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

[Dyson Logos]

I've used this graphic several times in the past when discussing Murderhobos

 

[cbwjm]

I'm not fond of the term murderhobo, but I did always think that it meant adventurers out clearing dungeons of orcs, goblins, and other monsters and taking their stuff.

 

[Leatherhead]

"Muderhobo" is a derogatory term for migrant mercenaries, especially the ones who are orphaned or have cut all ties from their previous life. It's always been kind of a misnomer, due to their great wealth and often having the equivalent of a letter of marque or government contract to legitimize their actions.

Yes, that does describe a great number of adventurers.

 

[Sunseeker]

I think it's a little bit of both.

In the end it's players who are essentially metagaming and have discovered that killing things and taking their stuff is applicable at all parts of the game. Wizard has a quest for you? Find out what he wants, kill him, take his stuff, then take the quest-loot for yourself. Town guards won't let you in? Kill them. Shopkeeper has an unreasonably priced magic item? Kill him.

But at the end of the day, this style of "playing" and I will only tentatively call it "playing" D&D since I dislike it so aggressively, is enabled by DMs. It is incentivised by systems and settings and DMs who only reward XP from "loot" or "combat" and no social encounters. It's supported by DMs who fail to create any sort of system to hold players accountable, be it a tough force of "Hobo Hunters" or even the most basic of reputation systems to promote society-positive behavior. It is a way of "playing" enabled by overly restrictive DMs as much as too lenient ones.

So that is to say, murderhoboing isn't entirely on the players. There are systems fundamentally embedded in the game and thus, compounded in many settings that promote an attitude of "kill it and take its stuff" over alternative solutions.

 

[Ancalagon]

I think it's important to remember what hobo means - it's not "homeless bum". A hobo is homeless yes, but he works for a living. He's a migrant worker. Adventurers are homeless sell-swords, ie they are *for hire*. They aren't brigands. They get hired by people to deal with problems, violently.

 

[Iry]

I think it's important to remember what hobo means - it's not "homeless bum". A hobo is homeless yes, but he works for a living. He's a migrant worker. Adventurers are homeless sell-swords, ie they are *for hire*. They aren't brigands. They get hired by people to deal with problems, violently.

Yeah, this is an important element of it. It was a homeless migrant worker. Back in the 80s, I remember there was some mild (and somewhat affectionate) social commentary about the term Murderhobo:

Murder = Yes, it definitely references the habit of many early roleplayers to primarily overcome their problems with violence even when given the choice of non-violent solutions. It also makes sly commentary about adventurers killing without sufficient provocation because of things like "Evil" races, "Ugly" races, bad attitudes, or just because someone else said so.

Hobo = Migrant worker, someone who travels around and finds work. A decent term for a group of adventurers who travel from dungeon to dungeon, or quest to quest, without any focus on settling down in one location. It also makes sly commentary about early roleplayers intentionally minimizing plot hooks like family members, spouses, or children because they thought it was cool to get revenge for dead loved ones, or because they didn't want those things threatened and used against them in the moderately common Party vs DM mentality back in the day.

 

[Hussar]

But if the PCs ended up at their doorstep, someone probably sent them, and that means they posed a direct threat to other, more peaceful/weak beings that needed heroes to selflessly put themselves in danger to end that threat.

And that somehow justifies it? Your PC's are out collecting bounties on goblin ears by massacring the local goblin village and that makes them heroes, but, slaughter one orphanage...

Remember, a lot of play is often just adventure of the week stuff where the PC's aren't really on any sort of mission from an authority. Keep on the Borderlands is a perfect example of this. You go from the town (Keep), wander into the homes of various humanoids, and slaughter them indiscriminately. This was pretty much the baseline of play for many, many years of gaming.

Thus, murderhobos.

 

[Lanefan]

Voted "something else", in that I see it pretty much as a derogatory term used by an element of the RPG community who like to look down on pure hack'n'slash as an inferior style of play.

Lanefan

 

[Lylandra]

It is a sarcastic term and, in my opinion, describes the full spectrum between "Hack'n Slash adventurers" who wander from dungeon to dungeon to kill and loot without putting too much thought behind it and the occasional jerk group who are more akin to traditional robber-knights.

I guess in the former case, the term is applied more wink-wink figuratively and in the latter more literally as we generally say "murder" when it happens to people of our own species...

 

[Enevhar Aldarion]

I must not run in the "right" circles or something. I have been gaming for 30+ years, but until becoming a regular poster on the old WotC forums when 5E released, and then on here when those shut down, I had never heard the term "murderhobo" before. I just figured the term migrated from video game RPGs, where anything outside of a town is generally there specifically for the party to kill and loot in mindless repetition as you grind for XP and gold to level up.