D&D General A History of Violence: Killing in D&D

[Guest 85555]

Hear hear. Two close gamer friends died due to preventable health issues.

Sorry for your loss. Definitely something we could take more seriously in my opinion

 

[Maxperson]

Welcome! Stick around a while, we don't bite. Mostly.

Aren't you supposed to ask him if he's a bard before you say that?

 

[Guest 85555]

I've experienced plenty of wacky hijinks over the years, but murder hoboing hasn't been one of them. Even when I was a teenager, we didn't kill the clerk of the magic shop to rob him.

Honestly I experienced way, way more murder hoboing in Vampire: The Masquerade than I did in D&D

 

[Thomas Shey]

Intrusion situations could get a similar treatment but they lack an opposition. You could set traps and security systems as enemies but frankly, monsters are way more versatile.

As for social encounters, ‘social combat’ starts with the big disadvantage that D&D, as a role playing game, is already a social encounter in itself. Amongst friends ideally, but one player has the role and duty to play the opposition. As players, our ability to wield weapons in a pretended fantasy is not connected to our ability to deal with social encounters in reality. Pretended social encounters are muddied by the fact that they can be resolved by real-world social skills. It’s harder to remove the role-play elements of a social encounters and have it solely rely on the characters ‘attacks’ and ‘defenses’.

But the issue is, most people aren't necessarily any more good at "wielding" social manipulation than they are with swords. Honestly, a game system that has proper engagement with combat (i.e. where its not entirely mechanistic) doesn't necessarily have to have any less personal involvement than a social mechanic system; you don't have to do either of them all or nothing.

 

[Thomas Shey]

There are a lot of ways to get xp, but only one way to milestone: whenever the DM wants.

No. You can have it based on X sessions, when X time has passed in-game, or any number of other things. It doesn't have to be entirely ad-hoc.

 

[Snarf Zagyg]

Aren't you supposed to ask him if he's a bard before you say that?

All Bards are liars.
-Epimenides.

I'd try to unpack that, but it's all Greek to me.

 

[vagabundo]

Slight aside: the hobo part of murderhobo refers to the pcs generally having no real fixed abode or wandering around to different locations doing odd jobs - usually murdering..

 

[Pedantic]

No. You can have it based on X sessions, when X time has passed in-game, or any number of other things. It doesn't have to be entirely ad-hoc.

Notably, many game systems do advancement on a strict per session basis.

 

[Thomas Shey]

Yes, and milestone's incentives are strictly narrative, and thus not to my tastes.

As I noted, it doesn't have to be narrative based at all (unless you're using "narrative" so broadly that simply running the game counts for it).

 

[KYRON45]

With regards to Murder-hobos:
It's my understanding that the original concept of the murder hobo was that PCs had no back stories (I have no family, i'm a loner) and no ties to the community. They were just roaming the countryside killing things and taking their stuff. NOT that they were stabbing the local merchants with impunity.

I could be wrong.