17 hours ago, 2P51 said:

For starters if it's easy to get something somewhere, why would I hire anyone? That's not smuggling, it's giving a box a ride. If there aren't problems, why do I need you?

Because even if the chance of getting caught is small, the results could be death, life imprisonment, impounding of your starship, or being put on a Hutt's bounty list. So, a stooge is hired to make the run that the boss doesn't want to risk himself for. Han was a stooge. Jabba was the boss.

Running drugs across the US is actually pretty easy. You load up in a rental car, you hide the dope the best way you can think of, and drive long distances on fast food and caffeine. They rarely get caught unless they are very unlucky or an interdictor with some skill and a little luck crosses their path. Even so, the average unscrupulous Joe still doesn't attempt it due to what they are facing if they are one of the very unlucky ones.

Sometimes a smuggler is just a courier getting paid a premium to get something perfectly legal from A to B quickly. Sure, it could be sent by normal channels to arrive in a month on a vessel with a Class 2 hyperdrive and six intervening stops, but maybe someone is willing to pay premium to get it with three-day shipping on that snazzy light freighter packing a Class 0.5 hyperdrive and armed well-enough to handle pirates preying along the poorly patrolled routes on the butt-end of space.

We aren't just talking about smuggling though, at least I'm not. If all a table aspires to is pick up 'the stuff', roll the dice for Astrogation, and see if there's a bad result, so be it. Strikes me as dull, not to mention lazy on the GMs part.

I would think most players would enjoy laying the ground work via role play to establish themselves as knowledgeable goto entities for moving commodoties. Scouting routes, making contacts, learning blind spots in sensor nets, bribing officials for schedules, making a legal independent cargo business as a cover. That to me is running a smuggling campaign and the difference between being brainless mules, and being infamous galactic smugglers.

1 hour ago, 2P51 said:

We aren't just talking about smuggling though, at least I'm not. If all a table aspires to is pick up 'the stuff', roll the dice for Astrogation, and see if there's a bad result, so be it. Strikes me as dull, not to mention lazy on the GMs part.

I would think most players would enjoy laying the ground work via role play to establish themselves as knowledgeable goto entities for moving commodoties. Scouting routes, making contacts, learning blind spots in sensor nets, bribing officials for schedules, making a legal independent cargo business as a cover. That to me is running a smuggling campaign and the difference between being brainless mules, and being infamous galactic smugglers.

I absolutely AM lazy with smuggling because I detest playing it out. I would much rather it happen between adventures (aka, what the group of players got together to do) as I consider it background fluff (aka, what the characters got together to do). It might be different if I had a group where everyone was into smuggling (or bounty hunting, or technical wizardry), but I don't see that happening and, if I did, I probably wouldn't be the GM for it in any event.

21 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

I absolutely AM lazy with smuggling because I detest playing it out. I would much rather it happen between adventures (aka, what the group of players got together to do) as I consider it background fluff (aka, what the characters got together to do). It might be different if I had a group where everyone was into smuggling (or bounty hunting, or technical wizardry), but I don't see that happening and, if I did, I probably wouldn't be the GM for it in any event.

If all the table aspires to is rolling Astrogation checks for possible bad results of jumping in and out, I agree with not bothering. I'm speaking to the OPs original query in regards to running smuggling sessions/campaigns.

If the focus is all ships flying in and out, bad rolls and combat, which ends up feeling flacid at table time it's because the focus is random number generation and not story. I get the dice are narrative, but they're supposed to inform or enhance the story, not create it.

If it's just the Astrogation roll and maybe some kind of combat/chase encounter that's a narrative description of a tabletop tactical simulator session. All well and good if that's what folks want, but for the GMs and players looking for more RP juice out of a smuggling campaign/session it should only be a small part of it, and really not where the best RPing is to be found imo.

21 hours ago, Typherian said:

Alright, alright, alright... everyone seems to be focusing in on that one paragraph. 😏 I'm not necessarily interested in a "speed" run, I just figured out of all the bajillion planets in the Star Wars Universe there'd probably be a fair number that didn't have a lot of planetary assets or air traffic control. (Plus... it'd probably be nice if sometimes things did go smoothly and they had an easy run. /shrug)

For instance... say a week before the scenes in ANH I doubt anyone cared who landed on Tat. From all I can tell all those imperial assets showed up to look for those droids with the imperial plans. They weren't there before or after. (Am I wrong about this? It's possible.)

To be fair, Jabba would certainly care about who is invading his turf. Also, consider that planets without much in the way of smuggler defenses and customs assets, well, there just isn't likely to be much demand or money to be made for smugglers on those runs. If basically anyone can do it, anyone will. For instance, music piracy (a form of digital smuggling) was easy enough that we ALL became "pirates" for a bit. If something is too easy to do, the credits won't be there. That's the balancing factor.

17 hours ago, Typherian said:

The question about hyperspace wasn't just in regards to smuggling. It was just for general using hyperspace to go places.

You can apparently get into hyperspace anywhere (outside of gravitational pull) pointed in any direction going anywhere. I mean you never see them cruising around looking for the on ramp to the hyperspace lane, right?

But after we get in hyperspace, suddenly we have to conform to lanes, junctions, and specific known exits that are all patrolled?

So like you said, you can't jump while within an immediate gravitational body, this is how interdictors work, too. So the hyperspace lanes are protected areas guarenteed free of gravitational disturbances. If you look in any core rulebook, you can see the galactic map with the major hyperlanes. So sure, you can take an unexplored hyperspace route. But as Han Solo said, Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy! Without precise calculations we could fly right through a star or bounce too close to a supernova and that'd end your trip real quick, wouldn't it?

So most people stick to the safety of the hyperlanes and BoSS approved routes. But also, remember space is big. So long as the pilot knows the general vector of the lane relative to the system, they're probably good. If they've jumped in within the past few days, It's probably the same vector they had initially. Most of space is empty, after all.

There's a few things to keep in mind.

First, hyperspace travel in Star Wars is rarely strictly Point A to Point B (even though that's what we see in the films). Expanded universe materials makes a big deal out of "hyperspace lanes," and you need to chart a course using those routes or else bad things can happen. This is related to how hyperspace travel in Star Wars works: objects in realspace cast "mass shadows" in hyperspace, and hitting a "mass shadow" in hyperspace is just like hitting the actual object, except at a zillion times the speed of light. Basically, you just stop being engineering and biology and start being physics. Because of this, hyperdrives have safety mechanisms that prevent them from being activated while within a gravity well* (gravity mostly being generated by large amounts of matter) and that pops them out of hyperspace when they encounter a gravity well, but these systems are far from foolproof: even getting yanked out by the safety as you approach a mass shadow can heavily damage or destroy a ship**. So, hyperspace lanes are well-charted routes "clear" of anything that might cast a mass shadow in hyperspace that might pose a threat to a ship in realspace.*** Staying within those lanes is safer, and charting new routes is very difficult and dangerous work (seriously, there people who do that for a living in the Star Wars universe, and it's I gather a highly-paid and specialized profession, not something to try with the Star Wars equivalent of a GED). What all this means is your smuggling route isn't likely to be a simple Coruscant to Tatooine hop, over in minutes or even hours. You might need to go from Coruscant to Corellia, from there to Panolomin, to Gamor, to Naboo and finally to Tatooine. At each stop, your ship may be subject to customs inquiry and search (especially under the Empire). Even a perfectly legitimate cargo going from Coruscant to Tatooine might have to pass through a system where said cargo is controlled, restricted, or illegal, and you'd better have the permits that say you're legally transporting it through this system with no intent to offload it there. That's also how piracy in Star Wars mostly works: You can't ambush a ship in hyperspace and most pirates can't afford Interdictors (or even the poor-man's equivalents, like towing massive asteroids) so you stake out good, juicy transit points near major trade routes and wait for a ship with a nice, lucrative cargo to pop out so you can board them and steal stuff. Of course, that's also where the customs ships hang out, too, to make sure all cargo going through said transit point is legal. So, at any given transit point, smugglers and legitmate shippers alike might have to worry about customs and pirates, pirates might have to worry about their smuggler and legitimate cargo targets and customs ships that will try and stop them, and customs ships might have to worry about inspecting smugglers and legitimate haulers and driving off pirates.

Second, you have to actually land on the planet you're delivering the cargo to. If you go through a regular spaceport, there's certainly going to be customs checks to make sure nothing illegal is being smuggled in, and that's where things like Han's hidden compartments come in handy, or other ways to get the customs officials off the illegal cargo (bribing is always an option, but the whole point of smuggling is to make money, and bribes can quickly get expensive). You can just land somewhere else on the planet, but most civilized planets would probably have laws against putting down anywhere except a designated spaceport without a really good reason (like an official declaration of emergency from the ship in question) and the tracking equipment to quickly find anyone who puts down somewhere they're not supposed to. Think about airplanes in real life: even a tiny little puddle jumper plane has to take off and land at designated airports (even if they're dinky little airports) and file an official flight plan. Just landing on a street or the middle of an empty field is a BIG no-no.

Ideally, a smuggler will attract zero attention doing their job. No one but the person they're delivering illicit cargo to or picking it up from will ever know they were carrying anything other than official sanctioned, perfectly normal goods. In fact, I think a lot of smugglers do carry perfectly legal cargo in addition to their illegal goods, getting a little bit of extra money from a legal cargo run and having legitimate, properly-documented goods to show off to any inspectors who care to look (after all, it's a pretty big plot point in Heir to the Empire when Wedge encounters what appears to be a completely empty freighter. . . a freighter should never be completely empty). How, exactly, they keep their hidden cargo hidden until the time comes to exchange it for fat stacks of cash has been covered by some of the other posters, and that for me would be the most fun. . . if you have a group of clever players, see what they come up with for a smuggling scheme, and see if there are any holes in it you can exploit to get them caught. Because smuggling is risky, there should always be a risk of getting caught, and then they need to figure out how to get out of the trouble they're now in.

If you haven't, watch Firefly. Some great examples for what day-to-day life might be for this kind of a crew (though the crew of Serenity are more straight-up thieves, pirates, etc., they do engage in some "honest smuggling" every so often).

* Yes, I know new Canon shows us the U-Wing in Rogue One , and arguably the Millenium Falcon in The Force Awakens , do exactly that. My contention was always that the safety was hard-wired and could not be removed, overwritten, or otherwise fiddled with, because my players would be just dumb enough to try (and still almost did, leading to me having to declare that it was flat-out impossible to tamper with that safety). New canon, the safety may be less tamper-proof, but it's still done only rarely, allowing the U-Wing to hyperspace away while still in Jedda's gravity well. I don't think the Falcon actually was in hyperspace and Starkiller Base's gravity well at the same time, but I freely admit that's Your Mileage May Vary.

** Happened to Talon Karrde in a story he tells in Dark Force Rising . Emergency jump caused a ship he was on at the start of his smuggling career to nearly hit a mass shadow in hyperspace, which heavily damaged the ship and blew the main hyperdrive, forcing them to limp to civilization on the backup hyperdrive.

** And yes, real space is 99.99999999etc.% completely empty. This is one of those cases where Star Wars logic does not resemble our Earth logic.

On 12/28/2018 at 2:40 PM, ErikModi said:

Think about airplanes in real life: even a tiny little puddle jumper plane has to take off and land at designated airports (even if they're dinky little airports) and file an official flight plan. Just landing on a street or the middle of an empty field is a BIG no-no.

Well, there's a lot of international smuggling that involves taking off and landing on private, unlisted, hidden or otherwise covert airstrips.

https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/barry-seal-legacy-aerial-smuggling

https://www.asi-mag.com/drug-trafficking-air-lessons-aviation-security/

https://www.univision.com/univision-news/latin-america/the-wings-of-the-drug-trade-an-unprecedented-journey-into-narco-aviation-in-latin-america

http://www.wsj.com/ad/cocainenomics-the-logistics.html

Something I just found about hyperspace travel in general. In the E:CRB page 361 about Ord Mantell there is a descriptive paragraph that says:

A thousand other star systems offer the same temptations, though few are blessed with Ord Mantell's location. Situated at the end of the Entralla Route, Ord Mantell serves as the turn onto the Celanon Spur. Only the fastest navicomputers can make the course correction without leaving hyperspace, making Ord Mantell an obvious stop over.

So, that one line means that you don't have to drop out of hyperspace for gradual changes of direction, but only for the "sharp" turns. (and with a really fast navicomputer, not even for sharp turns?) So it would be possible to navigate between some places with one jump rather than multiple jumps with the navicomputer making course corrections while still in hyperspace. Note, I said some and not all. Some routes or destinations would still require multiple jumps. Obviously GM's and their groups can play it anyway they want, but there is information to warrant some direct hyperspace flights.

(it seemed worth pointing out because I got the impression that a lot of people feel like hyperspace is only straight lines that require a drop out of hyperspace at "hubs" to change direction.)

54 minutes ago, Typherian said:

Something I just found about hyperspace travel in general. In the E:CRB page 361 about Ord Mantell there is a descriptive paragraph that says:

A thousand other star systems offer the same temptations, though few are blessed with Ord Mantell's location. Situated at the end of the Entralla Route, Ord Mantell serves as the turn onto the Celanon Spur. Only the fastest navicomputers can make the course correction without leaving hyperspace, making Ord Mantell an obvious stop over.

So, that one line means that you don't have to drop out of hyperspace for gradual changes of direction, but only for the "sharp" turns. (and with a really fast navicomputer, not even for sharp turns?) So it would be possible to navigate between some places with one jump rather than multiple jumps with the navicomputer making course corrections while still in hyperspace. Note, I said some and not all. Some routes or destinations would still require multiple jumps. Obviously GM's and their groups can play it anyway they want, but there is information to warrant some direct hyperspace flights.

(it seemed worth pointing out because I got the impression that a lot of people feel like hyperspace is only straight lines that require a drop out of hyperspace at "hubs" to change direction.)

To make such information useful in-game, it would be nice if Navicomputers were rated with something more detailed than "Yes/No," but to be fair, I don't think they have had any more detail than that in any of the systems to date.

See, way I saw it was that given the speeds involved even the smallest changes in course can result in massive changes at far enough distances. Go fast enough and even relatively empty space starts to feel crowded with things that have to be manouvered around. Going from sublight speeds to the speeds hyperspace can cover is like standing still to full out. As such it’s easier for the computer to calculate the route from one system to another while still in the first system than it would be while in hyperspace. End result is while it might be possible to do a change in course in hyperspace, it’s just really difficult.

It’s also why it might be easier to do a route in a number of small jumps than one long one. The shorter hops have less variables for the navicomputer to consider and less time spent in any one spot in real space. A long jump would require a lot more variables to be taken into consideration and take a lot longer for a route to be calculated.

There is also the fact that you’re incommunicado with the rest of the galaxy while in hyperspace. Being out of touch means you might miss some important changes at your destination and/or route.

21 minutes ago, Hchar said:

See, way I saw it was that given the speeds involved even the smallest changes in course can result in massive changes at far enough distances. Go fast enough and even relatively empty space starts to feel crowded with things that have to be manouvered around. Going from sublight speeds to the speeds hyperspace can cover is like standing still to full out. As such it’s easier for the computer to calculate the route from one system to another while still in the first system than it would be while in hyperspace. End result is while it might be possible to do a change in course in hyperspace, it’s just really difficult.

It’s also why it might be easier to do a route in a number of small jumps than one long one. The shorter hops have less variables for the navicomputer to consider and less time spent in any one spot in real space. A long jump would require a lot more variables to be taken into consideration and take a lot longer for a route to be calculated.

There is also the fact that you’re incommunicado with the rest of the galaxy while in hyperspace. Being out of touch means you might miss some important changes at your destination and/or route.

I was looking at it like the navicomputer calculated the minor course corrections in the initial calculation and once you jumped you just followed the course that was plotted. But, the navicomputer couldn't calculate tight turns so if one was required the first course would only be to the junction where'd you'd have to revert to real space and make a new calculation. /shrug

To your point in the 2nd paragraph, I too, think it would take longer to calculate a long route with some variations in direction. But less time than dropping in and out of hyperspace and doing other calculations. You just wouldn't plot one of those long courses when you are dodging turbo laser fire or Tie Fighters because you'd want to leave to anywhere in a hurry.