Angel wrote:I think one of my main issues, however, is coming up with all the neat tech to give these people. <snipped. It's easy to make up enchanted armor and legendary swords, but how do I make something sound tech?
Space Opera is basically High Fantasy with spaceships. You are onto something in asking "how do I make it SOUND tech?" With that in mind, please accept some cheap Judd-advice.
Space Opera Tech for GMs
The absolute key to tech in Space Opera is to realize that tech is magic. Clarke's Law states that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." In Space Opera, technology becomes more of a plot hook, something science/tech involved has become the crux or vehicle of conflict.
What makes something sound tech is the name you give it. Remember the Star Trek adage of Roddenberry, the idea that people don't stand around talking about how devices work in real life, they just know that they do. So what you need are tech names that give it a punch. This involves creating a list of keywords that define your game world's technologies. Using old retro terms can give it a retro 50's feel, a retro cyberpunk feel (God, I love calling cyberpunk retro finally!). Different terms can give it a sleek Utopian feel or a trans-humanist decay feel - whatever you need.
How to create these terms? Well, you need a term that applies to energy fields, matter, and communication. If you have spaceships, you will need a drive system name as well (or a name for how you get around faster-than-light). Using these terms in the names of devices gives them a grounding (in OVA terms, it can also give them an Affinity).
Example:
I come up some terms for my new game. The energy keyword is "Phase". The matter keyword is "Nanobot". The communication keyword is "Null-point". I am also going to add another keyword related to a disease that makes monsters called the "Largessian Effect" (giving things names related to the scientists who found them both gets you out of coming up with a special term for it and gives the sense of history to the world).
Now, I put these words to work as follows:
* I need some weapons, so I come up with Phase Swords, Nano-armor, and Phasic Compulsion Pistols.
* I need a Drive System, but I want a special keyword for it, so I stab my finger in a dictionary a few times until I find a word that pops - "Proxy - a thing that stands in for another". I now have the Proxy Drive. It works by searching the destination with a Null-point transfer beam and locking onto a matter source of mass to trade out with. The matter seized on and the ship trade places in the physical universe. (This reminds me of ninjas doing that log trick, so I fiddle with some ninja mecha that can do that trick with asteroid material...)
* Null-point comms allow people to talk over long stretches at FTL speed, but I decide that this requires a bunch of repeater stations, like telegraph poles in space. Guarding these is important to everyone, as well as hacking them, and they are needed to use the Proxy-drive. Now I have some plots related to communications and Proxy-drives have a new juicy limitation on them.
* I have this ninja theme going, so I want some cool smoke-bomb teleport stuff. I come up with the "Nano-cloud Nagateppo". These smoke-bombs disassemble anyone inside the cloud and perform a limited distance Proxy Jump where they reassemble the cargo they carried.
* Phase-beam ship's cannons, etc.
As you can see from my example, as well as my "Rocketship Ronin" write-up, metaphor is more important than the science of it all. Basically, Space Opera replaces tales from yesterday or today with larger than life uses of tech and star-spanning travel and vistas. It injects a colorful and cool image onto the same stories that work in any other setting.
Now, true Science Fiction is about how science and technology change the human condition, etc. That doesn't sound like what you are going for, so i won't stamp on that soapbox as of yet. I would suggest looking up "Space Opera" on Wikipedia and doing some browsing around that neighborhood for some more ideas.