Quote from: RPGPundit;487719A term I saw used on another forum, ostensibly about roleplaying games but mostly about tangential subjects.  It was being used there to refer to D&D Player Characters, suggesting that D&D is a fatally flawed game because instead of producing great heroes, it produces detached vagrants who kill wantonly.

My question: does anyone seriously buy this crap? Is "murder-hobos" an accurate depiction of how you would define the PCs of your D&D game?

RPGPundit

This is a total crock of horse crap.  This is the almost the same thing as stating that ALL D&D characters are "LOOTERS".  

These are comments made by people who either have a narrow mind or just do not know what D&D is about in general.

PC's in D&D are heroes, plain and simple provided they are of good alignment.

Quote from: kregmosier;487777but it's a good game!

Please don't use Imageshack images on this forum.

RPGPundit

Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;488246This is a total crock of horse crap.  This is the almost the same thing as stating that ALL D&D characters are "LOOTERS".  

These are comments made by people who either have a narrow mind or just do not know what D&D is about in general.

I think that may be part of the problem, and it's not entirely their fault.

I have played with a few groups my age who have had players who've done extremely anti-social things that may even strain the believability of their character.  Not Killfuck Soulshitter types, but they've strained disbelief pretty hard.  However, a lot of people I play with are more LotR fans than S&S fans, and so they love playing goody-two-shoes types.  So I'm not sure how much these murder-hobo thing is a gamer thing, so much as it is a generational thing.

One thing that may have been a problem is that the audience for which D&D was originally published took a lot of assumptions for granted.   OG pointed out on tbp that wargamers assumed that your medieval village had a lord, and if you were stirring the shit you would have way more to worry about than a few kobolds.  But these sorts of things weren't necessarily assumed by the people who were buying D&D and were not in the expected demographic of middle-aged grognards.  So the DM doesn't know how to run a consistent medieval-esque town, and the players run around stirring the shit, but the DM doesn't realize they should be bringing down the hammer on them in the form of the Lord's local militia/guard.

Now if you've got a generation of gamers who had no idea about the type of context D&D was supposed to be framed in, and these 12-13 year olds in the 80s are playing out power fantasies and form a lot of habits and their own assumptions about what D&D is "about", and then I can see some campaigns definitely trending towards the power-trip/anti-social behavior end of things.  If you're talking about nerds who already suffer from poor social skills, this is only going to get worse.

So again, I'm not sure it's so much that the game, isolated from everything else, is the problem, so much as it is the relationship that people have to the game.  And part of that is because D&D expanded beyond the intended market, catching Gygax & Co. off guard and putting the game in the hands of thousands of people who don't really understand how it's supposed to work.

QuotePlease don't use Imageshack images on this forum.

RPGPundit

Why?

Pundz can't see them for some reason. Use Imgur instead, it works fine.

Quote from: Ancientgamer1970;488246This is the almost the same thing as stating that ALL D&D characters are "LOOTERS".

I have yet to meet any D&D characters who weren't looters. Even the LG Paladins dig through bloody goblin rags looking for coppers.

It is hysterical when playing with kids because half the time they don't wait until the battle is over to start looting.

I played in a Gamma World demo today and there were 5 adults and 2 young teens and neither teen cared if PCs were in danger when they tossed grenades, dropped ground zero blasts and certainly leaped on the looting before the last foe went down.

I would have chastised them, but that would have made me a hypocrite because that's exactly how we played at their age.

Quote from: Spinachcat;488328I have yet to meet any D&D characters who weren't looters. Even the LG Paladins dig through bloody goblin rags looking for coppers.

This is my experience as well. The reasons behind a mission, quest or dungeon crawl might be noble'n'all, but once the heroes start out, they are all ready to pull the bloody +1 armors of their dead opponents still warm corpses and empty the pockets of even the lowliest goblin. I don't know if makes them murderous hobos, but it's hardly noble or especially heroic/classy.

Quote from: Peregrin;488288I think that may be part of the problem, and it's not entirely their fault.

So, something more than the Old School Primer is needed to bring them up to speed?  I would have to agree, and that was kind of the stepping off point for me.  It seems like the retro-clones are being targeted to a demographic that already knows what they are about, as you mention with the original games.

'Meanwhile Nestor shouted to the Argives, saying, "My friends, Danaan warriors, squires of Ares, let no man lag that he may spoil the dead, and bring back much booty to the ships. Let us kill as many as we can; the bodies will lie upon the plain, and you can despoil them later at your leisure."'

Looting the dead is exactly the sort of thing heroes do from pretty much the beginning of the concept of heroism. The heroes of the Iliad strip the dead and dying on the spot whenever possible.

The reason real people used to take prisoners in war was either to be paid a ransom for their safe return, or to sell them as slaves. If you are not offering either option, then you should not be surprised that your PCs are not taking prisoners.

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;488308Pundz can't see them for some reason. Use Imgur instead, it works fine.

It isn't just me.  Imageshack has decided that they don't really need a significant part of the world, mainly the third world countries, actually seeing their images.  Which to me, makes them fucking useless.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPundit;487719A term I saw used on another forum, ostensibly about roleplaying games but mostly about tangential subjects.  It was being used there to refer to D&D Player Characters, suggesting that D&D is a fatally flawed game because instead of producing great heroes, it produces detached vagrants who kill wantonly.

My question: does anyone seriously buy this crap? Is "murder-hobos" an accurate depiction of how you would define the PCs of your D&D game?

RPGPundit

I never thought of it that way before I saw the term... but now that I have, I want to run that game.

JG

Quote from: Pseudoephedrine;488340The reason real people used to take prisoners in war was either to be paid a ransom for their safe return, or to sell them as slaves. If you are not offering either option, then you should not be surprised that your PCs are not taking prisoners.

I hadn't thought of it that way... but it would be interesting if that were more the norm... with orcs acting more like Somali pirates.

Sorry, I've been away for a couple days but I want to acknowledge bee jazz below...

Quote from: beejazz;488152I should have specified that I was referring to larger publishers. And I think part of what I was trying to get at was that there are certain kinds of social interaction better handled by RPGs than others. The goal of combat in RPGs is usually pretty specific: Kill somebody (or survive, capture, or what have you). General social rules might be hard to write because of the variability of potential goals.

You might be misreading me. I'm not anti-violence. I'm pro-mechanical-variety. Murder-hobos as vagrant sellswords is a big part of the appeal of low-level play for me. I'm a fan of (say) Samurai Champloo or The Good the Bad and the Ugly as a way to play the game. At least in certain genres. Stops being cool in modern realistic games for some reason.

I think we may be talking past each other due to coming in with different agendas, or maybe we're over-agreeing and not seeing it because we phrase things differently.

Addressing your points above, as best I can, I'll reiterate that I don't believe the larger publishers, who address broad audiences, have failed to incorporate social interaction mechanics out of pure conservatism. I think it's "give the people what they want", or really: don't give the people what they don't want, and that is detailed, game-like social rules which are sufficiently integrated that they're hard to ignore. I think that (as you may have argued) this makes mainstream RPGs subject to "combat capture", where the game-oriented players glom onto that aspect of the activity and encourage the combat rules to grow more and more voluminous and detailed.

But for non-game-oriented players, mechanics aren't mainly a source of fun in themselves, but a way of easing the burden of decision-making & adjudication (for the GM), and helping players know what to expect. The main activity of an RPG for these people is "playing pretend"; the rules are just an adjunct for when "pretend" doesn't easily spit out an obvious result.

Skipping a few steps of logic, this may mean that "mainstream" games are nearly always liable to be played in a "murderous hobo" style with groups that don't know better, except perhaps if the game provides extensive guidelines on setting-based social structures and repercussions, ways to tie the PCs into the setting, etc. And somehow ensures that GMs read that stuff.

But aside from that, working from your comics parallel, I think it's a bit silly for snot-nosed brats to reach their 20s and suddenly declare themselves (a) the new wave in opposition to superheroes, and (b) about to take the mainstream by storm--when in reality underground and indie comics have been around in the US since at least the 1960's, and despite non-superhero comics' occasional inroads into the mainstream (e.g. Maus), it's really not likely that they'll ever be more than a niche with the genre, or a rare outcropping in the larger culture.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;488513Addressing your points above, as best I can, I'll reiterate that I don't believe the larger publishers, who address broad audiences, have failed to incorporate social interaction mechanics out of pure conservatism. I think it's "give the people what they want", or really: don't give the people what they don't want, and that is detailed, game-like social rules which are sufficiently integrated that they're hard to ignore. I think that (as you may have argued) this makes mainstream RPGs subject to "combat capture", where the game-oriented players glom onto that aspect of the activity and encourage the combat rules to grow more and more voluminous and detailed.

I think it's the combined effect of a formula that works and publisher conservatism. So combat rules are a must *plus* social rules have been done badly *plus* big publishers have the most to lose by taking a chance.

I agree with your points on degree of integration. I like the idea of treating some of the more complex rules as "widgets" to strip out or drop in. Non-combat rules can be built this way. And that's more or less how I see them working in a mainstream game.

QuoteBut for non-game-oriented players, mechanics aren't mainly a source of fun in themselves, but a way of easing the burden of decision-making & adjudication (for the GM), and helping players know what to expect. The main activity of an RPG for these people is "playing pretend"; the rules are just an adjunct for when "pretend" doesn't easily spit out an obvious result.

I see what you're getting at here (I think), and that's what I was trying to get at with the idea of narrower social rules. Like tracking notoriety in GTA/Assassin's Creed, or having "political influence" simplified to the level of abstract currency. As opposed to having a "combat" system come into play at every negotiation. Letting most of that stuff go without rules, and applying rules to the one or two things crucial to track could go a long way. And the "widget" could be easily dumped for dungeon crawling.

Also, some non-combat rules still handle similarly concrete challenges and such. People have also complained about the loss of dungeoncrawling focus or what have you.

QuoteSkipping a few steps of logic, this may mean that "mainstream" games are nearly always liable to be played in a "murderous hobo" style with groups that don't know better, except perhaps if the game provides extensive guidelines on setting-based social structures and repercussions, ways to tie the PCs into the setting, etc. And somehow ensures that GMs read that stuff.

IME, I've seen new players quickly catch on to the whole roleplaying thing with little external input. So that's not really my issue with the combat rules bloat or with the excision of other stuff. I have other issues with that stuff, but the main one is variety. Right now, teir 1 and teir 2 are both combat/chargen rules heavy takes on D&D.

I like vagrant sellswords. I know the game can do more. I think most newbs will quickly catch on to both points. But I also think there's been needless combat bloat and non-combat excisions on the basis of people playing and seeing the "murder hobo" game. I think fewer faster combat rules may be better for the "murder hobo" style, so it might be counterproductive too.

QuoteBut aside from that, working from your comics parallel, I think it's a bit silly for snot-nosed brats to reach their 20s and suddenly declare themselves (a) the new wave in opposition to superheroes, and (b) about to take the mainstream by storm--when in reality underground and indie comics have been around in the US since at least the 1960's, and despite non-superhero comics' occasional inroads into the mainstream (e.g. Maus), it's really not likely that they'll ever be more than a niche with the genre, or a rare outcropping in the larger culture.

Heh. It's what us snot-nosed 20 somethings tend to do.

But I'd point to the success of comics of many genres in Japan, different genres in France/Belgium, and shifts in predominant American genres of comics as examples of why stuff need not remain the same.

60s alternative comics are a pretty specific genre that happened to not appeal (those that I've seen... admittedly limited). I'm talking breadth. I'm talking many genres. I'm talking proven formula as much as you are. I just want more of them.

And lastly, even with supers and that subset of shonen (Bleach, DBZ, etc) not being my thing, I'm certainly not opposed to them. Watchmen, Soul Eater, and others are still pretty cool. At the end of the day, execution carries the piece.