Sociology of the murderhobo

[empireofchaos]

Some musings about how adventurers fit into the world around them (Part 1 of an extended post).

http://bardichesandbathhouses.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-sociology-of-murderhobo.html

 

[Morrus]

Care to summarise?

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Wandering the earth slaughtering orcs, goblins, and other vile races of evil is not murder, its pest control with a bonus loot pile at the end.

 

[empireofchaos]

Care to summarise?

To a known extent, the imperative to keep the focus squarely on the PCs, and the imperative to embed them within a larger social environment which is replete with particular institutions, hierarchical orders, histories, and symbolic systems point in contradictory directions. Allowing for a little oversimplification, we might say that each approach is informed by a distinct fantasy aesthetic. The ‘hero-driven’ perspective in which society functions as a backdrop is rooted in Swords & Sorcery and Weird Fiction genres. The social world inhabited by their protagonists is violent, corrupt, broken, or simply distant, and irrelevant in terms of helping them overcome the challenges that face them. Their societies have lost, are unaware of, or are actively trying to conceal any information that the heroes might find useful.
The second, European strand of fantasy literature, offered a very different perspective on the relationship between the hero and society. The valence of this type of fantasy literature differed profoundly, and in some respects, diametrically from the Western, Swords & Sorcery, and Weird Fiction. Its heroes, rather than being antinomian frontiersmen, were deeply rooted.

EDIT: Changed the citation to what I wanted to quote.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Totally agree with the linking of the (romanticized) American frontier and the adventuring world. And arguably, PC motivations can be divided between the modes of Conan ("I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.") and Lord of the Rings ("I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."). Between the mercenary and the heroic.

For my part, I think murderhoboism comes particularly from thinking of the PC as a playing piece on a board game, rather than as a fleshed-out character. Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws get forgotten the moment they are inconvenient to the player's goals.

 

[Celebrim]

I suggest you either drop the pretentious intellectualism, and focus on what can be of practical use to a game or else you get a lot more footnotes and more rigorous citations. Right now the essay is in an unhappy place between blogging and a term paper, where it doesn't work well as either.

You also should go back through the essay and strike out any words that don't add meaning. There seems to be a brain of some worth behind this essay, but its muddled behind walls of excessively ornate verbiage.

And I say that as a writer that is infamously verbose and bombastic.

For example, pare down:

"To a known extent, the imperative to keep the focus squarely on the PCs, and, on the other hand, the need to embed them within a larger social environment which is replete with particular institutions, hierarchical orders, histories, and symbolic systems point in contradictory directions."

To something more like:

"The imperative to keep the focus on the PC's, and on the other hand the need to embed them in a larger environment replete with social institutions, histories, and legends point in contradictory directions."

And this:

"Allowing for a little oversimplification, we might say that each approach is informed by a distinct fantasy aesthetic (both of which influenced fantasy gaming in important ways)."

To this:

"Each approach is informed by a distinct fantasy aesthetic that greatly influenced fantasy gaming."

 

[Nagol]

Totally agree with the linking of the (romanticized) American frontier and the adventuring world. And arguably, PC motivations can be divided between the modes of Conan ("I know this: if life is illusion, then I am no less an illusion, and being thus, the illusion is real to me. I live, I burn with life, I love, I slay, and am content.") and Lord of the Rings ("I do not love the bright sword for its sharpness, nor the arrow for its swiftness, nor the warrior for his glory. I love only that which they defend."). Between the mercenary and the heroic.

For my part, I think murderhoboism comes particularly from thinking of the PC as a playing piece on a board game, rather than as a fleshed-out character. Bonds, Ideals, and Flaws get forgotten the moment they are inconvenient to the player's goals.

Muderhoboism is also encouraged when the players feel, for whatever reason, that the only group that can be relied on are the other PCs. Once the players decide 'us' refers to PCs and 'the other' is everything else, murderhoboism is one of the natural outcomes. This can come about from the players only adopting 'pawn stance' and dealing with situations as if their characters were pawns on the board, from too many betrayals from NPCs (one can be too many for some players), from NPCs who consistently appear hopeless and helpless, or from any of the other situations where the PCs only bond with each other.

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

All you have to do is have one NPC betray the party and NPC are forever marked as betrayers....and voilà all NPC are viable targets.

 

[Gradine]

This seems to miss touching on the nature of the relationship between players and GM, which I think plays a rather important role spurring on murderhobo-ism. A few folks have touched on the "NPC Betrayal" as a cause to view all NPC's with mistrust, but I think it runs deeper than that. It's not a mistrust of any particular NPC or even all NPCs; it's a mistrust of the GM. This is most often caused by one too many NPC betrayals, but can spring from any preponderance of evidence (real or imagined) that the GM is out to get them. When the GM is treated as (or acts like) an adversary of the PCs (and by extension their players), then all of the GM's creations become adversaries. Note, this doesn't just mean their NPC's; it also means their setting, their world, is the adversary. And no part of it can be trusted. This, I think, is the most important cause behind murderhobo-ism.

 

[Max_Killjoy]

Muderhoboism is also encouraged when the players feel, for whatever reason, that the only group that can be relied on are the other PCs. Once the players decide 'us' refers to PCs and 'the other' is everything else, murderhoboism is one of the natural outcomes. This can come about from the players only adopting 'pawn stance' and dealing with situations as if their characters were pawns on the board, from too many betrayals from NPCs (one can be too many for some players), from NPCs who consistently appear hopeless and helpless, or from any of the other situations where the PCs only bond with each other.

There's a lot of fiction out there for GMs to emulate in which you have almost nothing but the protagonists, the antagonists, and then "other characters" who will inevitably suffer horribly to motive the protagonists and/or show how "evul" the antagonists are -- fiction in which characters and setting all exist only to serve narrative purposes and act as narrative shorthand / shortcuts.