. 

[01:00:59] Thomas Marrone: Yeah. 

[01:01:00] Spaceman: Think, that would be a lot of fun.

[01:01:01] Halfling: No, it's just agreeing. I think that sounds like a lot of fun.

[01:01:04] Thomas Marrone: Mm-hmm. . Yeah. Well, star Trek Adventures is the current game that's running right now, published by Modiphius. And I'll go and plug that. I actually wrote for them for their most recent book was all about ships, the Utopia Planitia Star Fleet Source book.

[01:01:19] Thomas Marrone: And I was able to contribute a few ships for them. I wrote the lore and the stats for ships from Star Trek online that appeared in Star Trek Picard. And that was a lot of fun. I also, wrote the forward for them for that book, and, that was an honor to do but yeah, it's a really fun game.

[01:01:33] Thomas Marrone: I really enjoy watching people play that game cuz it's like I'm watching a little Star Trek episode, which is is really cool.

[01:01:40] Halfling: Oh, so are you actually monitoring the games or, uh,

[01:01:45] Thomas Marrone: No, people will like play, stream games on Twitch. 

[01:01:48] Halfling: oh, okay. Gotcha, 

[01:01:50] Thomas Marrone: you know, like the live play thing where they'll, they'll play. Yeah. And

[01:01:53] Halfling: Okay. Okay. Well, I didn't know if that was something that the company did. 

[01:01:57] Halfling: Well, they monitored the games, 

[01:01:59] Thomas Marrone: think sometimes they'll watch, I'm not an employee of Modiphius. I just, you know, I did some freelance work for them, for that, for those books. But, and also we did, uh, as another, you know, official licenser. We were happy to give them a lot of the art that they used in that book. So a lot of the ships art for obviously the Star Trek online ships, but also the cannon ships are actually renders of the ships from Star Trek online in that Medicus book.

[01:02:22] Thomas Marrone: So, 

[01:02:23] Thomas Marrone: so that was cool. 

[01:02:24] Spaceman: So, it's about time for us to wrap up our conversation. What exciting projects are you working on right now and where can people find out more about your current projects and about, cryptic studios?

[01:02:36] Thomas Marrone: Yeah, so I mean, um, you know, for as long as Twitter has left I'm at Thomas the CAD on Twitter and anything there, you know, I usually tweet about. But, people can learn more about Star Trek online just at startrekonline.com, if you have Steam or the Epic store, you can go find the game there.

[01:02:55] Thomas Marrone: It's free to play so you can download it and try it out. Our business model is your retail business model, essentially, where if there's a ship you want or a uniform you want, you can buy it. We do give out, free things for people. We have a certain subset of ships and uniforms and stuff that are free.

[01:03:11] Thomas Marrone: And then, we make our money by just selling, if you want the. The Voyager that has the bat Mobile armor, for example. Like you can buy that kind of thing. We only charge for those items. We don't charge for content. So you can experience all of the missions in Star Trek online for free.

[01:03:26] Thomas Marrone: And I recommend if you enjoy RPGs, if you love Star Trek, it's a great, it's a great game. I'm really proud of it. I'm really proud of all the work that we've put in for the last, 13 years. So, as art director for the game, my projects are basically wrangling everybody else to create new art.

[01:03:43] Thomas Marrone: And we're adding, you know, we're actually wrapping up, our current storyline, which has been about the mirror universe. We're wrapping that up soon and gonna be starting a brand new storyline. And, so I can't really can't talk anything about it other than I'm excited because I'll get to direct the creation of an entirely new species of aliens, which I'm really, really excited for.

[01:04:06] Thomas Marrone: And as art director, you get to sort of establish the vision and then you trust your talented group of artists on your team to go execute on that vision. And, I can't wait to get to, to get started in that whole process, to just give people a few key words and then see what they come up with.

[01:04:23] Thomas Marrone: You know, that's, that's gonna be really exciting.

[01:04:25] Spaceman: All right. Well, I'll make sure we get all that linked in the show notes.

[01:04:30] Halfling: Yeah. And thanks so much for talking with us today. We have had such a great time getting to know you and more about your journey into becoming, art director for Cryptic Studios.

[01:04:41] Thomas Marrone: Thank you so much for having me. You know, it's great to talk about this and like I said at the top, I really think it's great to have, conversations that celebrate the creative side of fandom, because fandom really does inspire us and sparks our imaginations.

[01:04:56] Thomas Marrone: And then enabling people to go and create their own work, I think is great as a creative person, there's nothing so flattering to me as when somebody like makes fan art based on star Trek online, right? It's the highest honor I can have is that I inspired somebody else to go create something.

[01:05:15] Thomas Marrone: So I think it's awesome what you're doing with this podcast. And I wish you, clear skies on more episodes in the future.

[01:05:21] Halfling: Well, we appreciate that and again, we thank you for joining 

[01:05:24] Spaceman: us 

[01:05:25] Halfling: today. It's been a lot of fun. 

[01:05:27] Spaceman: All right. We wanna thank all our listeners for tuning in today. We hope that you've enjoyed and perhaps become inspired by today's guest, Thomas Morrone. We want to give Thomas a huge thank you for joining us today, and this is the Spaceman of the Halfling and the Spaceman signing off.