Making Your Macguffin Matter Make It Personal Make It Metaphorical

Making Your Macguffin Matter Revenge is a great way to make your macguffin meaningful. In the Sting, the whole point of the Heist is to get revenge on both a corrupt policeman and crime boss who murdered When you plan a heist, as a player or a GM, there are a lot of things to consider: the move- Robert Redford’s friend, ex-partner. The same goes for needing it to prove your innocence ment of guards, the actions of the Crew, what could possibly go wrong, and most impor- of a crime you didn’t do--the only way you can prove you didn’t steal Lady Holliday’s tant of all, what you’re stealing. Because what’s the point of pulling a heist if you don’t have Necklace is to stop the Baseball Diamond from being stolen, and the only way you can do something cool to steal? that is by stealing it first.

So let’s talk about how to make your macguffin matter. In storytelling a macguffin is just Or you need it to help someone you care about. In Supercrooks, the Loot matters because the thing that drives the story. It’s the Loot you’re there to steal. It doesn’t matter if it’s it is needed to pay off the debt of their mentor. Maybe your character needs the diamond a rare necklace, a stockpile of gold, plans on microfilm--it’s there so that other things to bail out a friend. (guards, security systems) can try to keep you from getting it. Finally, you can make it something personal but incredibly petty. This works best when You can find some amazing roleplaying opportunities if you take some time to make your there are a few other characters who have already established grandiose meanings, but if macguffin matter. It’s not just that you’re stealing the necklace, it’s that the necklace is the you’re the thief who just wants to make enough money to open a donut shop on the coast only thing you had left of your inheritance before your family was disgraced. Or the big di- of Miami and watch the sunrise while handing out delicious donuts--then it’s going to feel amond is your last chance to prove that you can still do the job. Or it’ll be enough to open so satisfying to get that. Again, the key is specificity. It’s not just that you want to open a up that quirky donut stand you always dreamed of. donut shop--you want to open the seaside donut shop and get away from the hustle and bustle. But now we’re drifting into metaphor territory, so let’s talk about that. When we know what the Loot means to our characters, suddenly the stakes are that much more personal. That’s where we want to be--because the heist itself? That’s just plot. That’ll Make it Metaphorical take care of itself, but what will make it stand out is when you can hang a good story on the frameworks we’re presenting here in the book. And the way you do that is by making it Another great technique is to think about what the macguffin represents. This kinda takes about characters, not the plot. away from the specificity of the Loot, but it still gives it a lot of meaning. Because it’s not just a ship you’re stealing--it’s freedom. It’s not just a diamond you’re stealing, it’s redemp- There are a few ways you can make your Loot all about your characters--you can make tion in the eyes of your mentor. It’s not just a pile of gold, it’s a slap in the face to every rich it personal, make it metaphorical, make it spectacular, make it dangerous--whatever you bastard putting his heel on the neck of hard-working crooks like you. domake it about your characters. You’ve probably seen this a million times in movies. The Loot matters to the character, but Make it Personal it’s all about what it symbolizes in their life. This can be something a character gains by stealing it: freedom, respect, redemption, mercy. Or it can be something a character loses This is one of the easiest things you can do as a GM or a Player. Make the Loot something or breaks through because of it: you finally have what you need to leave the criminal life personal to your characters. Think of the Heart of the Ocean in Titanic. The necklace is behind. Until the next “one last job” comes around. valuable, but its real value is to Rose. It’s emotionally priceless. This has the advantage of giving your character a unique point of view in the heist. Once There’s nothing stopping you from making the macguffin emotionally priceless in your you know that what you really want is to prove you’re the best--your goal in the heist own heist. The key is specificity and history. In Pulp Fiction, Bruce Willis’ gold watch is changes. Now you don’t just have a reason to be in on the heist, but you have a way to just a watch, but it’s emotionally priceless because of its history and connection. Because of inform your character’s actions. A character looking for respect might act differently than it, you understand both why he can’t leave it behind, and what it means to get it back. a character looking for freedom.

Even if the object isn’t something you have a personal history with, you can still make Finding the metaphor in what you want is a great way to still feel like you win even if you something emotionally priceless by having a connection to the Loot. Or the people hold- don’t get the Loot itself. If you’re looking to play games where you’re the plucky crew who ing the loot. Instead of the necklace being the only thing you have left of your mother, it’s never actually walks away getting that payday, or who are kind of Happy-Go-Lucky thieves the most prized possession in the hands of your enemy. Sure, it’s worth a lot of money, like Lupin III in Castle of Caligiostro, then finding what you get out of every heist is im- but it’s also one of the few ways you can get to them. portant. It keeps you coming back because Heists aren’t about the money--they’re about Samplehappiness. Or the thrillfile of it. Again, this is less a loot specific thing, but once you have this, you can tie that metaphor to Stories work best when they’re driven by the characters in them. Making something Dan- the Loot and have a lot more fun trying to grab it. gerous or Spectacular can be tricky, because you can get caught up in the plot of it--but these are some fun and interesting ways to make the heist appealing to all kinds of players. Make it Spectacular The Real Loot Is The Friends We Made Along The Way One of the big things about a Heist is the spectacle of it. Why go through all the trouble to come up with a complex plan if you’re not also going to steal the statue of liberty. Go big. In the end, getting players and the GM all on the same page is what it’s all about. You’re Carmen San Diego big. Lupin III big.. If you’re running one of these Heists as a one shot, all there to tell the story you’re going to tell together, whether it’s through roleplaying or or are looking to really amp up the heist, make the Loot something spectacular. hardcore grinding of mechanics, you’re still figuring out what happens next. If you want to make it all about the characters, the biggest thing you can do is just come out and say why Make it something impossible to steal. This isn’t necessarily a great character motivation you want the thing you want. tool, but life doesn’t have to be all about internal drama. Sometimes you just want to drive a tank down a highway and ramp it off of something else--and if you want impossible It can be harder to do this in a roleplaying game where you can’t just script everything. But plans with impossible stunts, you need impossible loot. all you have to do is give yourself the opportunity to say what the Loot means to you. It might feel a little off to stop in the middle of talking about how you’re going to get past the The best part is you can still put a personal or metaphorical meaning on this, and then bank vault lasers, and instead say that the necklace you’re after is the only thing you have you’ll have to try and justify all of it. Loot like this sets the tone of your heist--which is the left of your family. Or that you want to get revenge on the owner of the diamond because other thing a good piece of Loot can do. they framed you and got you locked up for five years.

The heist where you steal Big Ben should feel entirely different to the heist where you But heists are all about colorful characters. Whether you’re playing larger than life or not, break into a museum to steal a priceless diamond. Stealing something big and over-the- it’s the Crew that makes the heist. And the Crew makes the Loot meaningful. Even if it top means you’re probably going to get that kind of plan--because when you sit down at feels weird, it’s never toolate to say what the Loot means to your character. Every good the table, the implicit understanding of the game is ‘we’re going to succeed at this heist.’ heist film has a scene where the characters stop and talk about what they’re after. A great And if it’s implied that you totally can just up and steal the Pyramid outside the Louvre, way to start that scene is to turn to the person next to you and ask: then everyone starts thinking bigger. They start to wonder how to make it happen. Just like if you decided to just make it about stealing a painting--the planning is going to be more “What are you going to do with your share of the treasure?” realistic. People will get granular, worry more about cameras and guest placement in the ballroom, etc. Whether you’re the GM or a player, this is the perfect way to give space to air out those motivations. You can get all kinds of character moments, you can set up intrigues or inter- Whatever you decide to steal, the Loot is a great chance to set the stage for the kind of personal conflicts. You can lay out a variety of different reasons--and the best heists will Heist you want to have. have a team of characters who want to steal the Loot for their own reasons. One character wants to prove themselves innocent, one character wants to get revenge, one character wants to get back their family heirloom--one character just wants to stage terrible avant Make it Dangerous garde plays. Whatever the reasons, once you have them out there, you’ll make your mac- guffin--and your heist--more meaningful. The same thing goes for heists to stop someone from getting something dangerous. If your loot is a bomb or a bioweapon or a nuclear core, then the Crew has to consider more than just how do they steal it--they have to figure out what they’re going to do with it once they have it.

This is a great tool if you’re looking to play a Heist where the team is assembled to try and stop a disaster from happening. If you want to go the classic thieves doing the wrong thing for the right reasons route, then this can be a way to set up characters with a noble motiva- tion. Again though, you’ll probably find more successSample if you make something personal. file LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION THE SCORE: Tonight is the spectacular premier of Three Aces High, the latest film THE ROUGE THEATER, HOLLYWOOD, 1958 by master director Eliena Hearts. It’s supposed to be great, but we’re 6:30PM more interested in the pre-screen show. We’ve got a tip that the final copy of lost film The Last Night In Bel- gium is being displayed for the stars. Film buff or not, that thing is worth $8 million. And the gold canister’s gotta be worth a couple bucks too.

The Lobby The Red Carpet This is where the action is. Ticket checkers & basic security Lots of cameras, lots of people. here. Has an elevator leading to the basement and a couple of Easy to blend in but try to avoid museum pieces on display. Might being interviewed this time be worth a couple dollars?

Screen One The place only has the one screen, The Green Room but it’s huge. Seats 500 people Fancy name for a converted and it will be packed tonight. Good conference room. This is where place to lose a tail they’re holding the reel. Expect guards and alarms, but look at Sample filethat vent shaft! LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

The Building Calcifaux Projection Unit, playing the film on repeat for the rich and famous who care about that sort of thing. The gold film can and several stills are displayed on a plinth behind the projector. The theater is a Hollywood mainstay. Constructed in 1902, every film that matters has its pre- mier here. It’s owners, the Mishka brothers, have pretty open ties to the mob, who provide a lot The Score of the alcohol, drugs, girls and muscle for the extravagant parties the theater is renowned for. They also own most of the local government, which is why the cops turn a blind eye to the vari- The Last Night In Belgium is a legendary film - directed by the late, great Oku Suresh in 1934, ous mishaps that happen on the property. only 5 copies were ever made, shown on repeat for a year at the Rouge’s rival theater, the Sunset Theater, in all 5 of their screens. It’s spoken of by critics as one of the greatest works of art ever The exterior facade is decked out in an expansive nordic style, designed to invoke a Stave and the response from the general public seems to support that - every screen was sold out for Church. Lots of intricate carvings and wooden dragons heads. A few years ago a fire broke out the first 6 months of its showing, something no film has ever managed to even approach since. thanks to a broken camera bulb and nearly burned most of the multi-tiered entrance gateway to the ground. It’s since been restored using the same ancient nordic wood as the original structure. Tragically, a fire claimed 4 copies of the film (as well as much of the Sunset Theater itself) and left How they got the money for that, I have no idea. Suresh permanently blind. They would go on to direct several other highly regarded works, but The Last Night In Belgium remains their magnum opus. The theater itself is built slightly underground, partially for noise, partially because Theo Mishka was paranoid about a proletariat uprising and wanted it to double as a bunker. Past the front How the Mishkas managed to get hold of the film is a mystery, but it’s been in their hands since doors is the lobby - an enormous and extravagant space that continues the viking theme, with a the fire, only displayed on very rare occasions, and played even less. It’s traditionally stored in massive wood-carved mural making up much of the inside wall. Expect the lobby to be teaming their joint home up in the hills, under lock and key and protected by an army of their mobster with celebrities and stars on the night. From here you have a set of doors leading into the main goons, but tonight is Eliena Heart’s birthday and the premier of her latest hit, so the Mishkas are screen, an employee-only elevator that takes you to the basement and, a side door leading to the looking to impress. concessions kitchen and a passageway to the Green Room. The film canister is almost as much of a work of art as the film itself - designed for both preser- Screen 1, the only screen in the building, is massive. It can comfortably fit 500 people and has vation and presentation, it’s pure gold, with a beautiful fresco that mirrors the events of the film one of biggest film screens in the country. Usually during premiers, the director will give a short etched into its surface. The inside is lined with a secret alloy that reportedly protects the film speech from the stage, then absolute silence is enforced by about a dozen stewards who have from almost any imaginable disaster. been known to eject the films leading actors for talking. There’s three floors to the theater, acces- sible by a staircase in the back, and a door to the projection booth at the top. The Security

The basement isn’t much to write home about for the most part - generator, service closets and For the most part security is pretty basic at the HVAC, as well as an employee break room. Plans for the building seem to show a missing room theater, the most it usually has to deal with is near the generator which I think is probably Theo’s emergency bunker. There are a number of theater hoppers getting in without a ticket, but the interesting service tunnels accessible from the basement - the most useful one is probably the premier and the display have brought some extra tunnel leading behind the main screen, but there’s also a repair shaft for the chandelier above problems to deal with. the lobby. The elevator to get in is locked with a key, but almost every employee has one so it shouldn’t be too hard for you to get in if you need to. First of all there’s going to be a lot of people there - crowds can be a blessing and a curse, depend- Finally the Green Room. This used to be a big conference room till Stan Mishka renovated it ing on if they know you’re supposed to be there or in ‘27, now it’s a “Luxury Event Space” that’s currently being used to show off The Last Night In not. There’s also the problem of paparazzi, they’ll Belgium. It’s designed to be configurable to the needs for whatever “Luxury Event” is going on, be snapping pics and getting interviews all night on and right now it’s mostly empty, with a large glassSample cylinder in the center of the room housing a the red carpet which poses filea pretty obvious issue. LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION

Past the red carpet, you’ll have people checking IDs and tickets on the door. They have a guest The Getaway list, which is most likely being written up on-site before the show. Once inside, the lobby will have at least one guard on each door - with a handful of plain clothes guys milling through the You’ve got a couple of options here, some are better than others. First, the theater has a sewage crowd. The lobby has a state-of-the-art alarm system installed, ostensively for fires, but we’re system in the basement behind the HVAC machines. It’s a tight fit, and it smells like shit, but it’ll pretty sure it’ll be the first thing they trigger if you’re made - keep an eye out for the big bird- eventually put you right into the city’s system, and from there anywhere you like. You’ll need house looking things on the walls, they disguise the alarm boxes. some way to protect the film if you go that route though, sewage has a way of ruining old priceless filmstock. As we mentioned earlier, the elevator is locked with an employee key but the basement itself will be about as lax as it gets for security - your main risk is being made by an employee or engineer, You could also escape via the roof - looks like the HVAC system has some large enough tunnels nothing a uniform and a purposeful walk shouldn’t be able to handle. Expect every door down to take you there, but that’ll make a lot of noise and you might have company up there. there to be locked but we’re talking basic double cylinder here, barrel bolt at worst, nothing you haven’t seen before. Except for the bunker. No idea what that looks like. If you have to go in There’s also two doors - front and back. The back door is behind the film screen, and leads into there, expect anything. Rumor has it Theo contracted the Great Gustino to build the door, no an alleyway just behind the theater that runs right to Franklin Ave. It’s rarely used cause the one’s picked a Gustino lock in 25 years. Mishka’s have this whole thing about showing off their workforce through the front door.

Back upstairs, the theater itself has ushers everywhere, and we have some reason to believe Speaking of the front door, that’s a perfectly good way out if you can time it with the end of the they’re not just for showing people to their seats - last week at the gala for Sandy Lauper, some premier - the media blitz and the stars trying to get home should be great cover even if you’ve bozo’s flashbulb went off and they had to scrape him off the pavement outside by the time they been made, but traffic is going to be a nightmare at that point. What else is new, am I right? were done. Good news is it’s dark, and they don’t have radios as it’d interfere with the film experience. Influences The Green Room is where you’re really gonna have problems. Let’s start with the basics; 3 guards Movies: Hollywood (1923), Hail Caesar! (2016), Sunset Boulevard (1950), Get Shorty (1995) on constant rotation around the room, and a steward right next to the glass itself. She’s there to answer questions, but she also looks like she could break your arm in 8 places before you say Music: Annie Get Your Gun, Singin’ In The Rain, Rear Window OST, Max Steiner’s soundtracks Houdini. You’ve got an alarm box right by the door, and some kind of newfangled electronic lock system that’ll make leaving the room impossible until one of the Mishka’s resets the alarm. Worse, the glass case itself isn’t just for show - it’s fitted with a Komisar Sonic Alarm system. In short, there are a dozen microphones pointed at the thing, and if they detect the glass so much as cracking, they’ll trigger an alarm. You’re gonna have to either disable, or confuse the system if you want a clean escape.

Now, this is just a rumor, but some people are saying the film on display isn’t quite what they remember watching all those years ago. That the case looks wrong, or there’s some scenes out of order. Could be nothing, could be the Mishka’s have a fake on display and the real film else- where. Might wanna figure that out before you leave.

Oh, and last thing - those guards are definitely mob, which means they’ll have guns and won’t be afraid to pull them at the last minute. Unless you wanna end up wearing a new pair of shoes at the bottom of the Reservoir, be very careful. Sample file A Wizard did it THE SCORE: The Three Celestial Spheres of Nal-Kesh conjoin amongst the stars THE UNREPENTANT TOWER OF ZOLVAN THE IMPERILLER tonight, and Zolvan the Imperiller has gathered his apprentices to THIRD CONFLUENCE OF THE SPHERES conduct an elaborate ritual high atop the Unrepentant Tower for rea- sons beyond the comprehension of mere mortals. eventide Far more interesting, is the Crown of Orom, locked away in Zolvan’s Un- redoubtable Vault.

The Arcanaeum Of Unperishing The Upper Tower Here’s where the ritual is being Zolvan conductsKnowledge all kinds of experiments conducted. It’s also where in these well-fortified labs. If you need to Zolvan’s Sanctum is, which might evade magical security, these can be a be an easy way into the vault--if you can stay out of sight. great place to hide.

The Lower Tower Zolvan’s apprentices have come from far and wide to conduct this ritual--as well as their entourages of bodyguards, hirelings, and kitchen staff. This is where they’re staying. A The UnredoubtableThe Imperiller Vault Of Zolvan great place to blend in, but you can be sure Zolvan is keeping an eye out The Vault itself. Sealed away in a pocket Sample file dimension, thethan vault just is protectedspells. by more