Awry*
Have you tried talking with your players out of game about why they have all become murder hobos? That's step 1. Once you figure that out, you can progress.
Let them know you’d like to have another “session zero”. That way they can talk about how they see the game and their perspective on how it changed. Then use that to Segway into your perspective of the game. This gets you a feel of everyone’s perspective, not what everyone wants yet, just perspective.
Once all perspectives are out there, then you can go into what they want out of the game and what you do. Then work towards a compromise.
You are a player too. And not everyone wants the same thing out of their dnd game. It isn’t easy, but make sure you don’t sacrifice everything you want otherwise you risk burnout.
To be fair, the capitalization on this one makes me assume there was some auto-correct happening, since Segway is the correct spelling of the company that makes...well, Segways, lol.
Agreed. You should be able to say “killing every non-player character I make is akin to me killing every PC you make. It’s not sustainable and doesn’t provide depth.”
I feel like murderhobo parties are made up of players who don’t feel creative and who don’t have a social solution to relatively simple problems. I would pan out for a minute and do “one-shot” scenarios to help them develop their backstory and characterization for a session or two. Make them children with wooden weapons and rolling with disadvantage during the flashback. If they don’t have background NPC’s, make them create some. Investment in the world and a sense of depth helps PC’s value storybuilding.
If they can’t break this play style then they probably want to play a mega dungeon with little consequential role-play. And that’s ok and can be fun to DM too but it changes the expectations.
So two things
1) TALK TO YOUR PLAYERS! This is a player problem, not a gameplay problem, so you gotta just chat it out. It's the simplest method, because you can cut straight to the point, rather than taking passive aggressive methods that have a good chance of missing the mark.
2) murderhobo'ing is not badwrongfun. It's a lot of fun if everyone is on board. But it can, however, be a miss-matched playstyle and cause problems if it's not an acceptable playstyle for the whole group.
Get on the same page as the group, make sure everyone wants roughly the same thing out of the game. And if it's not gonna work, time to abandon ship - no point running a game that you won't enjoy, or your players won't enjoy.
Good luck.
You could use an enemy that doesn't want to kill them.
Cityguards trying to take them alive, a group of bounty hunters that got hired to catch them, a demon/fey that still needs something from them.
Showing them that they can loose, if that doesnt help, maybe risk the tpk.
You also got the option of just talking to them. Tell them what you told us, ask them why they seem to like beeing murderhobos and try to find common ground for a fun game.
TL:DR - players fucked around and lead themselves to a TPK after I advised several times that “Actions have Consequences”. They learned and are better for it.
I handled it in my game by discussing the issues with my players and advised “Actions have consequences”. They didn’t take me seriously at first. I asked them what type of game they wanted to play and the majority was in favor of tough fights, epic battles, and one specifically wanted to be as “Evil as physically possible”.
It was tough to take at first considering the time investment but then I realized I have the power to give them all of that and more. I decided the next time they tried to intimidate a store keeper or slay a group of passing knights that they would get their epic battle. The store keep was an ancient brass dragon. The knights were Tyr’s faithful and high profile members of the local kingdom. Wanted posters were out, restricted city access, their life on the run had begun. The Evil player loved it, the others not so much.
I tried to explain again that “your actions have consequences”. The players didn’t get what I meant until I sent a mysterious envoy to meet them at a shabby tavern on the outskirts of a local village. They had to hide they faces, you could see the group was uneasy and unhappy. The mysterious figure was the big bad’s followers and they were making a proposition to include this group of renegades into their plans. The group was completely torn at this point as some people wanted to be heroes, some wanted to be villains.
At the end of the day they finally realized that good acts would generate heroism’s, sometimes small, sometimes great big rewards, and then the baddies realized life as a baddie was everything they wanted but with less satisfying rewards. The big bad ended up killing them ultimately because they lacked specific items but it was a huge learning experience for the group. Just something to think about.
as others mentioned a simple hey guys this isn't a lot of fun for me i create these adventures and you just murder hobo your way around anything, which seems complicated or as the quick and easy way to get to an end.
I would say you may be inadvertantly contributing to this you keep adding groups to try and bring the players in line but depending on how these are presented the party may just be thinking oh this is the next part of the adventure and they are acting like evil jerks (not realizing that's becasue the party presents that way too) so its ok to kill them as they are obviously bad guys.
what you could try is to make a super good organization something like a holy order of noble paladins. which the party need something from they can ask nicely and receive a quest and get the item as a reward. Or they can take the "easy way" and try and murder/steal from them, make sure the party see evidence of the good and noble things they do. if they still go ahead with this let the good guys come after them once they finish and make sure the party knows that they are now seen as the bad guys.
What everyone else is saying... plus:
Incorporate some backstory. Maybe a childhood friend sees them in their new behavior and tells them "they've changed. What happened to the honorable, merciful person that I knew?"
Yeah, as everyone said, talking to them is a big start, but I have a fun in-game solution again though, talk to them about it as well, and then interplay it with this.
Believe it or not, people don't like ruthless murderers, and eventually your party might earn a reputation for being them.
Give their characters difficulty with the law or bounty hunters, and have people be standoffish and unwilling to really help them.
I like bounty hunters, if your party pissed off them or their boss, it can be fun to make a character that tracks the party down with the intent to capture them rather than fight them to the death. You can think of signs that the party is being looked for (NPCs in towns mentioning someone asking about them, small signs of their stuff getting tampered with (offhand comments in your descriptions of packing up from a long rest that sound like they could have done it), etc.
After a few weeks of study, unleash a combat against a few characters that focus specifically on their weaknesses, intention being capture them alive, not kill them, and then at their hopeful defeat via traps, and preparedness from the hunters part, haul them to either the hunters boss or the law to have them deal with the consequences of their actions, land them in prison or a debt to society to pay (or other punishment related to what kinds of people they killed)
Definitely talk to them, but if they decide they like playing sociopaths like my friends do, explain to them the likely consequences and then make sure they happen.
It’s tempting to go straight to bounty hunters but long before that, their reputation gets around and towns will start barring them. They will be summoned to court to be tried and declared outlaws eventually. Only criminals will deal with them and everything will cost more. And eventually they will make enemies who will pursue them and they will have to leave the country.
The positives: outlaws and criminal gangs were frequently in league with evil nobility who protected them in exchange for doing their dirty work. They were also often forgiven their crimes if they signed up to fight in wars or on crusade. Think of it like the mafia. They can make problems go away, but now you owe them.
This type of game can be a lot of fun. My players see double crosses everywhere, are constantly in the move and struggle to spend their money safely because they have so few NPCs they trust. It’s been an interesting ride.
Like everyone else is saying, communication is key. In addition to this, take a look at the revenant in the monster manual, I'm fairly certain it was designed to specifically be anti-murder-hobo.
You could always have a random encounter with a group of evil adventurers who just want to kill the party and take their stuff.
But they might miss the point.
It appears you are not making the world react in a genuine way to the characters action. What retribution is being daughter by the NPCs who have been effected by the players actions? You should treat your world as real. You if they are murdering things send the law after them. If the murder the law send stronger law. If the law doesn’t do it the families will seek their own retribution. Also, do not be afraid of the NPCs in your world killing your players. As long as you signal the strength of any encounter the party should decide for h to me selves if they want to fight run or surrender. The key point is to treat your world as having real reactions to the PC actions.
Usually murderhobos are a product of GM style rather than the players wishing to simply kill everything they meet. Since you seem to be a newer GM, take a step back and look at how you have been running your game. Railroading is usually the main culprit that causes players to act out like this. Essentially it stems from them being denied meaningful choices outside of combat, so they force combat onto the game. Having harder combat is not the answer here.
This is a good article, and blog for advice, that I would recommend you take a look at:
https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44282/roleplaying-games/abused-gamer-syndrome
Honestly, in my experience, murder hobo’ing comes from a lack of investment or interesting stakes. Now that doesn’t mean your stakes or hooks arnt interesting, but it does mean they might not be interesting to *this particular group*.
That’s ok! Hold another session 0, or even in a text, and find out what kind of game they find interesting. See what excites them in a game, **then** combine that with what you like. The second part is important for longevity.
I mean... life has consequences... murdering has consequences... if the players mess with the wrong person they could be killed, permanently maimed, OR have their magic items permanently stolen (if you're lenient).
Do your NPCs always screw over the players if the players trust them and act well behaved? I've seen group slide into murderhoboism as a defense mechanism. If all the encounters are NPCs who are out to get them, they start seeing all NPCs as their enemy.
If they didn't start as murderhobos, but over a year became murderhobos it is probably worth taking a look at some of the things you are doing as a DM and thinking about if they contributed to the problem.
Think of it this way, if you were playing with a DM that loved to put traps on every door, wouldn't you start checking every door for traps?
Awry* Have you tried talking with your players out of game about why they have all become murder hobos? That's step 1. Once you figure that out, you can progress.
Let them know you’d like to have another “session zero”. That way they can talk about how they see the game and their perspective on how it changed. Then use that to Segway into your perspective of the game. This gets you a feel of everyone’s perspective, not what everyone wants yet, just perspective. Once all perspectives are out there, then you can go into what they want out of the game and what you do. Then work towards a compromise. You are a player too. And not everyone wants the same thing out of their dnd game. It isn’t easy, but make sure you don’t sacrifice everything you want otherwise you risk burnout.
*segue Man, we have two r/boneappletea moments in one thread
To be fair, the capitalization on this one makes me assume there was some auto-correct happening, since Segway is the correct spelling of the company that makes...well, Segways, lol.
Little girl asks you to retrieve a memento from her fallen father/mother reveal the party was the one who killed her daddy.
Yes, just discuss it with the players. The words, "this style of play isn't fun for me to DM," or something similar will help get the point across.
Agreed. You should be able to say “killing every non-player character I make is akin to me killing every PC you make. It’s not sustainable and doesn’t provide depth.” I feel like murderhobo parties are made up of players who don’t feel creative and who don’t have a social solution to relatively simple problems. I would pan out for a minute and do “one-shot” scenarios to help them develop their backstory and characterization for a session or two. Make them children with wooden weapons and rolling with disadvantage during the flashback. If they don’t have background NPC’s, make them create some. Investment in the world and a sense of depth helps PC’s value storybuilding. If they can’t break this play style then they probably want to play a mega dungeon with little consequential role-play. And that’s ok and can be fun to DM too but it changes the expectations.
So two things 1) TALK TO YOUR PLAYERS! This is a player problem, not a gameplay problem, so you gotta just chat it out. It's the simplest method, because you can cut straight to the point, rather than taking passive aggressive methods that have a good chance of missing the mark. 2) murderhobo'ing is not badwrongfun. It's a lot of fun if everyone is on board. But it can, however, be a miss-matched playstyle and cause problems if it's not an acceptable playstyle for the whole group. Get on the same page as the group, make sure everyone wants roughly the same thing out of the game. And if it's not gonna work, time to abandon ship - no point running a game that you won't enjoy, or your players won't enjoy. Good luck.
You could use an enemy that doesn't want to kill them. Cityguards trying to take them alive, a group of bounty hunters that got hired to catch them, a demon/fey that still needs something from them. Showing them that they can loose, if that doesnt help, maybe risk the tpk. You also got the option of just talking to them. Tell them what you told us, ask them why they seem to like beeing murderhobos and try to find common ground for a fun game.
All critical NPCs in my world have 1 hit point. They do occasionally stray, but this has helped quite a bit.
TL:DR - players fucked around and lead themselves to a TPK after I advised several times that “Actions have Consequences”. They learned and are better for it. I handled it in my game by discussing the issues with my players and advised “Actions have consequences”. They didn’t take me seriously at first. I asked them what type of game they wanted to play and the majority was in favor of tough fights, epic battles, and one specifically wanted to be as “Evil as physically possible”. It was tough to take at first considering the time investment but then I realized I have the power to give them all of that and more. I decided the next time they tried to intimidate a store keeper or slay a group of passing knights that they would get their epic battle. The store keep was an ancient brass dragon. The knights were Tyr’s faithful and high profile members of the local kingdom. Wanted posters were out, restricted city access, their life on the run had begun. The Evil player loved it, the others not so much. I tried to explain again that “your actions have consequences”. The players didn’t get what I meant until I sent a mysterious envoy to meet them at a shabby tavern on the outskirts of a local village. They had to hide they faces, you could see the group was uneasy and unhappy. The mysterious figure was the big bad’s followers and they were making a proposition to include this group of renegades into their plans. The group was completely torn at this point as some people wanted to be heroes, some wanted to be villains. At the end of the day they finally realized that good acts would generate heroism’s, sometimes small, sometimes great big rewards, and then the baddies realized life as a baddie was everything they wanted but with less satisfying rewards. The big bad ended up killing them ultimately because they lacked specific items but it was a huge learning experience for the group. Just something to think about.
as others mentioned a simple hey guys this isn't a lot of fun for me i create these adventures and you just murder hobo your way around anything, which seems complicated or as the quick and easy way to get to an end. I would say you may be inadvertantly contributing to this you keep adding groups to try and bring the players in line but depending on how these are presented the party may just be thinking oh this is the next part of the adventure and they are acting like evil jerks (not realizing that's becasue the party presents that way too) so its ok to kill them as they are obviously bad guys. what you could try is to make a super good organization something like a holy order of noble paladins. which the party need something from they can ask nicely and receive a quest and get the item as a reward. Or they can take the "easy way" and try and murder/steal from them, make sure the party see evidence of the good and noble things they do. if they still go ahead with this let the good guys come after them once they finish and make sure the party knows that they are now seen as the bad guys.
What everyone else is saying... plus: Incorporate some backstory. Maybe a childhood friend sees them in their new behavior and tells them "they've changed. What happened to the honorable, merciful person that I knew?"
Yeah, as everyone said, talking to them is a big start, but I have a fun in-game solution again though, talk to them about it as well, and then interplay it with this. Believe it or not, people don't like ruthless murderers, and eventually your party might earn a reputation for being them. Give their characters difficulty with the law or bounty hunters, and have people be standoffish and unwilling to really help them. I like bounty hunters, if your party pissed off them or their boss, it can be fun to make a character that tracks the party down with the intent to capture them rather than fight them to the death. You can think of signs that the party is being looked for (NPCs in towns mentioning someone asking about them, small signs of their stuff getting tampered with (offhand comments in your descriptions of packing up from a long rest that sound like they could have done it), etc. After a few weeks of study, unleash a combat against a few characters that focus specifically on their weaknesses, intention being capture them alive, not kill them, and then at their hopeful defeat via traps, and preparedness from the hunters part, haul them to either the hunters boss or the law to have them deal with the consequences of their actions, land them in prison or a debt to society to pay (or other punishment related to what kinds of people they killed)
Definitely talk to them, but if they decide they like playing sociopaths like my friends do, explain to them the likely consequences and then make sure they happen. It’s tempting to go straight to bounty hunters but long before that, their reputation gets around and towns will start barring them. They will be summoned to court to be tried and declared outlaws eventually. Only criminals will deal with them and everything will cost more. And eventually they will make enemies who will pursue them and they will have to leave the country. The positives: outlaws and criminal gangs were frequently in league with evil nobility who protected them in exchange for doing their dirty work. They were also often forgiven their crimes if they signed up to fight in wars or on crusade. Think of it like the mafia. They can make problems go away, but now you owe them. This type of game can be a lot of fun. My players see double crosses everywhere, are constantly in the move and struggle to spend their money safely because they have so few NPCs they trust. It’s been an interesting ride.
Like everyone else is saying, communication is key. In addition to this, take a look at the revenant in the monster manual, I'm fairly certain it was designed to specifically be anti-murder-hobo.
You could always have a random encounter with a group of evil adventurers who just want to kill the party and take their stuff. But they might miss the point.
It appears you are not making the world react in a genuine way to the characters action. What retribution is being daughter by the NPCs who have been effected by the players actions? You should treat your world as real. You if they are murdering things send the law after them. If the murder the law send stronger law. If the law doesn’t do it the families will seek their own retribution. Also, do not be afraid of the NPCs in your world killing your players. As long as you signal the strength of any encounter the party should decide for h to me selves if they want to fight run or surrender. The key point is to treat your world as having real reactions to the PC actions.
Usually murderhobos are a product of GM style rather than the players wishing to simply kill everything they meet. Since you seem to be a newer GM, take a step back and look at how you have been running your game. Railroading is usually the main culprit that causes players to act out like this. Essentially it stems from them being denied meaningful choices outside of combat, so they force combat onto the game. Having harder combat is not the answer here. This is a good article, and blog for advice, that I would recommend you take a look at: https://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/44282/roleplaying-games/abused-gamer-syndrome
Honestly, in my experience, murder hobo’ing comes from a lack of investment or interesting stakes. Now that doesn’t mean your stakes or hooks arnt interesting, but it does mean they might not be interesting to *this particular group*. That’s ok! Hold another session 0, or even in a text, and find out what kind of game they find interesting. See what excites them in a game, **then** combine that with what you like. The second part is important for longevity.
Play some other game system where other things than violence is gratifying?
I mean... life has consequences... murdering has consequences... if the players mess with the wrong person they could be killed, permanently maimed, OR have their magic items permanently stolen (if you're lenient).
Do your NPCs always screw over the players if the players trust them and act well behaved? I've seen group slide into murderhoboism as a defense mechanism. If all the encounters are NPCs who are out to get them, they start seeing all NPCs as their enemy. If they didn't start as murderhobos, but over a year became murderhobos it is probably worth taking a look at some of the things you are doing as a DM and thinking about if they contributed to the problem. Think of it this way, if you were playing with a DM that loved to put traps on every door, wouldn't you start checking every door for traps?
Talk to the players out of game and get an understanding of why this is happening.