List Your MacGuffins!

[Humabout]

So I thought it'd be interesting to see what sort of MacGuffins people have come up with for various adventures. It doesn't matter if it's seen action; let's just get a list full of brainjuice and plotfuel going. Make sure to list any relevant GURPS stats or page references along with your posts.

The Jade Eagle's Talon

A highly-stylized, Barrett M82A1, .50 Browning (High Tech, p. 118). Rather than a bipod, it has a copper tripod with legs resembling the skeletons of three snakes holding the rifle with their mouths. The rifle itself is also strange - the aluminum scope features an orange pentacle for a crosshair and close inspection (roll against Jeweler or Geology) reveals that the lenses are actually clear sapphire. The barrel and many of the weapon's components are naturally steel, and the extended magazine (Shots 15+1) features jade inlays of an eagle grasping a fish in its talons on both sides. To make things even stranger, the bullets while predictably match-grade, are also custom jobs with platinum inlays of arrows and smell pleasantly of nutmeg.

A successful Thaumatology roll reveals that these details would serve well to invoke a combination of Pisces/Jupiter, Sagittarius/Jupiter, Virgo/Mercury, and Gemini/Mercury, significantly reducing the cost of any luck-related magic rituals concerning the operation of the weapon.

This MacGuffin assumes the use of Ritual Path Magic with the optional Decanic Trappings rules (Thaum:RPM, p.35-36) and gives a 20% discount to Path of Chance effects (-5% for the weapon components and magazine inlay, -5% for tripod, -5% for the scope, and -5% for the bullets).

[Purple Haze]

In order to be a MacGuffin an object must have no intrinsic value to the PC's, otherwise it is just treasure.

[Arith Winterfell]

Originally Posted by Purple Haze

In order to be a MacGuffin an object must have no intrinsic value to the PC's, otherwise it is just treasure.

I disagree with you there. For example, the Ring in Lord of the Rings has a great deal of value to many different characters, even as a "magic treasure." So it has intrinsic value, but is the driving MacGuffin of the entire series.

[Boomerang]

I thought a McGuffin is a unique item that is the only way to solve a specific problem. The ring in Lord of the Rings is a good example because ultimate victory was determined by who could use/destroy it.

The Golden Fleece is another example of a McGuffin item.

[Boomerang]

Originally Posted by Humabout

So I thought it'd be interesting to see what sort of MacGuffins people have come up with for various adventures. It doesn't matter if it's seen action; let's just get a list full of brainjuice and plotfuel going. Make sure to list any relevant GURPS stats or page references along with your posts.

The Jade Eagle's Talon

A highly-stylized, Barrett M82A1, .50 Browning (High Tech, p. 118). Rather than a bipod, it has a copper tripod with legs resembling the skeletons of three snakes holding the rifle with their mouths. The rifle itself is also strange - the aluminum scope features an orange pentacle for a crosshair and close inspection (roll against Jeweler or Geology) reveals that the lenses are actually clear sapphire. The barrel and many of the weapon's components are naturally steel, and the extended magazine (Shots 15+1) features jade inlays of an eagle grasping a fish in its talons on both sides. To make things even stranger, the bullets while predictably match-grade, are also custom jobs with platinum inlays of arrows and smell pleasantly of nutmeg.

A successful Thaumatology roll reveals that these details would serve well to invoke a combination of Pisces/Jupiter, Sagittarius/Jupiter, Virgo/Mercury, and Gemini/Mercury, significantly reducing the cost of any luck-related magic rituals concerning the operation of the weapon.

This MacGuffin assumes the use of Ritual Path Magic with the optional Decanic Trappings rules (Thaum:RPM, p.35-36) and gives a 20% discount to Path of Chance effects (-5% for the weapon components and magazine inlay, -5% for tripod, -5% for the scope, and -5% for the bullets).

What problem is your McGuffin destined to solve?

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

I thought a McGuffin is a unique item that is the only way to solve a specific problem.

The other way around, actually. The nature of a MacGuffin is irrelevant and interchangeable. It's just a motivator for early action in a film, and often enough is forgotten by the end. The Maltese Falcon, for example, doesn't solve any problems, or figure into the plot other than for the fact that everyone wants it. It could just as well have been the Hope Diamond or the Holy Grail.

Stories could have objects that everyone wants, but that also are unique and do take part in the plot. (Maybe call those "plot devices", though that's a pretty broad term.) The notable thing about MacGuffins is their very irrelevance to the actual story, despite the apparent central importance they supposedly have due to the way everyone is acting at first. You could swap out a MacGuffin for any other valuable object without changing the story. So, a proper MacGuffin can't solve problems in the story.

[mlangsdorf]

The macguffin in my After the End game is going to be the body of a pre-Fall astronaut preserved in nanostasis (UT p 200-201) that literally drops out of the sky (on a parachute) at the beginning of the game. If the PCs are interested, a large part of the plot is going to be trying to find the resources required to revive this astronaut and then exploit her knowledge of the world before the Fall.

[Phantasm]

In one game, set in my Ranoc setting, it was the Spear of Bri'ney (renegade goddess of lust, temptation, envy, jealousy, and all that good stuff), forged in the dawn of time by the goddess in her rebellion against her fertility goddess mother. The Spear was said to have washed ashore in antiquity, stored in a reliquary in the fertility goddess's temples, and recently stolen.

Another campaign had the Spear of Longinus/Spear of Destiny, set during the mid 1930s in a campaign that was equal parts Raiders of the Lost Ark and Constantine.

The whole campaign in both cases was about finding the Spear, with the idea that whoever gets hold of it would be able to change the shape of the world for good or ill.

Both campaigns kinda died long before the Spear could be located.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by Anaraxes

Stories could have objects that everyone wants, but that also are unique and do take part in the plot. (Maybe call those "plot devices", though that's a pretty broad term.) The notable thing about MacGuffins is their very irrelevance to the actual story, despite the apparent central importance they supposedly have due to the way everyone is acting at first. You could swap out a MacGuffin for any other valuable object without changing the story. So, a proper MacGuffin can't solve problems in the story.

I wouldn't go quite that far. Maybe it can, just not in the hands of the main characters. There can be a good reason lots of other people want it. Consider a piece of the divine regalia necessary to crown a new Emperor of the Universe. It's useless to the PCs - they don't have and cannot possibly get the rest of the set to crown somebody themselves - since most of it so holy it vaporizes anybody not of the Imperial Family who touches it anyway - but every faction that thinks it has a serious chance of crowning their own candidate really wants it.

[robkelk]

Originally Posted by Boomerang

I thought a McGuffin is a unique item that is the only way to solve a specific problem. ...

That's the exact opposite of a MacGuffin.

Quoting from https://allthetropes.org/wiki/MacGuffin (warning: Tropes site):

"To determine if a thing is a MacGuffin, check to see if it is interchangeable."

"A common MacGuffin story setup can be summarized as "Quickly! We must find X before they do!"."

"If it's more than just a something to keep the plot moving, it's probably a Chekhov's Gun. (Though that only counts if it's initially introduced as being unimportant.)"