Make the "collecting shards of macguffin" cliche into

>>52383911
The shards of the macguffin are parts of a gun left by a time traveler.

The shards never actually add up to anything, the real macguffin was friendhip~

Actually it's quite easy.

You just put the shards in interesting and varied locations with interesting and varied challenges guarded by interesting and varied enemies supported by interesting and varied side quests.

You're players will completely forget they were even collecting something by the end of it.

>>52383911
You are a robotic being, and the shards of maguffin are pieces of your own body.

>>52383911
"Collecting shards of Macguffin" isn't a story.
A story is why and how you collect them.

>>52383911
The shards are your draconic children and you must eat them

>>52383911
> each shard is dangerous on its own, and the only way to preserve the power from being misused is to seal it away in the MacGuffin

Alternatively, > the quest giver knows it's going to waste your time and is completely pointless, it's a test to see if you're autistically devoted enough to something so purposeless you'll be trustworthy enough to enter his army.

When the MacGuffin is finally complete, it turns out to be the key to ushering in the life-threatening crisis the heroes sought to prevent.

The shards are waifus.

>When you walk away...

>>52383911
You're collecting the pieces of your broken heart.

>>52383911
>He's never played Return to Zork

>>52383911
There is no special "plot" reward for collecting ALL of the pieces. Each individual item is useful and some of the uses complement each other, but there is no requirement to obtain all 7. The players may not even be aware that they are collecting pieces of a MacGuffin until they have half of them and start to see common threads between the pieces.

This allows for dramatic tension. When players know that they have to collect 7 of something, any quest that seems to lead to that has to have a foregone conclusion.

If it is beneficial but not required to have a given piece, players will have much more investment in the outcome.

Or did you mean in fiction, OP? If so then you're

>>52384199
Of course, at this point, it might not be considered a MacGuffin anymore. But maybe it was a MacGuffin in another time or another context that doesn't apply to the PCs. Maybe the items have already filled their purpose and they still have residual desirable qualities, or maybe it's just for the honor of saying that you have them.

TL;DR, it's still cool to have in your possession the 6 Atlantean Traitorblades and to be able to pull them out on some chump, even if the mad king they are destined to slay is yet to come to be.

>>52383911
The big bad has just been defeated. Your party is tasked with taking the pieces of his super weapon to the far corners of the world and hiding them away.

>>52383911
Just play through the story of Jackie Chan Adventures.

>>52383911

There are more shards than you can reasonably collect but they can be combined to create something weird and chimeric which has the properties of all components used.

Instead of collecting All 5 of the Legendary Kajiggers, you've got a Sunset Red Shard, a Midnight Blue Shard, a Seafoam Turquoise Shard, and a magical teapot. Put them all together and see what comes out.

Identifying general properties of each would probably be obvious and easy, but assembling both informs and changes the nature of whatever chimeric thing comes out.

>>52384398
This. This one has potential. Consider it stolen.

remember the end of Dark Tower? It's like that but every time you get to the tower it's a new piece of the McGuffin..

>>52383994
See: Deltora Quest.

>>52383911
The "shards" are random trinkets of the big bad scattered all around the world. Obtaining all of them does... Nothing. It's the experience of the adventure that lets the adventurers beat the big bad.

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>>52384584
>Deltora Quest

>>52384584
Why the hell would anyone willingly look at Deltora Quest

>>52384644
Deltora Quest is kind of a perfect vanilla quest archetype story. Each gem had a an interesting location, setup, and power it supplied to them.

>>52384664
It's also written for a "see spot run. run, spot, run." literacy level.
Better off reading Dr. Seuss, that shit will teach you how to read and give you far more varied adventures.

>>52383911
The shards of the macguffin aren't literal pieces of an item, but some sort of weird pseudo-metaphorical aspects of character gained through overcoming your own character flaws. Through your growth as a person you acquire the ability to resolve the plot/beat the bad guy/whatever, and maybe get some cool-ass psychic abilities or enhanced state through enlightenment as a physical reflection of your change.

>>52384584
The clean freak cult gave me the creeps, I've had enough of that from my mother ...

>>52384761
So they're Personas?

>>52383911
>One shard was destroyed long ago so it can never actually be completed

>>52384914
>the Macguffin is a time machine

>>52383911
>The Macguffin is actually an even bigger threat than the big bad it was assembled to stop
>Heroes and big bad now need to team up to stop the macguffin

>>52384079
See: Tales of Hearts R

>>52383994

This. Same applies to basic fetch quests and kill quests too. It's not about the basic goal of the quest but the means of achieving it. If a fetch quest is about getting something locked deep underground in the vault of a magical bank then that's a tough and interesting challenge.

The shards are actually PC's memories.

BOOM

I used this plot. The campaign is ongoing but essentially the shards of the macguffin are all immensely powerful magical items that have unique powers (key that opens any door, brooch of invisibility, knife that reanimates the dead, helm of illusions and a pair of teleportation portals).

Three groups want them, because draining the power from all five will let them reactivate the fountain of youth.

Faction 1 wants to reactivate the fountain because they made it and it's their magnum opus, faction 2 wants to make immortal people they can endlessly drain blood from to collect the iron, and faction 3 wants to make the royal family immortal.

>>52383994
>mfw the shards were entirely unguarded not even any traps

I mean the temples were all abandoned and shit but it was a temple to the fucking blood god.

The only fight we ever had in one of them was 12 skeletons that were dispatched with 0 effort.


I suppose there were the spirits of pure emotion i guess. I mean we talked with them but that was about it.

>mfw the macguffin unlocked a temple
>A temple with weapon recipes
>Made weapon and placed it on altar
>Party leader gets teleported into space on a platform
>Is told to shatter this rock floating there

>Its a big fucking hunk of Thinaun

>Deifacted Thinaun

>Can consume infinite souls and gods souls

>Gives it to the Psion/Ur-priest/Theurge who wants to kill the gods
Nothing can go wrong here.

>>52384051
you don't hear me say

The shards are party members and it starts as a single-player campaign.

Friendship would defeat the final BBEG

>>52386122
PLEASE

>>52383911
Once the players have collected all the shards and assemble them... they find out it's a bigger shard. One of many more.

>>52386239
Ho babyyyyyyyyyy

>>52385729
>faction 2 wants to make immortal people they can endlessly drain blood from to collect the iron
Sorry, but that's just stupid.

>>52386273
don't go

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>>52386293
That's enough.

>>52383911
The shards are the things holding the world together.

>>52383911
It's the driving force and limiting force. Each "X" makes progression and the final conflict More possible at the expense of the suffering of others.
>The water macguffin halves the water supply of the world.
>The fire macguffin makes the nights longer and the days shorter.
>The Earth macguffin makes the world more unstable.
>And the wind macguffin stills the air and calms the waves.
Three macguffins are needed in total for the final conflict and the fourth provides a bonus.
At least 2 macguffins will be permanently destroyed in the conflict and the world will have to cope with it.
The entire world knows of the your journey and will either help or hinder you.
Plus a deadline somewhere to stop Antagonist "X" from destroying or taking control of the world

The PCs are, in fact, the various shards of the Macguffin and they must adventur and grow in strength to become suitable enough to be joined together in the end to bring back the original being whom they all reincarnated from originally.

>>52383911
>Need to collect ancient weapons of the gods to stop the great evil
>After you defeat the great evil the gods ask for their weapons back
>They lost their weapons and were too lazy to look so they created the great evil so you would find them

The shards are the only things protecting the 12 kingdoms each from a horde of dangerous creatures, so everybody is endangered as you gather them to save the world.

>>52386633
Okay there Darren Shan

>>52384007
This.

>>52384517
See also: Forever After, an humorous fantasy anthology that Roger Zelazny helmed, right before his death. Not the greatest, but interesting, and explores this idea.

>>52384702
Why the hell would anyone willingly look at Dr. Seuss.

>>52384018
Hello Iron Kingdoms.

>>52384702
I reqd one or two of the second storyline as a kid, it wasn't so bad

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>>52383911
The shards are just a red herring spread by the BBEG

There's supposed to be 7, but there are only 6 and people are too busy fighting over them to notice.

>>52386693
I actually lol'd at this. I'm planning a bronze-age "our gods are dicks to but our neighbor's gods are worse" campaign, and this is exactly the type of dickish behavior I'm trying to come up with

>>52383911
The McGuffin shards need to be collected in a non-linear order due to time shenanigans.
As in:
>Collect A to open the door needed to get B
>Use B to get C
>But since getting C occurs earlier in the timeline and contradicts getting A through the timestream, you need to get A again
>There are seven of these McGuffins, you don't know which produce changes when until you test them, and you need ALL SEVEN to achieve your goal

>>52389026
"I've found the shard labeled 'one', 'two' and 'four' but I can't find shard 'three'!"

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>>52383911
the possession of the shards is a continuous back and forth between protagonists and antagonists

The shards are part of a magic seal to banish the ancient evil that corrupts the world. His Cultists, but also paranoid heroes and greedy magicans hold the shards. Some are just lost.

>>52384702
Read the entire series back in elementary school, was one of the first I read. Definitely was my start to RPG storylines.

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>>52383994
>Campaign began with party searching for macguffin rings that could grant any wish. With a subplot of each PC being a chosen one of a God, and given their own personal task to undertake with various rewards

>Campaign's middle had the players finding out that rings used to be part of the God of Chaos' scepter, and that using them would grant their wish at the cost of the entire world being fractured and (insert a large portion of the worlds population here) dying. And finding out that rather than Gods giving them tasks they were tricked by the God of Chaos into doing tasks that severely harmed the existence of its rival Gods and their followers.

>Campaign ended with the PCs returning from being sent 5000 years into the past and using the Macguffin rings to free a PC who had their mind corrupted by the Goddess of War. After which they proceeded to taking their fight to the Gods and doing PC things to them.

>>52384007
There's always gunna be another mountain
I'm always gunna wanna make it move
Allways gunna be another battle
Sometimes I'ma have to lose
Doesn't matter how fast I get there
Doesn't matter what's waiting on the other siiiiiiiiiiiiiide

it's the climb!!!!

>>52383994
This.

If you make quest big and long enough, with enough subplots and interesting characters in it, your players won't even care - assuming they still remember - it was a mcguffin chase.

>>52383944
To be mcguffin the desired object must pay no role in the story at all, aside being the "object of desire", but not affecting directly anything. So I guess there are no bullets for the gun then

>>52383911
>Adventure Zone

Coraline did it well with the eyes of the dead children. Great movie in general for campaign inspiration, especially if you will be running with a younger or tamer crowd.

>>52391299
Uh no, they do have some supposed effect, they are just powerless in disassembled state and either never get used or their use is a complete finale of the story.

so the badguy desiring a gun is going to be stopped only right before he finds the bullets.

>>52384702
Oh fuck off, the books are meant for children, there's nothing wrong with that.

>>52384702
So, what, would you recommend the anime version instead?

>>52392110
Yes. Teagan's got some nice tits and Jasmine's moe as fuck.

Just create a world that isn't built around it. The players have to search for the shards and they often won't find them. Their purpose is lost to endless wandering, cursed with the knowledge that their unrelated acts of heroism won't help them beat the big bad nigga lich.

>>52392215
Fair points both.

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>>52389026
this

>>52394897
I'm a faggot, what the bottom one?

>>52386178
Tails of Equestria soon

>>52394897
I think it's that belt thing they were talking about earlier in the thread

>>52395316
Deltora Quest I'm pretty sure. Its a children fantasy series with your pretty typical find the macguffin to save the kingdom plotline.

>>52395316

The belt is the regalia of the kingdom in Deltora Quest.

Diamond, Emerald, Lapis, Topaz, Opal, Ruby Amethyst

Individually, they've got a few useful abilities. Usually, they were put in the least convenient location for said ability. IIRC, the one that cured poison and venom was hoarded by an highly venomous toad monster (which supplied the BBEG with a supply of excruciatingly painful paralytic venom, loaded into sling bullets and used as crowd control by his manufactured "peacekeeper" Grey Guards.

Kingdomofloathing already did it in their lvl 11 mainquest "The Quest for the Holy MacGuffin"

In fact it was so good they made a challenge path revolving around you playing the guardian of the MacGuffin retracing your [the adventurer] steps and attempting to retrieve it.

>>52396191
>highly venomous toad monster (which supplied the BBEG with a supply of excruciatingly painful paralytic venom, loaded into sling bullets and used as crowd control by his manufactured "peacekeeper" Grey Guards
For a kids book series, that's actually pretty clever.

>>52397561

Rhodda wrote some incredible worldbuilding under the YA trappings. The Seuss jokes earlier are somewhat apt because, while definitely not master-class like Dr. Geisel, it's very clear she's taking harder writing and making it more accessible rather than simply being stuck at that level. (See C. Paolini)

I'd argue that The Adventure Zone handles their macguffin quest quite well, but as usual, strong role-players and interesting characters can really carry otherwise uninteresting plots.

>>52384702
Just because something was written for children doesn't make it bad; look at Animorphs. Heck, didn't Deltora Quest have some Animorphs-level fucked up scenes too?

>>52386281
To be fair, I think infinite iron could be useful no matter how slowly you get it. Assuming the immortals regenerate blood as fast as they lose it and an adequate iron extraction system is in place, you could sort of set it and forget it. Like blood iron Cookie Clicker.

>>52386281
having infinite iron is never stupid, anon.

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>>52394897
>Deltora Quest

>>52390140
I always find it funny that somehow, in the far future, JACK was the one on the very top, not even Wu-ya could beat him in the end.

>>52397561
Deltora Quest was fucking brutal, the best comparison for how fucked up it is would probably be... animorphs.

>>52383911
>collect the shards story
>bosses usually pay out 1 per quest
>team collected a number already
>run into other party also collecting shards
>beat team and gain 2+ shards at once

Does anyone else get bothered by this shit? It makes me feel like the writer was running out of ideas.

>>52398322
He's ironically the only one on the heylin side that has any sort of ambition. The rest of them just run around doing random shit.
>"I told him to drink the soup and he actually did it, the absolute madman."

>>52383911
The bad guys are collecting the MacGuffin shards in order to create a weapon that ends the world. You need to get them first and destroy them.

But it turns out they're actually a way to save the world from a worse evil by restoring an ancient magic, and one of the bad guys turns on the others in order to get the magic. The good guys go forth and unite the MacGuffin shards to save the world, despite having set out to stop them being reunited.

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the shards are pieces of the main characters memory, as he collects them it changes him and he begins to remember why he smashed it in the first place

>>52383911
The "shards" are cute girls and the "macguffin" is an idol group.

>>52383911

The shards have become sentient beings who want nothing to do with each other.

You have to kill each of them to return them to their original state.

Problem is while some are evil others are good.

>>52385729
>fountain of youth
>make immortal people they can endlessly drain blood from

You can't endlessly drain blood from young people, nor is blood loss related to aging in any way. Is "fountain of youth" a not entirely accurate shorthand name or is faction 2 a bunch of idiots?

>>52384620
not the same dude, but dont talk shit about my deltora quest

>>52403616
I barely remember anything about Deltora Quest, except the monster designs were great and it had some stellar body horror. That and Animorphs could fuck up any small child's day, and I love that.

>>52383911
The Macguffin isn't a bad trope. Plenty of stories include macguffins. The trick with the macguffin is, the story has nothing to do with it in all honesty. You might be a WW2 spy collecting the key shards for a ciphertext with top-secret enemy plans. But the story isn't about the ciphertext or whatever it is the enemy is planning; it's about the people they interact with, how they react to danger, how their outlook develops, etc.

The hero is tracking down a villain who collects shards of muggufins. But only one shard of each muggufin.

Meanwhile there are a good 45 separate ways the world is going to shit because some asshole keeps stealing bits of important magical artifacts.

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>>52383911
Define:
>good story

>>52398218
I seem to remember the ship of the dead giving me nightmares.

>>52406593
Fuck, didn't the (ex) captain of that ship throw a gypsy child into a waterfall to be brutally dashed to pieces against the rocks because he didn't want to pay him for stealing the macguffin? I have strangely vivid memories of someone getting all broken and dead at the base of a waterfall, and I think it was the gypsy kid.

>collect all 7 dragon balls
>summon enormous dragon
>Dragon: State your wish, and it shall be granted
>PCs: we wish for (insert whatever)
>Dragon: are you SURE you wish for me to eat you?
>PCs: w-wut? That's not what we said, we wished for (not getting eaten)
>Dragon: All I'm hearing is "We wish to be eaten by a dragon". OK, your wish will be granted
>everyone roll initiative, surprise bonus boss tiem

The pc is a villain and the macguffin is a world ending weapon

I remember reading a blog post (?) about this cliche with maybe some suggestions about the "shards" pointing to other shards, and there was a pretty clever twist I can't remember.
It might have been a sci-fi setting. Anyone knows what I'm talking about?