Favorite T2k MacGuffin

[Legbreaker]

Originally Posted by Lurken

I'd say Going Home...

The train?

[ChalkLine]

Macguffins are positive and negative.

A positive one you want to have.

A negative you don't want other people having. (The briefcase in Ronin)

[swaghauler]

I'm lucky in that I'm GMing a MERC campaign in Africa. My players take missions to get paid so they can eat. Occasionally, that payment can be unique like the time they were paid in DIAMONDS and that other time they got to "raid" a UN supply depot in exchange for a "side job" that the UN commander needed done "off the books." Burt Gommer (Tremors II) would have been proud!

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by swaghauler

I'm lucky in that I'm GMing a MERC campaign in Africa. My players take missions to get paid so they can eat. Occasionally, that payment can be unique like the time they were paid in DIAMONDS and that other time they got to "raid" a UN supply depot in exchange for a "side job" that the UN commander needed done "off the books." Burt Gommer (Tremors II) would have been proud!

After playing Far Cry 2 I wanted run a session like this.

I posted a quick game outline over at the T2K Fb page:

The premise is that some former troops are contacted by their respective governments to act as advisers for a rebel group in a fictional country and try and overthrow the current government. Once on the ground they realise that the intel they've been given is totally wrong and the situation is far more complex than they were briefed. After a bit of scene setting where they start to realise that they're probably not on the side of the angels (obviously there simply isn't any in this situation) a factional struggle kills the rebel group's leaders and the new leaders have other backers. As this is post-Glasnost I'd probably pick some other nation than Russia as 'bad guys', probably a fictional one as regional governments often fostered rebel groups in each other's territory. (Liberia was infamous for this).

A loyal soldier gets them a warning that the new rebel leadership has targeted them for arrest. Some of the group will be executed as a spectacle and the rest extradited to the rebel's backers for intel. The executed will probably be the lucky ones as the backer's methods of interrogation are similar to those of Idi Amin's.

In true T2K fashion the advisers have to get to an extraction zone with plenty of betrayal and conflict as well as the possibility of using their skills to do what they consider is correct on the way as they're no longer considered 'employed'. Behind them and pushing the plot is a horde of various factions in technicals displaying various levels of the brutality that marked the regional conflicts of that era.

The players start in a situation much like the end of the 5th ID; grabbing whoever and whatever they can and beating feet. The infrastructure in front of them is destroyed by the war and they may even end up cooking fuel.

Worse they may now be seen as something of a liability by their own backers; the shadowy organisations that put them in theatre. How this develops would depend on the plot.

Of course all is not lost. There was some very good people in the area in that time and they might be able to help out. However it would inevitably be a tangled situation as these helpful groups or individuals tried to liaise with each other to provide help or guidance.

[Raellus]

That sounds like a pretty kick-ass campaign concept, Chalk. I went through a big mercs in Africa phase a couple of years ago. Read a bunch of books about merc ops in the Congo, Sierra Leon, Angola, the Wonga Coup...

Really gritty stuff. It got rather depressing after a while. I had to stop.

Lot of MacGuffins in Africa. Diamonds in Sierra Leon, oil in Angola, Coltan (for cell phones) in Congo. After watching a doc on Netflix (can't remember the name), I briefly wanted to run a game where the mercs were protecting Mountain Gorillas from both sides in a civil war. "Guerillas in the Mist" never got past the conceptual phase.

[ChalkLine]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Really gritty stuff. It got rather depressing after a while. I had to stop.

Exactly the same here. Too close to reality.

[Matt Wiser]

For our group? It was gold bars, so our GM came up with a rumor of gold in a bank, and so....cue "Burning Bridges" from Kelly's Heroes.

Reset was a background while we were in Krakow-had a few fire-fights with people who thought we had the documents.

[Lurken]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

The train?

Not always. The group I played with accidentally missed the train totally so we went to Bremerhaven in our merry convoy of assorted vehicles. I didn't even know about the train until I read the Going Home module after the campaign!

[Olefin]

Africa has a lot of possible MacGuffins that work both for MERC and for V2.2.

Players in Kenya could be part of Operation Harvester gathering material for the war effort as part of the US military.

Or they could be mercs and dealing with guys like Rick Blaine in Mombasa who pays for "items" that he can sell for a very high price to the right buyer. Or being paid by the LRA for things like black market fuel or spare parts for their vehicles or gold or gems that can be traded for what they need.

Or be both and have their eyes out for "items" while they are part of an Operation Harvester mission- i.e. a la Kings Ransom.

[Raellus]

Technically, I probably didn't use the term MacGuffin correctly in the OP/Poll, but there's definitely a difference between "an object or device in a movie or a book that serves merely as a trigger for the plot" and a mission like "gather stuff", or a patron that sends the character on missions, like "the collector". A MacGuffin is almost always one really important thing. How and/or why it's important usually doesn't matter to the character charged with finding/retrieving/destroying the thing, but it still manages to drive the main plot line.

[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by Raellus

Technically, I probably didn't use the term MacGuffin correctly in the OP/Poll, but there's definitely a difference between "an object or device in a movie or a book that serves merely as a trigger for the plot" and a mission like "gather stuff", or a patron that sends the character on missions, like "the collector". A MacGuffin is almost always one really important thing. How and/or why it's important usually doesn't matter to the character charged with finding/retrieving/destroying the thing, but it still manages to drive the main plot line.

That's why I posted my two examples. In the first one, the PC's needed to retrieve the Blood Diamonds to develop an "in" with a local warlord to insure their client's safe passage through his area.

In the second one, they needed equipment to take a job and the only way to get that equipment with a STRONG UN arm's ban was to do a job for the UN Commander to get the equipment.

[Legbreaker]

Three definitions from different sources, all basically the same.
Make of it what you will.

Definition of MacGuffin:
an object, event, or character in a film or story that serves to set and keep the plot in motion despite usually lacking intrinsic importance

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/MacGuffin

MacGuffin
Also: McGuffin
an object, event, or character in a story that lacks intrinsic importance but serves to set and keep the plot in motion

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/MacGuffin

MacGuffin
something in a film that moves the plot (= story) forward but is not important itself

https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dic...lish/macguffin

[pmulcahy11b]

The Tac Nuke in the Challenge Magazine's "Shell Game" mini-module.

[Mahatatain]

The Last Submarine to set up a different kind of campaign to nromal where the PCs are still members of a functioning military and act as the ops team aboard, going ashore on missions. Handled right it can work well, providing a command structure to guide the PCs without restricting their ability to make their own decisions on how they resolve the missions they are asked to undertake, potentially even refusing them.