My player has asked me a few times whether his Smuggler could make some money during downtime between adventures (or if there is significant downtime story-wise) doing some actual smuggling. I haven't seen any rules or suggestions for how to play this so I'm thinking of some way to house rule it: Something simple, can get it out of the way quickly and get to the next session, but more interesting than just saying they made money smuggling.

In my mind, the PC is just a middle man, given a job to take items from point A to point B. I could ask the player whether he wants to take an Easy, Average, or Hard job, indicating the size/risk of the shipment, distance to the destination, and size of the payment. Perhaps then have a table of obstacles the PC would randomly encounter, a number equivalent to the difficulty of the job (two or three max). Something like customs agents, ship trouble, Imperial checkpoints, getting stiffed or double crossed at the delivery, and so on. The player will have to roll an appropriate skill check to handle each incident and only gets paid upon successful delivery. Depending on the outcome, maybe even have some consequences caused by failure - injuries, ship damage, debt or wrath incurred to the employer, attracting unwanted attention, Obligation, etc.

Does this sound stupid, or is there a better way, or perhaps the legwork has been done already?

Well, smuggling by its very nature is something illegal and risky. Which means it's probably better suited to be done during actual play sessions so the players have to deal with any consequences that come up.

Why does the player want to do this? Is it more for building up the character's story and/or reputation as a smuggler? Or is it to just try to make some extra cash?

If it's the mainly for cash, maybe suggest a "legit" delivery job that can be done during downtime between sessions. The Colonist book "Far Horizons" actually has some guidelines (including pay scale) for some occupations that PCs can have and do these day jobs during downtime.

If it's for story and rep building purposes, I think the mechanics you propose are okay. But I still think it's way more fun to have those smuggling jobs play out during actual sessions.

My player has asked me a few times whether his Smuggler could make some money during downtime between adventures (or if there is significant downtime story-wise) doing some actual smuggling. I haven't seen any rules or suggestions for how to play this so I'm thinking of some way to house rule it: Something simple, can get it out of the way quickly and get to the next session, but more interesting than just saying they made money smuggling.

In my mind, the PC is just a middle man, given a job to take items from point A to point B. I could ask the player whether he wants to take an Easy, Average, or Hard job, indicating the size/risk of the shipment, distance to the destination, and size of the payment. Perhaps then have a table of obstacles the PC would randomly encounter, a number equivalent to the difficulty of the job (two or three max). Something like customs agents, ship trouble, Imperial checkpoints, getting stiffed or double crossed at the delivery, and so on. The player will have to roll an appropriate skill check to handle each incident and only gets paid upon successful delivery. Depending on the outcome, maybe even have some consequences caused by failure - injuries, ship damage, debt or wrath incurred to the employer, attracting unwanted attention, Obligation, etc.

Does this sound stupid, or is there a better way, or perhaps the legwork has been done already?

We run our campaigns on Obsidian Portal and the way we handle between session stuff is via stories. If a player wants to do something like that you require them to do a brief 2 or 3 page short story about what precisely they are doing. Then you just sorta SWAG an estimate on how much you want to reward them for credits.

This guy has played too many MMOs so he is all about the loot and the money. If I let him he'll be fully decked out in gear and ships tomorrow. I'm still very new to GMing (and thanks to the holidays and such it's been 3 months since I last GMed) so I'm not making up adventures yet, which means not much smuggling or bounty hunting going on.

I'll have to look into those occupations, that's more along the line of what he's trying to do. I agree that smuggling jobs should be an adventure. All that risk and danger would make for a good one too. And those are usually the big score kind of deals that you'd focus a story around. Yeah, I'm already getting ideas for this adventure.

This guy has played too many MMOs so he is all about the loot and the money.

Ahh, he wants to Smuggle Farm. I see.

If he wants to farm between sessions, tell him to run a Colonist instead, because there’s a book for that.

Yeah, exactly. Does he play SWTOR by any chance? Because it sounds like that's what he wants, with how the companion system works earning you credits and items while you're offline, hah. If that's the case, I'd politely decline his request. Try and gently get him out of the MMO mindset. It's about the story and journey, not the credits and gear.

In my games, at least, the PCs are almost always on the run, very often they're in uncivilized places or they have very little money when they *do* reach civilization.

I'd hardly ever let the PCs get into a spot where they've got (a) loads of money, and (b) a civilized, populated world with shops carrying lots of awesome gear, © time available to shop and buy stuff.

Two out of those three, but hardly ever all three at once

Well my response would be to start the next session with them making the delivery on this "side quest" and have that be the start of the next adventure...

The only time I've seen that kind of stuff pulled off is when that PC is the GM for that game, I usually just find a way to explain why my character's not there rather than give my character an effective power up but here at least they're trying to do this in game.

Ask him what he's trying to accomplish with this and if he answers consider adding this subplot to your game you never know it might give you that scene you've been having problems setting and now that player has all but set themselves up to explain their new obligation or duty if this puts them answering orders to some crimelord on Onderon...

A simple idea is that the background smuggling (or bounty hunting, or whatever) is what lets the characters break even (keep Obligation from increasing and credits from going down). The stuff that lets them get ahead (reducing Obligation and making credits) is the stuff that happens at the table.

If he wants a steady out-of-play income he should buy into the Entrepeneur specialization; it actually has talents for that very thing. And there's nothing that says the entrepeneurship can't be smuggling rather than legitimate investments.

As for earning serious money, I think HappyDaze summed it up very well: anything that puts substantial cash into the PCs' pockets should be played out. Make a smuggling adventure for them where they have to meet with some shady people, pick up the cargo, get betrayed, have to sneak it past customs inspectors (they DID invest in secret cargo compartments, didn't they?) by making Stealth or Skulduggery checks vs. the inspectors' Perception as they board and search the ship. And then they can make delivery, with the possibility of being betrayed, swindled or plain mugged. Ah, the glorious life of a smuggler.

I think you go with something quick and dirty if you go with anything at all. I prefer to have my role playing played at the table than by a mechanical bank of charts and tables.

Lets assume a few things, getting a job takes a few days, it costs a few drinks and bribes, it takes a few days to fly to the destination and then start again. So each 14 days will give him one smuggling run. As for the bribes and drinks this becomes his buy in, he tells you how much he spends on this.

When he gets to his destination roll a force dice for each 500cr he spends on his buy in. These are low risk jobs not worth playing out so don't expect much. If the light pips exceed the dark pips he makes back his buy in and 50% per pip. So if his buy in was 1000 and he threw two light side pips he would get 1000cr as his buy in and 50% x2 of his buy in, another 1000cr.

On any other result he rolls a skill check, the opposed pool is formed by the number of dark pips showing. Start with an easy pool, and upgrade the difficulty by 1 factor for each 2 Dark Pips. If there are any remaining pips then upgrade a dice. So he takes his 2,000cr and rolls it back in. Rolling 5 black and 2 white pips, as he has three black more than white, he'll go from easy to hard and upgrade a dice with the left over pip (RPP).

Note: If you get more than 6 dark pips you will form a pool of 5 purple dice, so any extra pip beyond the 6th will upgrade one dice. So if your player goes for an outrageously big score and he rolls 9 black pips then he will be going against a RRRPP. If you should get to 12 pips then start adding then upgrading dice with each successive pip. (12=RRRRRP, 13=RRRRRR, 14=RRRRRRP, 15RRRRRRR etc)

If he is successful he makes his buy in back, if he fails he will suffer a loss of his buy in. If he has advantage he will make 25% of his buy in back per advantage, if he had threat then he will suffer a loss of 25% of his buy in for each threat. If he has a triumph he will make 100% of his buy in. If he has a despair then he will suffer the loss of everything and will end up owing the cost of the cargo (10 times the buy in) to his client. This can be paid for or if he doesn't have the funds will be paid for in an obligation of 5 per 10,000cr or part thereof to a maximum of 25 obligation gained. If the player gains the maximum obligation but would still have debt remaining the GM can make the obligation harder to buy down than normal. You could also assign parts of this obligation to the crew of the ship, being the other players.

Examples (based on 2,000cr buy in):

Success + 2 Threat: 2000 - (50% of 2000) = 1,000

Success + 1 Threat: 2000 - (25% of 2000) = 1,500

Success + 0 Advantage: 2,000

Success + 1 Advantage: 2,000 + (25% of 2000) = 2,500

Success + 2 Advantage: 2,000 + (50% of 2000) =3,000

Failure + 2 Threat: 0 - (50% of 2000) = (1,000)

Failure + 1 Threat: 0 - (25% of 2000) = (500)

Failure + 0 Advantage: 0

Failure + 1 Advantage: 0 + (25% of 2000) = 500

Failure + 2 Advantage: 0 + (50% of 2000) =1,000

As above but with triumph: +2,000cr Each

As above but with Despair: -20,000cr or 10 Obligation

Thanks for all the advice. I mentioned it today and the logic and idea of making a big score kind of deal is more appealing to him. Now that I think about it, that is really what he was asking for without asking for it - adventures more centered around their characters.

He may have tried SWTOR, but when I say he's played too many MMOs, I mean its just affected his thinking, RE min-maxing and sandbox gameplay.

Anyways, I've just accepted that I'll need to start planning my own adventures next. I wanted to get more experience first, but playing through these books isn't going to work much longer. I'll have to use what I've got and plant some seeds in Beyond the Rim for what's next. I plan to just keep it simple and have small adventures that last only one or two sessions to test the waters.

The way things play out, it may actually benefit the group more if I can give them a longer leash than they've had with these books.

On my Obsidian Portal page - my players engage in role play scenes. These tend to be slice of life discussions that don't need to be role played during the actual session. I have between 4 and 5 players a session and if 2 want to have a heart to heart, the others need not sit around watching. That can happen via text and be posted to the Adventure Log.

In addition, several of my players maintain post-session journal entries from their characters' points of view. This all really adds to the campaign world we've created and deepens the experience. Your smuggler could engage in similar situations.

Perhaps rather than listening to a few of these gamer-hating Luddites, you can nurture the player's interest in continuing the story even after the session is over and provide a forum or email role play environment for them, like Obsidian Portal.

I'm at the point where my two smugglers want to do the same. I'm going to be running two sessions, basically - one with everyone, and another for the two smugglers whose availability and interest is such that they would like to spend more time together being creative and carving out back stories. We will be doing these every-day smuggler jobs but from the perspective of it being back story rather than concurrent with the plot so the others don't feel left out.

If my Jedi gets to the point where she has the time to role play the back story of how she escaped Order 66 - I'll facilitate that as well.

Leave it to some people to interpret a player's interest as an attempt to loot all the chests.

Look to Han Solo for inspiration -

Next adventure, tell him he's worked his way through a pair of harrowing but successful smuggling operations. With those under his belt he's managed to pay for the cost of maintaining and refueling his starship. I mean, every time that Tie-Fighter hit you, it was like "****, there goes 2,500 credits."

No one ever got rich being a Spacer.

My GM let us get away with this. We basically made 'Blue Milk Runs' where we just delivered live stock or some stormtrooper bobbleheads and either made a small-time contact or very few credits (250-500)

Big scores should be role-played and action-packed or stealthy and risky.