K is for Killers...the stone cold, natural born variety. Your players' characters, in other words.
Was a tough day today which is why this is coming out so late. And so I'm going to punt slightly and repurpose an earlier post to talk about "murder hobos."
"Murder hobo" is one of those terms that has changed over time. When I first heard the phrase, it playfully referred to the average (D&D) adventure party. Why? Because adventurers are a group of folks without homes (until Name level) that wander about the fantasy world engaging in violence as a means to make their living. It was a wink-and-a-smile at the basic premise of the original fantasy RPG: combat (even against "evil" and "monsters") is still just a form of killing (i.e. murder) and these protagonists were outside the norms of whatever established society the game world has.
It was a way to jokingly refer to the PCs, purposefully ignoring the nuance and context that makes a game of (essentially) killing and looting enjoyable by viewing it through the perspective of non-gamer eyes.
These days, however, the term has come to mean something else...instead of being used to describe ANY adventuring party, it is used to describe a specific type of player: one who indiscriminately kills (i.e. engages in combat) during the game, even when doing so is deemed inappropriate or counter-productive to the goals/objectives of the party. And in SOME instances, it is used to describe a player who engages in ANY form of combat without just cause...and sometimes even with just cause!
More often, though, the "murder hobo" label is applied to a character who decides to slay non-combatant NPCs for little reason. A tavern keeper giving the PC lip. A shopkeeper that won't lower their prices. A "quest giver" NPC who the player(s) find annoying. These kinds of in-game actions are considered to be disruptive and/or derailing to the story the DM is attempting to tell.
Here's the deal: DMs, the problem is not "murder hobos;" the problem is YOU.
I do not have, nor have I ever seen, "murder hobos" at my table (in 40+ years of play), unless you mean in the tongue-in-cheek original sense of the term (i.e. when all un-settled adventurers are little more than wandering, murderous hobos). But if you mean in the "disruptive" or "derailing" present day use of the term, then nope, no murder hobos here.
And these days I'm (usually) playing with kids.
First off, how boring must your game be that the players can find nothing better to do than stab some NPC shopkeeper? I mean, really. Players never even interact with NPC shopkeepers in my game! "Do you guys want to buy some equipment before heading out?" Yeah. "Okay, tell me what you buy and how much it costs and let's go."
The only reason to go into any detail about a particular non-dungeon location (such as a tavern or inn or shop) is because that location is pertinent to the adventure (say, the Golden Grain Inn from module N1). The tavern in B2 has a chance of containing men-at-arms or adventurers for hire...you roll up how many are there (if the PCs express an interest in hiring people) and you ask what they're offering as payment. That's it! Let's get on with the game!
Dungeons & Dragons is a game where violence is an inherent part of its concept. I know that doesn't sit well with some people, and that's fine...D&D is probably not the game for them! Not everyone likes every form of entertainment out there! I'm not big into horror movies or playing tennis...that doesn't mean other people don't love-love-love those things. And more power to them.
But if I went into a game of tennis and complained that people kept score because 'how lame to just make it about getting points' than guess what? I'm the jerk...not the tennis player or the game of tennis.
I have the occasional "quest giver" type NPC that shows up in my campaign. A duke with a treasure map who's willing to finance an expedition (that he doesn't want to go on) in exchange for a cut of the profits. An innkeeper who had a break-in through her cellar and was willing to pay brave souls to go into the mysterious tunnel and see what was going on. A drunken man at a tavern crying about how his sister had been taken by the evil vampire lord of the village and maybe the PCs would be interested in avenging his family. Etc.
Did my players decide to roll the duke? Slay the innkeeper? Stomp the rambling drunk? No! Because they were mature individuals? No way! Because they wanted to get onto the adventure, and they saw the profit in dialing in to the game we were playing. Not just actual "profit" (treasure for their PCs) but a profit of time (for the players)...time better spent playing the damn game we'd all sat down to play!
Hey, DMs: how seriously do you take your game? Do you make a world that is sensible and consequential? If players pick a fight with the town guardsmen (and lose), do they end up swinging from a rope and needing to roll up new characters? They do in my game. Do you have "magic shops" on the street corner just begging to be robbed by the PCs because the potential profit far outweighs the risk of killing the owner and his body guards? I don't...because I want my players to have reasons to go into dungeons, rather than loot townsfolk.
Hey, DMs: are you providing enough treasure in your games that knocking over citizens isn't worth their time? If you're not, guess whose fault that is.
Yes, I have seen "evil PCs" that would actively engage in reprehensible behavior. In my youth, I had one player who created a (male) Drow cleric of Llolth that was trying to set up a secret temple in a (surface) town and murdered a goodwife and at least a child or two, mainly as random acts of wanton violence. However, the character was caught and imprisoned (for being Drow, I think...not sure if the murders were initially discovered) and the player lost interest in playing the character after that first and only session. A different player, playing an insane, evil priest (Father Cornelius...still remember his name) engaged in some sort of heinous acts that I honestly can't remember. But that was back when I still allowed PvP and the other players killed him for being too much of a loose cannon.
In neither of these cases was this an issue of "disruptive" behavior. They were brief experiments into "playing evil" and being transgressive, the kind of thing you do when you're young and new to role-playing. Murdering (and 'hoboing') was neither new, nor outside the norms of play at our table. Many of our characters were chaotic neutral (or worse) back in the day, simply because we played By The Book, and those non-goody alignments allowed PCs more freedom of action ("agency"). It didn't turn them into random stabbers of non-combatants.
But they would have wanted the option (even though it wasn't exercised), which explains why we never see any paladins and precious few rangers or Lawful Good types (the main LG cleric was the same player who created "Father Cornelius"); just too many strictures over player behavior for our taste. However, my co-DM and I provided enough adventure in our games (as well as a consequential game world) that giving the players such leeway was never an issue.
Do you give your players enough adventure?
Every single AD&D character is fight-worthy. Every one of them has an attack matrix, a set of hit points, a number of weapons with which they are proficient. This is not by accident. Not every character is a fighter, and not every challenge faced requires violence. But violence is inherent to the game...and every player and DM should know this when they sit down at the table.
Okay, that's it. I should have more time tomorrow.
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