D&D General Violence and D&D: Is "Murderhobo" Essential to D&D?

[TaranTheWanderer]

Given that D&D is usually a medieval society, corporal punishment is often the result of arresting or bringing bandits to justice.

But, for the PC, that takes the decision out of the players hands. They are leaving it to the community to decide what happens.

It's still violence. It's kind of on the DM to decide what happens to the Bandits at that point. Maybe they'll just end up as slaves in a mining pit.

In a situation where you are in the wilderness, I kind of like fiction that has the Heroes release the bandits and then they
a) come back to help you or change their path for good because you showed mercy
b) A la Saving Private Ryan: they come back to shoot your friends or end up as a recurring villain.

Not killing all your enemies usually makes for a better plot in the long run, I find.

 

[Campbell]

I think the idea that incarceration and surrendering someone over to an authority figure is necessarily a moral good is something I would consider somewhat contentious.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Not to question the morality or anything, that's fine, but I think it's a little more complicated than that. So arrest them and do what exactly? What if they're a week or more from the nearest, IDK, jail or whatever? Just pause the campaign and take the two week hit to escort them to the authorities? What kind of proof are they going to offer those authorities that the men are actually bandits? What will the authorities do with them even if you do that? Will they hang the bandits (sounds likely in a lot of scenarios), and if they do hang them what happens to the moral compass? Do the players even have the authority to 'arrest' anyone or act as agents of the law?

I'm not nitpicking, I just don't think there's room in every campaign to handle every encounter like this. Moral complexity snowballs quickly. I'm not saying the answer is to kill the bandits mind you, but the players aren't the sheriff either.

I am not taking your post for nitpicking, not at all! On the contrary, you develop, and certainly put in better words, what I called "the logistics of prisonners". Hence, most of the time, just killing opponents is much more convenient. Hence, not having bandits be human bandits but demons or demon-tainted creatures that could be killed for their deed (since it is known in the lore that they are absolutely evil and can't be redeemeed) allow for them to be killed without the same level of moral difficulty than killing human-like people. It "legitimize" the murderhoboism often displayed because of the otherwise tedious need to handle the "logistic of prisonners". I can totally see groups killing bandits in the aforementioned scenario and having no moral problem with that, but this is not the only way to see things and just saying "instead of having evil creature, why not have reason to attack opponents, like they commit banditry?" isn't answering the problem for groups who won't enjoy killing people even for reasons.

I think the idea that incarceration and surrendering someone over to an authority figure is necessarily a moral good is something I would consider somewhat contentious.

Indeed, the judicial system should combine the goal of preventing crime and rehabilitating criminals, and more often than not, prison is not the best way to achieve this goal, with some analyst saying that prison is only viewed as a deterrent by people who are less likely to become criminal in the first place. But we are comparing the morality of killing people vs letting the social structures in place for dealing with people who commit crime take responsability. If they are even more "evil" than the bandits were in the first place, it might make PCs less OK to support this community, but i don't think it would make killing the bandits moral.

[Edit to add this answer]

 

[Fenris-77]

Yup, logistics is a problem. My preference would be to 'drive the bandits off'. That seems like the genre appropriate answer to me (for a good party). Try not to kill anyone if you can help it, but save the caravan and then move on. I think in order for the game to function you have to assume a more tolerant view of casual violence, not wanton killing mind, but violence. If you regularly run into bandits, you need to be able to deal with bandits, and that is going to involve violence of some kind. I also think it's ... something ... to not have bandits because there's some potential moral grey area involved. You could just use undead or demons every time, but that's not my preferred answer, because it's not genre appropriate, not logical, and, I'll just say it, kinda silly. YMMV, of course. You can attain something beyond murderhobo without having to replace every potential foe with an unredeemable evil.

It does help to have what I'll call narrative markers. If part of the initial description is a member of the caravan dying to a bandit sword, then you have some concrete proof that that isn't some kind of Robin Hood thing, and you can switch the violent response button on without worrying too much about it. Something else that helps is if the DM is using something in the way of reasonable morale rules. If the bandits break off their attack after a wounding or casualty or two and flee into the woods, then the party won't have to worry about whether to kill them all. I also tend to be very permissive with non-lethal damage. If the players aren't taking a penalty to try and subdue instead of kill they might consider it more often. For the same reason, I have a very liberal view of being able to use sneak attack and things like garrotes and clubs to subdue rather than kill.

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I think the idea that incarceration and surrendering someone over to an authority figure is necessarily a moral good is something I would consider somewhat contentious.

I don't put that kind of modern day sentiment in my games. Unless the characters themselves feel the authorities are unfairly cruel, then it seems like what most people would do.

I assume the 'Law' is not corrupt, unless it makes for part of the story. I assume the community has a system that makes fair judgments of crimes. Given that most D&D is based on medieval sensibilities, punishment will be harsh. In small towns, communities will decide how to punish crimes. As a DM, I can decide that could be anything from paying off murder with a life-debt, working as a slave, rehabilitation or death.

The players can decide if giving bandits over to the community and its laws is 'just'.

 

[pemerton]

I haven't read every post in this thread. But on the question of D&D and violence:

There are a lot of posts about recent D&D sessions in this thread. And a lot of what seems to happen in those session is fighting.

I don't see any reason to think those sessions are unrepresenatitve.

 

[pemerton]

On the issue of bandits: in my Prince Valiant game the PCs (with their warband, the Order of St Sigobert) fought a group of Huns. A good number of Huns were killed. A good number surrendered. Those were spared, and were converted, and are now the light cavalry arm of the PCs' warband.

In principle I think D&D could support this sort of thing, although its rules for warbands are probably not quite as robust.

 

[Eyes of Nine]

Sometimes I don't give XP for killing monsters at all. I know, wacky. XP is a tool the DM can use to chivvy the game in a particular direction. So if I tell the players that XP will be awarded for representing core character drives, problem solving, overcoming encounters, and milestones, but specifically not killing monsters, they start off with a very different frame of reference. Killing creatures could be part of overcoming encounters, but it doesn't have to be. It's not like PCs are reluctant to draw steel, or that you won't have combat if you don't incentivize it.

I could see porting over the entire DW XP system. Including XP for failed rolls. And adding a end of session procedure - "Did you find memorable treasure?" "Did you kill a memorable monster?" "Did you engage with your flaw?" etc etc. and give out XP in that way. Perhaps the XP rewards would increase commensurate with levelling up requirements, or the level requirements would decrease to match the 4 sessions per level up to L5, 8 sessions per level after that...

 

[TaranTheWanderer]

I'm putting this here from another thread because it's probably more relevant to this topic:


"I feel goblins get about as bad a shake as orcs do. I find role playing out the extermination of a 'nest' of small sentient creatures, sometimes, repugnant. Mostly because the DM chooses to humanize them instead of portraying them as a scourge of vicious rodents. But almost every 1st level adventure has goblins as the main antagonist. They're like the gateway to murderhoboism which is another heritage of D&D. huh. Maybe this comment is better in the murderhobo thread...."

Feel free to do with it what you want. If you feel it's going to derail this thread, feel free to ignore it.

 

[MGibster]

Are we talking about murderhoboing which, in my mind at least, involves players just kicking down doors and killing everything in sight? Or are we just talking about violence in general?