Best Dungeons and Dragons Plot Device for Dungeon Masters
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- Опубліковано 6 лют 2025
- Let's Talk about using the MacGuffin as a plot device for our Dungeons and Dragons, Pathfinder and Starfinder games. Arguably the best Dungeons Master Story Telling device available to us.
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Taking20 It feels a little like you’ve misunderstood macguffins a little bit, but maybe I just don’t quite understand it. This video is very useful even if a little confused. Definitely putting some of your advice in the future.
I'm sorry this comment situation is affecting you.
Taking20 Thanks for this video. I will be taking a concept from a UA-cam DM and using as a McGuffin in my next campaign. “The Armor of the Emperor”.
The base concept of the campaign is a land grab. What the players won’t know is that antagonist is seeking the “Armor” to claim the vacant seat of power. I will slowly give the PCs low level magic items that will level with them.
3:23 not sourcerer, but phylosopher sone
My favourite example of a mcguffin was in my friends shadowfell campaign. The campaign started with all of our characters (5th level) separately arriving and fighting through an old crypt because we had seen a small prick of light inside. For the three of use born on the material plain, the first light we had seen since arriving/being banished to the shadowfell; For the four of us born there, the first we had seen in our lives.
After all individually fighting our way to the centre of the crypt and taking down the giant snake skeleton, this bunch of seven strangers all advanced on the orb of light in the central chamber to try and claim it for themselves. After a brief team fight (one of many in the campaign) where the sorcerer attempted to witchbolt the Asama paladin and got beaten to about three hitpoints, one of us managed to reach out and touch the orb.
At this point, we all feel a presence in our mind. Everyone instantly gained a level, and a voice asked each of us "do you trust me?". This orb explains that it is one of many scattered throughout the shadowfell, and that it has selected us as its chosen champions to reunite it with its other parts!
And with that, the mcguffin drove the entire campaign; it was a natural motivation that drove us to explore the dark and oppressing world our dm had made for us, to (kinda) work together and to keep the story moving. Each time we found another orb, the mcguffin got upgraded - at two orbs it could cast cure wounds 3 times a day, at four it could do an aoe heal that could also damage enemies. And rather than gaining xp in the normal way, each time we obtained an orb we gained a level, as the voice got stronger and stronger in our heads, always asking "do you trust me?".
Then, things started to get sketchy. The sorcerer (chaotic stupid) hadn't been able to make it since the second session, so we had just had him following the party around casting witchbolt on everything (it was the only spell we knew he had). By half way through the campaign, the dm decided to remove the character cause the player was unlikely to be able to make any other sessions. So the sorcerer reaches for the four orbs, wanting to claim the power for himself. And he vanishes in a flash of light. It asked, "do you trust me?"
Later, we meet a gnomeish wizard in a flying machine who has been exploring the shadowfell for a scientific study. We ask him if he has ever seen anything like the orbs before, and he says he hasn't but would be interested in studying them in exchange for a lift to the next orb we can see. The group agrees, on the condition we can watch him work. But after he starts casting some kind of identify spell, we are all asked to make a wisdom saving throw. We all fail, and black out. Some amount of time later, we wake up to find that the gnome is dead and we all have our weapons drawn. Which are dripping with gnome blood. From the gnome we just murdered. The orbs ask, "Do you trust me?"
And with that, the mcguffin had once again pushed the story forward without it feeling forced or railroady. The gnome murder (gnomurder?) created a rift in the party, which lead to a team fight where the two members who didn't trust the light got killed, and the paladin leaves due to braking his oath to not harm innocents. So with four sessions left, half the party has new characters and we need to climb to the top of a necromancers tower to get the next orb. Once we get up there two sessions later, the fifth orb unlocks a new ability - summon 8 zombies. At this point, everyone is kinda freaking out (except one of the new characters, who was a necromancer cultist that worked in the tower, he seemed pretty happy), but they had already murdered their friends for the light, so they weren't about to turn back now. "Do you trust me?"
At the beginning of the final session, we got one more orb, and the voice in our heads thanked us. It was now complete! We were all blinded by a flash of light, and found ourselves in a small black stone box with a window that seemed to show part of the material plain. The shadows in the corners of this room were moving. It ended up that the mcguffin was created by and evil entity of the shadowfell as a way of pulling parts of the matirial plain into its domain, and we had accidentally been helping them do it. Again, all organically drivin by the introduction of a single mcguffin and the words "do you trust me?".
What followed was the best end game fight I've ever been in, in which most of the lvl 12 party tried to fight back against endless waves of shadows and other undead. I say most, because the necromancer sided with the shadows after being offered power. The fight lasted hours and involved a high level angle bursting in to try and aid the side of good, but due to the abundance of materials in the shadowfell, the necromancer had an entourage of skeletons he had raised with the Animate Dead spell, which was kinda op. Also, 1d4+2 shadows were spawning each round, so the "good guys" were eventually overwhelmed. As a large portion of the material plain was dragged into the shadowfell to be consumed, a new orb of light appeared, attracting more adventurers. And it asked, "do you trust me?"
That's epic
amazing.that dm is one good writer.
Simon Smith Thats lit!
I'm stealing this for the Shadowfell part of my campaign, many thanks.
This sounds insanely epic
I started my first campaign as a DM recently (only 2 sessions in) and without even intending to, I already started doing this, but the thing I chose as my McGuffin would probably do in most DMs minds.
Basically, I started the party off being contracted by the nephew of a powerful noble who had just been robbed by a local bandit gang. The noble was ill and likely not long for this world and (unbenownst to the party at the time) the nephew was looking to replace his uncle as ruler of the region to gain influence in the nation to help usher in a pseudo-doomsday scenario (long story.) He hired the party to track down the bandits, not caring about recovering any of the gold or conventional valuables (his family was far too wealthy to care about the amount kept in any one of their various estates) but a particular magical item kept in a small leather pouch. He warned them that this item could be incredibly dangerous, and that his family had been protecting it for generations and only they could be trusted to hold it. (all of which will turn out to be a lie.)
Meanwhile, when they find the bandits, their leader is surprisingly civil to the party and tries to negotiate with them to leave the situation alone - not wishing them any ill will, but making it clear that this noble's nephew is the last person she would trust with this item, and she had no intention of letting the party leave with it, in case the promise of wealth drew them to return it to him as asked. They DID end up leaving with it, due to an amazing moment of roleplay...
So now we have a corrupt heir to nobility and a Robin Hood-esque relatively noble thief, and the factions that support each, trying to prevent coming disaster both trying to recover a pouch from the party. A pouch that contains.... the deck of many things.
Yep. I gave the deck to a party of level 1 characters, and I regret nothing. Haha
Hey, just rewatch ing some videos during quarantine, I'm uniquely interested to how the game went, II mean the deck of many to level ones is emcertian to arouse surprise and interest
Now I want a Mcmuffin
Thank you for saving me from having to make a joke about that. :)
But is the McMuffin important to the overall plot of your life?
...a sausage, egg, and cheese McGiffin?
3 Seconds in and I'm just screaming *"WHAT IS A MacGuffin ALEX!!!!"*
Starting a new campaign this weekend where all the players arrive on a new continent with merchant families funding them to explore the fallen dark kingdom. The maguffin is the tarasque roaming the continent who destroyed the old kingdom. At some point the monster will destroy the only port town, trapping the players in this strange land with a huge force-of-nature type villain. The players will have to spend the rest of the campaign learning how the tarasque arrived and growing strong enough to defeat it
Randomizer chances are that they're going to die
Sgt. Miller well if they're dumb and go right for it, then yeah. But the rest of the campaign is designed like curse of strahd, in that you're trapped somewhere and have to find magic items to defeat the big bad evil guy
I only hate the Tarasque because it makes mage-players kinda obsolete. Immunity to ALL magic for the most part would tick me off while the rangers and fighters can't do much due to it's damage potential in melee. Buffing is a valid option, but not as fun.
Lytbringr well it has advantage on saves vs magic and immunity to all spell attack rolls. So outside of warlocks your casters should be somewhat fine. It is susceptible to all magic weapon attacks, and someone like an ek or bladesinger will have enough defenses to survive melee
Lytbringr that's true. And that's why I'm using a homebrew tweak to the monster that I found on Reddit where the thick armor doesn't cover it's stomach. Players can move into it's space risking a free stomp attack to aim at its exposed belly. It's a nice risk-vs.-reward
I gave a MacGuffin -- a dozen mysterious disks -- to my Sword Coast Guard group early on in their adventuring career. They didn't know what they did or why they had them. Then random people were attacking them and using other means to get the disks back. This provoked their curiosity -- what the heck are these things? and why do these cultists want them so much?
Eventually they lost the disks, and they now know their importance -- and how grave it was to lose them. Now, ever so often, they run into more of the disks. I use them to slowly roll out the overarching plot of the campaign.
Bottom line: MacGuffins certainly work. 😃
Ok. So what are they and what do the do?
Don’t leave us hanging!
Palocles The discs contain the essence of an Elder Power called Drazovine who was banished from the known planes by the combined power of several deities. Cultists of Drazovine are using the discs to open a way for Drazovine to return to the material plane.
Recently, the heroes fought a Wisp, a "weak" manifestation of Drazovine and found several discs...drained of their power.
I'm not sure the players discovered why the discs had been drained, but the implications will prove fun (for me at least). 😈
Ok, cool.
Thanks for the reveal.
...When I first read that, I read it as a dozen mysterious ducks...
ahh, so they're horcruxes then lol
The cursed pirates only _thought_ they needed Elizabeth's blood because she lied and told them her surname was Turner when they kidnapped her and she parlayed with Barbossa. She wasn't _actually_ the mcguffin-Will was.
A different way to think about things: The One Ring wasn't a maguffin. It was the main villain of the story. It spent the entire story trying to seduce the protagonists to evil in order to get back to its master. Sauron is often misperceived as the villain, but he wasn't... he was the consequences if the villain won. Everyone knew that if the ring made it back to Sauron, the fight was over... period. That's not a villain... that's an ending. If anything was maguffin in LoTR, it was Aragorn's sword.
You mean the had for his entire life and only got reforged when he was about to go on a quest to aid Gondor and the ring bearer?
I don't agree with Frodo being a mcguffin. One of the defining traits of a mcguffin is that it's interchangeable with basically any other mcguffin, and another is that it doesn't affect the plot. It doesn't actually matter what it is, just that it's wanted.
Frodo is definitely not a mcguffin. You can't switch Frodo for someone else, because anyone who could succeed at getting the ring to mt doom to destroy it would basically be Frodo by a different name. And Frodo has a major effect on the plot, being the one to choose to leave the Shire, the one to volunteer to bear the ring and move things forward from rivendell, the one to split the party at the falls, the one to take gollum in who would actually end up destroying the ring. He's far too specific and active to be a mcguffin.
Mt Doom is a mcguffin. It doesn't matter what it is. It could be a volcano where the ring was forged, it could be a pit of magical acid that's strong enough to destroy the ring, it could be a portal to a world that sauron can't reach; it's interchangeable with any other mcguffin, what's important is that getting there is how you win the plot. And it doesn't really affect the plot at all. At no point does Sauron use the power of mt Doom to hary the party, it's just there and must be reached to satisfy the win condition.
I agree, but the McGuffin was Aragorn's crowning
@@StabYourBrain One could also say that Mound Doom was the Mcguffin....
In my own campaign (using the Lost mine of Phandelver module), I've given the party (level 4) a shattered wish scroll that they found in the ruins of Tresendar manor. The scroll, despite being shattered, has retained most of its magic due to the sheer power of the wish spell contained within it. The scroll is linked directly to the Tresendar family name, meaning that only the rightful heir to the Tresendar family line may cast the spell, but the Tresendar's were (presumably) all killed when the manor was destroyed. So now the players must do three things to restore the Wish scroll:
1. They must reassemble the pieces of the scroll, which requires a powerful wizard - far more powerful than anyone they've encountered so far.
2. They must reinforce the scroll so that when the party's wizard tries to cast it, it doesn't fail (as can happen when using a scroll of higher level than they can cast). Because of the power of the wish scroll, if they try and cast it without reinforcing the scroll, the scroll automatically fails, wasting the scroll. The party knows this. In order to reinforce the scroll they must find an ancient spell tome to obtain the ritual required for this.
3. They must either find the heir to the Tresendar family, or they must partially re-write the spell.
All the while I can use this wish scroll to push the story forward, ensuring that there is always a reason for their adventures, and always something reason for powerful enemies to hunt them down. It also gives a reason for them to travel across the world, and gives interesting opportunities for how they deal with things, because they don't necessarily need to kill every monster they come across.
Really don't mind this style of ads/plugs. Interesting, short, enthusiastic items well suited to the audience.
It's certainly something I put a lot of thought into. For every sponsorship I do here on the channel I turn down 7 1/2. I only want to talk about products and companies I enjoy and use myself.
Agreed. Have found lots of cool stuff with these kind of targeted ads. Now buy from mini mart regularly
Running a campaign where the current MacGuffin is a kid on the run, who is also the supposed reincarnation of an old evil. My players keep running into factions who want to either capture or kill him, but they're hot on his trail to find out whose side their on. Oddly enough, it looks like some of the players find him compelling to the point of wanting to befriend him.... I'm excited to see where they take his arc.
That'd be an interesting twist if the players befriend the guy who presumably you might have wanted to be the big bad of the campaign. LOL What would you do then?
the DM Lair The kid is definitely a force to be reckoned with at this point, but it's the rival factions that have so far proved greater threats based on numbers alone. I have it planned that his "MacGuffin-ness" will have to come into play when the players eventually interact with him and influence his future actions, since right now he's just retreating aimlessly and attempting survival. A lot of the players have a theme of redemption written into their backgrounds, so I'm anxious to see how it'll push things, for sure. Luckily there are plenty of big bads I can pull from my already-established factions in this world. My friends are weird guys, so if I'm not fluid in my story, they'll always be throwing me for loops!.
I'm trying something similar in my campaign but I have a couple murder hobos who I fear might kill the MacGuffin as the expedient solution. The obvious solution is to give the kid powers, but I kind of wanted the kid to be more helpless than that.
eschatological Sounds rough! The main thing keeping my kid alive is a cult that's worshipping and protecting him without his knowing. Outside forces have been my campaign's saving grace.
Yeah, I was considering some sort of divine protection since the ultimate arc of the campaign is basically about a thought to be long-dead race of gods coming back to the world, but that feels like it gives too much away. It's a delicate balancing act, but it's the part of DMing I like.
I wonder if someone's hidden incredible power in pastries? then we'd truly have the macguffin muffin.
A mcmuffin?
Maybe an Illegal Danish.
More like the McGuffin McMuffin.
My favorite came out of no where
PCs stranded in desert heading back home met NPC from where they were heading (he happened to be a noble).
Through their role-playing they kept bringing him back as a negotiating piece (boon) and befriended the guy.
They somehow got him involved in an assassination attempt (wrong place, wrong time). He went from Bob the NPC to Bob (insert full name here) key element to the ending the merchant merchant wars
Been watching your stuff on and off for a while... This is actually some of the most helpful DM advice I've ever heard. Trying to figure out how to get your players interested, this just helps. Earned a sub.
One of my favourite things to see worked around: players making their own macguffin. When you leave multiple ways to solve a problem, you can really tell whether your players are murder hobos, murder hobos with brains, or a load of clever players who might undermine your plot but it’s okay to let them since it could turn out more interesting.
Needless to say, resourceful players are incredible and the key to making a macguffin work.
I am running a Strahd campaign and have accidentally come across a McGuffin in the backstory/random encounter rolls. My players are about to leave the village of Barovia and will encounter a revenant on the road. The revenant is the uncle of a player who was left to die at the hands of a dragon as the player got away.
This seriously reminds me of an amazing MacGuffin in the Dragonlance series. The blue crystal staff/Goldmoon.
In The Martian, the Ares IV landing site was a MacGuffin. Mark Watney knew from the beginning that his only hope of rescue was to get there. The book wasn't about getting to Schiaparelli Crater though. The book was about Mark surviving on Mars, and NASA organizing a rescue mission.
I recently used this idea for a different reason but it worked out well. I was DMing for a small party of two. They were both 1st level, inexperienced players. I knew they would be easily defeated on their initial adventure so I had them meet another small group that would balanced out the party. The new group was looking for their list friend and this not only helped drive the story, but it allowed for the players to try their hand at rolled playing different characters (as they now had a couple of players to play). It went over really well and made for a really fun adventure.
I'm running two campaigns that both involve MacGuffins, the first is the "keep this away from the bad guys" type, the party was hired by a merchant lord to transport and deliver a certain antique scepter to a mage in a far-off city, he's not sending it by the usual trade routes due to fear of it being stolen by a fearsome bandit chieftain who is raiding the normal trade routes, necessitating the party taking a roundabout route through mountains and desert that involves plenty of danger, along with them steadily accruing a laundry list of other individuals who want the scepter. The second won't involve the MacGuffin directly until much later on, with the party learning about it and tracking it down throughout much of the first half of the game, as they try to keep ahead of others who want to claim it and use it for their own purposes, it's very much the god-tier magic artifact type.
I used a MacGuffin as my character motivation in Storm King's Thunder, I was a Forge Cleric with a mystical book depicting the lore of the dwarven gods of the forge. The entire reason for my character joining to stop the giants was in the hope that he would find out the truth about his belief, my DM joined in on this and made my book significant to the plot by having dwarfs and other creatures trying to steal it for themselves.
My next campaign will be focused around a time-egg and intercepting it before a wizard can fracture the reality.
They must find the egg maguffin.
I loved this, since I tend to do this a lot in my games. You did a great job covering it, and I can only hope that Dungeon Masters will watch this and start to think beyond just monsters and stat blocks, and more at the story and an overall narrative.
In my current game, the mcguffin is actually an old teacher. The NPCs grew up, being trained by a powerful, retired Magus who is basically their mentor and father figure. Only for him to eventually uncover an artifact and ancient ritual (insert the classic summon a dark god trope here but spice it up) and he more or less sacrificed the whole village, players included to gain this power.
...Though of course, the players survived. And now, it's a revenge story. But we're 6 months in and it's about the tale -towards- him, not just the revenge. The world now sees this Magus's power as a sort of deity to worship, and only the players and a select few NPCs know the truth about what's really going on, wanting to expose him. But in the process, it's exposing the false religion, the false ideals, and more or less trying to overthrow a power, making them good but chaotic most of the time.
Overall, it's a story of revenge, but one about the journey to it, and them trying to reshape the world and peoples values one village at a time, before building up to the final act. Feel free to use this idea any time~ Hope you like it!
MAAAAAN ITS BLOWING MY MIND. I am freaking out. Its the BEST tip for a advanced DMs in all the internet SO FAR!!! I run two Campaings, one is strongly tied to a MacGuffin without i even know about it, the players are looking for their missing father (they are adopted). And in my other there is a weak MacGuffin that is the players can get home after the breakout the mage's slave prison.
All tips you find on the internet is about "bad DMs/players" and all that bull#$@, but not this This is the tip that will take my games to the next TIER. The one little thing that was missing to my DM techniques. The HOLY GRAIL TIP. Im so damn grateful for this video. THANKS A LOT CODY!!
Poor Uncle Owen's death? Uncle Owen was a crotchety old grump of a farmer. RIP poor, sweet, understanding Beru!
LOL - I think folks celebrated Uncle Owen's death. Trying to keep Luke down. 😜
Trying to protect Luke from becoming part of an oppressive war machine - yeah, how could Owen be so cruel to his nephew? What a jerk!
blablubb Wasn't Luke trying to join the Rebellion though? He spoke of his friend, and then later found that same friend as a pilot for the Rebels.
My memory about the novel adaptation is fuzzy, it might have been in there somewhere... in the movies though, there is no mention of any of this. Simply Luke's desire to "join the Academy". And as far as I know, the Academy trains Stormtroopers and/or TIE pilots.
blablubb yeah in the movie it's just "join the academy". That could be anything, but it seems it is more likely to be an academy for thw Empire than for the Rebellion.
I ran a scifi game where the macuffin was broken into several pieces. The players could not digitize the item to store it and once activated acted as a beacon for the bad guys to track them down. It became a battle for them with a very hefty choice: to carry the pieces and be under constant attack from the antagonists, or, try to store them safely somewhere which would also draw the villains to the stashed location often destroying whoever's town or bank/museum the party left the pieces with.
thanks for posting this, your video made me more confident in my homebrew. I've been gradually introducing a macguffin into my story (a magic stone) which the players have already been familiar with. Last session they learned just how important it is, they just dont know what it does yet. I was afraid that it was a cliche, but the initial mystery around the item has kept them interested, and now that they know it's important, it feels special to them.
Random Fun I think D&D is all about embracing cliches half the time. Most interesting things have already been done. As DMs and storytellers, we'd be hard-pressed to come up with something TRULY original. Instead, we really just steal something that's been done and put our own twist on it. And why not? People may have heard about it, they may have read about it, but have they ever LIVED it? So, let's let them live it.
I've used this sooooo much. The current campaing has being MacGuffin on top of MacGuffin.
First a paladin that was used on a demonic ritual and the quest to rescue him from a lost Duergar city, he was the MacGuffin. Back to the surface, the guild that the paladin was part of asked for the group to retrieve a Moonblade( THE MacGuffin) that belonged to the Elf King in the surface, but was stolen by the Drow in the underdark. During the travel to the underdark, they discovered the lost forge of Yakum, another MacGuffin.
It's so easy to use this as a plot device, I find myself using it a lot. And it's easy to mix with the characters backstory. The drows had kidnapped the bards family for slavery in the past, the Moonblade will actually tell the Half-elf druid that she is a bastard daughter of the Elf king. Love MacGuffins.
The druid would be the brat daughter. A bastard is the male child of an unmarried couple, a brat is the female child of an unmarried couple
My first campaign I ran 2 years ago was centred around a "blood stone". Which was essentially a plane within a obsidian stone, in which souls were being stored for power.
The PCs only found that out about it at the end, they just knew everyone wanted it so they wouldn't let them.
Love MacGuffins, they're great
My current campaign:
Early on players heard rumours of a powerful demigod of death gathering power in the south. A few levels later they are in Candlekeep as it is being invaded by an undead hoard. Fleeing to the great library they find themselves in the forbidden section which happens to be exactly where the undead are headed. In the midst of the battle they discover the Book of Vile Darkness encircled by three mystic wards and in a moment of desperation manage to harness it's power to defeat the hoard. They are now in possession of the evilest magic item in the realms which this demigod could potentially use to destroy the barrier between life and death and basically unmake the world. And since even Candlekeep's defences seem unable to defend against the king of death, it is determined that the best course of action is to keep the McGuffin moving in an unpredictable manner... say for example, in the movements of a wandering band of murder hobos... murder hobos who now have a vested interest in NOT leaving a trail of corpses in their wake.
I'm putting my players through a campaign now where they unintentionally discovered an artifact important to a god and now that god is hounding them. My twist on it is that the god can't actually interact directly with the artifact so he is instead trying to control the party, essentially controlling the artifact by proxy. Sort of like if Sauron were trying to make Frodo into his general. They seem to be having fun with it, trying to figure out why this god has taken an interest in them.
While I was running Tomb of Annihilation, my party chose Salida as their guide, to my delight. Fast forward, and the PCs come across Artus Cimber, who has the Ring of Winter. Salida tells Ras Nsi, who believed it could stop the effects of the Death Curse, and we had ourselves a McGuffin. It made the jungle expedition sections of the campaign more memorable, and some of my players had run the campaign before, and said it made things really interesting.
In one L20 Campaign I put in the “Kayoz Emeralds” as a side easter egg. Each one essentially works like a reusable once a week spell scroll for a different non-wish 9th Level Spell from PHB/XGE based on color
If you collect all 7 you can us an action to gain the effects of Haste, Fly, Invulnerability and Tenser’s Transformation for 1 minute, no concentration, and non dispellable. Alternatively you can cast wish
They count as legendary items and work similar to the Dexk of Many Things, you can’t wish for them, but you can wish to discover their location. You otherwise can not find them
My players found 3, Time Stop (Green), Meteor Swarm (Red) and Mass Heal (Yellow)
Some crystal pillars that they found in some cities and later showd up to be portals linking those cities. It became a major point of the travel system and strategics
I know this video is 2 years old, but I want to say my favorite MacGuffin anyways.
In Jackie Chan Adventures, each season has them finding a new set of MacGuffins. Their best one was the Oni Masks, because by gathering them together, the evil Oni generals would be released. So they were brought together, but by the heroes, and the Oni were still released. Such a cool twist.
Now that you say it... I made a whole arc about a MacGuffin (I guess).
As far as the story goes, the players know that they need "a weapon powerful enough to kill even gods" so, they started to look for someone who could lead them to such artifact.
First, they turned into a scholar they saved previously and he told them that faraway, in the summit of a deadly cold mountain, lives a divine blacksmith and that he maybe could be able to make them that weapon.
Then they went into the coast and conviced a group of sailors to bring them to the mountain (they had to go across an ocean). During the path they were ambushed by pirates and had to deal with stuff like that.
Fast Foward to the Mountain: Climbing that was something nobody could do... Unless you are a party with three 13-level spellcasters.
When they reached the summit they met the blacksmith who, after making them pass a couple of trials, gave them that Weapon. Bad news is that, in order to use it at full power, they had to travel around the world doing certain rituals and trials to awaken the weapon.
I personally enjoyed DMing this part. They had a goal set and went full in both in and out character. For that time the ultimate goal (save the world and classic stuff like that) wasn't as important as "Climb the Mountain and meet the Divine Blacksmith".
I had a person as a MacGuffin once. It helped that she was paralyzed from the neck down, so REALLY couldn't take care of herself. She was a scientist for one of the villain organizations and was put in a fairly comfortable retirement after the accident than paralyzed her, but she realized that the organization's plans needed to be stopped and used her assistant to arrange for rebels to break her out. That got subcontracted to the PCs, but as they broke into the place to rescue her, a "guest star" character played by my friend was also trying to get her for nefarious reasons. The plan was for the guest star to team up with the party, help them get her and then betray them and be killed, but things happened and the party never saw the guest star before he got away with the MacGuffin lady and a Charmed PC. A whole mess of stuff later and they finally got her, but sometime later the party's base of operations was raided by their enemies in retaliation for something they did, and MacGuffin lady got kidnapped again. The party (motivated more by rage than by a desire to rescue her) followed the clues into a trap, fought their way out of the trap, attacked the enemy base and got her back yet again for PROBABLY the last time.
Drinking Game: take a shot each time Cody says MacGuffin. *Don't*
Watching this right before a session that I didn’t have time to prepare for, Hope it’s helpful :))
I ran a campaign that had the party storm the abyss with the goal of destroying the seed of evil. The seed was just a thing, hardly a macguffin, but the abyss itself was incredible to play with. I made the abyss visible on the material plane as a dark tear in the sky that kept growing and growing, giving a powerful sense of impending doom. fantastic way of building tension, and driving the party toward the goal.
I was thinking of making the Abyss accessible from the prime material in my campaign too. But in my case it was to be in some suitable remote desert area and begin as a wadi or crack in the ground. When standing on the surface of a mountain over looking the Abyss it’s just a narrow crack in the ground running for some distance. But if you enter from the end where the crack begins to slope down, as the sides rise up above your head it begins to open out until it is a deep massive valley, full of hellishness.
A constant war between the souls damned to the hells and the Abyss is waging, Valhalla style. The battle begins every day as the darkness in the sky is replaced by a blood like red glow, the armies of the lost driven towards each other by towering devils and demons. The next day the fallen are revived, still bearing the wounds which struck them down.
Packs of monstrous hounds, 5ft at the shoulder with the flesh chewed from their faces, roam the battlefield devouring the fallen or chasing the PCs.
The PCs would need some MacGuffin to even keep them alive in there.
I did not realize that i was using MacGuffins in my DnD campaign until i saw this video ;). This helped me a lot just to realize how i can make the best use of it!
In my current Rolemaster campaign, I use greater and lesser McGuffins, plot hooks, tidbits learned in bars, a slowly approaching comet full of demons (which they know the approximate arrival date of), paid missions, commands from nobles and military officers, and just unexplored sections of the map with a few footprints to let my players choose where to go. - - - They are currently chasing down the last few of 14 "artifacts" that are useful against the impending demon attack, and their self-imposed deadline is to return to the elves who are making magical items for them before the comet strikes ground.
That's basically what I'm doing to a campaign set in the Elder Scrolls universe, that involves the PCs traveling all across Tamriel and both finding all of the Daedric artifacts and winning the favor of the Princes they're tied to before they can even come close to touching the BBEG, who is stripping the Princes themselves of their powers. Glad to see my first instinct with that wasn't far off.
So in a series of pathfinder games that I play and DM in, the character I play has his own mcguffin (sp?). The character, Ershin, is the great grandson of the last King of Cheliax, King Gaspodar, and Gaspodar in my rendition was killed and had his scepter taken from him after death. It was assumed to the populace that House Thrune (the ruling house of the nation) had the scepter, but Ershin and his sister Immith grew up with stories from their father that their grandfather, Rygos, actually went out to search for the scepter himself. Rygos wrote letters back home to his wife and his infant son at the time, Ershin's father. The letters just stopped after several years of searching for the scepter, and so Ershin is looking for those lost letters to gain the scepter and make a claim for the throne of Cheliax.
On top of that, I have another character I play that is one of Ershin's lifelong childhood friends, Dannius Agelastus. Dannius is a nobleborn human also from a city in Cheliax that House Thrune actually funded the founding of. So Dannius, being loyal to the current ruling house of Cheliax, notified the ruler at the time, King Infrexus, about Ershin and his sister's quest for the letters to retrieve the scepter and is helping Ershin find it, but will also try to steal it to bring to House Thrune to gain their favor.
I don't know if the Sun Sword from Curse of Strahd is supposed to be a McGuffin, but you best believe it was for my Paladin. From the moment I heard of it, my vampire-hunting Paladin of Tamara was basically obsessed with finding that blade.
Great concept for adventure design! I'm not a writer, so having a handle to put on this concept makes using it much easier, and to better effect! Cheers 🍻
Good advice and great examples. I would like to hear more of your ideas on how to become a better DM.
I was totally expecting ES:4 when you were talking about the MacGuffin being a person, I immediately thought Martin Septim!
New to Dnd and dming and my first campaign that I am writing has apparently a Mcguffin in it. It's about the Pcs getting send on a quest to find the tome of spells of a strong elven sorcerer who lived a thousand years ago and who was considered/still is a myth. WHat the pcs don't know is that the questgiver has a evil agenda of its own and that the tome is actually a necronimicon of sorts. Will run the first session next sunday so I hope this will turn out good!
great advise i can't wait to work on expanding my use of macguffins, in my campaign i am currently using a unseen antagonist who is giving people evil artifacts that they think will help them as my macguffin
John Britton What is the antagonist's goal with giving people evil artifacts? What's he trying to accomplish ultimately?
I'm writing a campaign where the pc have a maguffin, "The Eye of Yeenoghu." I made it an artifact that allows them to "see what they hunger for," however the drawback is it points a huge Gnoll warband toward where it was used. Many people want it for it's ability, the "main quest" is to take it to a gold dragon to be destroyed.
Yep, I use a MacGuffin all the time. My most recent one is a magical sphere that creates a shield bubble around itself. It got stolen by Zhentarim from the Tyr's temple where one of my players just happens to be a paladin.
I'd love a jade egg mcguffin that turns out to be a brilliantly painted dragon egg and the players could gain a dragon companion when it hatches before they reach their destination
I'm a film fanatic, so when I first GM'd I immediately thought the adventure should be a Macguffin, I'm glad that other's see that too.
Oh, I guess I was using MacGuffins in my story without realizing it haha! Mine are: A power of immortality called Infinity Ultima, controlled (and abused) only by dragons, Jera Wystral, a dwarven genius who disappeared to seek it out, and the Centerforged Three, three implements that allow mortals access to Infinity Ultima.
I had my boyfriend track down and rescue a captured Fey Queen, since otherwise the country would have been levelled by the Fey's last-ditch effort to get her back in time to save nature.
Thanx Cody, those tips are epic !!
This helps me a lot! I was debating a campaign around "The Silent Horn": giant war horn that makes no sound whatsoever... unless your a Tarasque. Yep, Tarasque dog whistle, you can tell why good/bad guys want i
Many of the examples are misleading as to what MacGuffins are, although I really like the idea of using them more in games, so bringing this idea to people is appreciated.
Now to clarify:
• The blueprints serve more as a reason to give value to the droids connecting all the characters in the story rather than a macguffin, it's of such insignificance long before the 3rd act that its practically forgotten about while the story is developing the characters. The macguffin in Starwars is the Force as because, it really is the think that all the main players are getting high on while the audience has no idea what it is.
• Harry potter himself would only be considered a macguffin if the story didn't give us a reason to care about his story (even if we saw the story through Dumbledore). A better example of person as a macguffin would be The Golden Child (1986 starring Eddie Murphy) because that kid has practically no character so he's pretty much and infinity stone.
• Elizabeth Swan is not the macguffin, it's would be the blood of Will Turner (the spanish doubloon also plays a part but really it works similar to the Deathstar Blueprints as it connects Elizabeth → Will → Barbosa → Jack). Elizabeth is used as a kind of unintended bait & switch.
• Frodo isn't the macguffin in LoTR, the Ring of Power is because the story isn't really about the ring, it's about the characters involved and how this ring has affected and changed their lives. (I realize this was mildly stated later in the video)
• I wouldn't consider Private Ryan a macguffin, mainly because it's pretty much told by him and in the end we have to care about him otherwise the hero of the story dies for nothing.
I'm running a game where the players are trying to access a place with a sealed barrier. They need three ancient artifacts to enter. They already have one, so they need to track down two more.
Thing is, there are four of these MacGuffins out in the world, so the players can pick and choose which ones they want to pursue.
My favorite was a Red Herring McGuffin I used when I ran the Vampire LARP at Origins one year. The entire story was to find the Prince’s lost magical chalice that he could use to enthrall any he gazed up (or some other hugely outlandish thing, a few separate rumors started getting passed around). In truth, the chalice never existed and it was just something he thought up in a torpor dream and no one thought to question him on it.
In the end the Prince was disposed as they all figured out he was just batty $#!+ crazy and the new Prince (one of the PCs) found a pretty wine glass, called it the magical chalice and threw it in a vault never to be seen again.
I'm really loving your stuff. Subscribed!
Wow. I actually didn't even realize that my campaign was...entirely focused on a MacGuffin. The MacGuffin specifically being a cure to a plague that's afflicting the entire party, and wiped out a good chunk of the population.
It's so obvious but I never even realized it, ahah. Especially since a lot of these tips were things I was already doing (aside from making it a person...an artifact of some sort fits the setting much more) for the main MacGuffin. But I wouldn't have even realized that, meaning I couldn't apply these things to other potential ideas during the campaign!
I mean, saving an old friend from a cult that has held a town hostage makes sense - especially since that town has the only artifacts that would allow the party to get to the actual main MacGuffin...
The campaign I DM is rather interesting in that a ton of different and unique shit that normally doesn't flow well in a DnD setting happens. I coordinated with one of the players to let them play the big bad who would ultimately betray the party, and the player would then make a new character. That aside, my campaign is now focused on the task of finding and safekeeping multiple macguffins called the Heads of Doom. There are five in total, each representing a different chromatic dragon color. The bbeg already has three, one is missing, and the one that the players are currently searching for is unlike the others. The five Heads are part of a ritual the bbeg is trying to cast in order to summon an avatar of Tiamat (yes, an avatar and not just Tiamat herself. I made it so that in my world Bahamut banished Tiamat from ever entering the mortal plane again, but the bbeg found a loophole in letting Tiamat possess someone's body). All the other Heads were some sort of weapon like a sword or glaive, but the Head of Gelus (the white one) isn't. The Head of Gelus is actually the blood of the missing princess of the main setting, Elyssia. This would cause the campaign to actually overlap with a war between humans and elves going on in the background and forces my very racially divided party to make a choice on who to assist in the war.
Basically, I'm an asshole.
My character was running around with a massive McGuffin (Orb with the essence of a goddess in it) for most of a campaign. It was awesome, all the villains each tried to get it and even some of the other PCs had some interest in it, so I didn't even tell the Players, that my character actually had that Thing right up until the end, as only he had a strong interest in reviving the goddess.
Well a brilliant example of a MacGuffin would have to be from one of my favourite films, Treasure Planet. It's so-so how everybody wants the map orb for the same reason but the true magic is how it changes its role through the film, being a conflict catalyst, a map, then a key. MacGuffin evolution!
I used a McGuffin by accident with a robot NPC the players had to befriend to convince her to open the 5-inch thick steel security doors that had locked them in, but she's also one of the few beings smart enough to understand the thinking that the illithids the party is fighting well enough to work as counterintelligence. Didn't know what it was called, but yeah, McGuffin.
The shrubbery is a macguffin. The holy hand grenade is a macguffin
Definately a deus ex machina. Direct intervention from God is pretty much the only way they could ever have survived that rabbit.
I was in a campaign where my character was the McGuffin. She was an assassin on the run from her father (leader of one of the larger chapters of the assassins in that world) because she had attacked him. He had tricked her into killing her mother and she ended up taking his eye before running. Later on we found out that it was part of an elaborate ritual to bring back a dark angel using my character as the sacrifice. It kind of fell apart because I forgot to disguise myself in a town and we.... split the party. One person was killed, and my character was captured. The other players were pretty much stuck after that because they had no idea where my character had been taken....
Another good example of a MacGuffin (sorry if I spelt it wrong) is the the Keyblade in the Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2. In KH1, the main reason that the main enemies of the game attack Sora, the main character, is because they are afraid of his weapon, and the weapon even guides the enemies to your character. In the end of the game, you even fight with your rival over control of the Keyblade because they need it to complete their goals, just as you need it to complete yours.
In KH2, the main villain of the game instructs his underlings to leave you alive because your using of the Keyblade is powering a separate MacGuffin in the series which is Kingdom Hearts.
This may help some people better understand MacGuffin's better, or will give another way of looking at them, where you have to use the MacGuffin, but doing so helps your enemy. This can lead to some strong moral dilemma's in your role playing where characters have to decide if using the MacGuffin is worth the possible consequences.
I don't necessarily know if it's considered a Mcguffin but in a home brew I made I presented my players with a set of very underwelming weapons that, when tempered by a dwarven master smithy using dropped items of bosses, created massively op god slaying weapons. Which my villian character, highly comparable to the darkness from "Gods of Egypt", was immortal. Making the weapons the only true way to end the campaign.
sometimes the PCs create their own mcguffin. my PCs decided they wanted to take a haunted ghost ship, put the ghost pirate captain to rest, and restore the ship. this was meant to be a side quest where they recieved the captain's ledgers. I never planned for the mcguffin of the ship.
I kinda of always used this not even knowing this term exists. It was somehow kind of natural - give the players a common goal to rally around.
I once used the book of vile deeds as a Mcguffin
Even though I'd seen Kingdom of Loathing make a joke about a MacGuffin diary I never understood it til now
After LMOP my players will have to rally allies, assasinate enemy commanders, to weaken and defeat a Tiamat worshipping hobgoblin army in the meantime the half-dragon leader is trying to summon Tiamat.
The McGuffin in my campaign is the monk of Arabic like origin who has the classical mysterious birth. However, his father was a Djinn. Partial to the McGuffin is also a Djinn Lamp. The monk thinks of it as a family heirloom and his only tie to past memories. It is however a vessel for himself. As the monk levels (since he sworn off all magic items) he'll begin taking on Djinn like traits. This is in lieu of magic items and the player is unaware. He'll also begin being drawn to the lamp more and more until one day he awakes inside of it. At some point he'll travel to the City of Brass to unlock his mystery (through the conversion of 4th editions Revenge of the Giants) and confront a Tyrannical Rakshasa who destroyed his family. City of Brass is lost in time detached from Sigil (the center of the planes) and the Rakshasa has developed a way to not only re-establish a door to Sigil, but take it over and make the City of Brass the center of the planes.
The "white rabbit" in Mission Impossible III is a perfect example. We never even find out what it really is. It's just wanted, like whatever's in Marcelus Wallace's briefcase. The tag, though, established by Hitchcock, was the name of his prop guy.
My current, very first campaign as a DM is about the players racing against the enemy to collect the 7 dragonblood stones, which could turn the BBEG into an ancient dragon if he got them all
Soooo... It's dragon ball. More or less. Long as your players have fun, go with it.
Just wondering if we are getting another Taking20 Magazine? Really enjoyed the last one.
Thank you! My adventure plan was missing something, this was it! I was able to take something simple that a player already had and make it a McGuffin!..... She's not going to know about it for a while though :D
I use a MacGuffin, actually 5 pieces of one. The players need to find the 5 pieces of a SWORD OF POWER and re-assemble it before 'they' do. This adds several things, once they have to find it, once they find one, they have to protect it. Others, not just the 'epic bad guy' will want it too, the MacGuffin lets others around it know of it's existence so thieves, nobles, kings, and even beggars want it.
A good MacGuffin that you can use if you a running a game with a Lich is an item that can destroy the Lich's Phylactery. 1. You need it to permanently kill the Lich 2. You can give it to them early telling them "Hey this can destroy the Lich's Phylactery." or Hey I found this glowy sword, I don't need it, take it. 3. This could be an item of one of the characters newly deceased family member. Or maybe the Lich turns a good friend of the party into a powerful Undead which wielded the one thing that could kill the Lich without it knowing. 4. Maybe the dagger gets stolen by a random group of thieves or a curse was placed on it by the Lich to attract every none intelligent undead for miles. If you want to make it a person, maybe there is an old wizard that has learned a spell that can weaken the Lich's Phylactery to normal attacks. 6. This thing can destroy or weaken the Lich's Phylactery, why not have it also shoot lasers or something, I don't know.
What? No mention of the Rod of Savrille in the Dungeons and Dragons (2000) movie?
My favorite campaign was the one where i straight up rolled the player 'Base' the 'MacGuffin' and the party's primary means of transport into one item. Specifically, playing FFG's Rogue Trader.
The first plot was the finding and stealing/mobilizing the ship. Then they had to keep it, and find out why it was so much more important than the dozens of ships various villains and factions were throwing at them.
granted for a while they just assumed everyone wanted it cause it had a Nova Cannon. Which, yeah, giving the party that was a mistake. That weapon is Way to overpowered in FFG's system... but there was more to the ship than that as they found out moving forward.
and yes, before anyone yells at me, i did rip a good portion of the plot points straight from Outlaw Star and then 'Grim-Dark' em up a bit.
A MacGuffin the key to winning? I am currently having the group quest for various 'MacGuffins' that will allow the person who is giving them the quests to morph into the BBG through a ritual that needed the items the group has been collecting. They have direct history with the person and now the BBG knows and understands how the group works and their limits (at current levels) so she knows how to hold them off. The group is slowly putting this together, that the items can be used together to create a potential powerful item (but they have already collected all the items - just waiting for the ritual to be enacted).
Just realized my player has a mcguffin, but I didn't know what that was before now. It was definitely happenstance. A PC raided the office of a villian they believe to be dead, and had a short insulting conversation with that villian’s demonic Lord before casually pocketing the key orb that allows communication with the demon. The villain, revived and anxious, scryed on the orb and found it in his attackers possession, so now summoned shadow demons are being occasionally sent after this character. Whenever the demons attack, the orb will begin to vibrate, but the playerb misunderstood the relation the first time so it may take a few more attacks before he realizes it won't stop, and hopefully tried to track the demons back to where they came from, possibly with some ideas of what the antagonist is after in case he wants to use it as a bargaining chip of some sort. Anyway... This just happened as a matter of course. Coincidental mcguffin.
I'm about to run some players through the adventurers league of "Range of Demons" starting with "harried in hillsfar" - I'm going to convert the scythe they get early on to be deaths actual scythe. Death, of course, is looking for it and is a bit piqued that it is missing. Eventually quite a few people will be after it either trying to help or hinder death (eventually the players will realize nobody is dying all the way; just dealing with some long term loss of consciousness).
I've still got some things to figure out and the world is going to go through quite a shock once death gets his scythe back. It will be a big ring worldy but should be fun.
I use Legend of Zelda a lot and it makes some amazing campaigns.
I think I unintentionally have a lot of MacGuffins now that i think about it. There are people in this secret society I'm making in my game that have faked their own deaths or kidnappings. The players want them to be their allies and make sure they are safe, and their parents (who are all nobles) would want their children back if they ever found out they are all alive.
I know I'm late to the party here, but....
I'm currently coming up with a solo homebrew campaign for my sister. She's wanting to play a dwarf barbarian chief's daughter set to inherit the chiefdom, but is sent on a quest not only to find the mcguffin in the Axe of the Dwarvish Lords, but also some self discovery along the way before she becomes chief. I plan on making the Axe not only a greataxe, but can split into twin battle-axes. The first session is going to have her find one half of it, but because it's ancient, be unrecognizable and not have most of its abilities until she learns how to attune herself to it, and even then, it'll be a long time before she unlocks the axe's true potential. The second half of the Axe will be in the possession of the original creator who became a lich in order to find it and use it to rule over the continent (name in progress). I'm still working out details, but I think I have a decent start.
The DMG has some great MacGuffin ideas. If you're DMing a party of Evil Player Characters then have them run into the Book of Exalted Deeds early in the campaign, and follow this by at least a tier's worth of a Paladin hounding the players for the book. On the other extreme, a party of Good PCs might run into the Book of Vile Darkness, and have at least a tier's worth of an adventure trying to track down a Solar to destroy the thing, all the while being hunted by the worshipers of Vecna (throw in the 5 Tomes of the Stilled Tongue and the Hand and Eye of Vecna and you'd have a whole campaign).
I feel like D&D is particularly fond of this trope. Most recently in Tomb of Annihilation with the Soul Monger, but the Ring of Winter can also be considered a MacGuffin for side plotting. Curse of Strahd has Ireena who also fits, albeit to a lesser extent.
There's the stone of Golorr from Waterdeep: Dragon Heist
The Mcguffin's tome. Wonderous item. A book created by the greatest divination wizard Alfred Rosebud Mcguffin the III. Once a week shows an approximate location of any item or creature in all existing planes and demiplanes, provided it is not in anti magic field.
Vince Vaughn in Jurassic Park 2 ! Only reason for him being there is that he can be a terrorist hippy, release the dinosaurs and endanger dozens of human lifes, ultimately kicking off the entire plot of the movie. Seriously rewatch it, this movie would've been over without that in like 30min tops.
Thinking on the Elder Scrolls series in general especially Skyrim, the MacGuffin is the dragon that is used to destroy helgen and becoming dragonborn but the elder scrolls themselves play a part for only about 1% of the game and its named after them. I am inspired to use a birthrite / bloodborn aspect to make the players the MacGuffin.
yes sir. this is the thing. can't argue any of it. I use it multiple times a campaign. cause it's fun and easy
I was using this and I had no idea! I have this key missing some teeth my PC's must find in order to open an ancient vault that holds an artifact that can help kill the big bad!
I have a campaign where the players are hunting to find 12 MacGuffins (artifacts of the 12 Greek gods) to fight “the oncoming tide of evil in the world”.