Your party just got pressganged into the military. Rank, file, the whole nine yards

user, "press gang" was a term literally invented to refer to people being forced into the military.

Ok but how?

>armed soldiers walk into a marketplace
>pull out guns and clubs
>"alright fuckers, we need ten men. You'll do"
>you and your friends are grabbed by the kings soldiers and dragged off to the naval barracks
>congratulations, you are now a sailor in the Royal Navy

groups of recruiters would grab people off the street and ship them off to army camps or ships, poof you are in the army/navy now

>gunner is ex-navy, hates shaving and isn't going back to using an E-11
>bounty hunter loves his gear, hates Imperial issue crap. He's making a break for it at the earliest opportunity
>infochant is about to have to git gud at push ups
>pilot refuses to go near a tie fighter
>mechanic is going to be geeking out about getting to work on capital ship systems

"Here's a pike, here's your officer. Now follow his orders and we wont kill your family."

alternatively

"Here's a rifle, here's your officer. Now follow his orders and you might make it, disobey and we'll hang you."

"Press" in this sense of the word is a shortened form of "impressment", meaning to force involuntary service.
Hence "press-gang" is short for " impressment gang", the traditional term for a group of naval personnel tasked with finding recruits for service on a ship.

>Shadowrun
>Team is already across the border with hot new milspec gear and juicy paydata before they know it

>Grab your drunk ass and throw you on a boat.
>Next morning they're already a few miles off the coat
>You can swim back or get to work

Probably. We are kinda de facto military personnel as is since we are greatly involved in the current efforts to save civilians from a rampaging horde by leading the citizenry to the capital.
Prepare to be impressed user!
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impressment

No, we're totally incompetent.

Desertion at the first occasion, which means the first night basically. Or first day, if the wizard can't wait.

They'll laugh and tell the people trying to fuck off. They have to hunt the bitch that killed the emperor down since they are/were royal guards

They do fine, for a while at least. They deal with worse conditions on a standard adventure and usually have to fight more narly stuff with less backup.

They will still fuck it up though, out of sheer boredom and insolence. Best case senario: they sneak out, a couple men, tents and supplies are destoyed in the process. Worst case they do something dumb and take thier captors on up front, a whole bunch of men, tents and supplies are destroyed along with the party.

>Have a beer user
>Hey why is there a coin at the bottom of it?
>SMACK
>Wake up on a ship
>You pull those ropes or you meet your new friend the Boson

Isn't it pretty much illegal and basically kidnapping?

And that matters how? It's basically a more forceful draft anyways.

Kidnapping? Nah.

Illegal? Nope, you owe your labor to the crown you silly pleb.

basically kidnapping? sure
illegal? not if you're the one making the laws

the practiced stopped in the mid-late 1800s iirc, turns out volunteers and trained conscripted men make better sailors than random dudes waking up in the middle of the ocean with a knot on the back of their head.

Horribly. They don't do well with rigid command structure. The quartermaster gets tired real quickly of absurd obtuse requests for unusual gear and equipment.

Given the stats and personality of the average PC, that's a good way for the armed soldiers to end up dead.

No because my players have serious problems with authority, despite already being low-ranking members of an organization from the word go

>Chromed up elf with two decades of "work experience" with the Vory as elite fighter.
I think he will manage somehow.

At the start of the campaign? He would've been in major agony all the way through.

By now? Assuming he doesn't die in a trench in Fulda, he would be able to make it.

Sure. It's gonna work out just fine.

I understand that getting up at dawn to do marching exercises is bad for vampires. I'm pretty sure this ends with our happy band of shovelheads just slaughtering everybody and making snow-angels in the giblets.

What are good ways to haze player characters?

Where can I get the rules for that?

>travellers with 200+ years of combined military experience
I'm thinking yeah-
>30 year old scientist weeb
he'll die first step off the boat, everyone else will probably be fine though.

It’s a superhero campaign. One of the PCs is basically a Roman Superman. I don’t see how the military could force Superman to do anything.