D&D 5E What does "murderhobo" mean to you?

[Celebrim]

Uhm, you got a few things wrong here, I wonder - where do you study?

Well, beyond college coursework under Dr. Richard Gerberding, decades of reading books of medieval history as an outgrowth of my love of DMing in a sort of feedback loop.

Especially in late medieval times many Knights were in fact mercenaries.

Ok, stop. If this is going to evolve into a serious scholarly discussion and I'm going to have to start breaking out the footnotes and citations, lets start with the fact that 'medieval' is a post-hoc description of the period by people who were deliberately trying to justify a break with the dominate culture. You are in a sense correct that I should have distinguished between early medieval conceptions when the Feudal system was the dominate mode of society, and late medieval complexity in what is called 'The High Middle Ages' when the increase in available coin (owing to revolutions in the technology for mining silver) had begun to allow for economies that were only quasi-feudal.

In addition to that, I also agree that there was always a great deal of hypocrisy and divergence from the chivalric idea and the feudalism as it was justified socially, and the actual practice thereof. In practice, many household knights even in the early middle ages were mercenaries and indeed it could be argued that the entire feudal hierarchy was ultimately motivated by vested self-interest and greed. But the feudal ideal - what they actually wrote about themselves - was that they were motivated by fealty to their lord and that in its conception that fealty was motivated by mutual love and respect. So any of those knights, even if they were really just there for the room and board, would have been appalled and angered and considered himself dishonored and disrespected if you where to strip him of the veneer of nobility and claim he was no more than a common mercenary who fought and killed for money rather than feudal obligation to protect those beneath him and fealty to his lord and liege. Those would have been fighting words, quite literally.

The commoner - the villain to use the feudal language - who took pay in return for his service was deemed to be the lowest social class. Not only was his trade in blood and violence, but his motive was greed. At least officially, the nobility always maintained the pretense that they were very different, even if in practice not so much.

As for the distinction of Knight and Ritter, those are just the same words in different languages.

I'm quite aware of that, but the connotations of the two words within the society that they are very different. A ritter to a Swede conjures up a very different image than the word knight does to a modern American.

As for medieval mercenaries: Their reputation was their capital. If they robbed the land dry, chances were rather slim for them to get hired. This later became a major issue due to the extreme escalation in the Thirty Years' War yet, in the transitional time frame not so much. Also keep in mind that many mercenaries had extremely good reputations, both regarding their skill and loyalty. The swiss guard is a prime example of this.

First of all, the 30 years war starts in 1648, a good 200 years after what is now called 'the middle ages' had collapsed. And the Swiss Guard as such didn't come into being until the late 15th century. And sure, by that point many mercenaries had good reputations, but again the growth in respect accorded to mercenaries grows linearly with the ability of the noble class to actually pay for mercenaries and divest themselves of the comparatively complex web of personal loyalties that governed the feudal system. Sure, by say Agincourt in 1415, the English at least were primarily mercenary army. But I'm not sure I'd use the 15th century as typical of the Middle Ages, as by then all the sorts of features that defined it - short of coin, highly distributed political power, government by private contract at every level, manorial economies, subinfeudation, dominance of heavy cavalry in warfare, and so forth were already in abatement and had been for 200 years.

 

[FieserMoep]

As with late medieval times I actually meant the late middle ages. The so called high middles ages where in between as long as far as the consensus of the german mediävistik or english Medieval studies are concerned. As for the early middle ages that fully blown idea of knightship goes a bit to far and I wonder what literature you refer to here, given we don't really have that much for that time frame. Idealized court novels pretty much appeared in the high middle ages.

As fort he language thing: Please explain this further. Ofc it does mean something different to an american, they did not even have any medieval Knights. I am no expert in the swedish language, but do the term Knight and Ritter coexist there? Because they don't in german or english as far as I can deduct from historic literature so they would not have a different connotation for they were, if you attempted to translate, pretty much interchangeable.

As for the 30 years war, that was just an excursus to portray the difference that would later come regarding the widespread impact of mercenaries on the local area. I thought that was clear. Also I made rather clear that most of my input was especially about the late medieval ages, rather than the few centuries we have here. Yet especially for the 100 years war, mercenaries played major parts on both sides though the idea was not as widespread as it later would become and I focused on.

In the end the thing that intruigued me was the general apathy regarding mercenaries comparing them to such low standards for there are plenty of quite big cases that show them in different light, and especially as I said in the late medieval ages when they became widespread and professionalized.

PS: Does your connotation of Knight and Ritter boil from a modern perspective where English is quite widespread in northern countries and may transport the romanticized meaning of knight while there may still be "bad" associations with knights regarding the Christianization and Conquest of northern countries by germanic neighbors like the teutonic knights? Though that would not go as far as sweden. I wonder because Ritter is just as romanticized as knight is in any native language that utilizes this word I had contact to so far. And with that I refer to "Ritter" regarding all the sound shifts in language and what not. I guess for swedish it is riddare?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

It has to do with a lack of nuance, if you will. Think of absolute alignments and monsters. Why is that Orc in the dungeon? Because he needs killing. That doesn't mean the classic "murderhobo" party slaughters their allies and random townpeople just for kicks and XP.

In a world of absolute alignments, an Orc is a monster rather than a person; and killing a monster isn't murder, because it will definitely hurt innocent people if you leave it alive.

 

[Satyrn]

Killing Drizzt isn't an honest mistake, it'a an act of the greatest heroism imaginable! May your name and fame ring down through the ages for what you have done here today!

That's why all drow must be killed on sight - on the off chance it is Drizzt.

 

[redrick]

Mercenaries and murderhobos may share many things in common, but where they differentiate is that a muderhobo, like a muderer kills things on whimsy. They need not be paid and there needs to be no real goal to their killing either. They kill because they have weapons and like to use them. Mercanaries are at the very least, business-people. Mudering, thieving, violent business people but as much as a mercanary likes killing, they also like money. A murderhobo has no love for anything except killing.

I'm not going to get into how it worked "back in the day" since we're talking about how it works in D&D. I've plenty of mercenary players who are just fine to game with, they have motives and desires and a love for killing, but a love that can be directed. Such cannot be done with murderhobos.

The term "murderhobo" is a commentary on D&D and how some play it, not a commentary on murder. A mercenary character could be a murderhobo, if adventures basically took the form of, "You have just been hired to go to this place and kill all the people/monsters in it. They are bad, it's fine. Ok, you've cleared out the dungeon. You get this many xp for the night, and the local Duke gives each of you 100 gp. Deduct 1gp each for your lodgings at the local inn. See you next week!" A mercenary character would not be a murderhobo if adventures involved evaluating the clients, choosing which jobs to take and which jobs not to take, and spending time in places where the mercenary was not actively on contract and chose not to kill "all the bad guys" to take their stuff, because they only kill things when they are getting paid for it.

Mercenaries are also more than capable of murdering people indiscriminately. Just because you get paid to do something doesn't mean you also don't do it in your spare time.

Also, while murder might have legal definitions in most jurisdictions, it is also a word that, colloquially, is used to describe any killing that the speaker believes to be unjustified, even if that killing was performed "lawfully". For instance, we frequently refer to mass executions performed by agents of totalitarian states, within a quasi-legal framework (such as Stalin's Soviet Union), as "murder". So the fact that your character might have an in-game justification for why what they do is "killing" not "murdering", we could still, at a distance say, "Yeah, I mean, they just go into the homes of monsters and murder them."

 

[redrick]

In a world of absolute alignments, an Orc is a monster rather than a person; and killing a monster isn't murder, because it will definitely hurt innocent people if you leave it alive.

But in a world without absolute racial alignments, we might look at somebody who spends all their free time immersing themselves in a world with absolute alignments where killing monsters isn't murder as, maybe, just a little weird.

Like, we create these fantasy worlds and then go and inhabit them. We say, "Well, in this world, it's actually not wrong to behave this way." And that's fine. It's just funny that people are so defensive about the suggestion that, yes, they are playing characters who, by the real standards of the real world in which we all live, do lots of murder. I'm sorry if that causes an internal moral crisis for you. I'm gonna go home, turn on GTA, and drive a firetruck down the sidewalks of Manhattan for an hour, while dropping grenades out my window at trailing police cars.

 

[Satyrn]

I thought we settled this back on page 1, that the word was coined to ironically describe a "typical adventurer", but in the intervening years people new to the hobby (or just new to the term) have started using it in a more literal manner.

Y'all just seem to be saying either "I use the word in it's ironic form" or "I use it in it's literal sense." In a whole heck of a lot of words.

It seems to me that what should be interesting for those in the ironic camp is that some read the word literally now. I was a little surprised by that, anyway.

And what should be interesting for those in the literal camp is that the word was originally a joke. I mean, think about that, and what it says about the way we commonly used to play! It's fascinating and funny.

 

[Sunseeker]

The term "murderhobo" is a commentary on D&D and how some play it, not a commentary on murder. A mercenary character could be a murderhobo, if adventures basically took the form of, "You have just been hired to go to this place and kill all the people/monsters in it. They are bad, it's fine. Ok, you've cleared out the dungeon. You get this many xp for the night, and the local Duke gives each of you 100 gp. Deduct 1gp each for your lodgings at the local inn. See you next week!" A mercenary character would not be a murderhobo if adventures involved evaluating the clients, choosing which jobs to take and which jobs not to take, and spending time in places where the mercenary was not actively on contract and chose not to kill "all the bad guys" to take their stuff, because they only kill things when they are getting paid for it.

Mercenaries are also more than capable of murdering people indiscriminately. Just because you get paid to do something doesn't mean you also don't do it in your spare time.

Also, while murder might have legal definitions in most jurisdictions, it is also a word that, colloquially, is used to describe any killing that the speaker believes to be unjustified, even if that killing was performed "lawfully". For instance, we frequently refer to mass executions performed by agents of totalitarian states, within a quasi-legal framework (such as Stalin's Soviet Union), as "murder". So the fact that your character might have an in-game justification for why what they do is "killing" not "murdering", we could still, at a distance say, "Yeah, I mean, they just go into the homes of monsters and murder them."

Interestingly, people are capable of being multiple things.

Unfortunately, because people are capable of being so many things at any given moment of the day, it is difficult to have any sort of discussion about people when the response to a generalization of a group is "yeah but they're also different." Well no stick sherlock.

So if we're going to have any sort of productive discussion we're going to have to do some generalizing and simplification, because if we're ever going to discuss how complex, flawed and deep the average human is, we're never going to get anywhere because inevitably we'll start weighing how many kittens terrorists save vs how many people they kill, and that's just not pointless, it's stupid.

When I talk about "murderhobos vs mercenaries" I'm talking about characters for whom the majority of their existence (say, 75%) is based around a lifestyle of killing on whimsy vs a lifestyle of profit via death.

This was actually terribly clear in my post, in my several posts on the subject and this obfuscation of yours is really just a giant red herring.

Well, fundamentally we are just arguing over the definition of a slang term. However, I think your understanding of the term is divergent from how the term is commonly used and from how the term is intended.

I wouldn't say that's the case. I don't make people play murderhobos at my table, but I have had several. They're pretty consistent.

'Murderhobo' as a term was intended to describe D&D as it was commonly and perhaps most commonly played. It was a term intended to describe the fact that regardless of the nominal alignment of the PC, what they actually did was wander from place to place killing things for money. This was because per the rules what you were rewarded for was killing things and taking their stuff. The PC's behaved that way because the motivation of the players was to 'win' under the terms set by the game.

Yes I am aware definitions change over time.

While that's an interesting concept, it has nothing to do with the term 'murderhobo'. Not all 'murderhobos' have evil alignment, where as certainly any PC that kills indiscriminately out of whimsy is in every edition of the game is evil aligned. Ironically, these serial killers you describe might not be 'murderhobos', but might in fact be participating in an evil campaign.

Well, considering I'm speaking from what I've experienced as a DM who doesn't run evil campaigns, and a player who doesn't play in evil campaigns, I certainly have not witnessed people playing a "murderous campaign" or an "evil campaign". So, I'd appreciate it if you wouldn't tell me I don't know what I'm looking at or playing in, because I'm certainly not telling you or anyone else that their own experiences are incorrect.


The singular evil campaign I do run (my Drow campaign I've mentioned before) I an incredibly picky with my players because while murder may be a regular part of life in the Underdark, it is most decidedly not a murderhobo campaign.


And as I've told players who start leaning towards murder-hoboing or start trying to turn my games into evil campaigns, they are welcome to use the very real door and look for a campaign elsewhere. I am neither interested in running nor facilitating murderhobo games.

Whimsy as a motivation, rather than acquisition of XP and loot, implies that at the metagame level, it's possible (though by no means certain) that the player has actually separated the nominal goal of play (leveling up) from the goals of his play and his character. If he's consciously playing his character in a way that involves something other than maximizing the safe acquisition of loot and XP, and instead is focused on exploring the mental space of his character or his character's relationship to society, you might have an evil campaign that features wandering murders but not murderhobos.

I separated whimsy from XP acquisition for a reason. The delineation is important.


Every party wants XP and loot. Every. Last. One.


Murderhobos get it by killing anything that walks, talks or gets in their way.
Mercanries get it by accepting contracts to kill specific things.
Holy Crusaders get it by killing things that are specifically unholy.
and so on and so forth.


While murderhobos may have the lowest bar, the bar is so low that there is little differentiation in the mind of a murderhobo between something that gives XP and loot and something that is simply killable.

That's exactly backwards. The problem with your definition is that as you define it, murderhobo is fundamentally a synonym for murderer.

Yes and? In my experience murderhobos are murderers. In some cases, I question the player motivations more than the characters.

It doesn't describe any game culture artifact that is particular to the game of D&D.

Other games may also have murderers yes.

The term 'murderhobo' was invented because a term was needed to refers (usually) to nominal heroes, not nominal villains. We could just call villains villains without needing to invent a term.

I have never met a hero who I would describe as a murderhobo. Not once. Not in any game. Not in any fantasy literature. Not in any movie or comic book. Not once.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

But in a world without absolute racial alignments, we might look at somebody who spends all their free time immersing themselves in a world with absolute alignments where killing monsters isn't murder as, maybe, just a little weird.

Eh, I don't really see much of a difference between an orc monster and a zombie or robot. As long as they aren't people, there's nothing wrong with killing them in order to make the world a better place.

The closest real-world equivalent to a monster is a mosquito, and anyone who can figure out how to kill those more effectively is considered a hero to some degree. Killing dragon monsters is a lot like that, only somewhat more-so.

 

[redrick]

Interestingly, people are capable of being multiple things.

Unfortunately, because people are capable of being so many things at any given moment of the day, it is difficult to have any sort of discussion about people when the response to a generalization of a group is "yeah but they're also different." Well no stick sherlock.

So if we're going to have any sort of productive discussion we're going to have to do some generalizing and simplification, because if we're ever going to discuss how complex, flawed and deep the average human is, we're never going to get anywhere because inevitably we'll start weighing how many kittens terrorists save vs how many people they kill, and that's just not pointless, it's stupid.

When I talk about "murderhobos vs mercenaries" I'm talking about characters for whom the majority of their existence (say, 75%) is based around a lifestyle of killing on whimsy vs a lifestyle of profit via death.

This was actually terribly clear in my post, in my several posts on the subject and this obfuscation of yours is really just a giant red herring.

Shidaku, I'm sorry, I did not mean to insult you with pedantics about definitions of murderhobo-ery. Somebody upthread made a comment about "it's not murder if it's done lawfully," but I don't know that that person was you. Still my reaction to that may have slightly colored my response.

I think [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] captures my feelings about the term pretty well, so I won't try to restate them. Ultimately, where I think we disagree, is that I believe that the term murderhobo is divorced from the in-character justifications a character might or might not have. It's all about the way the game is played. If the game is just a series of dungeon clearings, the characters are quite possibly murderhobos. It doesn't matter if they behave themselves during the shopping/hook collecting trips back to town, and it doesn't matter if there is an in-fiction justification for every dungeon they clear out.

And since I consider the term to be, at worst, a loving insult, I don't really mind having such an un-nuanced definition. I realize that, for some people, murderhobo is a more pointed criticism of bad actors in an RPG, but I don't feel that way. It's just a way of playing the game.

"Come, come, Mr. Bond. You enjoy killing just as much as I do."