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Calthropstu
2017-03-26, 11:12 PM
In another thread in another area of the forum (or rather a subforum in this one) someone is talking about granting his PCs an artifact to kill a god.

The argument led me to thinking about horrible maguffin artifacts I have had in the past, and figured we could swap stories of terrible artifacts with really dumb fluff.

My worst one? This little number granted our entire party with spellfire-like abilities. It had no special purpose, I can't even remember how we got it. Each day we got 1d8 spellfire points, and if we didn't discharge when we hit our max, bad things would happen... leading to us eventually violently exploding.

This was 2e D&D. So there's this spell called haste which ages you 1 year. Our GM decided that since we aged a year, we got a year's worth of power points...

oudeis
2017-03-26, 11:38 PM
In another thread in another area of the forum (or rather a subforum in this one) someone is talking about granting his PCs an artifact to kill a god.

The argument led me to thinking about horrible maguffin artifacts I have had in the past, and figured we could swap stories of terrible artifacts with really dumb fluff.

My worst one? This little number granted our entire party with spellfire-like abilities. It had no special purpose, I can't even remember how we got it. Each day we got 1d8 spellfire points, and if we didn't discharge when we hit our max, bad things would happen... leading to us eventually violently exploding.

This was 2e D&D. So there's this spell called haste which ages you 1 year. Our GM decided that since we aged a year, we got a year's worth of power points...This actually had me laughing out loud. I'd say this was more a case of a 'gotcha' DM than a bad maguffin. And strictly speaking, this wasn't really a maguffin. A maguffin is an undefined or unexplained item that triggers a series of plot events. Perhaps the quintessential example of this in modern cinema is the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. We don't know what it is, what it does, or what it's worth, but it drives the whole film forward. Sorry to be pedantic.

/nitpicking


On with the thread!

NickChaisson
2017-03-27, 08:13 AM
We were playing the 3.5 Ravenloft game and and as far as I know none of us had read the adventure. This was part of the DMs campaign and we were sent there to bargain for strahds help in some war or something.

Anyway we are escorting and protecting this Tatyana person and find out strahd wants her. None of us are good aligned so we go up to his castle. Get past his guards and finally find strahd. He's all "give me Tatyana or die!" And we basically tell him sure. If he helps us out wih an issue. He absolutely refused and teleported all of us (including Tatyana) to town. We wanted to ditch her but the DM would not hear of it. We ended up carting her around until plot stuff happened.

Tatyana was a horrible macguffin. In this case she was role played horribly and we had to keep her safe even though she was clearly a threat. It did not help that the DM made things more difficult by not even entertaining the idea of the pre-written adventure changing a bit.

Haldir
2017-03-27, 08:43 AM
We were playing the 3.5 Ravenloft game and and as far as I know none of us had read the adventure. This was part of the DMs campaign and we were sent there to bargain for strahds help in some war or something.

Anyway we are escorting and protecting this Tatyana person and find out strahd wants her. None of us are good aligned so we go up to his castle. Get past his guards and finally find strahd. He's all "give me Tatyana or die!" And we basically tell him sure. If he helps us out wih an issue. He absolutely refused and teleported all of us (including Tatyana) to town. We wanted to ditch her but the DM would not hear of it. We ended up carting her around until plot stuff happened.

Tatyana was a horrible macguffin. In this case she was role played horribly and we had to keep her safe even though she was clearly a threat. It did not help that the DM made things more difficult by not even entertaining the idea of the pre-written adventure changing a bit.

You keep using the word, but I don't think it means what you think it means. I am adapting that castles very fine map into my current 5e game.

NickChaisson
2017-03-27, 09:08 AM
Which word? You quoted my entire post. If you are referring to Mcguffin then I disagree. I feel that in this instance Tatyana wad a Mcguffin as we had to tote her around and protect her. She moved the plot forward by her mere existence.

In the actual adventure her role could be very different but I still haven't read it. With the way this DM was running it she felt like a Mcguffin.

Nice on the adaption btw ^_^

Wavyhill
2017-03-27, 10:20 AM
We were working for the elves of Evermeet & needed to do a deal with Strahd to get this special seed he had (massive climatic plot thingy). The elves gave us The Wand of Orcus to trade (in a box). We get to Ravenloft, battle our way through, etc. etc. & finally face up to Strahd.

Cue a long debate where we pull all sorts of ideas out of our butts to convince him that the trade is a good deal. Finally (it took ages) he agreed...I opened the box and....

...the sodding elves had replaced it with some dagger...

Calthropstu
2017-03-27, 02:34 PM
We were working for the elves of Evermeet & needed to do a deal with Strahd to get this special seed he had (massive climatic plot thingy). The elves gave us The Wand of Orcus to trade (in a box). We get to Ravenloft, battle our way through, etc. etc. & finally face up to Strahd.

Cue a long debate where we pull all sorts of ideas out of our butts to convince him that the trade is a good deal. Finally (it took ages) he agreed...I opened the box and....

...the sodding elves had replaced it with some dagger...

Bwahaha.

That is awesome. Did you use it to kill strahd?

Quertus
2017-03-27, 04:17 PM
The glowing green amulet thingy that the sickly medicine man gave the party to ward off the Cthulhu monster. Worked like a charm (literally).

Funny thing, it worked, as we were told afterwards, because it was radioactive, and the Cthulhu monster knew that. It didn't want to be anywhere near the thing!

Hmmm... Maybe that was best McGuffin ever instead?

Honest Tiefling
2017-03-27, 04:42 PM
Children Macguffins. I don't like them, unless done very well. You often run into the issue of protecting the thing, as well as preventing them from seeing the gore of combat, so things can get really dark really fast.

Then you also have the issue of getting them to stay quiet for stealth or not revealing plans.

GAAD
2017-03-27, 05:05 PM
In a comedy campaign, one of the sessions was simply about how LAME the McGuffin of the week was. The PCs, and a rival evil adventuring party led by the Blackguard Muhuha Von Diabolicus, were racing against time (specifically, dinnertime; it was the anniversary dinner of both Muhuha's and the paladin's weddings) to locate... a bottle of cheap wine. Now, there was absolutely nothing special about this wine, being sold at most any tavern for 5 gp. The players knew this, but they also knew that the BBEG wanted this PARTICULAR bottle, so it must truly be some magical artifact or another. Thing is, Von Diabolicus would ALSO be fine with any old bottle of wine, but the players were ALSO after that bottle specifically, so it must be an elixir of untold power. Then, at the end of the session, both groups simultaneously reached the bottle of wine and had a climactic battle. The paladin escorted the evil adventuring party off to their cardboard prison they went after every session, where Muhuha would miss his anniversary dinner and thus Feel Bad. But the sorcerer stole the bottle of wine, went into the Wizard's College (that he spent a session doing wacky shenanigans in vain to try to gain admission; he is a sorcerer, thus no wizard would ever teach him), and blew it up, setting one of the dorms on fire. The party rogue was exiled To The Couch for the night, as she was every session, regardless of whether she actually did anything (sometimes she did something mischievous, sometimes she was a scapegoat, sometimes nothing happened and everyone assumed she'd done something and just gotten away with it).

So at the end of the day, Status Quo is God and nobody got the McGuffin, which was fine because the McGuffin was worthless anyway.

Draconi Redfir
2017-03-27, 06:54 PM
it's less the McGuffin itself, and more of how we GOT the Mcguffin.

We're playing a Shackled City Campaign, started in 3.5, later adapted into pathfinder. Near the end, We're off to kill the BBEG, who is trapped in a prison dimension, but is a threat since his followers are trying to free him. We know three things for a fact here.

1. This is a prison dimension with no / few ways out. People who are sent here rarely have anything on them.

2. As a result, Gold is not used here, this is specifically stated by the GM that the residents of this plane do not use gold because nobody has gold / a lot of gold. They trade goods such as swords and food instead.

3. If we get too close to the BBEG, he will mind control us, and make us kill one another.

So, we get information that there is an old woman who has a crystal that will block mind affecting spells from us, preventing us from being mind controlled. We meet with the woman, and she tells us she will only let us touch the crystal in exchange for "Something worth at least 2000gp" (Note the phrasing.) each.

So i think "alright, we each need to give up an item to get to this crystal, sounds interesting!" And i start looking through my character sheet. I see i have a +2 undeadbane sword that had served me well but wouldn't be much use to me here, and a handy Haversack that i WAS using, but i also had this portable chest that acted similar to a bag of holding that i could use in it's place. I himm and i haw about what to give her, when finally i overhear the other players speak.

"Okay, so we teleport to the BBEG's prison..."

wait, waitwaitwaitwait WHAT!? but i haven't given the woman anything! i haven't touched the crystal yet!

Yeah, turns out the group as a whole already paid for it. With what you ask? 2000gp each. straight gold. No items, no emotional giving up of things that were close to us, just throwing gold at the problem until it was fixed. Gold, in a plane that we were SPESIFICALLY TOLD did not use gold in trade!

everyone else was confused as to why i was upset at the whole situation the entire time we were on our way to fight the big bad. We had a chance to each have an awesome RP moment where we present something valued to each of us to this woman in exchange for the crystal's protection in this beautiful RP moment, where each of us got a turn to shine. But nope, throw gold at the problem and immediately teleport away without even letting the paladin know :/

Max_Killjoy
2017-03-27, 06:57 PM
On a family vacation one year we stopped for breakfast at this really seedy MacDonald's in Kentucky, and...

What's that? You said "MacGuffin"?

Sorry, nevermind, carry on.

Draconium
2017-03-27, 07:03 PM
One of the first full campaigns I played in had a MacGuffin that also was, in a way, the BBEG. It was also the Deck of Many Things.

Believe it or not, that campaign was actually really fun. But then, most of us were pretty green to TTRPGs, and our balance levels did vary quite wildly, but everyone still enjoyed it.

Knaight
2017-03-27, 07:39 PM
This actually had me laughing out loud. I'd say this was more a case of a 'gotcha' DM than a bad maguffin. And strictly speaking, this wasn't really a maguffin. A maguffin is an undefined or unexplained item that triggers a series of plot events. Perhaps the quintessential example of this in modern cinema is the briefcase in Pulp Fiction. We don't know what it is, what it does, or what it's worth, but it drives the whole film forward. Sorry to be pedantic.

/nitpicking


On with the thread!

It doesn't need to be undefined or unexplained - it just needs a narrative relevance based less on what it is than on what the characters do because of it.

GAAD
2017-03-27, 08:27 PM
It doesn't need to be undefined or unexplained - it just needs a narrative relevance based less on what it is than on what the characters do because of it.

Hence the perfectly ordinary bottle of wine that both the PCs and the villains only cared about because the other wanted it.

bigstipidfighte
2017-03-27, 10:13 PM
My character.

I make a Cleric of Kord, not knowing that in this campaign Kord and his church are playing a major part. Anyway, I'm the only one who can move around the Unobtainium Ore from the sky in it's pure form. The ore is used to make magic items that mostly go to the senior priesthood, not the PCs. Long story short, being a supernatural pack mule and possible chosen one becomes much more important than any value my character had as a person.

Piedmon_Sama
2017-03-28, 02:58 AM
bottle of cheap wine

Now I really wish I could play in that campaign o _ o