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I agree that the absence of long-term, game-world consequences, is a hallmark of a murderhobo campaign, but I would urge caution on the part of DM's using in-game consequences for what they think of as "bad behavior." It takes a light touch, or the players will just feel like the DM is punishing...

I like to pop into the IF scene every year or two to see what's new. I tried installing a player on my phone, but typing out text-based commands with the thumbs just ain't worth the effort. Maybe someday I will be baller enough to use voice recognition to play Curses on the subway. "x...

Haha, man, I have never had the opportunity to spend this much time considering the adjudication of a player action before! It's quite an exercise. I should record my sessions and invite all y'all to mark up my DM-voice in red pen. But, since we're all having fun here, and we've made this...

Well said.

Sounds good. Again, yeah, it sounds like you play your game in a manner that is legit. My complaint is simply that you seem to be ascribing all sorts of faults to the way other folks are playing their game, based on isolated situations, mostly because we prefer to have players state their goal...

I would add. I think "murderhobo" is more a description of a kind of campaign than of one particular PC. Can players push a campaign in a murderhobo direction against the wishes of the DM? Sure. But I think it's a description of an overall pattern of the kinds of things PCs engage in. I also...

I'm sorry, the point of saying "it's not a mistake" is not to avoid fault on the part of this hypothetical DM. Maybe it was a 'mistake' to omit the information, maybe it wasn't. The point was to illustrate how an action resolution method goes about refining our knowledge about the fictional...

Not describing the exact weight of the table may not have been a mistake. As a DM, I can't give the players all relevant details in one description. I can only hope to identify all potential features of interest. I know that, as play progresses, we will have the opportunity to refine the...

If the players are stating a goal and approach for which the outcome is certain failure, I will not call for a check. Instead, I will look to clarify with the player why they think their goal is possible. This could mean giving more information to the player about the scene, or it could mean...

You seem to be conflating the statements of multiple posters to pull together a Frankenstein's monster of a D&D game. For instance, the secret compartment behind the dresser drawer than Lanefan described. This sounds to me like a very fine-grain encounter. The DM has not only identified...

Well put. 5ekyu, when you describe the actual approach used in your game, it sounds like a consistent and legit game. You might go to the dice more than I would like to, and I'm sure there are stylistic differences between all of us, but it doesn't sound like you're playing it wrong. What I...

There's nothing wrong, per se, with running an evil campaign. Just because the players get want to come home from work, kick back, kill some fantasy villagers and steal their hard-earned coin, doesn't make those players sociopaths. (It does make the characters sociopaths.) Have you ever played...

It's not word choice. It's action choice. There are far more ways to say, "I look under the bed," than there are to say, "I roll for Investigate." I'm sure there are DM's who, through lack of experience or a misunderstanding of the goal of D&D, play word games. They are looking for you to...

I prefer this analogy: Bob is controlling a robot through a radio uplink. Bob can't see what the robot is doing, but he gets basic descriptions over the radio. Fortunately, the robot has a bank of skills and knowledge, and is able to do most things on its own. Unfortunately, the robot has...

Skills only enter into it when we call for a check. Now, theoretically, I could see a situation where, knowing a character had a certain proficiency, I ruled an action to be trivial, whereas I would not make the same ruling if the character didn't have that proficiency. I guess the character...

I'd describe some of the classic pre-D&D adventurer archetypes as murdhobos. Fahfrd and the Grey Mouser. Conan the Barbarian. Look at a classic D&D module like B2: Keep on the Borderlands. There are ways to approach this dungeon that don't involve killing all or most of the inhabitants, but...

Player Skill vs Character Skill. My wife is very smart. Better educated than I am. Lightning fast learner. Experienced researcher. I'd say that her Investigation skill is at least as high if not higher than mine. She cannot, for the life of her, find her cellphone before going to bed. Why? I...

Here are some examples I'd see in my game. The characters are exploring a ruin. Over the course of exploration, they've seen a few different symbols, but no more than a half dozen, carved or painted onto various things. A few rooms back, they saw a particular symbol painted onto a throne. In...

If this is the case, and it is definitely something I experienced, particularly when I was new to DM'ing, I think the best thing to do is to look at why the expectations of "what is reasonable" differ between the Player and the DM. Is there something that the DM is not considering? Is there a...

Lots of the NPCs speak with Russian accents. Most gaming in my home-brew tends to be low-level, so things tend to stay local. I don't have a deeply complex lore. I also tend to make adjustments to it every time I use it. I think of it more as the group of assumptions I use when I run an...