I was kind of hoping my players would be inclined to make Shadows for their crew, but there’s some talk of Hawkers, Smugglers, and Bravos. Hawkers I can refer to The Wire and plenty of other media touchstones. Bravos I can look to Peaky Blinders and others.
But Smugglers I seem to be coming up blank. Anyone have any media that comes to mind when they think Smugglers in a way that might inform a Blades game?
Boardwalk Empire or any 1920s gangland drama. A lot of them are all about smuggling hooch.
Argo, but they are smuggling people
Anything about drug smugglers. Firefly. Stories about the Millennium Falcon and her crew….
you could go Smokey and the bandit or American Gangster
I’d go Star Wars and Firefly, but I’d also say that if you’re just not feeling Smugglers, let your players know that. Which crew they pick is ultimately up to them, but you’re the one who has to come up with scores and consequences and if you can’t think of fun ones for Smugglers, they probably shouldn’t pick Smugglers.
Poldark, some of the Solomon Kane stories, the Monty Python Spanish porn skit. There’s a lot of smuggling, piracy, and wrecking lurking around the edges of most English historical fiction.
Neal Stephenson’s painfully long Baroque Cycle has a lot about puritans smuggling stuff in the first book, Quicksilver.
Someone’s already mentioned it, but Firefly was the first to pop to my mind. It’s also a good reminder that just because they’re smugglers doesn’t mean that everything they do has to revolve around the smuggling. They can branch out to all sorts of related things as well.