Everyday details of fringer life and its place in the core book.

By tschirm, in General Discussion

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The following were questions that came up during our last session there were not in the book. In addition, to responding to these questions, chime in whether or not you think these issues should be mentioned or addressed the core rules (like in side bar) or left up to the GM to research and write up.

1) In the Star Wars universe, is there fuel for starships? Or unlimited power produced by reactors? How much fuel is consumed per jump and is it related to distance travelled? How much does it cost?
2) How much do docking fees cost? What is exactly is included with a docking service, right to park, maintenance, etc? How does this fluctuate from place to place?
3) When are cargo holds inspected/scanned and taxes and fees levied? When does a smuggler smuggle?

In campaign setting where you start with a freighter and jet around galaxy with illegal goods these questions should come up frequently and my personal level Star Wars nerd doesn't get this technical.

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1. I've definitely read Star Wars stories where ships need to be refueled. Isn't that what Tibana gas on Bespin is for? Not sure on cost. Seems like that could be easier for a GM to determine based on how he runs credits.

2. Dock Fees are usually not extreme. In Kotor they were 100 credits I believe. I've always assumed that a docking fee only covered the space for parking, with repairs and refueling seperate. I'd guess fees would vary from planet to planet to space station.

3. Cargo holds would be inspected only on certain worlds, the civilized worlds. I imagine most would have custom agents who board every ship while other planets would just do spot checking. I imaging many outer rim worlds don't bother with checks.

These are all just opinion based on how I've run games in the past. I usually amp up these elements only when thematically necessary and gloss over them when it would just slow down the story.

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Very good questions,

In my opinion, all these questions should be treated in the core book. Even if some of them can be somewhat abstracted.

Ships need fuel in the star wars universe. It would be very helpful to have guidelines regarding fuel consumption, autonomy and cost. Even if this can also be treated in a manner that a [Despair] may mean in certain circunstances, a need to refuel, this does not impede the need for the abovementioned guidlines, IMO.

An estimate of common dock fees would also be helpful. In the introductory adventure, some numbers are mentioned, like 200 or 100 creds a day for parking only. Power and refueling 100 extra credits. This values can be negotiated, the price droped or increased depending on the dice results.

Most importantly, it would be very useful to me to have few ideas how smugling and inspection procedures work in imperial space (with scanners, personal inspection, chips carrying permits, etc)

Also, I'd like to know the consumption rate of bacta liquid, the most typical inns and hotel fees practiced in the Outer Rim, and other costs of living in general.

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I hope there will be a chapter on Life in the Outer Rim that will include all of the above information and a whole lot more. I am hoping the galaxy section will detail at least ten to fifteen planets with adventure hooks, and go into more detail than the planet sections in the Saga books, which to me were very lacking on planet descriptions. I want a section on Criminal Organizations and how to run them as they are in the Outer Rim. and a list of the 50 most common goods for smuggling. and how to hide them against the Imperial Space Police.

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I feel certain that a lot of smuggling involves flying specially built souped up spaceships really, really fast in an attempt to outrun the law.
+++++With the start of Prohibition Captain McCoy began bringing rum from Bimini and the rest of the Bahamas into south Florida through Government Cut. The Coast Guard soon caught up with him, so he began to bring the illegal goods to just outside of the U.S. territorial waters and let smaller boats and other captains such as Habana Joe take the risk of bringing it into shore.
The rum-running business was very good, and McCoy soon bought a Gloucester knockabout schooner named Arethusa at auction and renamed her Tomoka. He installed a larger auxiliary, mounted a concealed machine gun on her deck and refitted the fish pens below to accommodate as much contraband as she could hold. She became one of the most famous of the rum-runners, along with his two other ships hauling mostly Irish and Canadian whiskey, as well as other fine liquors and wines, to ports from Maine to Florida.
In the days of rum running, it was common for captains to add water to the bottles to stretch their profits, or to re-label it as better goods. Any cheap sparkling wine became French champagne or Italian Spumante; unbranded liquor became top-of-the-line name brands. McCoy became famous for never watering his booze, and selling only top brands. Although the phrase appears in print in 1882, this is one of several folk etymologies for the origin of the term "The Real McCoy."
On November 15, 1923, McCoy and Tomoka encountered the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Seneca, just outside U.S. territorial waters. A boarding party attempted to board, but McCoy chased them off with the machine gun. Tomoka tried to run, but the Seneca placed a shell just off her hull, and Bill McCoy's days as a rum-runner were over.+++++

+++++On the government's side were an assortment of patrol boats, inshore patrol and harbor cutters. Most of the patrol boats were of the "six-bit" variety: 75-foot craft with a top speed of about 12 knots. There were also an assortment of launches, harbor tugs and miscellaneous small craft.

At the start, the rum-runner fleet consisted of a ragtag flotilla of fishing boats, excursion boats, and small merchant craft. But as prohibition wore on, the stakes got higher and the ships became more specialized. Large merchant ships like McCoy's Tomoka waited on Rum Row, but specialized high-speed craft were built for the ship-to-shore runs. These high-speed boats were often luxury yachts and speedboats fitted with powerful aircraft engines, machine guns, and armor plating. Oftentimes, builders of rum-runners' ships also supplied Coast Guard vessels (such as Fred and Mirto Scopinich's Freeport Point Shipyard). Rum-runners often kept cans of used engine oil handy to pour on hot exhaust manifolds, in case a smoke screen was needed to escape the revenue ships.
The rum-runners were definitely faster and more maneuverable. Add to that the fact that a rum-running captain could make several hundred thousand dollars a year. In comparison, the Coast Guard Commandant made just $6,000 annually, and seamen made $30/week. These huge rewards meant the rum-runners were willing to take big risks. They ran without lights at night and in fog, risking life and limb. Oftentimes, the shores were littered with bottles from a rum-runner who had hit a sandbar or a reef in the dark at high speed and sunk.
The Coast Guard relied on hard work, excellent reconnaissance and big guns to get their job done. It was not uncommon for rum-runners' ships to be sold at auction shortly after a trial — often right back to the original owners. Some ships were captured three or four times before they were finally sunk or retired. In addition, the Coast Guard had other duties, and often had to let a rum-runner go in order to assist a sinking vessel or other emergency.+++++
+++++Operators of illegal whiskey stills conducted their business at night to avoid detection of legal authorities, because of this they became known as "Moonshiners". Bootleggers were the people that Moonshiners hired to transport the illegal alcohol to their buyers. The term bootlegger comes from colonial times when the smugglers rode on horseback with the alcohol concealed in their tall riding boots. Bootleggers traded their horses for cars in the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. T hese later bootleggers developed superb mechanical skills as they modified their cars with heavier springs to support the weight of the alcohol and more horsepower to help them outrun the law. NASCAR was born out of this obsession with cars and speed. The winner of the first ever NASCAR race had used his car to smuggle illegal alcohol the week before the race. Rumrunners are basically the same as bootleggers, however, they smuggle their goods by sea, using fast vessels with hidden cargo holds.+++++
+++++The name of the bootlegger turn originates from the Prohibition era of the United States, when bootleggers transporting illegal liquor would use the maneuver to escape from police officers. Bootleggers were notorious for using modified high-speed cars to transport their goods and for using daring driving maneuvers to escape authorities. The man credited with inventing the bootlegger turn is Robert Glenn "Junior" Johnson, who ran liquor from his father's moonshine still and went on to become a highly successful NASCAR racer.+++++
+++++During the era of Prohibition in the United States, these boats were called "rum-runners" because they were used to transfer rum from larger vessels waiting outside the territorial waters of the United States. The high speed of the rum-runners enabled them to avoid interception by the Coast Guard. More recently the term "cigarette boat" has replaced the term "rum-runner" when similar boats were used to smuggle cigarettes between Canada and the United States. The present era of cigarette boats, dating from the 1960s, owes much of their design to boats designed for offshore powerboat racing, particularly by designer and builder Donald Aronow. During this period, these boats were used by drug smugglers to transfer drugs across the Caribbean to the United States.+++++

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http://www.snopes.com/photos/boats/drugrunner.asp

+++++Evidence presented during Rush's 2007 trial indicated that Davison and George (and later, Rush) were making secret deals for boats like the one pictured above: craft between 30 ft. and 60 ft. long, costing as much as £350,000 ($680,000 US), and featuring up to eight 250-horsepower engines (with a total fuel storage capacity of 15,000 litres) that enabled them to outrun pursuers at speeds up 60 knots(70 mph). The craft were designed with low profiles (to avoid radar detection) and were painted grey or black to make them difficult to spot on the water. Crompton (and Nautexco) Marine's primary customers were said to be smugglers who used the craft for transporting drugs and other contraband between north Africa and southern Spain.+++++

2000_hp_drug_runner_boat.jpg

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Since I've starting running SW, in this system (5 sessions now), I've used the Crates of Krayts for a guideline.

"Impact [NPC] negotiates the docking fees and any other services the characters need. To work out a reasonable price, the PC's and Impact make an opposed Negotiation check. Fees start at 200 credits a day in a shared landing bay, or 100 credits on the shared platform, just to park the ship without any resupply or even standard power connections. The PC's can spend any Advantages scored on the check to get power and refueling thrown in free of charge, just as the GM can spend any Threat to allow Impact to insist on power and refueling costing 100 credits. Triumphs can be spent to drop the price by 50 credits a day, with Despair increasing the cost by 50 credits per day."

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It should be fairly clear that I feel PC smugglers should be on the 'cool' end of smuggling, with fast cars and exciting police chases rather than the version that involves getting a vulnerable person to swallow a bunch of condoms filled with coke.

So while snopes says this never happened:-

+++++A friend of my father's was a cop in Nevada, and he was assigned the graveyard shift, posted outside of town on a little used section of road, given a radar gun and ordered to stay put and to pull motorists over for speeding. One night, while the officer waits by the side of the road, the radar gun starts screaming for no apparent reason at all, registering about 140. The officer, who was sleepy anyway, attributes this to a faulty gun, and ignores the incident.

A week later the same thing happens again, on the same stretch of road, at about the same time at night. This time, however, the gun registers 145, and the officer pays more attention. Later, after his shift is over, he has the gun checked out for problems, and is told it is operating perfectly. A week later, same road, same time, the gun goes off. By now the police officer is confused, and angry.

The next week he has men stationed at a road block a few miles down from the spot where he has been positioned. Like clockwork, the radar gun goes off, and he alerts his friends to get ready for whatever is racing down the highway.

At the road block is stopped a black Lamborghini, with an engine iced and baffled for silent running. The driver is a drug mule, hauling a load and staying on the backroads, and less frequently monitored highways. The car itself is running without headlights, while the driver wears night vision goggles.+++++
it is totally the way PC should go about moving the goods. Only they often get spotted anyway so they can outrun the law in an exciting chase.
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a stealth car. that is just bad ass.

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WEG produced some great material about freighter pilots and smugglers. Remember Platt O'Keefe? Her guides discussed the issues of docking, refueling, what services were available at different ports. I'd like to see an updated version of this in conjunction with EotE.

Garrett

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schi0384 said:

1) In the Star Wars universe, is there fuel for starships? Or unlimited power produced by reactors? How much fuel is consumed per jump and is it related to distance travelled? How much does it cost?
2) How much do docking fees cost? What is exactly is included with a docking service, right to park, maintenance, etc? How does this fluctuate from place to place?
3) When are cargo holds inspected/scanned and taxes and fees levied? When does a smuggler smuggle?

1) So a quick search on Wookieepedia (the Star Wars Wiki) produced these results:
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Fuel
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Hypermatter
Short answer: Yes, Starships use Fuel.

2) As someone else already mentioned the Knights of the Old Republic video game showed fees at the 100 CR range. I'd use that as an average and adjust from there.

3) For this I've always used the old PC Flight sim X-Wing Alliance. In that game you are given missions to inspect Ships for a number of reasons. In the game your ship would have to fly close to the ship you wish to inspect and your onboard systems would analyze the cargo (through the Hull) and compare it to the Broadcasted Manifest (if it was broadcasting one).

As for when the ships are inspected, here's how I generally narrate it:

In the Mid to Inner rim systems of the galaxy (or any of the more "civilized" and wealthy places in the galaxy) there would be Space Stations and Police Fighters that would monitor for ships exiting Hyperspace (usually parked or patrolling Buoys that signal common Hyperspace routes). Once such a ship is detected it would be scanned by either the station or the Police Fighters. If all checks out any tolls, taxes, and fees would be charged as a bill to the registered owner of the Ship based on it's Transponder Code ( http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Transponder_code ). Not necessarily the Captain of the ship, but the owner. So a Captain of a Large Cargo Freighter working for a large shipping company wouldn't be charged, as he does not OWN the ship, the company does. In VERY high security systems a ship would be boarded and manually inspected.

In the Outer rim things are a little more freeform and can change depending on the system/sector. Usually a Space Station or a Starfighter patrol would be located closer to the individual planet and any fee would be paid by the Captain upon landing or docking. There may be a personal inspection if the need arises upon landing before you'd be able to leave the docking bay/landing pad.

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As a side note, if I recall correctly, Tibana gas is used in blasters.

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Always come back to the roots guys:

A New Hope, the final battle scene. When the rebels are preparing their starfighters we can clearly see

the technicians unplugging fuel cables from the x-wings.

So, ships do use fuel! :-)