**SPOILER** I'm trying to set up a political manuver and it's reversal. I'm running Shackled City and I want to set it up so that Lord Taskerhill, the most powerful noble of Cauldron, has something over the wizard alchemist Vortimax Weer. Taskerhill has a tangeble McGuffin that gives him cohersion over Weer. The PC, being married to Weer, will use her roguely skills to break into Taskerhill's mansion, find and recover the McGuffin, and find bonus evidence of Taskerhill's plot to hire an asassin to kill the mayor.
What I need is:
- What form is the McGuffin that it's possession can cause coersion to Weer (and it's absence would remove it)
- What is Taskerhill coercing Weer to do for him?
- What form is the evidence of Taskerhill's (or his "Mr. Johnson") finding, meeting, negotiating, and/or paying the asassin (or his agent)?
What's a McGuffin?
I wonder if it would be really upsetting if it turned out that Weer had slept with one of his Bluecrater Academy students, and Taskerhill has proof, like a love letter from one to the other. Or worse still, if it's from Weer to the woman, with his signature on it.
Then, if the PC wife of Weer finds it, it sets up a conflict:
Does she remain a dutiful wife and destroy the letter, or does she stay true to herself and let her husband be ruined?
Ooh. I like that idea.
McGuffin
• noun an object or device in a film or a book which serves merely as a trigger for the plot.
— ORIGIN a Scottish surname, said to have been borrowed by the English film director Alfred Hitchcock from a humorous story involving such a pivotal factor.
The letter idea is great!
What's Taskerhill using the leverage for though?
Surely he doesn't need cash that's.
Perhaps he needs a spell cast?
Maybe Weer himself has a secret that Taskerhill wants kept quiet and it's an exchange?
Here's a few thoghts on your mcguffin:
* stolen knowledge, a spell gone wrong perhaps?
* maybe something that helped him achieve his status as cauldron's most noitable spellcaster?
Or maybe he was maried before? He lived in the city of Greyhawk, an aprentice to some bigwig wizard (Mordenkainen perhaps?). He tried to brew a potion far more complex than he was capable of. The ensueing explosion killed his wife and their unborn child. He fled the city in shame and settled in a far-off land, where no-one knows of his tragic past?
Man do I love the word McGuffin! I'm totally having my next NPC named McGuffin. For example, somebody who provides them with a quest. Next, a murder mystery... where one of the suspects is named Redd Harring!
Back to the subject:
What if Taskerhill is having Weer brew potions which are then being sold off to rather unsavory citizens of Cauldron? Taskerhill is making 100% profit by selling Weer's potions to the underworld. That is to say, the Ebon Triad, the Last Laugh, the Alleybashers... all of them actually made by Weer and sold by third-party dealers.
And Taskerhill, being the evil aristocrat he is, sits back and rakes in the money hand over fist.
