10 Ways to Deal With Murder Hobos as a GM - Game Master Tips - GM Tips
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- Опубликовано: 5 июл 2024
- Murder-Hobos whether from Dungeons and Dragons 5e or Starfinder, we take a look at 10 ways you can as a Game Master deal with them.
08:04 #1 Consequences.
09:23 #2 Bounty Hunters.
11:09 #3 Give up! Run a murder hobo game.
11:45 #4 Shunned and hated.
12:48 #5 Talking to your players.
13:32 #6 More balanced NPCs.
14:44 #7 You set the tone.
15:35 #8 Educate the PCs directly.
16:44 #9 Give them a house!
18:03 #10 Give them NPCs!
14:44 #7 You set the tone.
Thanks @Lars Dahl for the breakdown
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08:04 #1 Consequences.
09:23 #2 Bounty Hunters.
11:09 #3 Give up! Run a murder hobo game.
11:45 #4 Shunned and hated.
12:48 #5 Talking to your players.
13:32 #6 More balanced NPCs.
14:44 #7 You set the tone.
15:35 #8 Educate the PCs directly.
16:44 #9 Give them a house!
18:03 #10 Give them NPCs!
I think this skip one of the most efficient ways of dealing with murder hobos:
Choose a proper RPG system!
Yes, let us be honest about it: The main source of murder hobos is bad RPG systems.
Not that I have precise statistics, but over the years I have gotten an intuition that say that the D&D series of RPG systems are the #1 source of murder hobos.
I think the Warhammer series of RPG systems come in at #2 source of murder hobos. (There are other RPG systems having this problem too, but they are minor.)
So avoiding those RPG systems is a real good way to reduce the murder hobo problem. (It is actually quite simple, as if you just steer clear of those two, you are likely to be good!)
Yes, this is in the category proactive.
Most of the advices here are attempts to fix the problem after it have shown its ugly face. (reactive.)
Here I think the most interesting is:
14:44 #7 You set the tone.
As your choice of RPG system is key important here!
Can you give an example?
MorgorDre to be honest, for all its flaws World of Darkness/Chronicles of Darkness is pretty good at balancing murder hobo'ing. There are mechanics built into the system that punish reckless or negligent characters. Also, if a pc doesn't min/max fighting.... there character will barely be able to hit the broad side of a barn until later into the game.
I think the suggestion was that if you do not play a game that is all about being a murderhobo then the problem will go away.
Honestly, I found WoD to be WORSE, except instead of engaging in honest face-to-face combat, literally everyone was engaging in political back-stabbing combat. It's barely better than the board game Diplomacy.
This needs to be pinned.
I had a MH group so chaotic they did more damage than the villian had planned. So the cult disbanded, repented then helped the village attack the PCs.
Holy shit that's a wake up call if I ever saw one.
Best kind of disaster is one where characters really tried to be good guys and it got out of hand.
I had once shadowrun session where we in middle of Berlin needed some distraction to get into corporate building. Our decker hacked into city surveilance system and rolled so well that he set off nuclear warning system.
It was one hell of distraction... except it had so many far reaching consequences that we had to move out of country pretty fast because we set quite the powder keg with that false alarm :-D
Therealhatepotion WOW when the heroes are so bad the bad guys just gave up
It was their first ever game without alignment so I think they lost focus and just wanted to “kill ‘em all” game with their new laser guns.
Unfortunately I kinda consider that poor GM'ing. Rolling so well it flips back over into poor consequences is, to me, somewhat spiteful because it punishes players for the one thing they can't control: the dice. It makes them worry about rolling high as well as low.
Also unless he pushed the limit he probably should have capped out at his Attack/Sleave attribute, depending on what he used to hack.
6:19 "Guys if you're going to kill everything that's a different kind of game and I'll shift to that type of game but..."
*draws knife*
"We're not roleplaying anymore"
LMAO 😆😆😅
CritCrab: The Murder Hobo That Broke the Fourth Wall
@Ajit Adonis Manilal Uhh...No offense, but you entierly missed the joke, lol. Read the initial comment again.
@Ajit Adonis Manilal, I feel like you missed the point here. The game, you would assume, is supposed to be fun for all parties involved. That includes the GM. To have them shut up and just allow the players to run amok rather than trying to effectively communicate how they are starting to perceive their players just allow it to spiral to the point a game just dissolves, and that's no fun for anyone.
It’s even easier to find new players.
It really comes down to setting expectations about the game everyone (players & GMs) wants to play before starting. Not every GM is a good fit for a group players. Just like every player is not a good fit for a table. It’s simpler to know before starting rather than wasting each other’s time. Then those that don’t fit the style that everyone else wants can go a find a different game they prefer, GM & players included.
We once killed all the crowns guard in town ,and then a dragon showed up and our DM just looked at us and said "do you know how many allies you would've had if you JUST. DIDN'T. KILL. ANYONE?"
hope you learned a lesson lol
Your DM is great lmao
We brutally killed a rival party in a pyramid when they were trying to negotiate to cooperate and get out together. Almost died on the last boss but we did it xD
I once played in a maritime murderhobo campaign wherein our PCs arrived on a deserted island to prospect for some rare magical metal ore. What we found there was even better.
The entire island was a hatchery for baby dragons. The weak and clumsy hatchlings proved no match for our superior murderhobo prowess. After easily slaughtering a few, we sat around the campfire eating baby dragon meat and reflecting on how much fun it was to exert total control over motherfucking dragons! Then somebody proposed a brilliant plan...
We informed our bosses the prospecting was a failure, the island had no ore and was barren and useless. Instead, we began marketing it as an adventure destination for the idle wealthy to experience the thrill of fighting real dragons. We contracted with local armories to supply weapons and armor, set up a shipping route to the island, began transporting tourists and made over a million gold within a few months. Eventually all the dragons were killed off and the business went under, but by then we were long gone. On to bigger adventures!
Until several months later, after our bosses caught wind of what was going on at the island. They were mad pissed that we set up a business on their real estate without cutting them in on the profits. They sent us on a mission to transport an extremely wealthy old man to a different remote island. Once we were far out to sea, the old man assumed his true form as... an Ancient Red Dragon.
That was how that entire campaign ended, with every last one of us being fried, dismembered, eaten, or drowned at sea.
kinda deserved that ngl@@johnalbert2102
I ran a house-rules D&D game which lasted for 9 years, set in a fantasy version of 1640 Europe which was experiencing an invasion of technologically superior Aztecs with steam engine battle machines, and I was able to avoid "murder hobos" by making combat absolutely terrifying.
Gunpowder and steam-powered weapons ignored armour, magic or otherwise, so there was incentive for people to run around unarmoured, relying solely on dexterity. A homebrew skill system linked to a critical hit system meant it was possible to chain up damage multipliers into ridiculous ranges through a combination of skill, surprise, hit location, and weapon quality. An unexpected shot from a rifle in the back of the head from a hidden position was almost a guaranteed kill, no matter how powerful you were. This meant that avoiding combat altogether was the best survival strategy. Players preferred to poison, trap, frame, blackmail, pressure, or even bribe enemies if they couldn't be absolutely guaranteed to wipe out the entire enemy force without witnesses and without leaving anyone alive to snitch.
It produced a very different style of gameplay, one of cautious ruthlessness, where a lot more time was spent setting up plans than actually executing them. Typically a gaming session would see only two or three combats, each one significant because it required so much finesse and pre-planning. On the rare occasions where straight-up face to face melees became necessary -- typically when both sides surprised each other -- it always provoked absolute barbarism with no quarter asked or given, and players using up all their saved-up emergency supplies as quickly as possible to provide as little opportunity for fairness as they could.
Not for everyone, perhaps, and it definitely didn't have a high fantasy swords-and-sandals feel, but it was entertaining enough to make the campaign last for nearly an entire decade.
"set in a fantasy version of 1640 Europe which was experiencing an invasion of technologically superior Aztecs with steam engine battle machines" What the actual fuck, I love this.
Im curious about the setting, were the PCs in an area already invaded/occupated by the aztecs? Or rather were they being invaded during the adventure? I might steal and recycle some ideas for an upcoming "stealth" one-shot I had planned.
This sounds incredible.
+Lorenzo I posted more details about the campaign in this thread: ruclips.net/video/XcF_oFp6zyo/видео.html&lc=UgwDwuOoLQayQ1xIGyx4AaABAg
In answer to your question, I just inverted the real history. Since Spain were the main aggressors and the ones who conquered the Aztecs, the main thrust of the Aztec invasion was in Spain, and that's where they had their occupying forces. But they also harried the French, English, and Dutch along their coastlines with steam cannon fusillades and occasional raids in armoured steam engines of war. (Since the Aztecs didn't use wheels, I gave Aztec steam vehicles legs and had them in the shape of stylized animals. You haven't known terror until you've been chased through a forest by a giant, 15 foot, armoured, Aztec steam llama.)
Sounds fantastic, you have inspired me to try something similar!
Sunset invasion but its eu4?
“You can’t kill it. A gazebo is not a monster,” is the most D&D sentence ever.
As you go to walk away from the gazebo, its pseudopod lashes out, wraps itself around your leg, and begins to pull you in.
"... You enter the town hall, the walls are decorated with colourful Gobelins..." - "I draw my sword and attack them! (dice) Ha! Critical hit!" - "Ok, the tapestry doesn't defend. You pierce through it and hit the stone wall." - "Is it dead?" - "Well, it's not alive, so in a sense it's dead." - "Any experience points for that?" - "You experience the mayor's baffled look and your mates ..." - "I facepalm." - "Roya looks away in shame." - "I point at him and laugh. 'What an idiot!'"
Great memories with that group. 🥰
It's clearly some kind of colossal mimic.
Murder hobos:”we will kill everything “
Me:”hmm, well you let that one guard escape, and what’s that, ITS A LARGE ARMY!”
ITS STONE COLD STEVE AUSTIN!
It's SLY MARBO!
I personally love consequences. Whenever I GM there are always consequences, mostly around the way they play. If a Paladin hams it up as a goodie goodie the other players may role their eyes but a little girl showing up with an extra muffin her mommy made really sets a nice scene. If the rogue is hitting on everything without a Y chromosome eventually one gives in and she'll grow attached and might either bare him a child or follow him along. If the fighter mocks the guard's incompetence then shows them how it's done and commits to it by waxing long about all the awesome stuff he's showing them then the guards grow stronger and remember him as the teacher. If the cleric starts preaching then he gets a congregation, if the wizard starts showing off and answering questions he's suddenly dealing with a kid who's learned prestigitation off him and calls him master now.
Consequences are beautiful if you're willing to commit.
@Ajit Adonis Manilal yeah whenever they are talking about consequences they are being a bit of a passive voiced coward because what they actually mean is retaliations.
Its not the universe of cause and effect its you as the GM that decides what happens so take some agency and ownership of your decisions.
And if you are gonna retaliate you are setting up an adversarial relationship with your players that even if you manage to discourage murder they will disrupt in other ways because you couldn't be enough of an adult to talk with them about it.
Love the gazebo reference :)
Also, always keep in mind that a "good-aligned" deity will _immediately_ withdraw all powers from any clerics or paladins acting this way or aiding other characters who do so.
I had to do this to my group's Paladin. She is (luckily she redeemed herself.) A paladin of the goddess of law, order, and justice. She didn't actively help to kill the guards for hire, who the party killed just because they were doing their job. Without trying anything else. But she also didn't step in to try to stop the two murder hobos in my group who did.
She lost all of her Paladin abilities right before a big boss fight.
The whole party had to stand on trial, amd she lost her job with the city guard.
I step by step explain by their choices, that it was Vecna all along that whispered to them, soothed them to sleep at night and gave them dreams, guided them to the people they needed to meet, and kill. And more than kill, free, freeing the likeminded who they will meet in the afterlife not as enemies but those who, half-aware of how to do so, cried out for death, not to end their suffering but cast off a worthless alien shell.
In denial of their true desires the paladin or cleric was hallucinating an entirely different cult, calling their true god by another's name. I tell them Bhaal would have found them strange, for there was no affect, no motivation, no pleasure, no murder or even suicide by an enemy's blade in their killings. They simply despised life and its pointless quests and conquests and piles of gold or good food and drink on a feasting table and embracing friends or blankets of a (living) lover's bed. They were undead before their bodies knew it. They weren't lying, so much as had no words to express themselves, like those who falsely seemed to be their victims but were actually cultists of death without religious education.
Which the players would recognize because they ritually killed them, in a primitive way, preparing them for the afterlife. Guzzling up the combat bonuses to attack I gave them, if they listened to the voice's words and did things according to it, turn for turn. Such as the bonuses to hit you get if someone is prone and consenting to death. For that is exactly what they were doing, though standing and making the motions of someone fighting to survive - mockingly, out of the same hatred for life as they had. I point out they sacrificed one of the members of their party who died in "combat", one by one, instead of resurrecting them, and walked with that person, willingly undead, to continue their passage to the afterlife they craved with utmost and flawless fanaticism. The NPCs, as word spread of their horrifying deeds, silently and quickly became the society of fellow cultists, surrounding and protecting their path through the thrice-accursed world of the faithless living. Mocking the adventurer's quest with them, filled with enthusiasm in their presence, freed of emotional baggage and hangups in their devotion. At the end they reach no hated BBEG, but an admiring lich who tells them everything they wanted to know of their god, who wishes to speak with them if they are ready.
@@Slapmybabushka Aw well that one's sad. The paladin player wasn't really participating in the murdering, but maybe didn't want to get in front of the other players, and got powers revoked anyway. It made sense though. Maybe it was the right call still.
I did that when somebody randomly killed a maiden after claiming they were "evil" (They used detect good or evil too, and ignored the outcome),
He claimed she saved the day, but died in a fistfight with the son lol, That was the story of how a new player ended up dying on a PRACTICE SESSION
a gm that just takes away the players stuff? lamee
I once had a GM who kept complaining about our group's habit of murdering all the opposition. The thing is, as we tried to explain to him, we always tried to solve things without violence, but nothing worked, either it failed or quite often we were just told "that won't work" before we even tried. So violence was the only solution to problems.
The group fell apart soon enough thanks to this and other issues.
This is a huge part of it. I'm in a group where everyone is slowly morphing into a murder hobo because we've been railroaded so hard for so long that it feels like nothing we ever do matters, so we just kill what's in our way. The GM keeps trying to prove he's smarter than us by having the villian be smarter than us, but it's not outsmarting, its what happens when the person with the god powers controls one side and is set against the players.
Sounds like a bad GM lol.
That's one of the first things I understood as a GM, many years ago: if you don't want your players to become insta-killers of anything barely antagonistic, you reward their attempts of doing it in another way, even if you think on the moment that was a bad idea. It's more work but damn me if it isn't rewarding! I prefer to change huge chunks of a campaign because someone decided to ally himself with a "villain" than because he just murdered another NPC.
Waaghstompa The feeling of actions not mattering sucks. I think it's a natural reaction to just start killing NPCs/whatever in the world. It's something players DO have control over. And it's a way to send a message to the DM, too, I guess.
However, have you all tried talking to the DM about it? It's possible the DM just doesn't know how you all feel, and might change his ways if you let him know.
Kasper Oja Indeed, if nothing besides killing stuff solves problem, the DM has no one to blame but himself when his players kill everything and everyone.
Murder Hobos also arise when the DM only gives XP for killing things. Why negotiate with the Goblin King when you can kill him and level up sorta thing.
That's why I DM without XP. You get lvl ups for milestones. Using your example, PCs would get a lvl up for "solving the conflict".
Whether they solve it diplomatically or by shooting his head off is up to them.
That way RP solutions get valued the same as combat which makes them more enticing by default because barely anyone shows up to a session to throw dice for 6 hours. People WANT to RP. DMs need to enable them to do so.
@@Psyman2 XP can work just not simply give XP in a old fashion way, give xp for solutions, and other things in the world instead of killing
This! Establish non-combat experience rules in Session Zero.
"In my games, any way you resolve an encounter is worth experience - so if you find a way to, say, rescue a hostage via negotiation or stealth? You'll still get rewarded. Meanwhile, killing random townsfolk doesn't give any experience."
"As you walk down the trail, you see an elderly looking man in peasant robes talking to 7 canaries..."
* They attempt to murderhobo *
"As your weapon bounces off the man's robe, the canaries begin to encircle you all. In a blink of an eye, the canaries are now gargantuan sized dragons of gold ready to attack in a moment's notice. The man raises his hand and the dragons stand upright like soldiers to a king.
The man speaks, in a serene yet commanding voice: 'Hail and well met adventurers, I am Bahamut, King of Dragons. Why have you attacked me?'
Bahamut, has given you a chance to speak."
This is a pretty good idea
Fatty0666 ah yes
5E in a nutshell
DOOD! YES! I did the same thing, but they were dogs, not canaries. the reveal came much later too. also, i had a lot of fun with changing his name to "Ahab Tum" (thats an anagram of bahamut, btw.)
that'd be funny
@Ajit Adonis Manilal seems fun
No
"AHHH!! please! no don't - Guards!! somebody help me! please! don't hurt me anymore I'll do whatever you want!"
- a reality check might help
What do we roll for said "reality check" I need to know if it is a class skill.
@@grendelkhan3082 Wisdom
From experience with this type of player, (as a FELLOW player,) this type of thing does not help.
"I cover their mouth before they finish their sentence"
- literally anyone
Reality check... through the skull
I've run quite a few games as a DM, and I usually run games with new players. I've never had players resort to becoming murder hobos. Even my most murderous players don't just start murdering the towns and villagers. In my personal experience, (the way I run the games) the best way to keep the players from murdering everything is to keep things moving and fun. I think that some DMs take the game a little to seriously. I always run the game pretty loosely. I don't throw difficult puzzles at them. I make it so that the town NPCs are quick to give out information and quest when asked. I make sure that if an NPC in a dungeon isn't hostile that it'll talk to the players first, so they know that conversation is still an option. That way they'll start to consider dialogue as more of an option, even with the hostile NPCs. Above all though, I try to make my new players understand that I'll let them do anything. They won't always succeed, but I always let them try; no matter what it is. Running my games this way wound up being a real blast, and the players really started to experiment with what could happen. They gained a goblin companion named glob from a dungeon. They created an entirely new deity called "The Banana God" who hates apples. They convinced a cult that their wizard was "the one true eye" and got the cult to kill a beholder for them. My point is, I give the new players the freedom to do whatever crazy non-sense they can think of, and if they're lucky enough to get a good roll, "I'll allow it." If playing like that isn't your thing, I understand; but that's how I've handle my games. I think that it's important to consider that it's still, just a game and the enjoyment of the players is your role as DM.
Perhaps, tho I have not roleplayed I just like some of the videos here, you could do that sorta trope in story telling where the person is trying to do a quest so they come along and they are locked out from someplace but they see the lights are on, so someone from the party knocks on the door and they open a latch, and say what do you want? The party explains, they don't care so they ask for a bribe or tell you to shove off, and the door is magically reinforced. Then wouldn't they be forced to make an investment into the place if they pay the bribe so they can get something out of it. If they linger you can always have someone 'escort' them off the premises, like a mage does a sleeping spell from the safety of a window, then you guys wake up without their sword of village slaying and they were mugged and now need to try and find equipment, but they happen to be by some kindly villager who decides to give these poor chaps some work to do. Or if they do pay the bribe, it can be a method to do questing, and because they may hire you into jobs you may or may not succeed at, it can progress the plot as well. And if they go with the kindly villager then you can have that villager be threatened by someone who is even more murder-hobo-y. So your person killing that person is sort of like putting the past behind you, its a transition, who knew I would be protecting someone from someone I was like, its significant. It could change how they view the game. Thats how I see it anyways. I have no experience roleplaying really, just borrowing tropes from movies or fiction as tools and building off of it.
Those all sound like good ideas for trying to get the party to stop being murder hobos to me. I was just saying though that this is what I do to prevent the party from becoming murder hobos in the first place because I run games with a lot of new players.
I'm not one to ask this kind of thing in youtube comments but Ogichi, can you please run a campaign for me and some newbies, What you described is kinda what I look for in a DM.
I'm afraid I can't. I don't have internet where I live, so I can't really do voice chats and stuff. Sorry.
There are different levels of murder hobo, too. I admit, when I started out, monsters were just monsters. I remember a few times where the DM set us up to have a conversation with a sapient monster, and we just attacked. Now I'm my old DM, in that regard.
"Are we the baddies?"
"the badges on our caps, they've got skulls on them"
I gave my players a castle to call their own (I literally told them "No one will really mind if you take the vampire's castle; he won't object after you kill him.") One of my players, a ten-year veteran of D&D, admitted that in all his experience, he had never gotten a castle of his own. None of the players had.
They immediately began badgering me with questions about how they could upgrade their new home and struck out on adventures to find the gold to upgrade the thing. Yes, I put the castle in peril several times, but they fought off the intruders each time.
In short, they loved it. It not only gave them a tangible connection to the game world, but it also gave them an end goal for the "kill things and take their stuff" mentality- they needed the stuff to play with their new toy.
there's an old tale in my country, basically a fable, anyway it tells about a realm where all the men were mining gems in the mountains, ignoring the fields and their families etc..The nobility tried to give them gold, force them, nothing worked. The vision of striking a big deposit and becoming filthy rich made them blind. Until one prince, the hero of the story, came and gave them beautiful horses. Now, you can't feed an horse with gems or gold, so the men returned to the fields. Your experience reminds me of that. (i am aware there are fallacies in the story, it's a fable XD)
@@Eisenwulf666 I love this idea
Damn right you can't kill the gazebo!
That sounds absolutely DREADful.
Unless, of course, the gazebo is a mimic.
If isn't a mimic, you can turn it into a mimic or golem, and then kill it.
When people start attacking gazebo's.. we have to introduce some don Quixote ripoff to save the "fair villagers" from the "spider queen" for the lulz
But i rolled a nat20...
Everybody's dead Dave. Dave everybody is dead Dave.
What, Captain Hollister?
Ieuan Hunt What about Rimmer? Kochanski?
What, everybody?
Dead Dave, everybody is.
umm36 is that your Star Wars/Red Dwarf crossover idea? With Yoda as Holly, that sounds kind of cool actually.
Character: "I have a back-story..."
Murder hobo: "I have a back-stabby..."
"no, you can't kill that, it's a gazeebo..."
ten seconds in and I'm already laughing my ears out!!!
My all time favorite way of dealing with Murderhobo's was using court.
I had a few friends who never played DnD before and wanted to get into it. So I had them make full backstories but as there were only used to pc and console games the idea of roleplaying never came to them. I attempted to give them NPC's to interact with however they would pretty much kill on sight.
So after about 2 level's of this (They were level 3 at this point) I had them captured and sent to jail. They then had to speak their case in court (Forced RP) as family members of the slain came in seeking justice and the characters own family came in ashamed of their actions.
The campaign ended after the court ended as they were sent to death but the players realized how DnD is very different than a PC game and most of them kept playing and really enjoyed the RP more than combat.
I remember in one of my games I stated up a Batman-esque anti-hero called the Enforcer (I know it`s corny but I was twelve lol) who put up announcements in the town that he would be coming for any wrongdoers vigilante justice style.
I knew it had worked when my players started stoppig eachother saying, "Hey man stop that, I don`t want to have to deal with the Enforcer right now!
On the other end of the spectrum is our party, who has refused to kill anything so far. The only thing we did kill was a mimic, but we later learned that the very obvious mimic was supposed to be a new companion. Whoops.
My DM made me a murder hobo... He gave me a sword that gets more powerful the more souls it has... Needless to say, I've started a couple wars...
He gave you Soul Edge!
Murder dildo c:
The Ebony Blade
Frostmourne
[Edgy sword name]
I once had a very interesting campaign with an actual narrative with a murder hobo player. One of the players was playing a violent psychopath with no moral compass who was done living among the rabble of society and the other was his sister who was so Desperate to keep her last remaining family member alive she was willing to go along with his plans and the two went on to be the most wanted serial killers in the land. They dodged authority's and a world class detective who went on to be the nemesis of the campaign and one of my all time favorite characters. In the end when the law was a couple of days from catching them and the brother went so far as to turn on a widowed mother with 3 kids the sister turned him in.
It was close to a dishonored situation. A massive plague with tones of abandoned buildings rats everywhere and moral corruption everywhere. When we met to talk about what they wanted they wanted dark so I planned for dark.
There had been plenty of events leading up to that that caused a rift between the characters that was just the moment she decided to act on all of it.
I find real consequences to murderhobos a great way to stop them.
3 methods i use, depending.
1 they are now outlaws, and have to deal with the authorities. Can create fun stories of the players being the villians. Also alignment shifts. How can you call yourself any sort of good if you casually murder people?
2 snipers, or assasins. That noble had hired assasins after all... mostly when i rule that character has to die, due to flow of campaign
3 that guy they tried to murder is far tougher then they think. Just because the dark general came peacefully to negotiate, or a diplomat comes to hire the heros guild, dose not mean that npc they are trying to murder for shiggles is low level, or even on their level.
I had a lv 5 party once decide they were going to bully a diplomat who was hiring them from the guild for a job for more pay. They lost (because he was a lv 15 warrior with high charisma and leadership) so they tried to kill him and steal all his gold.
It did not end well, 4 of them who went along with it died, and the guild contract was lost. So 4 people had to re roll, and they took things more seriously after that.
Moral of the story is, just because an npc is a non combat npc, or a quest giver, dose not mean he is a wimp.
Of course most of them are, but not all
*does
The first one is OK, not a bad idea if everyone likes it. The second I don't agree at all, your players will see it as just you wanting to kill them, period. The third one is boring, but to make it better: if you make the NPC not unkillable but very hard to fight, and make the next one a little more difficult, and so on until they finally get that something's going on (make a plot around it!), they will stop being murder hobos and start asking questions and investigating.
Chrysanthus well to be fair the 2nd one is me trying to murder someone.
Ill admit thats my one fault as a gm. If you purposefully try to break my campaign, and ignore my warnings in and out of character, i start sending npcs who use player tactics to eliminate the threat. The encounter is still winnable , its rather similar to what he discusses. A crossbow sniper i chose because most people i play with feel crossbows are useless, so in pathfinder i made a crossbow sniper that could out do almost any bow build to prove a point. He was able to hit targets at maximum range increment reliably. Longest shot was at about a mile away.
So for me, yes its cheap, but it was also satisfying as i rarely have more then one murder hobo in a game,i tend to be lucky.
#1 is more a campaign shift, story goes on kind of thing. Tho i am a firm believer in gm forced alignment shifts. If your chaotic good, and murder innocent people, i will ask your characters rp justification, and shift your alignment accordingly if need be.
Tho i also dont belive in an alignment shift if a character is mind controlled or tricked. If a paladin is dominated by a wizard and kills a ton of orphans, i feel its wrong to alignment shift him, unless his character keeps doing it, or the player tells me he wants his paladin to fall, for a plot line.
I am a firm believer in cause and effect after all
Number 3 reminds me of one of the running gags about Forgotten Realms where that bartender is a polymorphed ancient silver dragon, or the minstrel is a retired level 20 bard, etc. So bullying random NPCs usually results in dead PCs.
If someone, after talking out of character like a serious and mature person would do it, will still insist on the problem, then I tend to tell them that they are not forced to play and the door is open for them to leave. It's the last resort to me, and I only say it after a loooong and hard series of discussions with them, and I have never had to say it (only twice in my life a player has left because this reasons, and it was with VERY immature persons who nowadays are still proving everyone who such a dicks they are, for what I have heard. I didn't even got to this point in the discussion before they left).
As for alignment shifts, I use the rule of letting them commit more than one transgression, always asking them for the reason for why they did what they did and never shift too fast their alignment. Generally, the second a player sees his Chaotic Good become Chaotic Neutral, he doesn't let his character full fall into Evil. Never had a moment in my life where they don't stop being dicks when this kind of things happen, but I confess I almost can't the remember the last time I had to do it.
I wonder if a GM has gotten murder hobos and the big bad just offered them a job. Bonus points if they take it.
Weaponized Pizza
I have, and he took it. Had the murder hobos off each other.
Thought the title said "10 Ways to Murder Hobos" for a minute. I got excited.
"We plan to cut all homeless people in half by 2025"
I really want to run an adventure that starts with the pc's being hired to avenge the actions of a bun ch of murder hobo npc's who acted just like murder hobo players have in the past. It's an amusing in joke and I wonder how long it would take for my players to realise it. When the witness statements go along the lines of "they just walked in to the feast hall, never said a word. They just started butchering people without the merest hint of emotion or anything" it might not immediately sink in.
If telling it as a joke the npc witness statement would end with something like "as they were walking away leaving some of us to bleed to death one man grabbed at their ankles and demanded to know why they were doing this. One of them simply said "we're the pc's" as if that was some kind of explanation."
The joke could be even better if you make them very cliche. Make the sorcerer be extremely handsome, the barbarian unreasonable, the bard a dangerous womanizer... They will get the joke eventually, without the last part of "we're the pc's". You can even make the witness say that they said "You didn't got a dungeon or a princess to save, what did you expect?".
Raphael Perry That's a great idea! LOL 👍
Oh they'd be extremely cliche murder hobos. The kind who only speak to npc's if they can find out where to find things to kill and rob. Possibly reminiscent of characters the players have played previously but without being carbon copies.
I wanna do a campaign at some point that's set inside an MMORPG where the player characters are actually NPC's within said world, and murder-hobo PC's are a problem plaguing their world.
Ohhh I've done this. Had a new bunch of decent player characters hunt down and capture for a cruel execution some murder hoboes who were the arrogant characters of the previous lousy group. It was extremely satisfying for all of us.
Saw a weird in setting way to deal with this. Place was pretty enough, meadows, cliffs, small settlements, but the monsters were hard, vicious, very tough. Players start young and git gud over time, but do not underestimate humble guardsmen, they have seen some shit, they know how to use that halberd, and spellcasters really will juggle you and ruin your day. In a setting where an average guard is level 7, players can't murder-hobo out of the gate, or for long.
As someone accused of being a murder hobo I really appreciate your video. It gives me a lot of different ways of thinking about how people perceive my actions and things I may want to bring up to the GM in down time as potential things my character might be able to do in the future.
I don't know why, but Guy's sleepy-yet-intense way of speaking is so fun to watch and listen to.
Also, "if they do it a second time, however, squish them with a meteor" made me laugh so hard I woke up the whole house.
An experience I had in my game
GM: The now, defeated, young queen quietly surrenders.
P1: She insulted me earlier, so I begin to brag about my victory "So... You thought you were so cle-"
P2: I shoot her in the face because I don't like speeches.
GM: Well, that's it, you killed her, the very last of her bloodline and one of the only survivors from the tragedy 10 years ago, gone with the pulling of the trigger
Da queen no da wae, but da queen you have slay. *tears*
P2: "Good riddance."
I doubt the guy who shoots the BBEG in the face would be the sentimental sort.
GM Continues: "And now how are you going to stop the dragon?"
P1: "What dragon."
P2: "The one that's going to kill everyone soon."
The Queen was the only thing that kept the floating rocks from falling and killing everyone
As her blood trickles across the cracks in the floor the crackle of magic can faintly be heard from the curse of the Hell gate opening just beneath your feet. The screams of demons are already howling for your flesh....
Having all the NPC' s be dull with no backstory or just having all of them being dicks to the players I find has definitely caused for some good aligned characters to end up going murder-hobo'ing. (New Verb)
Good point. Players need to be invested in their world in order to care about fitting into it. If every NPC interaction is either forgettable or unpleasant, the DM's made a rod for their own back right there. Even if the DM wants a somewhat antagonistic attitude from those in authority towards the party, there should also be NPCs who like the players. The innkeeper who's always glad to see them for example, or the amusingly eccentric shopkeeper.
Gorom Valand Yes, if the DM is always playing the NPCs as unhelpful jerks, then he shouldn't be surprised when the players are aggressive or violent toward them.
My last GM just made obstinat NPCs. If the conversation lasted more than a minute, just kill it, otherwise you will be there all night.... Fortunately another player who had played with the GM before was wise to it, but it took me a while to figure out why his character was so erratically violent...
The NPCs I write don't start out as assholes. They just turn out that way wen characters are breaking into their house in broad daylight. Or the party who was conscripted to protect some traveling merchants who I explicitly introduced as NON-COMBATANTS, but they get mad when those same merchants aren't helping them fight the band of Gnolls that's attacking the caravan that the merchants ARE STILL DRIVING.
The thing I do to prevent my players from murdering around the NPCs is to let'em seduce the "important" NPCs when they ask to. It makes them more encline to have deeper relations with the NPCs than "I kill them". And none of them turned murderhobos. Welp. One did, but he started as a neutral evil, and warped to chaotic stupid after a few sessions. A big part of the plot for the PCs was to prevent her from just killing everyone around for no other reason than "I want". Ended up that they all died when she bit at a cursed phylactery and it exploded, instakilling everyone.
That whole seduction thing didn't happen very often, but it's always fun to have the human cleric get into a lesbian relationship with Shalelu.
I don't remember where I heard this, but a GM suggested the following in relation to this situation:
"Never tell a player 'no.' Saying 'no' takes the exploration and wonder out of the game, and ultimately leave everyone unsatisfied. The best solution, then, is to say 'Yes, but there WILL be consequences...and I don't think you're going to like it.' In what way you impose those consequences is up to you, but a good GM will use something like this to take a game in a whole new, possibly more fun direction. Ultimately, the point is to have fun."
The things you stated are great suggestions. This is why it's important for GMs to detail their campaign and world, as well as learn from other GMs to make their experience the best it can be. Nothing spiritually and emotionally murders a murder hobo faster than suffering an extended and needless side quest which rewards nothing and wastes time.
I believe Projared is the one who said that line as I remember watching that video.
I personally hate that mentality, it works if you have experienced players and GM who know how to play, but otherwise not being able to say no has a bad habit of reinforcing bad behavior that can be destructive to the party or campaign.
For example, if a player asks to pickpocket or hit another player then that's going to cause needless fighting outside the group because the GM was unwilling to step in and say no. Or if a murder hobo player constantly tried to kill the king or ruler and constantly gets the party into trouble and ignores the other player's protestations and you as GM refuse to stop it because you are unable or unwilling to say no, then that will cause nothing but problems
Apologies for the long rant, I just don't want a GM that says yes all the time or no all the time because both extremes can (and will) cause problems in the group that could have been easily avoided.
All role play issues can be solved by role playing.
If you DM a living setting, with real consequences, the mobos will weed themselves out in short order. All but the staunchest mobo players will adapt, and the extremists will leave.
You don't need a specific way to do it, just think "what would happen in a world inhabited by actual people?"
And what about those? We have one in our group that we have started to reign in a little but he's still regressing every so often (meaning: every session with a few exceptions he'll cause-or try to cause-th death of someone, rob them and cause general mayhem).
We can't throw him out and he's gotten in a lot of trouble more often than I can count (he used to die once or twice every session)and it doesn't seem to help.
My only hope is that we (the one's who don't constantly end up dead) will one day outlevel him enough and go on adventures that he'll just keep dying in and eventually quit but that would require the GM to go along and not give him level x every time he restarts (he hasn't started doing it but I fear he may one day;if he's not to unimaginative for that) or that we'll finally end up taming him enough to not constantly cause havoc.
We're all pretty inexperienced players, most/all with slight murder tendencies and a not-very-good DM (which is to say: one that just falls short of being a bad one by not being a total asshole/unfair) but none as bad as this one player.
So it's your DM's fault...
_"We can't throw him out and he's gotten in a lot of trouble more often than I can count (he used to die once or twice every session)and it doesn't seem to help."_
Why are your characters still adventuring with a murder hobo? Are they okay with him doing what he pleases and potentially screwing them over?
Because the whole thing is hosted by my uncle who's VERY reluctant to throw anyone out even if he's obviously not compatible with the game, the rest of our group or our objectives. I mean, I get that you might want to give children/teenagers and relatives a second chance, but it's just getting ridiculous and turning into an completely unmoderated game where 25% of time the only one really having fun is said murder hobo/troll.
No to the second, but we're essentially powerless to do anything about it (the good news is that he isn't allowed to outright attack us either) and can't really find another group to play with. We might not be able to really do anything even if someone else takes over DMing but it's probably still our best shot.
Luna Fowler Has the party tried killing his character themselves?
demon traps pcs and tells them
"hey, look. I can free you if you will be my heralds. I will even give you power if you do some stuff for me"
first player be like
"ok"
player gets some power, others are jealous.
demon visits next player in dream, offers them to be his herald too
"ok"
cue every player becoming his slave (last one due group pressure)
and they begin to slaughter villages and behead nuns.
Yaaaay.
My plan was for them to resist the demon and find another solution to the entrapment but whatever.
2 sessions of mindless slaughter later. Inquisition. TPK.
That's why i let them do what they want, if they wanted to explore that option i let them even if i don't favor it. Players fun goes first. The bigger problem was that we wanted to start a campaign module and this was supposed to be the lead-up to that. But wasn't possible with evil characters, so we needed to start from scratch anyways. If it didn't end in a TPK, which they could have avoided on multiple instances, i would have just narrated the closing curtain on that part. It was a cool "once and never again" kind of thing anyway. Of course i learned some things from it as a DM.
The evil route just happens to be the one that gives better short-term rewards most of the time. Thats why murder-hoboing is so popular. I think its not really my job as DM to pull them away from that route. What matters is that we agree as a group how we are comfortable playing. Nowadays they see those options but decide against it. A sign of maturing players.
The next step is once they become powerful villains, have them all make new level one characters who have been negatively influenced by their old characters and now they have to rise up and kill their old evil characters for vengeance or justice, whatever their motivation. And in the process, they end up defeating the demon with their new good characters.
In the end, they get to play the murder hobo and kill and destroy, they get a good back story for their new characters and they get to have an awesome adventure where they get to fight several powerful villains and a demon at the end.
Natasel that’s why you make it very plain to them while they are creating the new characters that they have to have some reason (revenge, need for justice, etc) for their character personally to want to bring down the evil character they just got done playing. In my experience, players will actually get super excited to fight their overpowered bad guy. They’ll even argue over which one they want to kill first, each one wanting their personal revenge first. It all comes down to the session 0 and how well they understand what the goal for the switcheroo is. Also it’s great to see the looks of surprise and sometimes dread when they realize they just min/maxed the bad guy.
Natasel lol we must have very different players.
Had similiar experience. I was the player. Evil McEvilwizard guy captured my Halfling Alchemist and throwed him into jail in his fortress where he had army of goblins under his command.
Since rest of group was taking their time rescuing me, I decided to switch sides and become henchman to that wizard. He gave me some 100 goblins and send me to plunder nearby city... where rest of my party was... well partying for lack of better words.
Was kinda fun to be in charge of goblin horde going against city militia while party members were wondering wtf is happening, how those goblins managed to blast away gates etc.
In my third session dming a few of my players murdered an inn keeper in the boondocks for no reason so i improvised and said some neighbors came by and asked what happened and they ended up calling the guard. One of the players were a gunslinger so the ball bearing in the keepers head was a telltale sign it was them. The investigation went underway and they were brought in for questioning. The players set up someone else in the party to die and convinced the interrogator with very good rolls. So the player was imprisoned and i gave him a small opportunity to escape and e rolled poorly and was rather dumb and failed. He was brought up and lynched the next morning and had to roll a new character.
I think consequences are a great way of preventing new players form murdering.
That sounds like a really, REALLY, bad experience. I probably wouldn't play with that sorta group ever again.
I had the PC's just be like "Yep. This is normal. We're used to the nobles killing whoever they please."
The players decided things needed to change and fought against the nobles to create a safer world for the peasants.
One of the things I've enjoyed experiencing as a player in a campaign, is the way my DM has interacted with my group. My character is a Noble Human Female Barbarian (Long story, interesting details) and we'd encountered a town in our travels that was wholly racist and antagonistic towards one of our members, to the point of actually poisoning a water supply that caused some distress with the character (And the player, amazingly) due to the fact that the player felt attached to their character enough to want to help fellows of their characters' race, who were holed up in a cave and suffering. We pulled a bit of a murder hobo in this instance admittedly, as once we'd figured out that the mayor was underhandedly doing these things, and the small town was essentially aiding in this, we proceeded to raze the town, and used the newly emptied out residences to allow the previously ill and poorly treated race of people (Kenku, for reference) to re-populate the town. My character led the assault, and as I'd been dutifully using retainers to perform menial tasks here and there throughout the campaign, I acquired a mass of gold, and used it to invest in the town, rename it, and at current it's being used in a sort of Pseudo-Civilization themed mini-game, where the town has an export, import, etc. and I have to manage it. It's done wonders for distracting me, as I've myself been a little bloodthirsty at times, but I remind myself that I'm trying to set an example for the places we liberate, and I can't do that if I'm just out and destroying anyone with a vaguely antagonistic nature, and as an extension I cannot allow my party to also just slaughter wantonly without making a village I own look barbaric as a result.
This subject makes me think of a good story about Murder-hobos. This actually goes back to Punch & Judy, an English puppet show. After some disagreement, Punch would always end up killing his wife, his son, the constable, the hangman, the King, the devil and even Death. One could argue this was nothing but childish nonsense; but I see in it a profound despair, a erratic clinging to life, a maniacal descent into hell that is worth playing through. Quite honestly, I wouldn't stop there. Imagine if the Great Creator of the Universe come to them with a contract : ""Well, you killed Death, and now people cannot die. I need someone else to assume this charge. Would you care for a job about killing people?"
And then he also kills the creator.
My go-to is establishing early that the players are not the only badasses around. After the first couple incidents, the next group of people they fuck with just may include a high level retired adventurer.
This worked particularly well in a high powered Rokugan inspired campaign, where I straight up told the players in session 0: this is a kung-fu movie world. There are high level individuals everywhere. I had to play this out in game with one player who always plays the same arrogant “lawful evil” psycho. He was playing a samurai, and I had what could have been a quick non-combat encounter where a man carrying large buckets of water walked down the road without acknowledging anyone. As I knew he would, the player got in a huff and demanded that the man show him respect, eventually physically grabbing him, causing him to drop the water. Turns out, that man was a level 15 monk on a brutally difficult pilgrimage that forbade communication of any kind from beginning to end. The players were level 5. What followed was a savage beat down that left that player sulking for the next two sessions.
That being said, Murder hoboing is often a symptom of various kinds of bad DMing.
9:15 - "If they do it a second time around, squash them with a meteor." Master of subtlety. I think you'll get the point across :P
You're way more entertaining than ANYONE else talking on this topic and you're just being yourself! 10/10!
Plus your dry humour has had me laughing for a long quite a while now lol
a setting where people are cursed with immortality where they fall into a short torpor instead of dying should be interesting when it comes into contact with a murder hobo party.
Yeah. Now they get to senselessly murder the same NPC again and again. That'll learn them.
Given that a primary cause of Murderhoboism is lack of consequences, I'm less than confident that completely removing consequences is the solution. To say nothing of the fact that the PCs are unlikely to be paid much for killing Orcs that come back to life the next day.
How about this: a setting where anyone whose actions directly lead to killing someone else, even accidentally, will die immediately. The quest is to deal with a cult of fanatics driven mad by life under the curse and "liberate" themselves and others through murder. They must either sacrifice their characters to stop the threat, or find a way to do it without killing them.
+TB Tabby
Simple and direct honesty may in some ways be thought of as the purest expression of true respect possible. I would like you to place the comment that follows in that context.
Your idea sucks balls.
It could very well work as a short story or novel. I don't see it working in an RPG.
so basically dark souls but you dont go crazy from coming back to life
so it's oblivion where everyone is essential?
"Squash them with a meteor" lol
6 Signs you may be a Murder Hobo: ruclips.net/video/C5E8wzwjO2U/видео.html
Number 4 will suprise you :-D
Guy, I kept thinking back to this Co Optional Podcast episode... "No.... you killed, like, six quest givers." ruclips.net/video/7mnvuoLs2wY/видео.html
Very insightful. I really enjoy and appreciate your videos. Great quality stuff. I think they are the best out there when it comes to D&D advice.
Well, in the system that I typically play with my friends (Midgard, the oldest German system), murder hobos are rarely a problem because of one simple reason: Battles are always dangerous. You can be a high level knight in plate armour and your enemy can be a peasant with a pitchfork and still kill you if he is lucky. First, you have a split between health and stamina. Leveling up will increase your stamina but not your health. You can block or dodge more attacks without being exhausted but you cannot take more direct hits.
Now, some people might say: "He will not even hit me. His chance to hit is low as hell and even if he hits, I can still roll my much higher defense. And even if that fails, he still has to get throug my armour." But there is always the chance of a critical hit. Once you roll a 20, the enemy can only defend with another 20 or they take damage to their health. And a critical hit does not simply increase the damage of the hit; in many cases, it does not. Instead, it gains an additional effect because of a certain area that was hit. These often make a character completely unable to keep on fighting (stuff like broken limbs, unconsiousness, inner bleeding and so on). The hit does not even need to do damage in most cases. You do not need to bleed for a concussion to have an effect for example.
And because there is always the risk of being taken out by critical hits, being outnumbered is much more of an issue in Midgard, as more attacks also means more chances for crits to occur. Fighting a single, very strong enemy might prove the safer option than fighting dozens of weak people at once because you were kicking a begging child in the slums.
Awesome video, this covers so many problems that happen in games! As an example: I once played a game where a 1st time DM had basically every NPC treat the Players something like this: "You're the only one who can save us! Now get out of here you slime balls!" By the end of it even my brother (A DM of many campaigns himself) was ready to go full murder hobo on the whole place. "Why are we trying to save these guys again?" I think Chris Perkins (of Wizards of the Coast) once said that you have to have a "world worth saving." Love your videos!
Love your videos bud. Always nice to get new ideas even when you're already experienced!
I have one way, but you guys won't like it
show them warhammer
DIvayth89
AoS: Skirmish, and Warhammer Quest in particular for fantasy murderhobos.
Epic solution. XD
I concur and just had a mega nerdgasm
Dork Heresy.
Lend me your flashlight, guardsman.
rouge trader, you want to kill everything? fine, everything is now trying to kill you
"why yes, Dave, the gazebo did just eat you, guess you should've tried to kill it"
XP...,killing stuff gives more XP and more frequently then quests or anything else...
Give more Xp for various stuff outside killing, will be an incitive to change their behaviour.
Or don't use XP at all. Best campaigns I've watched, played, and managed never use XP. The milestone system is far superior if you want your players to consider all aspects of the game from the start. XP systems, regardless of your solution, lead to fighting as people will always inherently make the connection between the two first.
I'm loving your channel! My favourite parts are your smart assery! They are hilarious and I feel like I'm becoming a better GM/DM just by watching you!
Wait... how does Guy do sessions of d&d, prepare for them as a gm, prepare and make RUclips videos, and then edit in special effects, and then not be over-encumbered with stress?! A true god in my book. Your effort is greatly appreciated Guy.
I was searching for innovative way to murder hobos, what is this about? Couldn't figure it out
What you do is you give them loads of money so they can live a good life but whenever hey fall in love with somebody you instantly murder that person
Interestingly, I have a pair of murder hobos. They steal and are abrasive and just want to kill all npcs. And it's great.
Together the duo get into so much trouble one of the other PCs is now playing the father figure and they're learning like little kids. When they wind up in jails the party bail them out like disappointed friends from a stag do.
Sometimes it's just great. Though obviously I give them conssequences, such as the jailing. It's like dealing woth 5yr old's, I'm finding.
Thats sorta. Having the party bail them out is just giving them a cop-out from a real punishment. What'd be funny tho is putting them on a leesh, and using them to threaten baddies 'do x y or z or we will sick em on you' 'no anything but them! their reputation speaks of how ruthless they are!' But I dont have experience so, grain of salt.
Been and done that now. The party are seriously regretting their murder-hobo decisions in our latest game.. They're gotten put on a watchdog list and can never be sure when they're going to be jumped. I love the anxiety it's built.
I really really enjoy how well this was presented. The examples were really good
''You can't kill that, it's a gazebo...'' Made my day.
you could always just pull a legend of zelda so when they attack chickens well the chickens attack back
My first DnD session ever resulted in the whole party becoming murderhobos, including myself.
We were a group of Chaotic Evil mercs, hired to help protect a ship as it sailed to the unexplored island Leonti. Once we got onboard, things spiralled downward quickly. The Trighton captain was not sharing information with us and restricting access to certain areas of the ship. Within the first night, we attempted to break into the locked vault in the lowest deck out of curiosity. Since we were the only other people on board, we only had to worry about the captain and keep an eye out for him while we attempted to plunder the ship.
He discovered us as we were about to open the vault and locked us behind the cell door that lead to the vault. I decided we may as well open the vault and then decide how to escape. The vault was full of undead and giant hands that were a delivery of sorts for this Lich we havent heard about at the time.
We killed the zombies and proceeded to question the captain. He was more honest after we fucked up his entire delivery. After a few more days of the captain being a jackass, we repositioned the cannons on the upper deck to face his cabin. We unloaded cannons into his room through his wall and decimated him and his Fleshgolem sex toy, but we made the ship sink.
Thankfully, I am a 7ft, 360lbs Lizardman Monk and we have an Aracokra Ranger. The other 2 party members are a 30lbs Goblin Rogue and a Drow Warlock, so light weight and easy to carry. Currently we are swimming/flying to the island and we have no ship, no food, no map, no contacts once we get there, and no employer.
I'm planning on conquering the island and reigning as King for the rest of my character's life.
The best part of this video is hearing you say 'Murder Hobo'. I could listen to that for an hour and be amused the entire time.
Thanks for the video and for sharing your experience. As a GM I had the same problem not long ago. Luckily there was only one murder hobo in my group. Game after game it became clearer that he was only interested in some raw action: he didn't participate in the story unless it was fighting, he threatened each and every character in their city, be they a priest, a shopkeeper or even a governor. I got confused, because he really got invested in creating his character with a nice backstory, but time after time he tried to get the group in a fight. Finally he got the opportunity - a staged and obviously unfair fist fight in a low-ranking pub. He lost, because neither he, nor the group tried to investigate beforehand. So he takes out his battle hammer and tries to murder his opponent and ignores the group which was trying to calm him down. They had to use force to do it and then the guards came. He started arguing that he acted in character and got offended. I had to point out that he played a chaotic good character, and acted completely out of his role. We had to stop the game and all the players were pretty much down. And then he just rage quit and never even bothered to apologize or at least say thanks for running the game. I guess it's for the best. The rest of the group goes on and tries to not murder everything in their way.
I had a group in ravenloft setting and the pcs were doing more harm then strahd was (not a evil csmpaign). So first town they locked everyone in their houses before lighting the town on fire.
The second town they convinced a revolution with a change of mayor.
The third town was almost entirely anti strahd af they convinced about half the people strahd wasn't that bad and started a civil war siding with the strahd supporters. Killing all the resistance they could find. I told them you are all murder hobos. To which some of my players protested. I asked do they own a house? And said no. One of the guys who didn't protest smiled and asked if we get a manor will we be murder lords. I said yes and from that point on there goal was to get a manor
I feel like you missed a HUGE cause of murderhobos:
PLAYERS WHO ARE INSECURE IN REAL LIFE.
A player who is attempting to overcompensate and go on a power trip may not be emotionally mature enough to engage in a normal tabletop RPG. Sadly, even from the player side of the table, I have seen this time and time again in my fellow party members.
As a fellow player, and as a friend, your job is to help that player feel welcome if not secure. Don't use this kind of thinking to dismiss murderhoboing, you're not *better* just because you aren't also hoboing. Help them to feel better, understand and seek interest in the game itself, and show them there's more than just being belligerent.
To be completely honest, people trying to "call them out" rather than talk to them about it are being just as belligerent.
This.
Or they're just really young and stupid. In a one-shot it was only the dm, my dad, me, and a ten year-old who according to the dm would make the most overpowered anime character he could. He would do the stupidest things too, trying to cast lightening bolt at a guard taking away a crazed old man ranting about a map, in a city of spell casters, when we had been given no reason to attack instead of talking. Where there were guards in towers who had spells at the ready. He was so incredibly annoying, especially since my dad and I were actually trying to role play, and he just wouldn't stop.
Cannot say that I have personally seen that kind, but I don't think that it would be a distinct solution. The reason they are overcompensating by killing everything is because it is the ONLY solution that works. Why? Because your game is flat and you are unwilling to make your point. Providing them a world based more on soft power makes the murder hoboes character weaker than a social character, so the way they must overcompensate is to create social characters. If you enforce your point by punishing players for murder hobo behavior, you expose their insecurity by exposing them to much more powerful entities, and you expose them to the fact that the only way to make up for those insecurities is by building a more social character.
Granted if all they want is a power fantasy, there is not much you can do aside from run a game for them as murder hoboes, but honestly I don't see much point in running a game like this for power fantasies, video games do a much better job.
Totally agree
>Oh i havne't seen this GM youtube channel before. Lets click on this video
>10 seconds in
>"No you can't kill it. It's a gazeebo."
I'm subbing.
"No you can't kill that, it's a gazebo." I subscribed for that line alone. The informative content was a happy bonus.
I had a character in my game who was the mother of one of my player’s character. It was my way of thanking him for helping me in the story. Her name was Abel, and she was a kitsune who was the leader of a nearby village.
One of my players (a vampire,) decided to plan to murder her for EXP, a system that I hadn’t defined earlier in the game because we didn’t actually have a fight yet.
So, my vampire buddy waits for his other buddy to come over to help murder Abel. The vampire had a ridiculously high strength and the buddy, a Lich, had a custom spell that prevented spellcasting, which was Abel’s modus operandi. They kept grappling her and keeping her from defending herself against their thousands of relatively weak attacks.
For all of her 250 HP she lost, Abel didn’t have a chance to fight back. She was brutally beat up while the Vampire and Lich both intimidated the team into watching them do it.
My friend was extremely upset, I was disturbed to describe an assault/murder, and everyone was pissed that this nice lady was being beat up and they couldn’t protect her.
It was such a bad end, that I had to restart the campaign and the two guys who murdered Abel KNEW they were not gonna get the rest of the group’s sympathy. They left the game, and I couldn’t convince them to stay.
That was my first game I ever DMed, by the way.
The second they pulled that shit, I'd have them paralyzed and tortured. No way in hell is that behaviour acceptable; that's metagaming, likely playing OOC in game, and just...... Yeah, I doubt you could have ever re conciliated that anyways.
Quil63 You’re right. To be fair, though, the Vampire made me aware that he was going to do it beforehand. He was level 1, and Abel was level 10, so I wasn’t worried.
Just more of a reason not to get overconfident, am I right?
Those aren't people I'd ever keep in my game. Honestly, they seem like edgelord teenagers and you're better off without them.
Towards the end, I start thinking about the anime Overlord. If you don't know what is, basically it's about a guy who plays a Lich and is trapped inside a world after his favorite game goes down. It isn't the same world he played though and the interesting part is his lack of knowledge and just how real the NPC are. It's unclear whether this is a game world and if there are other players or not.
Just found your channel, happy to binge. I'm not a DM (yet) but I've been helping my DM design some of his sessions / missions merely because I have more knowledge of the lore (Skyrim based, I'm the Loremaster, but I can self-blind when playing a character). I designed a mission for 2 of our murderhobos. It was given by a superior member of the DB who, with no violence, showed that he was able to infiltrate the PC's base FULL of NPCs, take their rugs and blankets, and sit comfortably at the top of their tower while no on else realized. He assigned the mission and gave them parameters.
So I used a single location with plot - relevant items and incentives for the murderhobos. Explicitly let them know that they would be free to kill - all but ONE NPC. The NPC himself was not important to anyone or anything - particularly. BUT he provided supplies necessary for another NPC who was influential to run her gig. SHE isn't important to the plot, however, if she got involved, it would AFFECT the plot and mess up the PC's goals because now she'd have to find out who killed her provider. IF the NPCs in the mission were killed, and not the supplier, it would look more like the supplier was being targeted. But if HE died, then SHE would take it personally.
But to whet their appetites, the quest giver stipulated that the murderhobos would be rewarded for CREATIVE kills, if they HAD to kill. But none more than necessary. They had maps, knew the layout of the building, but not where all the mercenaries were. They were encouraged to observe before killing (because we know most wannabe assassins aren't particularly spectacular tacticians) and to strategically move about. If they moved through the floors of the building too quickly, I would elevate the stats of the next group of mercenaries. If they were more cautious, I would make the mercs weaker and more isolated. I wanted them to experience exploration more than simply look for the next kill. Plot relevant items were *not* in the Big Obvious Safe in the corner of the room. So if they were rewarded for thinking things through first, they knew that they could always employ stealth to get what they needed without raising a single blade. If they managed to get the intended items without a single kill, they would be rewarded with the additional incentive amounts (this was not explained to them). Bonus if they did some impressive intimidation of the non-killable NPC.
I never had murderhobos so invested in a heist / assassin mission more than those two. One has particularly curbed his enthusiasm but is still rather ruthless when he goes out to do "his thing."
What has always worked for me with groups at my local shop is sending another adventuring party after them. Treat them as the villains.
The players murdered a murder hobo. Lol so basically this guy showed up for 1 session murdered 3 people in the span of 4 hours the guards caught him threw him in prison. After a revolution happened the other players who were regarded as heros had publicly executed him via two hammers and smashing his head haha.
Alazynortherner Ive been that guy. I was playing a Paladin, and one of the players decided they were going to break every diplomacy by attacking whoever we were in talks with.
So, the first time, I warned the barbarian. The second time, the fight started as "I smite evil."
The barbarian just stared at me. The druid tried to talk it down, and my response was, "No, im sorry, but she is a direct threat to all sentient reasonable beings. She is a plague, and she must be stopped."
Fight gets going, and the barbarian is doing impervious damage... And I just heal it off. I was the secondary healer for the group, so i had a hewards handy with scrolls and potions of healing, plus my.own Paladin abilities.
For extra fucked up points, when the barbarians HP started getting low, I started reciting the Catholic last rites. Post mortem, I took the body, set up a funeral pyre, and burned her body to ash, so that only a True Ressurection spell would bring her back.
I hope you then took away their body in the back of a truck in RL as well.
Eddyhartz Nah, that wouldve spared me the fun of watching roll a new character, and interaction with me in the party the next week.
Altan Tulga Are we talking in or out of game? If in game, youre welcome to try, but if your own stupid is just going to keep fucking it up for everyone, then you'll lose eventually, whoever ends up getting the final shot.
If you're talking out of game, Im a Navy vet, raised by a Marine, and grew up studying Karate and Tae Kwon Do... You're welcome to try
Altan Tulga Aww, did little Altan just figure out how insults work? It's so cute! Like watching a clumsy dog try to walk on its hind legs for the first time.
Hello everybody! If you're seeing this, have a wonderful day! :)
Thanks! You, too! 😀
Cheers :)
You as well thank you :D
Thank you, you too.
Very helpful stuff here, it meshed with some ideas I had been mulling over on various subjects of late. I've been tinkering with some balancing issues a lot lately and this vid helps, my group arent full on murder hobos either and yet this is still useful because as you touch on here, these things interact with other elements of play.
I’m getting back into D&D after a long time off, looking at doing this in this digital age. Been playing for 35+ years. Just wanted to say that your channels make me happy.
How to not cause Players to BECOME murder hobos.
1. Don't throw unintelligent enemies at them(Undead, oozes, etc)
2. Use INTELLIGENCE saving throws, show intelligence is important.
Just say:
"Ok, you can do that, but your alignment is now chaotic evil"
And then every moment you can remind them of how evil they are.
And then? In my experience, a murderhobo won't care and won't stop simply because the DM is now calling them evil every 5 minutes. Where's the real retribution?
@@vanzero356 Well, i was thinking "reminding them" as in, with wanted posters and guards chasing them around and people staying like 15 meters away from them at least
Just the term murder hobos and the way he says it, had me cracking up for hours.
Thanks, I know someone who has problems with a particular murder hobo and this will help her.
When I set up my campaign, there was a point where my players got to name their group.
They elected "The Murder-Hobos"
Murder Hobo: Tries to kill everything in the game. Complains when games tries to kill them.
...omg, this channel looks AMAZING !!...
Not sure how youtube guessed I like rp, but I'm happy it did !
"no you can't kill that it's a gazebo" thanks for the laugh.
I've fortunately never had to deal with murder hobos in my games. However, if I did, I'd deal with it the same way I always deal with player issues when they come up: an out-of-game conversation with the player.
Reasonable players will respond to a simple conversation about the issue. If they don't, and they continue whatever disruptive behavior they are exhibiting, the remaining recourse may be they leave the game.
Also, during that conversation, we hopefully come upon the reason for the behavior. Maybe it's something I'm doing and can correct. Maybe it's not the player at all, but me, the DM.
the DM Lair
Totally agree, otherwise there is a real risk of an unspoken tug of war between GMs and players.
the DM Lair
Totally agree, otherwise there is a real risk of an unspoken tug of war between GMs and players.
the DM Lair Or have one of the npcs be lvl 20, they're not just a simple pushover. You can't expect the punch everyone, without the tar being beat outta you.
The bit about explanations/narration couldn't be more on point. I've been trying to use this more with my players. They are starting to pick up through npc's descriptions whether the fight is worth it or not, without me straight up saying, "this guy will kill you all."
a way to deter murder hobos could also be in the system itself, either giving no xp reward for killing npcs below a certain level or just remove xp entirely, maybe start adding interesting quest items in the loot that your party won't know what to do with them and can't sell at pawns to maybe have them interested into listening to the next npc being an antiquarian, an archaeologist, priest or another quest giver.
You're so amazing Guy. I love watching your videos I use your tips to apply to my home brew campaign and it does wonders
For what it's worth, if you have one (or maybe two) characters who just want to fight and kill stuff, but you can get the other players really invested in NOT murderhoboing, the murderhobo wannabes can often be directed into being the 'shock and awe' part of any combat that's *supposed* to happen.
NPC looks at the Half-Orc Myrr der Haughbow, asks the Wizard, "Why do you put up with him?"
Assassins leap from the shadows to assault the Wizard and the NPC
Half-Orc's player says "FINALLY!" Half-Orc runs screaming at the assassins, giving the Wizard time to cast spells to protect herself and the NPC
"That's pretty much why."
!!! A house? I like it!
This guy is brilliant...
Nope to "narrative power". Do NOT run the game by fiat and simply declare retroactively that the enemy had 1 more HP than you were able to do before you went down. DO run the game by the numbers and let the guards have either numbers (giving the players a chance to run away) or make it clear that these are not "ordinary" guards. The aim is to simulate consequences of bad choices (yes, dear players, there is a reason this society functions; they do have a police equivalent), not to railroad.
What I find useful is to ask a confirming question as the objectionable action is about to take place: "Your sheet says your character has the skill. If he doesn't then please remove the skill, but if he does, then I'm sorry, but that makes him realize that this action will be against the law. Do you STILL want to do this; and if so what does your character tell himself?"
This clears up:
*Has the player gotten the wrong idea about your game? If so, why?
*Does the player just not care about your game?
...or maybe...
*Did the player misunderstand the situation? Did he think that it was more hostile than you intended?
*Has the player gotten frustrated and feel like all NPC's will turn on him anyway?
*Is the player overzealous in portraying a character concept?
*Has the player inferred something from the situation that you didn't think through? Could violence actually be rational from the PC's in-game POV for reasons you hadn't considered?
If the player still wants to go through with the action then let the dies roll and let the consequences be visited in this session or the next. But at least everyone will be on the same page and the PCs have no complaint coming when a group of high-level paladins show up to bring them to justice.
Fantastic insight regarding players becoming murder hobos. Cheers!
Question on murder hoboing, whats your stance on rangers and their nemesis? When I make a ranger I tend to make the character to unreasonable when it comes to whatever is that I chose.
Falionna I don't necessarily make a favored enemy a hated target even though I do jokingly refer to it as enhanced racism. For example, I often make human rangers have a favored enemy human. Simply put, you know your own race best, know how to fight and how to deal with, but it doesn't mean you hate your species, just that you know what you and your kind are capable of.
Not to say every favored enemy has to be an enlightened combat study, but there's a time and a place to make to edgelord supreme vengeance seeking ranger and a bounty hunter who doesn't take things personal.
I usually take the idea of the favored enemy as "you know this type of creature better, to the point you know how to fight them better" and not like a, you know, LITERAL enemy.
Falionna I think that's a rational way to play a ranger. If goblins slaughtered her parents, than she would quite likely be biased against goblins, even killing them on sight. I think as long as you build role-playing reasons into your character's actions, it makes total sense.
Indeed that's how I usually make it for a ranger. That said ranger lost someone close, and has a vendetta at the race. However thinking on the ranger could also be like a "dragon slayer" and would be more interested in the glory of taking down a large creature. Another is that the ranger is just used to killing the thing, doesn't have a strong emotional tie to it. But have just killed so many, let's say. Orcs before.
That's a lot of reasons why a ranger would just kill on sight a certain type of creature, that is also defined by his favored enemy. I don't think that's specifically a murder hobo, unless the GM for some random reason presents such type of creature over and over and over. In which case, it's the GM's fault. Unless you talk about humans, dwarf and other typically good intended and well spreaded humanoids, of course.
You should sit down with your players and make sure that they make interesting and varried characters, any GM who fails to help the players make compelling characters has failed the players.
Also give them a family.
Very useful. Thank you
Another great video thanks
Didn't realize this was about D&D when I clicked it. I guess I'll stick to the tried and true method of landmines.
So two questions, did you get my RUclips Message? And what if you have the opposite problem? Where players are Role-playing way too much and not actually progressing the story enough?
On the roleplay bit, my suggestion is to set the pace more to your liking. If you don't want your players to be focused solely on roleplay, then make something dramatic happen that forces them to take action. Don't remove all the roleplay, because obviously they enjoy it, but make sure that your employ elements to the game that you enjoy as well.
if your players are just talking endlessly kind of like a group I'm in right now then you can do what matt mercer does and have the NPC they are supposed to be talking with getting annoyed, cut them off, or just remind them that they have things to be doing.
Have things get worse. Didnt go to stop the goblin warcamp? Well, the goblins start expanding, link up with Hobgoblins, building into a horde, and claim territory.
Still dont wanna get a move on? They take control of the trade roads their city is located in. The city is now effectively under siege, as hobgoblins capture and enslave the feeder cities that support it. Things start getting worse inside the city, people starving, trade grinding to a halt.
Dont let your villains be just sitting there waiting for the party to show up to kill them.
The “something happens” table on the dm screen helps a lot. While they are talking and you can tell things are going nowhere, roll on the table and make something happen. Or roll on a random encounter table. They are interrupted by a goblin crashing through the roof and a couple others jumping through the windows! Roll initiative!
In our campaign we often either have a problem with 1) players getting chatty 2) characters taking too much time deliberating. When this happens, our dungeon master just moves on. NPCs get tired of waiting, monsters get aggroed, or something random and disruptive happens. It may be good to just chat with your players about what they want out of the game versus what you want out of the game, too :) nothing beats a little communication
I love the Gazebo reference to start this vid! I can Already tell this will be good.
some good tips here that I plan to use very soon!