It seems that the Modern Traveller "Mariner" thread has centered on rules questions.  I'll open this up for adventure ideas and questions, you dig?

How would you present a game to your players?  In media res would let you skip the boring parts of setup ("You've been floating dead in the water of the Indian Ocean for three days when...") but you'd still need a rock-solid hook to keep the game from turning into a boardless game of Gazillionaire.

What antagonists would you toss at your villainous crew?  Pirates and corrupt militaries seem obvious choices; how would you spice them up?

I've been floundering try to piece together a game from the concepts, I'm looking forward to your takes on the idea.

There are a few different approaches I'd take.
 
The first that leaps to mind, and that owes much of its inspiration to the original Traveller, would be the "Firefly" route -- an ensemble cast aboard a tramp freighter with only one real goal, to "keep sailing". The situations you'd play out would seldom be tied specifically to any one location, and could feasibly take place anywhere. Tie key antagonists to NPCs with Mysterious Pasts.

The next idea that leaps to mind is "Tunderbirds Are...on the skids!"  Like the eponymous Thunderbirds, the players are members of a maritime salvage/exploaration team, each with specialty vehicles for the job, but times are lean.  Well, times are always lean.  The big haul is always compromised or confiscated, dodgey clients turn out to be far dodgier than they seemed at first, etc.

As for antagonists, corrupt officers in the various local navies seem like natural adversaries.  They aren't all mean, though -- some of them are your "friends".  They take an active interest in following your activities, relieving you of any troublesome cargos that could inadvertently get you arrested, always with a smile and always addressing you formally as "Captain".  On the other hand, you might have an ardently scrupulous Australian Navy officer who rides you hard under code of law, and chafes at you and your crew with his starched-collar antics.

Do you recall the character Beloc from "Raiders of the Lost Arc"?  An unscrupulous researcher who might act either as a patron or as a competitor on a job.

I have to run now, but I'll try to think up some other ideas soon.

!i!

There's also the fact that a decent ship of about a thousand tonnes is going to set you back several hundred thousand dollars. PCs, being PCs, will no doubt want to jack the thing up with decent radar, accompanying speedboats and the like - call it an even million bucks, in US$. Fact is, most people don't have that sort of moolah handy. So, they need a loan. Who's going to lend you a million bucks for speculative trading in piracy-infested waters? Well, organised crime - mafia, triads, whatever the locals call 'em.

So the PCs are in hock to a criminal organisation. They have a boss who's called the Boss. This guy has enemies, and friends. And so they'll have some opposition, and some assistance, both turning up when they least expect it. And the guy who's an asset to you in one port is a liability in another. In the port of Mogadishu, being friends with Momo Aideed's nephew is a great help - up in Djibouti, not so much.

They way I'd run it is to focus on the characters and the choices they have to make. You'd want either quite good roleplayers, or some system which has character traits as part of it. So you have some character who's "charitable", or some other who's "cowardly," or another who's "greedy." Then these guys have got to make choices. So I'd approach it the way I always do - give them dilemmas.

Suppose a wealthy Persian Gulf sheik, worried about his starving brothers of the Faith in Somalia, hires them to take five hundred tonnes of food down to Kismayao, "give it to Mr Alabani." Off they go, they skirt past the US Navy stopping and searching ships to enforce the UN arms embargo, fight off some pirates - then when they get there, they find out that "Mr" Alabani is in fact General Alabani, and he'll be the one distributing the food. Though a General, he only has fifty men - but with food on offer, he'll soon have five hundred more, being able to promise to feed the guys and their wife and kid for a year each.

So if you give this guy food, 1,500 people will live for a year, and you'll be paid that money you needed to pay back that other guy after you had to drop a cargo of counterfeit watches overboard when the Singapore Navy boarded you in the Malacca Straits last year.

But giving him the food will make him a stronger warlord, five hundred guys, he can do a lot with five hundred guys. Maybe more than 1,500 people will die. What sort of warlord is he? Well, he says all the right things about wanting to bring peace to his land, and... he seems nice - shared his 20 year old bottle of Scotch with you when you were talking about the deal.

Those sorts of choices will make for interesting roleplaying, and lead to lots of arguments and discussions within the party. And of course, they'll have consequences, those choices. Bail on the deal, what do you do with the food? Keep it, and annoy the Sheik? Sell it elsewhere, pay back the Sheik? Keep the deal, and next year when you come back, is Alabani a minister in the new Provisional Government? You just got a big friend! Or maybe not - maybe he's gone all nationalist and pretends never to have been helped by any foreigners, and your presence asking for favours is now a liability to him, time for a running gun battle as you head back to the ship and cast off...

I'd run a campaign where the crew members (pcs) of the vessel were trying to get enough money to buy their vessel back from an intelligence agency. I mean being involved with nascent intelligence orgs would be a blast. I'd go the British route.

"Listen here old fellow. Terrible business with Old Rutherford. Listen you would not happen to be passing through to Cairo by any chance...off course you are. One our friends...Malik...good chap...got himself into a little bit of a mess. Needs a way out. Good of you to arrange something...

Regards,
David R

Others have come up with some great ideas here, especially some for ongoing campaign issues.

One thing that will make a difference is what kind and how big a vessel will the PCs have?  If, as the original Mariner thread started with, a cargo vessel of some sort (say in the 1000dwt to 10,000dwt range) then the various trade suggestions will certainly apply.  If something smaller then things will be different.

But some ideas are:  

PCs ship recieves a distress call, could be from a small private vessel or something larger.  Is it real?

PCs vessel is in a port and someone askes for a package to be delivered at their next port of call, maybe it's a fuel pump or something or maybe that's just what it is labeled.

PCs ship has some room for passengers (a fair number of cargo vessels acutally do), so what kind of wild adventures do you think passengers could cause!

PCs ship comes across a private vessel that is drifting in the open ocean.  Is there anyone on it?  Maybe there are signs of a fight?  

PCs ship get boarded while in a port by local thieves.  Or perhaps a crewmember gets snatched on shore.  Maybe it's just locals after a ransom or maybe someone wants them to do a "job."

A bureaucrat or customs official is being a pain in the ### (very common).  And don't forget the very serious firearms restrictions that most places have.

I'll think of more and post them.

Just thought of another one.

PCs ship comes across a boat full of refugees.  The boat they are in was never intended for near as many people as it has on it or for going into the open water.  Possible their engine is out and they are drifting.  Maybe they are out of supplies and water.  There could be bad weather coming shortly which would capsize the craft.  What do the PCs do?  If in the Gulf, could even be one of those great "carboats" trying to escape from Cuba!

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A ship's Captain can perform a marriage on board a ship. While the couple are clearly in love, the family of the girl will  not permit their daughter to marry a meer laborer.  The family is powerful enough that the local authorities at the port  will not oppose them. The jewelry that the girl has is easily worth a fortune and can easily be sold at most any other port.

The problem is that this is an important port and earning The Family's ire will force the locals to shun the ship. Plus  The Family has a far reach and is known to extract revenge for any slights.

===
Several people in a life raft are seen floating in the ocean. Their ship was on the way to the island of Molokai, some fifty miles from Honolulu, (a leprosy colony), when it sprang a leak and sank.  

The surviving refugees will not admit they have leprosy for fear of being turned away. They hope to escape their fate by reaching a port where they are unknown and can live without being found out.

(Some armadillos in South Louisiana and Texas carry this bacteria.)
The bacteria - which take cover from the victim's immune system by hiding out in (and destroying) nerves in the noses, earlobes, toes, fingers and eyes - soon erase the cornea's sensitivity and disable the blink reflex.
Leprosy bacilli also attack the nerve controlling eyelid muscles, creating a condition known as lagophthalmos, in which the person is unable to close the eyelids.

The crew will notice that at least one of the refugees does not blink.
Someone in the crew has read H.P Lovecraft.
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"The Kingfisher" (Dr. Abernathy King) has derived a formula that will allow a person to breath water for a time.  This works by allowing the body to expel carbon dioxide into the water and absorb some oxygen.

He is supplying this formula to treasure hunters who are kidnapping people and using them to loot sunken ships. In return, they provide a share of the treasure they find.

"The Kingfisher" has a lab for Marine Research on the coast and is a reputable professor.

The treasure hunters find (or steal) maps and logs to help the search for ships. People kidnapped by these "pirates" are turned into "The Drowned" (which will actually drown if removed from the water.)
"One-Eyed Jack" is the leader of the treasure hunters/pirates.

A man with deep diving equipment hires the ship to take him to a "secret site" he discovered. He is not the only one to have learned of it.
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"The Kingfisher" is a fake. The formula is based on some obsolete cold war tech and cunning flim-flam on his, and his backers, part.  

The question is why would anyone want to buy his formula, kidnap people and then force them to try and salvage sunken ships when a scuba tank is so much cheaper?

The Kan Lung was a freighter used to smuggle goods for Sun Yee On Triads.  But it disappeared three months ago - supposedly carrying the biggest shipment of drugs/stolen cars/people depending on whose telling the story.

Was it sunk? Did it have its registration changed?  Who knows.

Now if someone was to find the location of the Kan Lung they'd either be very rich or have an excellent -and very dangerous - blackmail proposition to hand.

But if she didn't sink , someone has gone out of their way to make it look like she did.  Why?

Quote from: Stumpydave"The Kingfisher" is a fake. The formula is based on some obsolete cold war tech and cunning flim-flam on his, and his backers, part.  

The question is why would anyone want to buy his formula, kidnap people and then force them to try and salvage sunken ships when a scuba tank is so much cheaper?

Depends on the date the game is set in.
Besides, you can't escape if you have to breath water to live.
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Quote from: GreentongueDepends on the date the game is set in.
Besides, you can't escape if you have to breath water to live.
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Oh I wasn't putting down your idea.  I was just trying to put forward a twist on what you'd done.  Kind of like an Unknown Armies rumour.

My apologies if you thought otherwise.

No apologies needed.  I was in the "Pulp" mind set, forgot this was "modern".
I'll add more but, they will all be my Pulp ideas so feel free to add whatever twist you think is good.

A local Voodoo priest has contracted to have a corpse transported from Port-au-Prince to New Orleans. As the ship is leaving port a motorboat pulls along side and tries to convince the Captain to turn over the body.
The body is not actually a corpse, but is in suspended animation (from Sea Toad poison.) Only a trained doctor can determine this.
If the ship does not give up the body, and lose the money for transporting it, then a mechanical breakdown will occur during the trip.
The crew will blame the corpse since it is bad luck to have a dead body on a ship.  (Bodies are usually buried at sea by dumping overboard.)
One of the crew is West Indian and a practioner of Voodoo. They are being threatened, to insure the body makes the trip.
The "body" is a new lieutenant sent to run operations in New Orleans. Arriving there and rising from the dead is intended to set the stage for his takeover.
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While in an often frequented port, one of the PC's cousins is met in a saloon. The saloon is run by a local Crime Boss and has gambling in the back. The PC, or members of the crew with the PC, have lost a sum of money gambling here.

The cousin owes a large amount of money to the gang and is unable to pay. They have already beat him and while the PC(s)  are there, they attempt to break his arm.  
This is a large gang and the only way to save the cousin is to take him on the ship to another port.
The ship does a good amount of business with the Crime Boss so crossing him is bad for business.