D&D 5E A good method to prevent Murder Hobos

[Asisreo]

You get a group of new players, they're all excited to play their character and have agency. They want to bash skulls and make their enemies fear them, but they're bred from videogames and only know one way to solve conflicts: Violence! So, they see a shopkeeper that isn't selling them that special sword at a discount and...they attack!

You, as a DM that wasn't expecting the "lawful good" player to lunge at the shopkeeper with the explanation that them not cooperating is essentially an act of evil, fear that they just might get their way! They don't kill him, but still.

Well, you get some guards set up and ready to lock them up, that'll show them! But alas, its too late. Them being locked up has completely thrown off the adventure and the BBEG had completed their plan 2 hours later. Why did they do this and how could it have been prevented?

Responsibilities.​

Many players always think about who their characters are and where they come from but they never give their characters responsibilities. Their characters are always just existent in the world but without a call to adventure, they don't do anything truly productive.

But responsibilities are what keeps us, as real people, in check. The reason we don't start picking fights with everyone that antagonizes us is because we can't afford the consequences due to our responsibilities.

Giving players a house, a family, an important job or title, or even land right off the gate is a perfect way to make the players think twice about whether they want to jeopardize their character's foundational assets.

Don't overdo it.​

While the advice can help players, trying to force them into responsibilities too important to ignore can derail the adventure in its own rights. A character with a family may not want to risk their family losing the only provider and may bow out of a particularly dangerous dungeon crawl.

Try to make sure their responsibilities don't rely on them being safe and alive, just not being overly reckless especially to the law. A house can be revoked if the PCs have a 20,000gp bounty on their heads but the house itself will be perfectly fine if a PC dies.

So, when working with new players, it could help to provide a reasonable responsibility to avoid players turning into the dreaded murder hobo.

 

[Ovinomancer]

This is possibly asking for more trouble. The issue I actually see here is that there's a mismatch between the game the GM is running and the game the players are playing. Your solution is for the GM to essentially require players to have things they aren't asking for and thinking this will solve the problem. I've tried it, and it usually results in the players ignoring these things -- because that's not what they want and/or they believe it's just a trap from the GM to force situations on them by threatening these things. There's a lot of players that look at RPGs as an escape mechanism -- a power fantasy -- and forcing these things on them will not solve the problem, it will make it worse.

Effectively, what's happening here is that you're trying to run a society simulation, and the players don't want to play-act social responsibility and positions, they want to kill things and take their stuff. The solution here isn't to force more society, it's to better align player goals with the game -- and often the game needs to move some here as well. A frank discussion with players is, by far, the best solution here -- you're trying to fix an out-of-game mismatch in play goals with an in-game solution, and that never works.

 

[Oofta]

How do I fix it? Much like @Ovinomancer, I just set expectations up front. Before we ever sit down I make it clear what type of game I run. I reinforce it in the session 0.

I also explain that there are consequences to actions, being an adventurer doesn't give you immunity to the law.

 

[Blue Orange]

There's a pretty good reason you rarely see adventurers over 35 or so. Most people would consider it pretty irresponsible for a parent to risk their lives and possibly leave their children as orphans for the sake of adventure. Amelia Earhart and Sir Francis Burton would have been seen as downright immature rather than romantic figures of exploration if they'd had kids.

It's probably more realistic to just send the town watch after them. I would imagine any reasonably-sized city in a D&D world has problems with murderhobos with greatswords+1 and fireball spells, and probably has squads of fighters, clerics, and mages to deal with the problem. Knock over a store in Waterdeep, you'll have to deal with the City Watch, just as if you rob a store in Times Square, the NYPD is right there.

Also, as far back as the 1988 CRPG Pool of Radiance, picking fights with the watch meant the shops and temples wouldn't deal with you. Good luck getting raised or depetrified...

 

[Ovinomancer]

How do I fix it? Much like @Ovinomancer, I just set expectations up front. Before we ever sit down I make it clear what type of game I run. I reinforce it in the session 0.

I also explain that there are consequences to actions, being an adventurer doesn't give you immunity to the law.

That's not quite what I was saying, though. This is just demanding players buy-in to your concept. It doesn't prevent mismatches, it just gives you a stick. Instead, I'm speaking to finding out what the player goals for the table actually are, and then running that game, if it's something that can be agreed to.

 

[Asisreo]

This is possibly asking for more trouble. The issue I actually see here is that there's a mismatch between the game the GM is running and the game the players are playing. Your solution is for the GM to essentially require players to have things they aren't asking for and thinking this will solve the problem.

Well, the purpose certainly isn't to pull a magic routine on them and have them not know what's going on. I'm upfront about nearly everything at session 0, so that may help.

"We're going to be running 'So-and-so' adventure next session. This is a session where you'll be rescuing the princess from the evil clutches of Mr. Yugdab. Think about what your character was doing before becoming an adventurer. Where are your parents? Where do you live? How do you get by? I want to know because I want you to feel an attachment to your character and the world so that you have proper motivations and guidelines."

This advice is mostly for a DM running with new players who have no idea what they're looking for. They rolled up a soldier but they don't know how important their background is, if at all.

You can explain the type of adventure you want to run in full detail and players might be eager to agree to that, but they may not exactly realize the breadth of expectations which is difficult to maintain throughout the adventure/campaign.

Giving them responsibilities that aren't crucial to their health is great because if players do want to engage, they get to and they get to choose how, where, and why. If player's don't want to engage, no big deal. A DM can just pull back from having those responsibilities being in that character's face.

Its much harder, however, to give a player a responsibility mid-adventure since the player will feel like they've been pushed into a responsibility rather than feel like they wanted one themselves.

 

[Oofta]

That's not quite what I was saying, though. This is just demanding players buy-in to your concept. It doesn't prevent mismatches, it just gives you a stick. Instead, I'm speaking to finding out what the player goals for the table actually are, and then running that game, if it's something that can be agreed to.

Well for all practical purposes I can afford to filter out players that don't want the style of play I prefer. I've been doing this kind of filtering for years, and always have a full table.

I do it because A) I'm a player too and I won't have as much fun DMing a murder hobo campaign and B) my wife plays and she gets a majority vote on general style.

I understand this may be different if you have a preexisting group of friends, but even then players have to realize there are consequences to their PC's actions. There may not be effective law enforcement in your campaign, there is in mine depending on where the PCs are. If nothing else, word gets around and nobody wants to deal with you.

 

[Ovinomancer]

Well for all practical purposes I can afford to filter out players that don't want the style of play I prefer. I've been doing this kind of filtering for years, and always have a full table.

I do it because A) I'm a player too and I won't have as much fun DMing a murder hobo campaign and B) my wife plays and she gets a majority vote on general style.

I understand this may be different if you have a preexisting group of friends, but even then players have to realize there are consequences to their PC's actions. There may not be effective law enforcement in your campaign, there is in mine depending on where the PCs are. If nothing else, word gets around and nobody wants to deal with you.

Great, glad to hear it, my point was that claiming you do what I do wasn't correct -- I was talking to a different thing. I find the "GM's way or the highway" to be not at all what I want out of games, or out of the social contract at the tables where I play. YMMV, glad you're consistently able to find players that are perfectly fine with this. But, my recommendations are not to put the GM foot down, but to find a consensus as to what game everyone wants to play.

 

[Krachek]

Being lock down in jail while the BBEG unleash a plague on the city, I applause on such a good starting scenario! Could be even better, if the BBEG take on the jail and recruit the party for his next mad plot.

 

[Oofta]

Great, glad to hear it, my point was that claiming you do what I do wasn't correct -- I was talking to a different thing. I find the "GM's way or the highway" to be not at all what I want out of games, or out of the social contract at the tables where I play. YMMV, glad you're consistently able to find players that are perfectly fine with this. But, my recommendations are not to put the GM foot down, but to find a consensus as to what game everyone wants to play.

Which is why I clarified "much like".

I don't use in-game reasons to stop players from running murder hobos, I discuss the topic outside of game.