A 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

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

The 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.

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 think it is just a specific term to denigrate "kill 'em and take their stuff" play, which most folks unfamiliar with earlier versions have come to assume encompasses the majority of play, if not all of it.

Quote from: RPGPundit;487719My 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?

I have seen a fair number of sessions/groups that the title would apply to.

I would dispute that D&D (and its close kin) as a whole is fairly categorized by the moniker.

D&D can be played in murder-hobo mode; D&D doesn't have to be played in murder-hobo mode.

Honestly?  I find Warhammer to be generally more murder-hobo-esque.  I don't mean that as a critique; that's part of its charm.

I don't see this kind of play much. Have met a couple of players who basically like carnage and breaking the law. But they prefer to do so using Vampire.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;487728I don't see this kind of play much. Have met a couple of players who basically like carnage and breaking the law. But they prefer to do so using Vampire.

I think this is usually a function of age.  When I started playing D&D at 13...yeah, those early games were probably in the murder-hobo vein.  

A couple games in high school (such as when we tried an ill-advised all-evil party) dipped back into murder-hobo-ville.

Since then?  Not so much.  It's possibly a function of learning how to get more from the game as you become accustomed to it.

I think murdererous hobos is a good description of most hack and slash games. GM's hate good characters. Evil will always win because good is dumb. In an effort to try to tie the characters to the world or to make the players feel invested in going after the next bad guy, any NPC a player puts faith in will fuck them over. This, or the perception of this, leads players to make neutral characters rather than good ones, and everyone knows neutral characters don't have a conscience - you don't have to feel bad about anything you do so long as its justified rationally.

Combine this with the idea that nothing can really be evil by nature, and you have a band of adventurers who murder creatures based on race and rob their bodies. All adventuring is basically epic scale home invasions.

All of that, and they are still heroes in the Greek sense of the word.

I hate playing role playing games with most GMs because I like to play Paladins but the only thing that ever works out are rogues. In my current heroes game, I'm retiring my Principled martial artist because the GM keeps on tricking one of the other players into killing people with his force fields, and its go neutral or fight with the guy.

Just because the people on this website are the kinds of gamers that are motivated enough to make their RPGs great (also being the kinds of people motivated to read about them on the internet) are not normal gamers. Most gamers are shit when it comes to running games.

Quote from: RPGPundit;487719My 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

Nope.  Never was, not even in Grade School.  Not to say that there weren't silly or shallow games, but even back then it was "save the town, princess, etc..." rather then "kill them and take their stuff".

However, the people who use "murder hobos" will frequently claim the default trope of D&D is to enter a dungeon randomly, leave nothing alive and loot everything that's nailed down without any purpose or rationale as to why other then because that's what you do in D&D - ie. no one who has played it more then once since becoming an adult.  

It has described some games I have been in. They were funny and action-packed games with a satisfactory splat factor, so whatever, bitter online people.

But yeah, it is a term generally used by people who don't like D&D.

Quote from: Cranewings;487730I hate playing role playing games with most GMs because I like to play Paladins but the only thing that ever works out are rogues.

Well, this is interesting. The "murder hobos" stuff, though, while it contains a grain of truth and humor, has largely become about people projecting their own lame experiences and lack of imagination onto everyone else and the rules they use.

The term makes sense to me, I've seen murder-hobos players. I don't think the style is the exclusive province of D&D by any means. However it is possible that D&D's loose genre conventions are more tolerant towards the murder-hobo than some other games.  For one thing if you try to pull that off in Pendragon or MSH and you'll quickly end up without Fame or Karma.

D&D is a big game played in many different ways by many different people. You couldn't really pull off a muderhobo in Dragonlance, probably not in Planescape either, or any other game that require a strong setting buy-in by the players. However the classic "don't bother naming your character till your at least level 3" attitude isn't miles away from the murder-hobo.

Quote from: Elliot Wilen;487742Well, this is interesting. The "murder hobos" stuff, though, while it contains a grain of truth and humor, has largely become about people projecting their own lame experiences and lack of imagination onto everyone else and the rules they use.

In the last session I ran, the party was split. 5 characters found the crew of a treasure ship and recovered their treasure from the clutches of evil. They decided the best thing to do was to help the crew get it back to their king. Rewards from the king > than spending his gold while being hunted for having it.

The crew that brought the party to the island were Greek. The treasure ship was Persian.

To make a long story short, the PC who wasn't there, a paladin and his NPC cleric friend had a side quest were they were kidnapped by other bad guys, happened into the greek ship, had a big fight, helped the greeks win, and took the greek ship back to the island to meet the party.

Well, both sides square off. 25 persians standing with 5 pcs against 40 greeks. The cleric tells the paladin, "I don't want bloodshed, but these are my countrymen and they saved us. If it comes to a fight, I won't let your friends kill the hoplites." The party meets, decides that they couldn't just sit out a fight because the winners would hate them, couldn't take the treasure with the greeks because they would be hunted and might kill them for it, and didn't want to side with the persians because they would be out numbered in a fight.

So the paladin walks up to the hoplite captain and says, "My friends found the persian treasure. We plan to take it back to their land. Here is some gold. Take me back to port so I can higher a ship to take us to persia. You don't have to do it yourselves.

At this point, all the players face palm, pissed, because they thought it was clear they weren't going to bring up the treasure and were sure that the hoplites would attack for it.

Instead though, I reasoned that the hoplite commander wasn't an all together terrible person, and when faced with a Paladin he fought alongside in a battle, with a high charisma and an aura of good, he decided to do the right thing and take the paladin back to get another ship. No one apologized for face palming on it, but to the Paladin player and to me, it made sense. It is also the kind of interaction you hope to expect as a paladin player - that you can do the right thing and tell the truth because even people of questionable moral character will be inspired by you. That is the whole fucking point of the high charisma and aura of good.

I've never gotten to do something like that as a player though. It is always lie and murder or get shit on, because most GMs only know one way of motivating players to care about a plot, and that is to fuck with them.

I haven't seen "murder hobo" play since my age hit the early double digits.  It got boring really quick, and we either moved on to more "serious" play or to other hobbies/pursuits.

I only really see it when players don't get immersed in a campaign.  When there's a degree of detachment from the game world the players tend to ignore in-game attachments, in character motivations, and any sense of treating NPCs as more than info dispensers.  Hell even in the best of games it takes me playing NPCs as untarnished saints to get my players to trust them.  Murder-hobos is just a dismissive term for casual DnD play that focuses on combat and loot.  I find that the only people who use it are those focused on their precious "stories" even though those are often a veneer for campaigns based around traveling to different places, killing things, and taking their stuff.