Non-sleazy smuggler's goods

[rancke]

Mechant character generation has an event where the character has an opportunity to smuggle illegal goods onto a planet. I'm looking for examples of items that characters can smuggle without necessarily being bad guys.

I already have two ideas:

1) Gourmet foodstuffs to Roup.
2) Supplies to disaster areas (not illegal, but has to be smuggled past local bigwigs lest they confiscate the goods).


What else? Either general ideas or ideas specific to Regina subsector are welcome.


Hans

 

[atpollard]

Some places restrict technology ... so anti-protectionism smuggling.
Books ... religious, political theory, or written by local dissidents and printed off-world.
Trade in normal goods from a political enemy ... 'Cuban Cigars'.

People ... into world past No Immigration Policy ... out of oppressive world (Berlin Wall*).

* sorry, not really pre-WW2, but I can't think of a better real world example.

 

[robject]

An exiled political figure wants to be smuggled back in. "Trotsky has returned!"

Alternately, taking the 'blockade runner' angle, perhaps some dissidents (maybe persecuted, maybe not) wish to be smuggled off of a world.

Get the players involved in an underground railroad for moving slaves off of one continent or world and to another.

Ship a SuSAG medicine to a plague world, against the dictates of the world's government, either due to the experimental nature of the medicine, or opposition to the megacorp (which is squeezing the government), or etc.

Yorbundian Matrimonial Headmasks, purchased by a noble, need to be delivered from the sourceworld to his estate. However, the artifacts are still classified as banned/taboo import items, so port authority will confiscate them if they are found.

 

[Xerxeskingofking]

normal goods that are leagal but heavily taxed (tea in pre-revolution america, cigarettes today).

pisonic related items, in general.

imperial intellgence operatives investigating corruption in the planets goverment.

a bastard child of a major politcal figure, being smuggled to saftey to grow up in peace.

 

[pendragonman]

Depends on your definition of sleaze.

Alcoholic beverages may be sleaze, may not be.

Anagathics?

Oh, here's a good idea. Find out what industries that Roup is using protected tariffs on to support their industrial growth/ tech level growth in that area. Then bring in higher tech versions for grey market sale.

 

[Vladika]

I have a friend who made a fair sized fortune smuggling Pantyhose into Egypt... Seriously. (He retired at 27, very wealthy)

Another who's family business is in smuggling Antiquities.

I went to undergraduate school with a guy from India who's family business was smuggling gold out of India.

I had an Uncle who was arrested for smuggling Bibles into Soviet Russia. (He was caught after years of doing it without and import license. After getting one from one ministry, during detente, another had him arrested with 300,000...)

Just a few real world examples that point out there is much that is profitable to smuggle depending on what is/isn't wanted by the governing body.

 

[robject]

Kind of a Brother Andrew thing your uncle was doing, eh?

 

[Vladika]

Kind of a Brother Andrew thing your uncle was doing, eh?

Hard to know where the rules boundary is here but...

He was a Gideon. 300,000 Bibles confiscated and 2 months in a Russian Jail before he was released with charges (vague to begin with) dropped. The prosecutor finally decided the the government couldn't prosecute him for an "offense" that one branch had issued a permit for. Bureaucracy, worldwide, is still bureaucracy.

 

[atpollard]

I went to undergraduate school with a guy from India who's family business was smuggling gold out of India.

This reminds me of another common smuggling commodity ... money.
Some people want to move money, for both legitimate and nefarious reasons, without leaving a record or triggering some government regulation ... like a Cayman Islands Bank Account.

 

[CosmicGamer]

Keep in mind that smuggled goods themselves may be 100% legal and the reason for smuggling is to get around lots of red tape, inspections and delays, import fees, taxes, and whatnot.

Based on law level and government, here are some items that might be smuggled.

Regina
All drugs, even medicinal drugs, are "illegal". Illegal might mean illegal to buy over the counter and needing to go visit a doctor to get a Tylenol prescription. Illegal might mean restricting off world imports. Black market for pepto bismol?

Based on the tables, no off worlders are allowed and no technology over TL 3 is allowed!

 

[whulorigan]

MgT Law Levels

Regina
All drugs, even medicinal drugs, are "illegal". Illegal might mean illegal to buy over the counter and needing to go visit a doctor to get a Tylenol prescription. Illegal might mean restricting off world imports. Black market for pepto bismol?

Based on the tables, no off worlders are allowed and no technology over TL 3 is allowed!

Based on a strict reading of that line of the table, yes.

But somehow I have to imagine that those various Law-Level categories are the basis for an extended "Legal-Extension" similar to DGPs World Builder's Handbook (or at least IMTU that is what I would do), not the uniform Law-level for a given world in each category based on the UWP Law Stat.

In other words, for a full world write-up, define the Law Level in each of those categories. In fact, you could let the UWP Law Level be independent of all of those categories and simply let it represent the enforcement level or "strictness" on the world for the various laws that it has as defined by the chart. So, for example, you could have a WeaponsLaw-1 and UWP Law Level 9 (few weapons restrictions, but you are in BIG trouble if you break the few that they have). Or you could have WeaponsLaw-9 and UWP Law Level 1 (all weapons are controlled outside the home, but they don't make routine checks to enforce it, and if you get caught, you pay a fine, or are told to "get that out of my sight and take it home before I arrest you. Now I didn't see that, did I?".

Letting the UWP Law Level simply be the the "general enforcment level" of the world and defining the Category Law Levels independently allows for some nice granular legal profiles for the various worlds.

 

[Limburger59]

JTAS #15 had an Amber Zone adventure titled "Chill", where blood was the cargo being transported. Though not illegal, there were smuggling implications.

 

[Drakon]

Bobble headed geisha dolls. I am told that these can be a profitable smuggler's item.

Black market beagles as well, however there are issues with care, feeding and cleanup.

/me watches too much Firefly.

 

[Condottiere]

Romulan ale; and I believe, Klingon aphrodisiacs.

 

[pendragonman]

Romulan ale; and I believe, Klingon aphrodisiacs.

Klingon aphrodisiacs. How do you bottle "combat"?

 

[aramis]

Political refugees.
Clothing, especially if containing political imagery.
Fertilizer for off-world crops and/or terraforming.
News. (It's cheap and relatively light!)
Banned books.

 

[Condottiere]

Animal Farm and 1984 might not be too popular in some polities.

 

[Dagrill]

Mechant character generation has an event where the character has an opportunity to smuggle illegal goods onto a planet. I'm looking for examples of items that characters can smuggle without necessarily being bad guys.Hans

Everything to Algine, it's red-zoned, but has -594 RU's in the OTU, so needs to import an enormous amount to survive. Or should I stick this on the errata thread?

Regards

David

 

[SanDragon]

Bobble headed geisha dolls. I am told that these can be a profitable smuggler's item.

Black market beagles as well, however there are issues with care, feeding and cleanup.

/me watches too much Firefly.

One can never watch too much Firefly

 

[rancke]

Everything to Algine, it's red-zoned, but has -594 RU's in the OTU, so needs to import an enormous amount to survive. Or should I stick this on the errata thread?

By all means point that one out to Don. Perhaps it can encourage him and Marc to reconsider the ridiculous idea of negative production on the scale that the current rules cause. (My suggestion for a quick fix: Calculate effectiveness is 1 + (Flux * 0.1), giving you a range from 0.5 to 1.5 instead of -5 to 5).

Meanwhile, I'm not going to take the notion of negative production seriously.


Hans