Quote from: Rincewind1;519386GOND DAMMIT!

I thought of writing exactly such a game as a joke, to one up the "Indie Crowd" and their love of transgressive content.

Poke fun at the OSR crowd too, and retroclone it.  

Quote from: CRKrueger;519387Poke fun at the OSR crowd too, and retroclone it.  

Judging from that article, it already (supposedly) is, but that is a thought....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8dAUYAg8mAQ

A thread on EnWorld about this thread.

Either thread necro or someone at ENWorld being pretty slow on the uptake.

JG

Since its already necroed, here's a play story.

I'm in a group just now playing (I think) Barrowmaze.  Early on, exploring the surface around some burial mounds, we were ambushed by about a dozen guys, some in chain armor with crossbows, others slingers in leather armor.  No parley, just missile attacks from surprise.  An encounter with a similar group later also starts hostile.  I conclude, as a player, and not just "oh, my character thinks," that the random encounter table has bandits on it, and these are them.

So more recently, we encounter another dozen guys with chain armor and crossbows and leather with slings.  We hear some of them moving to flank us, going for a door that will take them behind us, and the GM asks for an initiative roll.  For once we win it, and our 1st level wizard Sleeps them all.

At this point, we've got the classic helpless prisoner dilemma, and are debating what to do.  Someone suggests taking their weapons and waking them up to parley, maybe to use them to fill out our ranks, but I'm down on this at first, because they still outnumber us, and I figure they'll turn on us as soon as they can.

Now keep in mind, not just my character but *I* personally am convinced these are bandits.  And I just start cutting throats.  The GM said "Wait, really? You're just going to kill them?" or words to that effect (in hindsight this may have been a clue), and described our few hirelings turning their faces away.

But I left three alive, woke them up without their weapons, and told them the same fate as their companions awaited them if they didn't serve us in the front lines.  One roll later, they reluctantly accepted, and had their crossbows returned, with orders to keep them pointed forward.

Of course, I found out later that "dozen guys with mixed armor and ranged weapons" is a random encounter entry for tomb robbers, which is to say, just a bunch of poor schlubs doing exactly what we're doing.  We'd just happened to blow the reaction rolls the first two times we'd gotten them.  The third group was neutral but wary, and I'd just murdered them.

Quote from: jeff37923;487722The only people who believe in the "murder-hobo" myth either have never played D&D, are playing it "ironically", or just play 4E. It has never been an accurate depiction of any D&D game I have ever played - not even the ones in Middle School.

4E?  ok yeah 4E is the only game that you can be a murder in, what a stupid comment and near-sited attitude.  I have GMed many games in many versions of D&D and they have all had murder-hobos if you want to use that term in them.  But even Super-Hero games have gone down this path, one I can name off hand is Wild Talents, which just for some reason causes murder hobos in it to take fruit.   IDK, but I think any game with any newbie players or young players tends to drive towards mass killings and murders to some effect or even the players attempting to be the bad guys at some point, they just want to play evil at times.  My last Pathfinder group was made up of all NE or CE alignment PC's, so I had to run an evil centered campaign, with Good being the opposition instead.

Murder-hobos would be an accurate description of quite a few DnD (and other) games I played in. It is, however, not an accurate description of all DnD games I have played in.

I've noticed that many Traveller games are more murder hobo than D&D. Land on a planet, kill some fuckers, board the ship and jump out of the system.

Most D&D sandboxes I have seen have been very "Sword for Hire" (regardless of edition) where PCs wander from town to town making money by slaying some foe of the nobles of that area and then moving on.

I don't know exactly where "Sword for Hire" ends and "Murder-Hobos" begins.

And since I run OD&D with Law/Neutral/Chaos instead of Good vs. Evil, and I tend to emulate more classic Swords & Sorcery than modern High Fantasy, I have less of an issue with that style of play. Conan was a Murder Hobo until he gets older and focuses on his path to power instead of just a sack of gold.

Of course, if the GM has no repercussions for wanton murder in his campaign world, then its his own damn fault if the PCs are crazed serial killers.

Quote from: Spinachcat;687312I don't know exactly where "Sword for Hire" ends and "Murder-Hobos" begins.

I'd say it's in the first Ravenloft module. Reportedly, the Hickmans wrote it in response to encountering a random vampire in a dungeon and thought "What a waste of a vampire." (paraphrasing) Which I agree with. Every monster could be much more interetesting than a stat block encounter in a dungeon room.

Of course, their mistake was making the module about Strahd and not about the player characters, but that's a critique of that specific module.

And I'd not knock murder hobos. It's the focus of board dungeon games like Descent. And not a few basic D&D campaigns. (There's the great Fellowship of the Bling thread on TBP, for example)

But scratch the murder hobo style just a little, and out comes more than just "kill monster, get treasure, repeat".

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

Pundit, if you really do want old-school gaming to have credibility with the chattering classes, you have to lose the ultra-defensive, humorless attitude. D&D, out in the wild, is full of half-serious jackassery. That's the fun of it. Don't be another one of those dweebs who takes his hobby way too seriously.

Quote from: Noclue;687302Murder-hobos would be an accurate description of quite a few DnD (and other) games I played in. It is, however, not an accurate description of all DnD games I have played in.

Same here. I've never seen it as a contemptuous term at all. Any more than Fantasy Vietnam. In most campaigns I've played, the PCs really are vagabonds who leave a trail of corpses beyond them. Doesn't mean they indulge in sadism. But most problems are solved with the sharp end of a sword and the body-count is comically high. Murder-hobos? Fuck yeah. Why not?

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

Even though i may frequently rack down on D&D myself, and even though the pcs may be murderous bastards at worst, i do find it to be an incorrect defenition, even at worst. I think Murder Scouts would be more correct ...
However, that is at worst.
If it just get a bit better, they fast gain both skills, abilities, status, some fame, and, especially, rewards for their work/hobby.
At no point, they can be compared to hobos, and at best, they can not be compared to murderers either.

Murder hobos always seemed good-naturedly self deprecating in the vien of KotDT. "elf-games" otoh seems to be used derogatorily

I may have mentioned this before, but in Game of Thrones (the TV version especially) being a murder-hobo kinda seems like the POINT.

JG

(shrugs)  It's a useful term.  It's a term with wide recognition.  I'd agree the syndrome's more prevalent in D&D circles, but I haven't run into anyone claiming that D&D players exclusively and uniformly play murderhobos, or that no one in any other game system does.

I'd say that if you DID run into someone asserting these things, and you got boiling mad under the collar rather than just say "What an asshole" and dismissing the choad ... ask yourself why the assertion bothers you that much.

I don't know, I think sometimes the criticism is useful.  Some introspection is useful as long as it doesn't become dithering naval gazing.  I think it's worthwhile to consider the role of orcs in the setting.  I think it's worthwhile to consider realistic aspects of war and its impacts on individuals in game terms.

It's not too hard to make dungeons forward military bases and leave the women and children far out of reach of the PCs.  Making the orcs despicable makes killing them palatable.  If the orcs were just funny looking folks who just want to be left alone to live as they see fit, murdering them would be unreasonable.

Without such context you may as well be playing an Mmporg with respawning heroes and monsters in steady state environments that are always the same as they were the first time you passed through.  "Room four oh three, that was five goblins and some nice jeweled tea cups that are worth 100gp just like the last three times we were here."

Actually, the Protagonist career in WHFRP is actually a murder hobo by profession.  As usual WHFRP is awesome.  Now I want to play a playwright who's working on the epic masterpiece Protagonist With A Blunderbus.  Playing soon on the green near you.