If you don't know what a MacGuffin is Wikipedia has the full explanation. Think of it as a plot device that has no other use than to advance the plot.
We're all guilty of using them. They're easy to drop into a game and then be forgotten by everyone, including the players.
In a way using these can be considered lazy. It gives the players a thrill of achieving something and then they go on to find something else. It can be unexplained as to why they're looking for it or what it does. It can be and do nothing in particular.
Sometimes that's what you want. Not every encounter has to end with a world shaking revelation or major plot twist. If they find the Amulet of Sugary Cereal then so be it. At that point it can be decided if it has significance.
Who decides? Good question.
If the item miraculously meshes with a character's motivations and/or backstory then hey, it's no longer a MacGuffin! If they decide they must know why the Rock of Shiny Crystals was so well guarded then they're off to the sages. Maybe the name sparks something in that overworked GM brain and it connects with something else that was in the overpacked filing cabinet of ideas.
Or maybe it's just a goal that they'll sell in the next town.
One thing it can do is break the players of the habit of expecting the results of every encounter to have long term ramifications. Finding the Cloak of the Sloth Prince when there's no empire they know of that has a Sloth royal family is an achievement that makes them feel good for finding it but is kind of a sorbet to the plotline palette. It's refreshing, it's welcome, it's not important.
Something that's far too easy to do is to use them too often. If you make most of the things at the end of encounters MacGuffins then you're stringing together random encounters and it's an extended dungeon crawl. You know your group. That may be all they want. Fight their way through to get the treasure then move on to do it again. Or they could be looking for meaning and a longer, deeper story arc.
I use them. I admit it. When I can't come up with a reason for why they're doing what they do I toss a random (probably) valuable reward at the end so they feel they've accomplished something. It also gives them something to RP about when it comes to what it is and how it got there. Sometimes they keep it, sometimes they leave it behind, sometimes they take it along, sometimes they sell it. The significance of the thing can change based on how the players perceive it.
Example time!
I love my random item generators. A rogue was very successful in his pickpocketing adventures and one of the things he got was a preying mantis in black glass. That's what got rolled up and I picked it out of a stack. The way the story was running I decided that this was what a thief from that guild would have with them when they were going to carry out an assassination, as a sign that they should receive all possible aid from others in the local guilds. Of course the rogue who stole it had no idea about that so now he's terrified that not only is he's pretending to be a member of the guild he's also got 'proof' that he's going to assassinate someone. So that one worked out.
Another time they got some minor magic items for their troubles. Minor enough that they sold about half of them since they didn't see a use for them in the future. So those are gone in all respects.
I'm not giving an opinion one way or another on these. I rarely given opinions in these posts. I show examples of what I've done or not done and let you - the reader - decide how useful the information is.
So this is kind of but not quite a MacGuffin itself. Go figure.
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