They must have remembered that Booster Terrik owns a Star Destroyer, so warships can't be restricted items
For the lightsaber i agree with Awayputurwpn, but i'd clarify who is owning the item: a Bounty Hunter, especially if famous, or a known collector of ancient weapons, can get away with it. Normal PC can't (unless they roll well on deception!).
Whatever fits the story. One person's luxury is another's mortal sin. Mittens could be illegal if the Empire is trying to freeze rebels out on Hoth.
Keep in mind that X-wing Starfighters are not Restricted, but I bet that any transport with a hold full of them is going to attract a lot of attention if Imperials notice it. Double that attention if the transport is a (also not Restricted) Mon Calamari design...
I think that the Restricted rules are really poorly done in this game. The idea that a MC-80 is legal to own is hilariously stupid--it's like the most outrageous 2nd Amendment argument cranked up to 11,000!
If one takes restricted as one cannot just walk to a shop and buy that item (and has almost nothing to do with legality), but it requires going thru some loops, then I understand it. After all, in where I live, you cannot just walk to a shop and buy a ferrari. You can order one if you are rich enough, and find out how ordering happens. But you cannot just walk to a shop and buy it.
I think that one potential problem with restricted is that it's description is a bit narrow (i.e you can only get it from black market), and legality is left to GM consideration, as narrative choice. If I'd play and GM would say MC80 is illegal, then I'd say "OK, good to know". Personally, I don't see item being Restricted and legal as synonymous. I see many non restricted item as potentially illegal, and restricted as potentially legal, but then we again come to roleplaying, situations and my GMing style. In fitting situation when PCs give good enough reasons and roll well enough, they can fake/bluff that their MC-80 is legal. Or bad situation and bad explanations and bad rolls may put them in jail for having holdout blaster pistol or stimpack. If story requires, it's illegal and may cause problems.
Thanks for all the info folks. I've since found references to "spice" and "glitterstims" on Wookiepedia, but I'm actually really liking the Jedi artifact angle mentioned here now.
Finding and smuggling an ancient Jedi/Sith artifact could have exploration, an Indiana Jones style dungeon crawl and running fights!
They must have remembered that Booster Terrik owns a Star Destroyer, so warships can't be restricted items
You know, in our modern world it is not illegal for a private citizen to own former warships, planes, tanks, etc…. The weapons have to be removed or otherwise made unusable, and there are other things that might have to be stripped off, but if you want to pay for the craft and the personnel to maintain and operate it, then that’s just a matter of going through the appropriate paperwork.
At least, that is true in at least some of the modern societies on this planet.
So, I don’t see why it would be a problem for this kind of thing to also be true in some places in the Star Wars galaxy.
No it isn't. Restricted items are that, restricted. Some may be illegal other just require permits but are legal. Heck even lightsabers are still legal, and that's canon.Any item in the books with an R next to the price is illegal so if you're just trying to find a thing to smuggle, pick any of those.
What I want to know is what we can snuggle. Even a teddy bear is going to stab your face with a spear or drop a log on you.
The way I look at it is this: how willing would the seller be for the buyer to give out their name?
If an item is restricted, all it means is that you are required to use Streetwise as the skill to buy or sell it, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily illegal. It means that your buyer/seller doesn't want to go through channels that could potentially be tracked.
Even on Nar Shaddaa where the Empire has almost no reach and almost no eyes, certain restricted items are going to be bought and sold clandestinely, so as to avoid the potential Imperial spy. If someone's a known kyber crystal dealer and is just offering them in their store front, any Imperium spy that wanders by could see it and note it. Should that person ever go off planet to a place with a modicum of Imperial presence, that person could be arrested for those activities immediately. Sure, the Hutts don't care and won't do anything to stop the sale of kyber crystals on their moon, but that doesn't mean the people dealing them are any less cautious about it.
"There are taxes for taking on salable goods, and taxes for delivering them [...], for carrying [them] along Imperial-monitored hyperspace lanes, [...] for crossing sectors."
Have you paid all of them, and have you got all the documentation in order and readily at hand? You don't, or aren't quite sure?
Congratulations! You're a certified (or rather in lack of) Smuggler.
"There are taxes for taking on salable goods, and taxes for delivering them [...], for carrying [them] along Imperial-monitored hyperspace lanes, [...] for crossing sectors."
Have you paid all of them, and have you got all the documentation in order and readily at hand? You don't, or aren't quite sure?
Congratulations! You're a certified (or rather in lack of) Smuggler.
Yep, This is important to remember. It's not necessary the nature of the goods that make something smuggling, but the nature of the rules governing the goods.
A few folks have referenced FIREFLY, which I think is well worth noting, since it's basically "Han Solo: The Series." The pilot features the crew finding some illegal salvage that's "Alliance-stamped food bars," Since each bar is stamped, if the Alliance (or, in Star Wars, Empire) were to encounter the crew, the crew would be expected to produce documentation for how they have this stuff, or the goods would be seized (and the crew likely charged).
Later, they smuggle livestock to avoid tariffs. Although they don't smuggle medicine, they do STEAL medicine and try to sell it to local. I suspect I'm forgetting a few things besides what's already been referenced.
This get's a little off topic, but if you have the Firefly boardgame (or access to a spreadsheet that lists jobs - I can provide a link if anyone is interested), the game lists a few dozen smuggling jobs... almost 80, although they're not all unique. For example, Magistrate Higgins has 8 jobs called "Mud Pipeline," where the implication is that you're delivering mud used to create ceramics to a series of planets where you're circumventing local law (he also has a series of similar legal jobs).
Niska offers the following smuggling jobs:
Note that in the Niska examples, the LOCATION is a a key factor as often as the type of goods.
All in all, the board game is loads of fun and also a pretty good "random job generator" (with a "Misbehave" deck of random obstacles if you're stuck! I use it sometimes in my RPG)
Edited by gwek
Misread topic title as "Can we snuggle". I was kinda like
but then when I realised what it actually said I felt a bit disappointed.
If an item is restricted, all it means is that you are required to use Streetwise as the skill to buy or sell it, but it doesn't mean it's necessarily illegal. It means that your buyer/seller doesn't want to go through channels that could potentially be tracked.
Even that rule doesn't always make sense. If I want to arrange purchase of a Restricted item from the manufacturer or from a (likely Imperial) authority figure, I'm probably not using Streetwise to do it. And it must be possible for this to happen, as not every Restricted item is used exclusively by the Imperial military.
So for example, if you ran a farm in NY or Virginia and you needed a new iron plow blade, you had to wait for the iron from Pennsylvania to be shipped to England and made into the blade and shipped back. Same goes for the cotton needed for the textile mills in Massachusetts.
If the planet is under blockade, regular food stuffs could be smuggled.
And if you were smuggling from Virginia to NY, you could smuggle in cigarettes, 32oz Colas, American flags, salt, transfats, processed foods, styrofoam packaging, greenhouse gas, 'grassy' areas, black roofs, No. 4 & 6 heating oils, and male restrooms in excess of 1:2 ratio of male:female restrooms in public buildings. Some of those things seem odd, but it's just a matter of whatever a dictatorial tyrant wants to ban in their star system.
Some would ban another system's products out of spite. I suppose you could smuggle foodstuffs or even children's toys under those circumstances. Maybe even small, fuzzy pet Tribbles if you so like.
Edited by DurosSpacerSubtlety can work. For color, I had players do a gig exploiting a loophole in Imperial customs regulations. Through some clerical oversight, turbines for obsolete/oversaturated landspeeders shared the same designation as higher-end and brutally tariffed skyhopper engines, and one party had a whole stock of the former. The scheme was to pick up the turbines off-grid, get them into the system and their cheap duties paid on a quieter planet along the Corellian Run, go "sightseeing" planetside where the party would swap the turbines for engines, then jump down the Run to a major planet where a willing buyer was saving tens of thousands in taxes. As long as the error remained and nobody looked too closely at the duty record, moolah.
Don't forget about weird ideas like the RL guys that were caught smuggling out-of-state cans into Michigan so they could get $0.10/can from cashing in deposits they never paid. Not all smuggling is glamorous...
Intergalactic proton-powered electrical tentacled advertising droids may net you a good profit. Just make sure that you didn't mishear the garbled subspace transmission placing the order.
Regular droids to planet where droids are banned.
Misread topic title as "Can we snuggle". I was kinda like
Don't be! When you're taking your pet to Australia, you can do both at the same time, apparently.
What can you smuggle?
Whatever the employer wants. Take the movie classic Smokey and the Bandit.
They were hired to smuggle beer. Not just any beer, a beer from a state that supposedly reserved it for itself, not selling it outside state lines.
The premise seems silly and it WAS a comedy however a similar thing could happen in the game.
Let's say the Hutts have a particular food they don't want shared outside of their space. Some Rodian crime lord is hosting a party and wants to flaunt his reach by serving it in front of Hutt guests.
He's found a disenfranchised rancher willing to sell him what he wants.. He needs the smugglers to get it out of Hutt space intact.