The Murder Hobo - RPG Philosophy
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- Опубліковано 30 чер 2024
- Taking a stab (get it?) at the most bloodthirsty of players, who shoot, hack, and burn their way through your game world. Here's 9 causes for murderhobo behavior as well as tips on how to handle them.
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Guest starring The Gang.
Disclaimer: No NPCs were harmed in the making of this video.
Chapters:
00:00 Intro Skits
1:09 Hello Internet
3:07 1 Not Invested
3:59 2 Boredom
7:21 3 Reacting to Game
9:28 4 Rewards
13:04 5 No Consequences
17:47 6 Believe They’re Roleplaying
19:44 7 Frustrated
21:48 8 Punishing the Other Players
23:21 9 They’re a Jerk
24:08 Whatcha Gonna Do About It?
25:35 You Might Share the Blame
27:45 Closing - Ігри
This reminds me of that meme:
-And who the hell are you?
-You killed my father!
-Do you have a slightest bit of idea how little that narrows it down?
That would be funny if you had some epic battle set up and the players were fighting the npc but they couldn't figure out who it was, because they had killed so many people.
noone will ever beat "for me, twas tuesday."
@@trazyntheinfinite9895 M. Bison? haha
"The day I came to your town and killed your father was probably one of the most influential day of your life. For me, it was just Tuesday" (not an exact quote I know)
@@charlesmclain6558 "For you, the day Bison graced your village was the most important day of your life. But for me, it was Tuesday."
Me(DM): Okay you get 6400XP for defeating the evil wizard.
Player: What? But he got away before we could kill him.
Me(DM): Ya, but you overcame the encounter. (laugh) It's not like the XP is in his sweet, sweet brain juice and you have to crack open his skull to get it.
Player: ...I guess so.
To this day my players will ask, "So how much is his sweet, sweet brain juice worth?"
the old runescape approach to xp is the best approach.
Experience for fighting, not just for killing.
@@bobmcbob49 I personally do a mix of xp from monsters and xp from story beats, usually finishing a dungeon/quest/story beat grants xp equal to a hard or deadly encounter or I do a milestone system where 5 minor milestones (hard combats, puzzles, a few traps, a small dungeon) or 1 major milestone (defeating a BBEG or one of his lieutenants, finishing a multi floor dungeon, finding a mcguffin) equals a level. I usually use the milestone system for prewritten adventures since it lets me control what I want to give levels for, so in something like Curse of Strahd you cannot just farm zombies until you are level 10 and kick down Strahd's door.
@@bobmcbob49 Here we gave xp when overcoming obstacles and achieving story arc. Fight is a dangerous last resort option when you can sneak past/persuade/trick/outsmart/evade dangerous npc.
Giving xp for resolving encounters without violence is the best way to defeat the murder hobo idea. Everyone knows they are playing a game and wants to WIN the game. I get that 'winning' isn't really the point of dnd, but its definitely the point of most games, so its natural to translate that in to other games. Give players a way to 'win' that isn't violence, and make it clear. Give bonus xp for using their brains, like a rogue planning a night heist. Experience is something you actually gain all the time, though certainly some circumstances will teach more of a lesson than others. Life experience is just as important as combat experience, and should be rewarded as such.
@@fisharepeopletoo9653 I run mostly premade adventures and they usually have plenty of non-combat exp rewards. Like Seth himself said, the best thing to do to get an idea for how the system really works is to read modules and adventures.
"But...I come from a long line of murder hobos. It's in my back story. Its what my character would do!"
Then your character sucks
I said that to a mate after the third random murder
That's... Actually an interesting character concept, if you give it real depth. Lol.
"How many of your uncles/ancestors were hung for horse theft? How many for piracy? Were your parents exiled for committing an oopsie-doopsie manslaughter back home? How does this make your character feel? Is your character okay with or resigned to the idea that they're probably going to either swing from a rope or have their head forcibly estranged from their shoulders before age 40?"
Could be kinda fun.
That's bandits. You are a bandit.
Ah, the Wangrod Defense.
It's not really old school, that's just called wargaming. People were roleplaying right from the Chainmail days, but those folk split off from the people who wanted a glorified skirmish wargame. No need to pick on either group.
Isn't it funny how the solution to so many RPG problems seems to be 'have an adult conversation about it'?
Ah.....if only that was the solution to every problem....
@@hariszark7396 It's the solution to a hell of a lot of them.
The best solution.
@@nickwilliams8302 And for the rest there;s shunning and violence. That about covers the spread.
@@nickwilliams8302 yes but not for every problem because not all people want to have an "adult conversation". Also you can't have any type of conversation if someone is trying to abuse you or harm you.
In the early days of D&D ( at least for me ) this kind of behavior was rampant. One time the party goes to a magic shop and they cant afford the magic sword they want. So instead of planning a clever night time heist the rogue tries to shank the shop owner in broad daylight. The shop owner then flees into the street where the rogue follows him into a crowded market and starts throwing daggers. He rolls 2 natural ones and hits random shoppers. Nearby guards see this and a huge fight ensues,horns are blown and eventually mages and high level NPCs show up resulting in a TPK. What did the party learn? I'm a dick and we never played again.
Ah yes it is always the DM's fault for not just handing out everything the PC's want.
Perhaps the players thought you were a dick, but I applaud you for for sticking to your set course of action.
First time I ran into behaviour like this as a GM I kinda tried the same, but chickened out half-way through - which resulted in the PCs murdering a bunch of guards and strolling off. We had a few months of extremely crappy play (I considered just closing the campaign), until I finally talked to my players about it off-game. We ended up finding a very patchy in-game solution, so we could keep playing the campaign, but I never had problems with that group going murder-hobo again... All in all a pretty good conclusion, but that could have gone so much worse
I'm happy that, even in the early 90s playing AD&D 2E, my players responded to an over-charging merchant with some over-the-top role-playing. The merchant had blamed 'supply and demand' for his prices, so these two PCs left his shop but came back later disguised as supposed personifications of Supply and Demand. They fooled nobody, but it was great entertainment. :)
@@originaluddite "Why did you slap me?" "T'was not me! T'was the invisible hand of The Market!"
@20thCenturyMan Sounds really boring.
The cure for a murder hobo is the 'retired' 20th level warrior with twin vorpal swords who gave up adventuring to open that tavern he always wanted...
Unfortunately he took an arrow to the knee and doesn't run so good. He tried using his trusty old crossbow instead but since he's so old he doesn't see so good anymore either.
It's like getting older makes you less physically capable...
@@GeorgeMonet doesn't matter if you're less physically capable than in your prime, if you're still miles ahead of the players.
@@GeorgeMonet be the most wary of old warriors. Only the best get old, the others all die
@@GeorgeMonet No, he retired because the rest of his party died... Of old age. They were humans and he in an elf.
That's actually the cure to the murderhobo at your table at all, I'd think. Punishing murderhobos only reinforces their behavior because murderhobos don't typically go into TTRPG's expecting to hack and slash everyone; they do it as a response to bad DMs who punish attempts at peaceful conflict resolution or simply don't tend to allow them at all.
D&D. My youngest nephew's first time DM'ing. Party was all dragonborn. There was a barbarian (DM's brother), a ranger (their friend, least RP experience in the group) and a wizard (me).
First session, we were sent to a small town, investigate some disappearances, find and kill a necromancer, then report back to the local sheriff. He gives us a small bag of coins for a reward. As the party member who had been doing the most talking, I graciously accepted.
The ranger feels offended that the reward wasn't handed to him (i guess he thought I was going to keep all of it...?), and goes to blast the sheriff with his acid breath right in the middle of town. The barbarian and I are like "whoa, wtf" and tackle him to the ground. We continue to pin him down, hold his mouth closed and play it off as "oh, he fell, we're just helping him up" until the sheriff leaves.
Not wanting to deal with further outbursts, the barbarian and I pull a Fight Club on him. The ranger is suddenly awakened that night by the barbarian holding him down and me threatening him with a knife. Gave him a speech about how he was dishonering his ancestors and next time it happened, we would make a suit of scale armor out of him.
Seemed like it worked... for a while, anyway.
Also, another time, I had to leave a game of Mage: the Ascension before the end of the session. Later, I found out the GM had played my character for the rest of the session. My character jacked a car, shot 3 people and used magic to suck several more into the netherworld. Thing is, I had been playing a stereotypical hippie up until that point, a total pacifist.
I was turned into a murder hobo against my will.
Oh my god. Absolutely disgusting. I can't believe what I am reading. Degenerate. Deplorable. Heinous. What garbage. Unforgivable. Awful on every conceivable level. Vile. Rancorous. This is the sort of thing that turns people against RPGS. Horrible. Terrible. Complete nonsense. A whole party of dragon born. ;p
I really like that you critiqued his behavior in character, that's cool
@@girlbuu9403 Yeah, I know, I know. We thought it would be interesting for all of us to play the same race, and see how we played them differently. (Don't blame me, I voted for dwarves!)
I (the wizard) was more tribalistic and primitive. Probably should have been a lizardman.
The barbarian was raised by tieflings and was convinced that he was one.
The ranger was way too aggressive and quick to anger, but I'm pretty sure that was just the player.
The next time you Fight Club someone, just bring a total stranger to the table and for 75% of the game, the stranger controls his character, and for the 25% of the time that he gets control again, all he hears about is how great the other guy was. It's a harsh elixir as far as behavioral modification goes, but it gets the job done.
@@ashrog82 Dwarves are the best in every way shape and form and every other answer is factually incorrect.
Being a DM is part story teller part manager part baby sitter.
lol (it's funny because it's true)
and part writer, part improv actor, part voice actor, part master deceiver... and in some games mathematician
TheDarkM yes sometimes I feel like I’m just a glorified calculator and bean counter lol
@@thelasttaarakian The math is real bro!
gotta herd them cats
Huh. We were playing our first campain. We had lost our memories. We woke up in a maze, and a druid was watching us. First thing our Dragonborn does, blast him with lightning. He died.
Fast forward, we figured out that the druid was there to help us regain our memories.
There was a time I made an assassin, seeking to rack up an unrivaled body count. The trick was to operate within the laws of the lands we traveled through.
The rest of the party made it a point to kill anyone they thought was suspicious, and they all ended up in jail for murder charges. When my character was investigated for associating them, I played Halfling's 'Get Out Of Jail Free' card and pretended to be a human child.
The result was effectively a soft TPK as no one was able to escape jail, and the assassin refused to help a group of psychopathic murderers get out of jail, and couldn't take on the adventure alone.
Total Body Count
The Assassin: 1 Contract Killing
Then Entire Party: 14 People (11 Random NPCs, 3 Town Guards)
I've started playing in an evil campaign very recently, and it's basically the opposite of this, lol. We're all edgelords to the point of comedy gold, but none of us are murderhobos. We thank people for helping us out, laugh at the idiocy of lesser criminals and brigands, and don't bother folk who aren't part of our greater evil mission. Meanwhile, half of my fellow party members get off on killing when we get the chance and my druid is constantly dissecting and experimenting on the corpses of our fallen foes.
Lawful evil is weird, lol.
You know, sometimes I think even the people paid to write adventures forget combat isn't the only way to earn experience points. An example of this, is the adventure Home Under the Range from Dungeon issue 134, a quest for a party of 5th level or lower, I like this adventure and will frequently use it as a quick time filler adventure, however, the second encounter of the story is with a pair of stone giants playing a rock tossing game. Now obviously the writer didn't intend this to be a combat encounter, its an adventure were 3-6 low level characters try to heard livestock through a tunnel, and the obvious solution is just to push the herd through the cavern most likely losing several animals to falling stalactites, fleeing from encounters doesn't award XP as a general rule, however, the Stone giants aren't separated from the PC's in any significant way and since they aren't evil creatures, there's nothing stopping the players from saying, "hey guys, we kinda need to get by, could you stop throwing rocks for a couple minutes," and making a few diplomacy rolls Now I can't speak for other GM's, but, I think convincing the giants to let them by technically counts as beating the encounter.
One of the top ways I improve most published adventures is to inject non-combat solutions into situations where the writer assumes a combat will happen. Our group often skips entire huge combat set pieces in dramatic fashion and gain a lot of satisfaction from avoiding it. As GMs, we gotta learn to be ok with letting go of those things every once and a while. If we want combat, a combat has to be meaningful to players and make sense in the story. All too often it is a real challenge to understand why a combat in a published adventure would make sense. You can tell when a writer is like "well, there should be a combat in here" and it doesn't mesh with the story. Adapt and overcome.
When I learned to play back in 2nd ed AD&D, this was explicitly pointed out in one of the core rulebooks. Not sure if it's still in newer editions.
The given example was something like: "If your players bypass an encounter with a pack of wolves by distracting them with food, they should be awarded xp just as if they had beaten them in battle."
It is built into a lot of books, but this is where the culture and RAW tend to clash. The culture of ttrpgs will tend to prioritize some RAW as sacred, and ignore other RAW that happens to be useful advice. I think that there are frustrated role-players out there that associate XP with "killing" so strongly that they view non-combat solutions as "boring" and not worthy of earning XP.
@@RPGImaginings The one that bothers me (though I admit I have been guilty of it from time to time) is when an encounter is set up with plenty of directions for the monsters/bandits/ancient alien robots to flee if the fight turns against them but, the encounter notes insist that group of enemies in-question will fight to the death with no thought of retreat or surrender, that's fine with mindless undead or constructs, or if the PCs and their allies are attacking the "enemy's" last stronghold in a sort of reverse Helm's deep scenario, not so much when its just a random fortress full of dudes, and the more vulnerable members of the tribe are camped somewhere else
@@ashrog82 my players are very good at finding unusual ways to win encounters, honestly, I'm more surprised when they have to run an encounter the way its written down or just getting so lucky/unlucky with dice rolls that it changes the entire course of the game.
If you're dealing with murder hobos, give them Yharnam, not the Emerald City.
Aaaah, what's that smell? It's enough to make a man sick....
Emerald City would actually frustrate Murder Hoboes as most of the native inhabitants of Oz can't be killed.
You there... hunter... didn’t you see the sign? Turn back at once. Old Yharnam’s burned and abandoned by men, is now home only to beasts. They are of no harm to those above. Turn back... or the hunter will face the hunt.
Fear the old blood
@@BenFrayle And the big dumb barbarian will be distracted for days trying to find that one horse of that one color.
I was the voice of reason in a game, despite being a wizard. We came upon a nixie sitting on a stump playing a flute, because the sorc knew nixies could charm they immediately used a magic missile to blow up the flute. The nixie immediately fled into the woods, I called them a dick and decided to see if I could salvage the encounter while the rest moved on to the main objective. A nat20 was rolled to find all the flute splinters and I cast mending which restored the flute entirely. The nixie came back, some talking happened, and it led me to a secret entrance to the encampment of orcs that was our main objective. I waited till the party came in the front gate to be a distraction and when all orc archers bunched up to take a shot at the party I cast a fireball. More fighting and bam, we take out the orc chief and stopped the planned attack as our assigned mission dictated. I had an advantage in the battle and gained more exp then everyone else because I was willing to talk first.
Killing innocent people is stupid. Convincing innocent people to invest their life savings into a scam is evil. Killing guards in order to get away with small crimes is stupid. Paying guards to look the other way while you commit big crimes is evil.
I don't mind evil characters, I mind STUPID ones.
A friend of mine played an evil warlock cultist for one of our games, and since he worshipped an insane god he was also crazy. So he was able to get away with the combination of stupid and evil, but not stupid to the extent of the examples you gave. He just did it so well.
I have a metric for this: does the collateral damage outweigh the gain and if so, how much? Killing guards in order to get away with small crimes is dumb but may be necessary; killing guards because you don't like authority is stupid. In the case of the former, the level of stupid may vary: a desperate attempt to avoid having your hands cut off for a botched roll when cutting a purse is just desperation but killing a guard so they don't see you pick the lock on that shop door is definitely pushing it.
This metric scales from Brilliant (Big Brain, 189-IQ plays) to Terminally Stupid. Terminally stupid characters usually die in horrible ways brought on by their stupidity. Killing guard because you don't like authority (I see this a LOT in chaotic types) has no gain at all and makes life hard on the party, ergo: terminally stupid. Scamming innocent people can be just as stupid depending on the situation. Fact of the matter is... murder hobos are not stupid, they're DISRUPTIVE. That's way, way, waaaaay worse.
The problem with the "evil" association to murder hobos is because a lot of people who play Stupid Evil characters are jerks looking for an excuse to ruin other people's fun and they need to be ejected as expeditiously as possible.
@@loosegasket reminds me on an old John Wayne quote. "Life is hard, it's even harder if your stupid"
@@vahlok1426 "Insane" as an excuse also doesn't do it for me. Mental illness won't make you into a funloving cartoon muder-clown. I guess the cartoon murder-clown has become a trope that people want to explore, but - IMO - it's pretty shallow. Still, the point is fun, and if everyone has fun, there's no point in stopping!
@@exquisitecorpse4917 Oh I'm not trying to put forth an excuse, far from it. Just saying that a friend managed to pull off an unhinged evil character who wasn't a murder happy, party killing, derailing ass hole.
On the first point. I once ran for a group that was really trigger happy and prone to starting fights for action. So, what I ended up doing was altering my pacing. I would open the sessions with an action scene for the players, get that bloodthirst out of their system right away. Once that was done, they were ready to roleplay the rest of the session and the aftermath. The immediate action gives them something to do and a direction to follow once the action finishes. "Who were those guys who attacked us? Why did they attack us? Let's find out!"
I started on game where a PC woke up in his apartment and found a giant rat chewed a hole through his leather boot.
It was Mortal Kombat the whole way.
DM: "complains to his players they are murderhobos"
Players: "Try to be less murderhoboish"
DM: "Uses next npc they meet to betray and try to kill them"
Players: ....
Ha lol, but the quotation marks are not proper here... not trying to be rude.
Pretty much this. Most of the times, when people go on killing sprees, it's because they learned that this is simply the most sensible way to deal with the world the DM presents. If everyone backstabs them, the logical solution is to simply anticipate it.
@@0x777 you guys realize this is supposed to simulate a real fantasy world and not scooby doo right?
Not everyone you meet is made to back stab you
@@elgatochurro That is entirely dependent on the DM. Like I said, when your DM keeps sending you NPCs that eventually backstab you, the sensible solution is to proactively ensure they cannot.
I'm absolutely in agreement that it SHOULD be a realistic fantasy world. All I want to point out is that it takes players AND GM to to make it happen.
@@0x777 bruh, most npcs aren't there to back stab you... Maybe try talking to other people in game, talk to more npcs
Then you'll realize it's just the ones the dms Force on you that are there to kill you
This is more like “RPG psychological analysis and understanding” than “RPG philosophy”. Seriously, a lot of your videos like this are really about understanding people/players and the way they think. I’m pointing this out in a good way. Me likee.
Deathblade i totally agree. well said.
It feels like the sort of analysis you see in marriage counseling or other relationship advice.
Could be the PC started on RPG video games. It seems to me that murderhobo is the best rewarded strategy in many of those. Just started introducing my son to tabletop games and I've had to remind him quite a few times that he's playing a hero, and heroes generally shouldn't murder everyone they meet
Oh yes. Whenever my younger brother would play a Bethesda game (Skyrim, Fallout) he would always kill everything and I can see this behavior transfer over to table top even in older people. That and abusing mechanics.
I have nephews all young adults who all like to back stab, murder hobo and loot npc's. They all play video game rpg's.
It was Diablo that handed me those players.
@@bigblue344 yeah, the most frustrating thing is that this kind of player will probably have min-maxed their character for combat as well, making them by far the strongest in the party at the start of the game. Since they're the strongest fighter and they turn everything into a fight they end controlling the game even more.
That being said this kind of thing can mostly be anticipated by a GM looking out for it since character creation and a talk about expectations.
Yes, absolutely! My younger brother in law did this, he was around 17 at the time. "Can I play a barbarian warrior? Can I technically do what ever I want in this world?", also he tried to loot every enemy, and was always disappointed if the only things he would get would be a small bone or a useless trinket.
Nice on 70k Seth 100k Soon
Super underrated channel
It should have happen already. This is one of the best rpg channels on youtube.
SOON BROTHERS
Seth deserves every single sub
Technotuna soon…
I remember an old Warhammer 40K game my roomate played. where on a planet everyone was a heretic, traitor, deviant etc. For some reason the GameMaster put a "true liberalism, pull yourself up" mutant, gene spliced, Atheist as a critical NPC. In front of a Monodominant, Deacon; A Firebrand Preacher of the Imperial Faith; A Scoutmarine of the Red Scorpions and a Techpriest.
The guy died, but the Deacon wanted him alive "So he can be flayed then burnt in the Eyes of the Emperor" and the Techpriest wanted to turn him to a toilet Servitor.
Sometimes its the Gamemasters fault.
Is a toilet servitor a servitor who cleans and maintains toilets, or a servitor who IS a toilet? If the latter, is the toilet wargear, and is there a Praetorian Servitor equivilant who acts as an entire bathroom?
@@raycearcher5794 I think it was a janitor servitor
The way I prevent things like this is to always make it apparent to my players that they aren't special. Sellswords are a dime a dozen, they aren't the only ones and they are far from the mightiest. Heroes are made by their actions, and if they end up being a band of roving murderers, well that shifts the game into them being a group of villains. There is no shortage of other adventurers to hunt them down and bring them to justice, the world is vast after all.
Did a Dark Age England campaign, and the PC party were very skilled at murder hoboing and burning down villages/ townships wiping out all life. Out come, ...
once the local armies were wiped out, the French & Germans invaded with thousands of soldiers and they killed everyone with a none French or German accent .
I did something similar, but there was a high-end fighter that was actually hunted by a kingdom for a bounty. When the PCs started thinking they could get away with anything, behind the scenes that fighter and the kingdom cut a deal: find the PCs and bring them to us and we'll drop the charges against you. They never fought him and told that after the campaign ended, told them, "You're lucky".
I had this passive aggressive immortal character, that was a pretty vital shopkeeper, and he just upped his prices whenever the party killed him... pretty funny way to curb murder hobos
@Nospam Spamisham they did try that but sadly he takes over a new corpse every time, like a moody revanant!
oh god it's the shrine handmaid from dark souls 3
So all they have to do is trap his soul and problem solved. Or send his soul to the underworld/afterlife. Or destroy the soul.
Or recognize that this NPC is bullshit and therefore cannot actually come back so they can just take what they want after they kill him and ignore your bs cheating.
@@GeorgeMonet it's... a world I made? How is that BS cheating?
Imagine being so diluted that you are at the point of "Your game of make believe is shit! It should be like my make believe!"
I’m what they call a minor inconvenience hobo
"You're a psychotic murderer." "Puckish rogue."
Minor inconvenience hobos are tight!
@@GoodOldGamer wow wow wow wow
@@ratholin I'm gonna need you and your wows to get all up off of my back, sir.
@@ratholin The only problem with Laura Bailey voicing so many characters in so many things is that the Boss/President is by far the most memorable of them. I can't hear Lucina in Fire Emblem without expecting the next line to be "I've got something for your ass."
One of my more fun characters was a barbarian who was a natural psychopath, trying desperately live up to his dead cleric brother's example and NOT murder everyone he encountered. I added the quirk that he refused to use barbarian rage, because he knew he wouldn't stop killing even once the enemies were slain.
That's actually a really cool character idea. An in-game murder hobo trying to control his bloodlust, even denying his own class's special ability in fear of losing himself.
@@derrinerrow4369 He was challenging to play, but a ton of fun.
When you talked about systems that have mechanical consequences for murderhoboing, it reminded me of Vampire the Masquerade, where killing someone (and other devious actions) brings your sanity down and not only makes your PC look less human (wich is a big deal for a vampire in that world) but also gives you mental problems and makes it more difficult for you to control your vampiric side.
Fucking VTM is riddled with murder hobos. Be it a Gangrel who's too immersed in their beastial side, a Brujah who leans too hard on their clan stereotypes, most fish Malks, and about 75% of every Banu Haqim or combat oriented Toreador. And it's always the same weak ass excuse of "No, you're the one who doesn't get it. We're supposed to play as monsters in this game! It's part of the personal horror!" Like, is it really personal horror if you don't actually care about the consequences of your actions? You're supposed to be fighting against the Beast, not being as much of a savage as it wants you to be.
@@jor4114 Yeah man, a lot of people didn't get VtM. Same with Hunter: the Reckoning, its supposed to be a game about normal people thrust into the supernatual world and too damn many people want to make ex-navy SEALs or some nonsense.
It's not sanity, it's humanity.
@@thomasrhoads4316 "Yeah man, a lot of people didn't get VtM. Same with Hunter: the Reckoning, its supposed to be a game about normal people thrust into the supernatual world and too damn many people want to make ex-navy SEALs or some nonsense."
Well it's a question of what the players want out of the game. That's really all that matters.
@@jor4114 to be honest... All TTRPGs are full of murderhobbos: D&D halflings with two daggers and black cloaks everywhere.
The Alignment of the Murder Hobo is always Chaotic Stupid.
Neutral stupid. "hey squire. Heads or tails? Good job you got it right, here's 5 gold for your trouble. Glad you didn't get it wrong."
@@ratholin so Anton Chigurh lol
A little too specific.
You can simplify it to:
Murder Hobos are the result of Alignment systems.
(Of course I am aware of the "Hen and egg" problem: What came first? The alignment system or the murder hobo? The two reinforces each other.)
Alignment and murder hobos have not so much to do with each other, as the latter exists entirely fine in systems without alignment.
@@larsdahl5528 Agreed. But I'm just pointing out that the Murder Hobo is Usually if not always Chaotic Stupid
Just from my old personal experience, you missed one cause for murder hobos. Being a bunch of 13 year old boys.
"They're a big jerk" does tend to cover that most of the time. It definitely did in my case.
Yes! Correct! It usually start around that age.
And almost always boys.
Though some grow up, then a huge amount of them stay (mentally) stuck at that age.
I am a DM for a few friends and we are around that age. We don’t have any murder hobo in our party and our group is quite big. We do have one player that tends to play an alcoholic
@@larsdahl5528 ''It usually start around that age. And almost always boys''
Thank you. It's rare to see someone admit D&D is a guys game.
''...then a huge amount of them stay (mentally) stuck at that age.''
Well, people went to the Saw movies to see people brutally murdered. People have a sadistic side they vent through fantasy
So, does that make Murder Hobo's a form of Edgelord or are they separate, yet closely related species?
Know the best way to stop a murderhobo? One word: *Revenants*
Anyone they kill, at any time, could come back as a high CR, unkillable, rage-fueled murder-ghost hellbent on the party’s destruction. And there can be more than one, too.
I guarantee, you make a punishment that is not only specifically tailored for them, but will also keep coming for them, getting stronger the longer they manage to elude it, and they will think veeeeeery hard about things the next time they feel like getting stabby with npcs.
Except for the ones who murder because they love the spotlight. Then, having someone hunting them for the rest of the campaign (or campaigns if they roll up new characters after they die) is very much a positive because they are the central point of your story arc. "Hey, an undying assassin will always be hunting me no matter what I do? And if I kill more people, there will be more of them? SWEET!!!"
@@mathsalot8099 Depends on how it's handled. I'm personally of the mind that the revenant doesn't have to confront them directly all the time.
Their purpose is to get revenge for their murder, but *how* they do that is entirely up to you. You could have the revenant go ahead of the party (which they could easily do because they don't need to eat, breathe, or sleep) and spread rumors about them, or frame them for crimes. From my experiences running DnD, I can tell you that nothing kills a murderhobo's buzz like having their murder victim get them thrown in the castle dungeon for the rest of their days by convincing the king that their character is an assassin sent to kill them.
As a bonus, if the revenant makes things hard for the party, and makes it very clear whose fault that is, the party will probably be very unlikely to try to boost them from jail.
That's a good one.
@@mathsalot8099 spotlight loving murder hobo: "Oh cool! A revenant! Awesome, I'm the star of the story! Let's kill that thing!"
Other players: "We roll to pick him up and throw him at the revenant, before running the other way."
In my experience ic punishments never stop players from being murder hobos. If you don't address the reason for the murder hoboing, then it doesn't matter how much you send at the players and you can even wipe the entire party, and it isn't going to change their behavior.
When consequences come:
"Dude, you were robbed!"
The Knights of the Dinner Table
One thing that I think is worse than a murder hobo is the player who only wants the enemy to go toe-to-toe, blow-for-blow with them. 0 enemy tactics or the player isn't having fun.
Speaking as some one who started in Ad&d. Its not wise to kill random folk.
As someone who started at 2nd e, I second this notion.
As someone who plays 5e, it is still not wise
As someone who played AD&D, it may not be wise but it sure is fun.
I began my career in both BECMI and first edition. Killing random people for fun wasn’t encouraged so much as a lifestyle choice. I blame Gygax.
Right. Even in 1st edition, you killed monsters, not citizens,.
I can relate, my one case of going murder hobo was in a session where due to the conversation was in draconic and only one PC could speak it... Was that one PC and the GM just trading notes and the negotiations going nowhere (they where lizardfolk with a captive humanoid they where planning to eat, we where trying to get them to release the humanoid, though they wanted a trade...). By the end of it (hours after the silent conversation between the two) I do think it was boredom that motivated me to just go eff it. Intimidate them, and if they don't back down, fight.
Last campaign I was in (pre-Covid) was supposed to be an investigation/ thought effort. I missed two sessions, came back to find it had become dominated by a murder hobo. I spoke up, but was told I should take it up with that player as this was obviously personal (it wasn't). I was very unhappy to learn that the group held its capstone adventure without informing me. 😕
Something not discussed is how some PCs will interrupt role play to kill an NPC. That really sucks and is very injurious to play.
That happened with a villain I was running one time. He started to talk and a murderhobo player immediately said, "Oh, shut up!" and attacked him... He fought back. It was a big boss fight.. They lost one PC and found what they needed and fled the castle... Had a rough time figuring things out later, because they killed the villain before he could explain anything. I let them suffer slightly and just dropped clues on what to do next with the artifact that they found. The whole time, the murderhobo that killed the person with the information they needed complained that it was too hard to figure out. I told them that it was because they killed the person giving them the information WHILE they were giving the information. They brushed it off and said something about wanting the xp... I don't even remember their exact response.
Thank the gods! I was about to go into Skorkowsky withdrawals.
All due respect to Seth!
Favour quality over quantity.
(Not like many other channels' spamming many videos with lacking content.)
He's pretty steady at once a week. You can always go back and watch old videos to get a fix to tide you over. :)
In an OSR game where XPs is treasure, I set a flat starting charisma score. We then set a "Group Alignment". When players do things that follow that alignment their CHA score goes up. Simple reward system that aligns with group goals.
That actually quite brilliant :) If a player wants to play a suave well-liked character they are actually forced to please the NPCs and other players in setting. Or at least trick the GM into thinking that's what they are doing ^^
Reminds me of Baldur's Gate 1 and Fallout New Vegas, where you keep track of your reputation with other people and that can alter the gameplay in some ways (people that don't like you sending mercs, higher prices in certain places, etc)
I use a "Social Class advancement table" that depends on Prestige. It operates like levels and XP, with a Social Rank to determine your Title, and Prestige that acts like XP. You increase your Prestige by giving to charity, buying a home, throwing parties, saving lives, hiring some employees (butler, maids, gardener, gryphon-keeper, etc.), and investing in public works projects. The higher your Social Rank, the more social benefits you get.
@@joshuarichardson6529 No, no, no, and no .. !
D&D is all about murder hoboing, dungeon crawl rooted in Diablo and classic Nintendo: Zelda.
Honestly with D&D3.5 skills & Feats. my game shop 15 years ago ran a " Phantom of the Opera " mini campaign with single shot pistols.
And the female gamers loved using the " lady's " dillinger single shot 1d4 dmg. Cause the small firearm provides a nice quite pillow shot to the head.
Or you strangle the rival opera singer with her own pearls so she can sing that night, losing her time slot in the lime light.
Needless to say, my shop normally plays VtM for " social " role playing and fall on D&D for a more action style of play.
I ran Dragon Heist way back when it first came out, there's a section in the book about laws and consequences, I loved it, a couple players had to run backups because their mains were stuck in jail missing out on experience points. It allowed a very RP heavy game and as the DM it was awesome. Afterwards the players begged me to run anything else because they didn't like being arrested for threatening, assaulting, murdering, stealing, spell throwing and all around being dicks...I don't play with them anymore.
I really need to look into that system because I could never find a solution to that problem
I had a copy of the Code Legal in plain view on the table at all times. Considering that in another game, those players had charm personed their way into a cultist's home, and stolen the legendary crystal ball she had, I felt it was prudent.
@@bigblue344 if u Google Image Dragon Heist crime page the first couple pictures are the crime table from the book, I printed that out and keep in with my DMG for all campaigns now
@@bigblue344 it's not a problem, you and your players just don't mix well. If you got to arrest/kill PCs to stop murder-hobos then you guys might just want to run a more beer and pretzels kick-in-the-door type campaign and/or find another group to run a more serious game with. Some people just want to run some dungeon crawls where they get loot and xp, while others want high RP campaigns where story trumps all, and neither is wrong, but figuring out what type of game you want to run and how it lines up with the type of game your players want is important, and whether those two ideas are compatible with each other or not.
@@TheodoreMinick in that campaign I had a player that used quite alot of charm and illusion magic, in Dragon Hiest it plainly states it's a crime to use magic on another without consent, they took a quest that required formal attire and he refused to change and tried spell casting his way in and ended up in a jail cell for something like 21 or 23 days
In terms of exp points our GM (we are playing using GURPS) came up with the idea of "slpit points". (for those who dont know, in gurps you have points, wich you spend on advantages, stats or skills) So, he basically made physical, intellegence and universal points. Physical can be spent on leveling strength, dexterity or health, all the skills that use them, and all the advantages connected. Intellegence points are the same, but for the intellegence and all skills and advantages connected. And universal can be spent anywhere.
He gave out physical points mostly for defeating enemies in combat, intellegence for good RP and clever ideas and plans, and universal for completing questlines.
Could someone counter murder hobos with npcs murder hobos? Imagine this: the pcs arrive to a city where everyone solve their problems by killing.
Edit: taking it seriously, could be a curse and everyone revives at midnight.
Land Of Permitted Murder from Kino's Journey would work.
I'd actually argue this sort of thing would tend to make the problem worse. One of the easiest ways to encourage murderhoboism is to have the vast majority of NPCs they come across all be jerks. This causes them to be apathetic towards the NPCs and the world in general, view violence against them as justifiable, and assume other NPCs are a threat they should deal with pre-emptively. Similarly, it also removes the consequence incentives, because "the world already hates us, no need to play nice".
It's a pretty good quest setup for any party; a group of hardcore murder hobos has been laying waste to the local area, the PCs must track them down and put a stop to their shenanigans. They could even catch up with the hobos in the middle of a dungeon.
Was reading a book recently about a city, when the sun goes down all the guards go inside and gangs of body collectors (in the vein of burke and hare) go out and collect anyone who's stupid enough to be out, to provide souls for the necromancer/artificers who run the city to be able to staff their huge workshops etc.
The players have set the precedent of murder hobos so they now exist in the world. Don't complain when you get ganked.
One way I've seen the lesson of "dont murderhobo" done very well is in a game of a friend of mine.
The initial conflict along the lines of which the party got together was an attack by a murderhobo party on the town. The murderhobo was a level 8 or so party of a warlock, a fighter and a ranger. Almost mirroring the wizard, fighter, rogue player party. They fought the players along with the town militia and WON but then got taken down by a special task force of a nearby city. The warlock and fighter died on the spot and the ranger was transported to the city and executed where the players where tasked with assisting to guard the caravan. At the execution the crimes where a basic description of murderhobo behaviours and the ranger was executed. The party got a bit of pay, travel to the city and a contact with the local bounty hunting guild to work jobs... And realized what kind of enemies are sent out to get rid of murderhobos.
I was at a convention 30 years ago when a gm was lamenting her murder hobos.
"They were baby kobolds. Why did you kill them?"
"They're not worth experience points alive."
The only good kobolds are dead kobolds. Now let's make these kobolds good. -Kobold Slayer
How will you lean from killing a baby? 0XP
A solution to having the players being the strongest around is making capable guards (for example), but there's not enough to go hunt down the villains without leaving the town vulnerable. Maybe you're solving a mystery, and you're not necessarily the smartest group in the world, but the last investigators died or got injured and the quest giver doesn't want to risk more of their own men. There should usually be a reason that the players are the ones doing whatever task without just saying the locals are weak or incompetent. That also usually helps get the players invested as there's a bit of extra backstory, and they can get a little help in the beginning if it turns out the clues are too vague or they missed something important.
Shield wall & crossbows. Box them in, and shoot them. People tend to forget after playing hours of video games, it took hundreds if not thousands of men to take over a village/ town.
A problem with sending in the town guard as a penalty is that the players might very well just view it as a challenge. Indeed, in an evil campaign I ran, I deliberately had law enforcement as their primary enemies for about half the game. So, that changes it less from a behavior you want to discourage to simply being another "path" to go down if you will.
Some murder hobos see that as an achievement
Is just better to talk to the players and save all the trouble.
Yeah, in my experience they will just kill the guards and flee to another city, or all die. Neither of which solves the problem and in fact makes things worse, since now you need to start all over or change the entire campaign to reflect they are wanted people in a far away city.
Can't law enforcement imprison or kill the player character to solve the issue?
@@melissablick779 That doesn't solve it since people would just make new characters.
Finally
I haven't bumped into a murderhobo in a long time.
I don't always bump into murder hobos, but when I do, they roll initiative.
I was once running an 'evil' campaign. Yes, the characters were all evil, but they were more the scheming, conniving, use the rules against you sort of evil (Lawful Evil) with a single 'evil is fun!' (Neutral Evil) character in the party, because the player begged pretty hard for it. Everything was going quite well for the villains. They were quite low powered to start and had to work their way up and gain influence and power. They were off collecting taxes for the equally evil local lord, and stopped at a farm that had gotten away with paying the lowest taxes possible despite every effort of the lord to set the laws up to hit them hard. The head of the household, as it turned out, was a pretty sharp old man and knew the laws like the back of his hand and could talk circles around the players, cite specific exemptions from heart; he'd been doing it his whole life and was 'up to date' on all the laws. There was a way to trap him and arrest him for tax evasion and a couple of other ways the party could overcome the obstacle. They had been specifically told by the lord that he didn't want anyone killed except in severe cases-- if someone was breaking the law they were to be brought in for punishment.
Well, the party had gained a little power and were a little tougher. Everything was going well until the party pulled their ace and threatened the old man with prison time for his 'tax evasion' and he pulled out an axe handle to try and beat up the Anti-Paladin in full plate armor. Clearly, the old man was absolutely no threat. What does the player of the Neutral Evil character do? Cuts the old man's head off. In front of his entire family. So, now there are witnesses. The Anti-Paladin was beside herself with outrage, the swashbuckling bastard rolled his eyes and said something to the effect of "...and this is how we die." and the Neutral Evil sorcerer/rogue promptly starts going on a killing spree to eliminate the witnesses. Obviously, someone escaped on horseback.
And that's how the party died. The lord sent in a group of armed men on horseback, which the party members slew. Then the party rode off on horseback and had to hide in the caves full of monsters they had been avoiding. They routed or killed the monsters and, upon leaving the caves to make camp were shot down by the lord's rangers who had tracked them down after several days. The player of the Neutral Evil character said, "That's not fair! We got away with it!" Anti-Paladin, "You really think killing off a small group of the lords men was going to stop with just that?" Sorc/Rogue, "That's not fair!" Swashbuckler, "Maybe next time don't be a murder hobo?" Sorc/Rogue, "REEEEEEE!!11!!!!"
Needless to say, that fellow was no longer welcome to the group.
evil campaigns can be pretty fun, gives you leeway with being a full fledged necromancer, as opposed to the "gray necromancer" thing where you use the armies of the damned against beings of truly evil intent
Neutral Evil guy was in the right originally. Self defense.
@@godlikemachine645 not according to the word of the lord they were serving, no. They were given specific instructions. This was a Lawful Evil society. Self defense was no excuse for causing a death-- the lord and his men had an absolute monopoly on force and punishment.
So, no, he didn't. Furthermore, he was trying to use that as an excuse to kill someone. Too many sessions without getting to be a murder hobo spanking everything in sight.
@@SoulSoundMuisc it wasn’t exactly a clear cut situation and to kick a player out over making a wrong decision in a complicated situation doesn’t really seem fair.
@@marcar9marcar972 hohoho. You assume much.
I didn't kick him out. He was nolonger welcome at the table by the Ill-Riggers player, who owned the house we played at.
Because he was a Murder Hobo.
I always make a point of telling my players that I give experience for solving problems, not necessarily for just killing their way through monsters. If you talk your way through a conflict, or worm your way past some gang leader's guards to speak with him, then I consider those guards to have been "defeated".
A couple of years ago, I had a buddy describe basically every variety of murder hobo in one or two players in another group for which he was running Pathfinder, particularly the Jerk. Pretty much all of this is spot on for the advice our other friends and I gave him, and covers stuff we didn't think of.
Also, I really enjoy the longer video, so if that's something that can happen more often, I'd definitely be in favor of that. I know every minute of video takes a LOT more work on the creator's part, and that kind of time on either end isn't justifiable for all topics, so it's understandable if content of this length is a rarity.
Nice. Thought-provoking.
Murder Hobos are kind of built into some game systems. Remember the original D&D rules where you got experience points for how much treasure you purloined and how badass the monsters you killed? Being an efficient Murder Hobo was pretty much the object of the game.
One time I was thinking about running a game and was trying to decide on what kind of game I wanted to run and what system to use. I came to realize that the RPG's that I knew of, and certainly all the ones I had played, all basically boiled down to tales of armed burglaries and strong-arm robberies with some murders thrown in. Since I wanted my characters to be heroes and not armed robbers, I had to come up with almost a whole new game.
@@TA-by9wv How old is "older" to you?
I remember my first group with a murderhobo character, during an Anima campaign. The character, by the way, wasn't at all neglected. He was an agent with a troubled past rescued by one of the most brutal and pragmatic tyrants in the game world, and had evolved to see him as a father figure. So he did everything to further his paternal figure's cause (in his eyes). That included murdering some scientists from a shady organization who had surrendered without resistance "to make a point" and slaughtering 100 stationed soldiers from a rival faction and sending a badly maimed survivor back home to tell the tale, even as the rest of the PCs, as a party from different corners of the world, had a manifest intent on preventing the escalation of the conflict.
In the end, the empress whose soldiers had been massacred (and most of us had befriended in her alter ego form, and knew who she really was) had us arrested and we had to escape when we set foot in her capital unaware of our companion's war crime (we had it easy because she was trying to make a point against such conduct and our mission was still crucial). After the war, his father figure married said empress to end the war, and he was sent to the gallows, though in reality he was sent to a top secret prison to rot for the rest of his life.
He had some good runs afterwards with other PCs until he chose to play with a knight with a strict code of conduct to which he had to systematically adhere to (because he chose that as a flaw in order to gain more character creatin points). Dude was so murderhoboing halfway through the game that his chivalric ancestors repudiated him and his arms and armor started to rot as soon as he touched them. Had to do a whole redemption arc in order to lose that curse. All in all, good ways to deal with characters like that.
Final reason for the Murder Hobo: the player is trying to control the DMs game. I had a player who demanded that we follow the rules as he defined them. He did not care about backstory when either playing or DM'ing. He picked his first fight with an unarmed farmer. He also cast spells like Command on other PCs. He had a fit when his druid didn't regain his spells, and scratched off DRUID from his character sheet without trying to see if he could make amends for actions. 4 discussions had. Some players and DMs aren't good mixes.
That guy is a narcissistic asshole.
What a nightmare.
I remember a time when a D&D PC decided to run down a stable boy for no reason..... Sad.
Now... It is rare that something "just happens".
There are always a reason, far from always obvious, and sometimes it is a long chain of reasons that lead to the next reason.
In this case (I know... Not much to go on... but, the usual suspect) : D&D (Yup! A murder hobo game)
Perhaps the sequence is: D&D -> Daft brute character -> Live out racist dream?
I'm glad you're here to judge people's motivations off one sentence and almost no context.
@20thCenturyMan Did a noble or king tell them to do it? Because Sandor wouldn't have otherwise.
@@girlbuu9403 Nope. Imagine, we are the good guys staying at an inn, the PC decides to take a horse and the stable boy comes out to see what the commotion is all about and is run down. The GM wasn't happy with the decision and tried to steer the plot differently to no avail.
@Great White With 3.5e I treat all drow children as 3rd-level rogues. Your half giant was just acting in self defense.
In AD&D2e, " Vault of the Drow," adult drow take bets on how long goblins can last being rope strangle by their children.
Hey Seth considering how much you like pulp and si-fi would you ever consider doing a review on space 1889? I'd love to see your thoughts on it.
Hasn't that been out of print for about 25 years?
It was, but Modipius publish it. Same people who do Conan and Startrek adventures
i consider 1889 mostly composed of poo
@@AvalonRegarnished
Modiphius did a savage worlds version recently
There's been an increase in interest of Space 1889 since the advent of Steampunk as a popular genre. Luckily, I've still my copy plus scenarios, sourcebooks etc. :)
My main issue when encountering murderhobos, is instead of treating the game like a collaborative adventure, they treat it like a video game. I even had one argue that when they ran from the party to kill some things that only they should get the xp because no one else was there. They refused to share loot, ect.. Demanding that I add things for them to kill, or complain when any amount of RP is done. ( I had one literally, openly say 'where's the skip button'...) There's a lot of reasons for murderhoboing, but often times, at least in my experience, this is the more prevalent.
People who just don't understand that D&D is not a video game.
I had a real bull zhit night at work one day that just left me more than a bit b*tchy, and I wanted to play Mario the Nintendo character back when AD&D was the only game in town. So I did an acrobatic rogue/ monk and the DM ran with it. All I got for treasure was giant growth mushrooms, fire flowers, and stars of Haste. Along with a " 1 Up " for every hundred gold coins I collected. Every time that DM ran a game, he always stuck me with that Mario character. When ever Mario got ahold of a wooden mallet warhammer, it was On Donkey Kong !
God every game I got my azz handed to me be an over size monkey.
You mentioning the boredom being an issue reminded me of something I heard a while ago. As a mystery writer once said, “if you fear the story might be getting boring throw a man with a gun into the room and figure out why he’s there later.”
My favorite experience with murder hobos was in my fraternity in college. My Lawful good character was teamed up with 3 evil murder hobos. Badically they were needed for a job and i had to keep them in line... they werent allowed to kill me so they came up with creative ways to distract my character while they rampaged through a town.
I've only ever had one Murder Hobo in any of my campaigns, or should I say a temporary Murder Hobo. They were a new player and didn't 100% get it at first how an TTRPG was usually played. He didn't go around murdering guards so to say, but he did kill everything he thought was an enemy and looted everything he could. He was basically playing it like a game of Elder Scrolls. However after a few sessions he seemed to realize what things were supposed to be like at the table, and became a well invested and highly enjoyable player. I did make sure to include plenty of combat so as to make sure he enjoyed himself more, but I also made sure to interweave that combat into the ongoing story.
Just take from this the fact that not every Murder Hobo is so bad, they just need a little help along the right way.
Once had a table that was like, all murder hobos. Few weeks in DM had up arrested, kicked out of town with nothing but our clothes, and wanted for murder. The murder hobo campaign insued, in which we desperately struggled for survival. No great evil to defeat, no grand quest, just the hopes that we might find our way to the next kingdom over and pretend all that shit never happened.
This actually came up in a game and conversation recently. I really think this was a well thought out video. And I appreciate you not just lumping murder hoboing under “ It’s because killing monsters gives you XP”
I'm not sure how it is written in modern rule books, but if the goal of an adventure is to get an item that is in the possession of a Dragon and the players can get it without killing the Dragon, they should get XP's as if they had killed the Dragon. Suddenly you can bring scenarios with opponents the party can't beat in combat and still get XP's as if they had. Just keep the alternate routes challenging enough to keep it difficult.
@@grayscribe1342 i havent read 5th ed yet, but been gaming for 35 yrs, every xp based game ive played, xp is awarded for defeating a challenge, not just "killing" a monster. so if you can run off, negotiate with, or otherwise solve the problem without "stabby stabby", we gave xp. and often other benefits, as Seth alluded to.
Kevin Gooley That’s a big problem I have had with the channel “Puffin Forest,” specifically with his video “The TPK module” where even though the players overcome the Type IV demon via not dying until it left, they didn’t gain any xp because they didn’t kill it!
@@grayscribe1342 I don't think they write it out specifically in later edition rulebooks, like they did in the old skool ones. I remember they give alternative options for handling xp, like milestones, but I don't think they specifically tell you that you don't have to kill the monster to count it as encounter xp for bypassing it.
Boy... I just love your videos, really.
Everytime you post an video like this it becomes like an Event for me.
Please never stop, Seth!
I had... sort of a murderhobo in one of campaigns. The thing is he was a new player that didn't roleplay as very well so often found himself silent during RP session and required coaxing to involve, but did admit to enjoying the story even if he lacked the confidence to particulate in it... However as soon as combat became apparent he leap into action becoming one of the most dangerous characters with exceptional tactical use of his (primarily) summoning spells, walling off enemies so the party only had to deal with a trickle at a time, or flanking enemies to allow the rogues to get off devastating sneak attacks, or all kinds of things. Here was the interesting thing. His character came alive during combat, with him reacting to flavor text in ways that defined his character.
Great content, Seth. Lots of longer videos like this I end up scanning through and skipping the fluff to get to the relevant bits. But this one is well worth watching all the way through.
I had a game I played in where the rest of the party denied that they were murder hobos despite them practically being a caricature of a murder hobo party. They literally murdered the magistrate of the town, stole their mansion, then just abandoned it to go kill someone in a different town. Yep. They murdered the government then just left the mansion they took to be murder hobos, but denied it.
(+Waynem Lambert) Definitely. I played in s game (different DM) in which a player attacked a magic shop owner, and it turned out that they were a level 11 sorcerer that was combat ready. It is worth noting that in this case, it was not because the character was a murder hobo and because the shopkeeper was a genuinely evil guy and the character had additional character reasons to want to attack them. The DM in the bad game I played tolerated that type of thing way too much and the DM I usually play with does not tolerate that kind of behavior at all.
In my experience, murderhobos who literally do not care on iota whether anyone else is having fun and just want to slaughter everything from session one of the campaign are by FAR the most common type.
I look forward to seeing Seth's videos every week. Luckily I can watch the older stuff until the new ones come out. Thanks Seth!
The opening skit made laugh out loud. Very nice video as usual!
Here's another reason: they want the spotlight. It's players who always want everything to revolve around them, and they are unwilling to share the narrative. If another player is interacting with an npc, the mh will kill the npc in order to gain the spotlight back. So even bad consequences are still a positive, because they get to be in the spotlight of the prison or assassin plot.
I had one of these at my table, and so we split up the party in town and told him to wait his turn. I know, "never split the party" but in this case it gave everyone a chance to take a turn. Once he saw that he wasn't getting his way and he was forced to wait, on his turn murder wasn't as appealing anymore.
Yeah, i think you are right on this one. A bunch of kids imo. Being in the spotlight constantly is something that 5 yolds do but whatever.
Still, you can work with that, spin the story in a different direction. Maybe make those people suffer some dire consequences later. Action and reaction. If they get pissed, they are always free to leave the game if they want to be childish.
@@susaac9755 yes, the player in question was a middle-schooler; we all start somewhere. Gaming is a great way for kids to learn social norms.
@@mathsalot8099 in that case i understand why he was acting like that. And ita good you disciplined him.
As an adult at a game shop, splitting the party is a good way for some of us to step outside to have a smoke.
Geezer here....
Every table, every group is its own biosphere.
As a wargamer I have no problem with a slaughter Everything.. Dungeon crawl. But I want to know that's the gig going in. Easy to make a character for those. As for multiple session "campaigns"... That's a different animal, a different table. Yep, for sure Talk About It. But really consequences solves the whole problem.... Unless it is a player that doesn't fit... DM or otherwise. Leave them for another table and carry on with the group that works.
The point on experience points is a valid one. Often in my mind characters should receive more xp for not slaughtering than just killing the baddies. As for the orphanage thing.... Sad. Let them burn it down and become haunted by the spirits of the slaughtered children. After all any "good" or even neutral deity is not to likely to allow their priest to turn or otherwise interfere with such spirits seeking justice. Consequences...
Game on.
At least war gamers know how to use tactics even if they might go murder hobo which I can respect. Every murder hobo I have met just run in a straight line and only use the attack action wanting every problem to just roll over and die with no challange.
@@bigblue344 which is why consequences are so important. If you have a psycho at the table that's what you have. Make the most of it! Wake the fool up with a blanket party and turn them over to a local authority. The last time it happened at a table I was at.... We got 2000 gp for the fool and he rage quit while we all laughed. Never had to see the idiot again...
Not to be cruel. Spoil the game for everyone or anyone else... They got to go.
Or to put it another way: the murder hobo has decided to spoil the game. It's everyone else's decision whether it'll be ruined for everyone or just the hobo.
Love the videos. Makes me rethinks RP style in the best possible way.
Very sensible and understanding approach. This kind of thoughtfulness is why this is my favorite channel in RPGtube.
On inspiration, don't play favorites if your the DM. Speaking from experience here. It really sucks when someone does their best to RP their character with the party only to get absolutely nothing for their efforts, not even an acknowledgement from the other players.
The more recent D&D campaigns give "milestone" leveling up, where you level up once the event/encounter is completed. You get to decide how it is completed.
I always run milestone leveling instead of xp. It's, in my opinion, a much better system.
Glad I found your channel - as a fellow GM I always thry to get different ideas and opinions and yours are well presented and greatly appreciated. Subscribed :)
This video really hits the nail on the head in that it's often the way we run the game that makes the murder hobo: only combat gives XP, most equipment options are weapons, no penalty for murder, mimics, etc. The 2nd edition Dungeon Master's guide had optional rule that let you award XP for non-combat actions. It blew my mind that this was only optional! Combat focus was the norm in earlier editions of D&D and it wan't until later editions that the more immersive aspects of role play began to take up more of the game mechanics. I've noticed a pattern with games I've played in. It seems people who's experience leaned more towards earlier editions are more prone to murder hobo behavior. Back when the games was filled with things that were out to kill you and violence was the only thing that was rewarded, it was only natural for players to be a little extra stabby.
I really liked that you addressed how psychological and social issues can result in murder hoboism as well. I ran a game once where two players acted out a real life conflict in character. I also had a player with PTSD play a character who often lashed out and attacked everything in sight. Several sessions had to be ended early so that we could all have a really deep heart to heart over what was eating the players. It's no wonder professional counselors use role play in therapy!
As Seth says, this is often a newbie thing. I remember playing with a guy in his first session ever, and he was like "Wait, I can do anything I want?" "Yes." "I attack him." "No."
"Let me rephrase that. You can do anything you want... so long as it doesn't ruin the other players' fun. Randomly attacking NPC's makes the game unfun for the others, so you can't do that. You CAN attack NPC's when it makes sense. This is not one such occasion."
I had an interesting example for this topic.
I was a player in a group of adventurers (Warhammer 4ed). We were chasing some bad guy to a distant city and he had 3 days head start. The whole trip should took about 10 days. So we needed to go fast. We made some fast preparations (unfortunately some were blocked by GM). But we felt that we did as good as we possibly could. Every day of this trip had some setbacks that were mostly unbeatable - like an important NPC that was with us got seriously wounded and we had to take him to the nearest temple for operation. This event was unavoidable. Next day there was also something.
On the third day we just decided "we are ignoring everything from now on and going as fast as possible". Short sleep, short meal, on the horses. GM was starting to be upset that we are ignoring plot hooks for some side quests. At the end of the day there was a road blockade and some random people waiting for the blockade to clear (witch was impossible - there was some pestilence in the following town). We were of course trying to do everything to go around it. Persuasion was just ignored - some impossible rolls were commanded- ups, we failed as we had 1% to succeed. At this point GM has presented us with a side quest of "finding a missing doughtier of a traveler". We refused. We were chasing a villain and were not doing a great job up to this point. We were even getting a bit angry at how this was stating to look.
Next to this blockade was a tavern. As it turned out, it was full of some brigands. We were trying to redirect guards of this blockade to them so we could slip past through an unguarded post. Nope. They don't care. So we event set this tavern on fire. Still, they don't care. GM even punished a player that actually set this fire with some negative points (that were not suppose to be used in this way at all).
You could argue that we behaved like murder hobos that session. But I think that we were just put in front of "end of the world" sign, masquerading as a road blockade and GM was just totally unprepared for the whole adventure (this was 3 sessions from start of the chase). GM after that accused us of breaking the session and his fun. That we were not role playing, not participating in the story and destroying his enjoyment.
After that, we, players, decided that we need a "session 0". But basically this was an intervention. It failed spectacularly. But I think that we were trying our best to keep the game going. We all suspected that GM was just tired of running the game but lacked communication skills to just say it. So he made it like this.
Some people can run a game and others can't.
My shop came up with a random card game to run a adventure where everyone draws a card which pushes the story. So no DM is needed. So it is heavy role played.
Knew a woman that could run any game of the top of her head but she would screw everyone over and a nightmare to deal with. But it was Soo fun, and you just Had to SEE how she was going to screw anyone over in play. She just loved Ravenloft setting so you knew you was walking into a horror game.
I think this is the most well thought out video I've seen on this subject. I especially appreciate the warning Seth gives to DMs regarding how easily a desire to impose consequences on a party can slip into an adversarial DM v. Player mindset.
I look forward to EVERY vid you post. On the rare occasion that I may not agree with a point here or there, the way you deliver the points always makes me think & consider the other side of the coin. Thank you for that & for all the hard work you put into these vids. You sir are very appreciated
In 3.5 I once had a DM give me a Feat of my choice & one relivent due to my RP attempting to be the face of the group when noone else would attempt getting information in a social setting. When I was a Warforged Juggernaut Barbarian. I was not a social character, but I tried due to needing a lead. It ended with quite a few unnerved nobles and laughs around the table.
I see most of the examples as fundamentally out-of-character problems. They have in-game effects, but they're caused by players who are not having fun with more cooperative play.
I firmly believe that you should _never_ try to handle out-of-character problems with in-game solutions. Do not have all the NPCs start hunting the PCs because one or more of them murdered a shopkeeper out of hand. Instead, stop the game immediately and talk to your players, identify the root causes, and solve them, either by changes in the way that you run games, changing the game you're running, booting problematic players, or by letting someone else run the game ... sometimes the problem really is the GM.
Now, if the characters are really playing reasonably, having in-game consequences for their choices is reasonable as well:
"He murdered my sister and we will never be able to bring him to justice. I slit his throat."
"You understand that with magic this might be discovered and result in your character being outlawed or being hunted by that guy's associates?"
"Yes, it's worth it to me."
But most of these examples really do sound like social contract issues that should be handled by conversation and agreement, not dice rolls.
This. Holy shit, this.
If a player is being a problem, fucking talk to them about the problem like an adult. Don't try to passive-aggressively "put them in their place" with in-character punishment. Because then you're letting the problem-player hog the spotlight and derail the session for everyone else.
If a murderhobo is making a mess, stop play there and then and fucking *talk to them* about what they want out of the game. Ask the rest of the group what they want out of the game. If you can find a compromise between what the problem player wants, and what the rest of the party wants, go for it. If you can't find a compromise, it might be best for the problem player to leave.
@@tbotalpha8133 Act like a murder hobo, then you get a fiend, Night Hag showing up to eat them to collect their PC soul or have a devil/ baator show up cause the Hobo killed the devil's human political pawn and their planes were set back. Honestly even if a party is playing within good social graces, if they kill a lawful evil aristocrat warlord/ cleric still send a fiend after them.
As always a great video. Murder-hobos is something every player and DM will run into at one point or another, and it's great to have something like this to refer to.
You're illuminating the problem, giving possible reasons to why a player might act like this, and giving sound advice on how to deal with/prevent that.
I wish I'd had something like this to lean on the first time I encountered a murder-hobo =) I was very new to GM'ing and I panicked a bit. We got it resolved in the end, and could keep playing, but that was a rough spot
Thank you for this video Seth! Murder Hobos haven't been a problem for me since 2010, but your elaboration on how to deal with them sparked an inspirational idea for a contact-merit system in my head!
I had a GM that ran his games so that there was very little story and a whole lot of fighting. Eventually, he designed his own game based on professional wrestling. It was fun but I stopped playing with that group.
I just finished a campaign, temporarily anyway, we may go back to it. In that campaign I set out to deliberately make a murder hobo. The campaign was non good mercenaries so the players and DM were cool with it. The other characters were a half orc cleric and a tiefling sorceress.
Anyway we started at level 8 so I went with a bugbear level 5 bear totem barbarian, level 3 rogue assassin with expertise in stealth and athletics.
Anyway he turned out to be a well rounded character with excellent tactical utility. He could tank or DPS, or scout or even intimidate in social situations.
Turned out I never played him as a murder hobo, he was kinda a nice guy who just killed people he was payed too and became mostly the party leader even if the sorceress handled the social situations.
This is an excellent video, The presenter addresses the topic thoroughly and reasonably. I found it quite informative and enjoyable to watch.
I was in what basically turned into a Murderhobo campaign, with my character having little regard for personal survival.
The worst incident nearly got the entire party sucked into a black hole.
After we escaped, my character disappeared on the party and I rolled a new character.
Characters stronger than all other NPCs in town - leads to them bullying.
This highlights a huge issue with D&D game structure.
Consider Magic the Gathering and how it balances powers. The players can be a rare group that can handles weak, but highly poisonous monsters (like a Cockatrice) but they can still be taken down by able bodied towns people. (at least a lower levels)
One of the star wars rpgs has the best solution to this imo. For health in that game there's two health pools. Vitality, the larger pool, which is sort of a representation of plot armor. When Vitality reaches zero then damage is done to Wounds. Then there's Wounds which is your actual health and never increases once you first make your character. When Wounds reaches 0 you die. A natural 20 won't double damage instead it will do damage straight to Wounds. This makes even the lowest level npc a potential lethal threat if they get lucky. It also makes numbers a significant threat. You may be a level 20 jedi but 100 level 1 stormtroopers are an incredibly lethal threat.
@@matiastorres1510 Exactly. There should always be a chance weaker people/monsters can do you in with one shot.
@@matiastorres1510 Also in Star Wars, if you are in a ship's hallway, crew cabin, or small control room if someone tosses a " flash/bang " near you, your Ref save is screwed.
Depending on how the Game Master is running Wound/ Con points, if you get pinned for one round ( helpless defender) and take a single point of a given type of damage the character has to take a Fort save of 11 or be render unconscious or end up dead. Riffle butt to the face, temple eye hit, or neck/ leg artery and you bleed out.
It all comes down to how " lethal " of a game you want to play.
I was just starting to need a new fix of Seth. Thanks for providing.
I played a Lawful Evil character, a guard was demanding payment for passage. Our Paladin wanted to pay and move on, but I decided to hit him with a rock to knock him out. Being Evil doesn't mean you kill on sight, plus, we later found out that wasn't a official toll, so my action was completely justified
Excellent video man!
If the locals cant control the PCs physically, they can control them emotionally.
The 7yr old girl, crying over the dead body of her militia father, says "Mister... Why did you kill my daddy?"
If a player doesnt pause for thought here you really dont need them at your table.
As for consequences to the character motivations, its why i prefer Shadow points in The One Ring or Traits and Passions in Pendragon.
I've applied that tactic on a few occasions. Most of the time, it works, and the player does stop and take it in. Now and then, though, I get one that stabs the little girl and checks to see if she has any good loot. Of course, they get mad when she doesn't.
One of the big things I've run into with this kind of behavior is people who are new to D&D, coming into it after playing video games. Diablo is the big culprit in my experience, where literally everything you stab gives you stuff. Players expect a similar mechanic and really struggle with that for a while. Most let it go and accept that table top RPG's don't work that way, but a few just don't.
@@CainLatrani Yeah the video game mentality is big factor in this. People are used to zero consequences. Even in a game that penalizes their actions they will just reload from a save point.
That last platitude is a bit dishonest, it's fine for players to be the Heavy in a western campaign, but if they don't have any good quips or RP afterward and are only there for combat, there are better games than TTRPGs, 'cause TTRPGs tend to be kinda trash for combat.
That wouldn't work. Just get the other players to kill the murderer.
Yep always take the moral high ground while running an RPG. That's my motto. I mean if your PCs actions don't have real life consequences, what's the point?
You know what you can doing you're playing dnd. Have stats ready for a silver dragon. According to the lore in dnd Silver dragons shape shift into people and live the lives of regular NPCs. If someones wiping out NPCs and you want to teach them a lesson have the npc shape shift out of their mundane form into an ancient silver dragon.
Ah yes, the first campaign I played in back in the 80s, had a little old man who was really a gold dragon. Terry Pratchett called this "Rule One"
Rule One is "Do not act incautiously when confronting a little bald wrinkly smiling man". (Due to the Disc's narrative causality such a person is almost always a highly-trained martial artist). (or Dragon)
Rule Nineteen is: "Remember Never to Forget Rule One.
Eh, I feel like this isn’t the best idea
Good advice, Sir.
Also, I had no idea that your Ashes of Onyx book was released in January. Time has flown for me this year (I'm in healthcare, so this pandemic just another version of the Ebola scare, but with a little less PPE that I have to put on.) I wanted to say that I like the subtle advertising. It's a good reminder for those that want to know more about your books. Keep it up. Always be proud of those books. I'd love to see a book displayed in the background every other video or so. Either way, this is another well done video. Well done, Sir!
After seeing narrow-viewed murderhobo discussions on Reddit, this video was just what I needed. Thanks Seth!
That kung fury Tee is awesome! Great content as always, Seth!
I see you are a man of exceptional taste.
I once ran a short run set in WH 40K where the players were imperial guards, murderhobo guy saw a terminator dudes brain went ohh big powerful soo lot of xp and loot as reward right?
It was a 15 unit strong bodyguard group of a librarian dreadnaught, it did not end well.
Random like and comment to help feed the YT machine. Keep up the good work Seth.
Very concise and clear. I have been in the hobby for over 30 years, and this is a great explaination for fixing the issue =)
I note that in one Howard's Conan stories, Conan himself was a city guard...if the murder Hobo's walked into his city, well...it wouldn't end well.
"You never asked yourself why there was a +4 Returning Vorpal sword just hanging on the back wall of a bar. Don't come crying to me now after you found out the hard way that the old geezer in the corner was not just the ower of the bar and sword, but also a retired level 20 fighter."
Kvothe would speak with you privately, troublemaker.
Forbidden Lands by Free League handles this issue perfectly. Characters have “reputation” instead of “alignment”, which directly effects how NPCs respond to you. Moreover, killing someone is a separate action, where once you defeat an opponent and want to then kill them, you must fail an empathy test.
They also have a talent tree that reverses that, first removing the die roll, then eliminating the Empathy damage for killing a downed foe, and finally restoring mental damage to the PC instead of hurting them. It actively encourages finishing people off. If one of your players chases that talent as fast as they can, you just might have a murder hobo in the making. :)
You also want to watch out for players who chase the Axe Fighting + Executioner combo, because that exploit is another way to dodge the "kill them while they're down" penalty. "Oops, I accidentally decapitated someone...again."
It's also amusing that even a bad Reputation is better than no Rep mechanically. You want to intimidate someone into not daring to refuse your perfectly reasonable requests, having Threatening and a few points of bad Rep is the way to go. Just don't be surprised when you have to rely on it more and more often as time goes by and people start trying to poison your food or kill you in your sleep and teh like.
I don't even get to play RPGs very often but these videos are great. You're a good speaker, you've got that "radio host" voice.
Man. If only I had the chance to play in a DnD game with a GM like you. You've helped explain all the issues and given solutions to the things I've had to explain myself and never had done for me in return.