D&D 5E On Murderhobos

[Warpiglet]

Consequences and repercussions are absolutely anathema to murderhobos. Some players like to kick the hornets’ nest, but most murderhobos prefer to do whatever they want, running rampant over the DM’s game.

Like many types of problem player, a lot of it boils down to power within the game. RPGs, at their best, operate on a shared basis. It’s when someone tries to imbalance that dynamic, DM or player, that we get railroading DMs, murderhobos, rules lawyers, and so forth.

This is correct.

I say foreshadow the fact that there is a tough baron who brooks no foolishness. Give him a name.

Later when enough BS goes down, have the baron's men on the hunt.

If this does not do the trick, have the badass baron and his men subdue and beat to 0HP the party and put them in stocks.

If this does not work have them harass the murderhobos who are now fugitives. For me as player or DM it is more fun to fight with armed equals than poor peasants.

Now its back in you control to a point. Make it about them surviving and running from the law. Make them live like the bandits that they are. I have had a blast with a group like this.

Of course if you HATE this, tell the group UP FRONT that you want to play good characters and then remind them out of character!

 

[Draegn]

I use a home brew version of the Dragon magazine critical hits and misses. My players know that any opponent might be able to do the same things they can do and that the dice will eventually fall against them.

 

[redrick]

This is correct.

I say foreshadow the fact that there is a tough baron who brooks no foolishness. Give him a name.

Later when enough BS goes down, have the baron's men on the hunt.

If this does not do the trick, have the badass baron and his men subdue and beat to 0HP the party and put them in stocks.

If this does not work have them harass the murderhobos who are now fugitives. For me as player or DM it is more fun to fight with armed equals than poor peasants.

Now its back in you control to a point. Make it about them surviving and running from the law. Make them live like the bandits that they are. I have had a blast with a group like this.

Of course if you HATE this, tell the group UP FRONT that you want to play good characters and then remind them out of character!

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 them, which can just lead to more un-fun for all.

Introducing consequences for PC actions will make the game richer. Certainly, PCs who rampage across the countryside, killing indiscriminately, should experience setbacks on the part of an increasingly organized countryside. But, ultimately, those setbacks should just be the kind of resistance from the DM that make the game fun in the firsthand. Maybe, the players will decide that they'd rather focus on other things than have to get drawn into a war against the small folk militia, and will gently be pushed back into rescuing little old farmers from big mean dragons.

The DM shouldn't communicate, through the game world, "play the game the way I want you to play it, or I will rocks-fall-everybody-dies every last one of you." That conversation needs to happen out of character, with the players and the kind of game everybody wants to play.

 

[Warpiglet]

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 them, which can just lead to more un-fun for all.

Introducing consequences for PC actions will make the game richer. Certainly, PCs who rampage across the countryside, killing indiscriminately, should experience setbacks on the part of an increasingly organized countryside. But, ultimately, those setbacks should just be the kind of resistance from the DM that make the game fun in the firsthand. Maybe, the players will decide that they'd rather focus on other things than have to get drawn into a war against the small folk militia, and will gently be pushed back into rescuing little old farmers from big mean dragons.

The DM shouldn't communicate, through the game world, "play the game the way I want you to play it, or I will rocks-fall-everybody-dies every last one of you." That conversation needs to happen out of character, with the players and the kind of game everybody wants to play.

Agreed. I hate railroading. I am just of the opinion that sometimes players try to railroad the DM!

Pretend for a moment there was a group of brigands disrupting the productivity of serfs, agriculture and commerce in medieval Europe. I would imagine some verisimilitude requires a response.

When younger, we used to laugh at villainy in the game. But really never got off on tormenting innocent NPCs. It was more goal-driven. Rob a manor, steal some gold and magic, fight a feud, run from the law if you get caught! We always had someone chasing us it seemed and it was fun.

However, that was what we told the DM we wanted. In the OP case, someone who has designed a heroic adventure with the expectation of LOTR is getting Grand Theft Auto. That sounds disheartening and less than fun for the DM.

 

[Celebrim]

Agreed. I hate railroading. I am just of the opinion that sometimes players try to railroad the DM!

Pretend for a moment there was a group of brigands disrupting the productivity of serfs, agriculture and commerce in medieval Europe. I would imagine some verisimilitude requires a response.

Some verisimilitude does require a response, but verisimilitude also requires that the response isn't strictly medieval.

Imagining the world as strictly medieval while it also has these magic wielding demigods in it is one of the things that causes the problem.

 

[Warpiglet]

Some verisimilitude does require a response, but verisimilitude also requires that the response isn't strictly medieval.

Imagining the world as strictly medieval while it also has these magic wielding demigods in it is one of the things that causes the problem.

Had the same thought. Lets reframe it then...

...a group of 30 brigands vs. 4 people with magic. Yet, I still think there would be an organized response would eventually be expected.

Frankly, the response could also include a wizard or cleric etc. The court magician might do some scrying. I am thinking it is LESS likely to get away with this stuff in a world of magic if you bother enough of the establishment. But again that is only one way to handle it. In our villain game we often were running the wilds too and there were no organized responses to be had. There also were no towns to terrorize either. The serfs were back in the fields, near stronghold for the most part.

As I contend, grown ups should be able to discuss and agree on some parameters for a game of this nature obviating a response like this unless it is baked in the sort of game you actually want to run.

 

[redrick]

Agreed. I hate railroading. I am just of the opinion that sometimes players try to railroad the DM!

Pretend for a moment there was a group of brigands disrupting the productivity of serfs, agriculture and commerce in medieval Europe. I would imagine some verisimilitude requires a response.

When younger, we used to laugh at villainy in the game. But really never got off on tormenting innocent NPCs. It was more goal-driven. Rob a manor, steal some gold and magic, fight a feud, run from the law if you get caught! We always had someone chasing us it seemed and it was fun.

However, that was what we told the DM we wanted. In the OP case, someone who has designed a heroic adventure with the expectation of LOTR is getting Grand Theft Auto. That sounds disheartening and less than fun for the DM.

Yeah, if the DM doesn't want to run a game of GTA, it's not a winning situation.

Verisimilitude is great, but it's also important to maintain genre consistency. genresimilitude. Players, over the course of a game, or maybe based on preconceptions, have an idea of how their actions impact the game world, even if they would have a different impact in the real world. If the DM moves too quickly to change these expectations, it can be jarring and disruptive, and lead to conflict at the table that would have been better addressed out of character.

An example. Say the players love having their characters jump off of absurdly high stuff, but always land feet first, like a character from Underworld. It's jarring to the DM, but they allow it, and so, if the characters make an acrobatics check, they can jump off 200 foot tower, stick the landing, and keep going. One day, the DM shows up and says, "You know what, I'm sick of this . You can't go around jumping off towers and not getting hurt. IT MAKES NO SENSE!" And so the next time a PC jumps off something high, the DM says, "You fall. 200 feet. Roll 20d6 damage." The DM ain't wrong. Those are the rules from the book. But they've also suddenly shifted the expectations of in-world consequences in the game and pulled the players out of the genre they thought they were playing in and into another one. They'll fight.

I've had things like this happen at my table before. Best to ease those consequences in gently, is all I'm saying. Players don't need to know the exact consequences of their actions, but they should at least know that the game world is reacting to actions along a certain axis and that there might be SOME sort of consequences for that. (Another example. Players routinely cast fireball, frequently in places where things catch fire. But the DM never worries about it and nothing ever does. Then the players cast fireball in a redwood forest, and the DM, rightfully so, says, "Oh yeah, also, I mean, fireball in a redwood forest. Sorry Smokey." Players would be miffed, because magical fire, up until this point, was treated as not really interacting with anything in the world other than hp-sacks. Nothing ever catches fire in Baldur's Gate when you drop a fireball on some fools in the woods.)

 

[Lanefan]

If the PCs decide to murder the villagers instead of rescue them then that's what I as DM am obliged to respond to as narrator of the world around them. I'm not going to tell them out-of-character "no, you can't do that" - it's not my place to do so - but instead just make note of what's going on and if it becomes a trend, quietly adjust alignments accordingly.

Whatever story there might be in the background might have to stay there, but even then there's sometimes ways to work it in.

The most recent case of real murder-hoboing in my game came when a party found itself behind enemy lines in a known-to-be-evil realm - the locals were often decent enough but the nation had been run by a lich for centuries. Party had to travel quite some distance, and so some of them decided to wipe out a few villages along the way. This led to some very interesting scenes e.g. where the supposedly-Good mage was fireballing a pub full of villagers while the supposedly-Evil Thief was climbing to the second floor to rescue the kids trapped up there...

Eventually they got where they were going, and the story creaked back into gear. (if you're wondering why no organized response came, the lich's recent destruction had plunged the place into civil war and they were all too busy fighting each other)

Lanefan