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

[Inchoroi]

Quick poll. I'm interested if some terminology has changed (I'm often behind the times!)


@Plutancatty here says Murderhobos are "adventurers who wander about, using their supernatural class powers and magic to take what they want from powerless commoners while ignoring the pitifully weak town guards."

I've always understood the term to mean homeless adventurers who kill orcs and take their stuff for a living (i.e. the default D&D model).

What do you understand the term to mean? One of these or something else?

I've always thought of a murderhobo as not a character problem, but as a player problem; in other words, a murderhobo is a player who does not care about the story that they are telling with their character.

"Who cares whether my character murders town guards?"
"Who cares whether I attacked, knocked out, and robbed this NPC for his magic items?"

Its taken me about a year and a half to train that streak out of my players; thank god they got it.

 

[5ekyu]

mostly, murderhobo means to me that someone is about to launch some form of internet monologue about other people's playstyles.

 

[Caliban]

mostly, murderhobo means to me that someone is about to launch some form of internet monologue about other people's playstyles.

Hey, don't murderhobo my fun.

 

[Staffan]

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.

Speaking as a Swede... not really. At least not today - this might be the result of the last century or so being much more influenced by English and American culture whereas German culture was a bigger influence earlier. But when I hear "riddare", I do associate that with nobility - both in the moral and social sense. Certainly there's an awareness that the reality of knighthood wasn't the same as in fairy-tales, but the word still has those associations.

However, there's another word which might be the one you're looking for: "knekt". The etymology for that word is the same as for "knight", but the meaning is much more of a common soldier, and often one whose primary motivation is money rather than loyalty. There's a fine line between "knekt" and "legosoldat" (mercenary), but at least the way I interpret the words is that a knekt is still someone fairly local while a legosoldat often works for someone completely unrelated and goes abroad to fight for nothing but coin.

 

[tuxedoraptor]

someone who was kicked out of my group for poor behavior.

To be fair though, I don't have a problem with RESTRAINED murderhobos. Your character can be a sociopathic vagabond who murders people indescriminately, but you cannot murder every NPC you meet.

 

[jayoungr]

I'm not a fan of the term murderhobo. For the most part, I generally see it as a term used by people to encapsulate the essence of D&D while appearing to be either edgy or snarky but who generally come across as being asshats.

mostly, murderhobo means to me that someone is about to launch some form of internet monologue about other people's playstyles.

I was just trying to formulate the same thought, but you two have said it much better than me.

 

[howandwhy99]

Murderhobo is a bigoted term made up by individuals about 15 years ago who hated D&D, shared an ignorance for understanding about its design and play, and wanted to change the hobby into one more like we have now. One focused on "collaborative storytelling" and not gaming. As a result of rewriting memory, a kind of flipped prejudice happened, and some folks now even champion "old school play" as having "always been about acting as murderhobo". The same thing happened in the 90s with the phrase "pretending to be an elf in my basement".

For the record, RPGs were never about creating stories or expressing fictional personalities.

 

[Mad_Jack]

For me it was adventurers who wander around and kill things for stuff. But with a connotation that's all they do. Just randomly show up in adventures and kill things.

For me it''s mostly this - while I still use it in a humorous fashion to describe all adventurers, I also use it to refer to the playstyle where the characters embrace the stereotype and don't bother with much else beyond showing up, killing whatever's put in front of them, and then busting up the furniture looking for more treasure...

I have absolutely no issue with it (and it's how I usually play computer RPGs) if that's the type of game everyone wants to play, but I do get mildly exasperated when people with otherwise interesting and well-developed characters start exhibiting murderhobo traits when it's expedient to do so.

 

[Shayuri]

What does 'murderhobo' mean to me? That's easy.

PROFIT.

 

[darkrose50]

[1] PCs often do not have a home.
[2] They wander around and kill things in things homes.
[3] D&D has its roots in war-gaming. In war-gaming you kill the other players guys.
[4] It’s a joke.