A character who kills everyone they meet can be a source of frustration for many GMs. Quite often, we hear GMs lamenting the fact that their party has turned into a pack of “murder hobos,” homeless wanderers who slaughter indiscriminately without regard to consequence. I am here today to make two points about this style of play: 1) This play style is not always a problem, and 2) If this is a problem in a group, it is the GM’s fault. These points may sound controversial to some, but bear with me and I’ll explain.
Disruptive or cathartic?
People play games in different ways. So many things can affect a person’s play style at a table, including: party dynamic, game tone, daily frustration, system fatigue, expectation, boredom, and experience.
A person may sit down at the table and decide they want to tell a lengthy story about a pacifist refusing to take a life. Or, they could sit down not wanting to deal with all that, and just looking for some fun. People play these games for all different reasons, and are looking for different sources of fulfillment.
Is it “wrong” to play a murder hobo? Not at all. This is a perfectly legitimate play style, and if that’s what the person is looking for, there is no reason to tell them they’re playing the game wrong.
Is it disruptive to the rest of the group? This is an important question. And I don’t mean is it disruptive to the GM’s story. That doesn’t matter. Is it disruptive to the other players at the table? Do they care? Are they joining in? Is it cutting off chances for them to engage with the story? Do they roll their eyes and accept it? Do they laugh and think it’s engaging in its own way? Are they all wanting to tell this type of story, and looking for some lighthearted fun?
If the party is perfectly fine with this style of play, the GM should recognize that and shift their own mindset. The GM’s job is not to tell their own story; the GM’s job is to tell the sort of story that the party actually wants to play and will enjoy. If one person at your table loves playing the murder hobo style, and the rest of the party enjoys it or doesn’t mind, it is your job as a GM to accept that play style and incorporate it into your story.
However, if this play style is bothering the rest of the party, and the person is being disruptive, there are some considerations to make.
None of this is to say that there should be no consequences. There should always be world reaction to character actions. But there is a fine line between story consequence and punishment.
Why this is the GM’s fault
If the behavior is actually a problem, or if the GM feels that it’s a problem, it is the fault of that GM. There, I said it. Stop reading, throw your laptop, flip the table, whatever you’re gonna do. But it’s true.
Behavior which gets rewarded will be repeated. If your players are acting as murder hobos, or are doing any other behavior which seems to be problematic, and if they are doing it consistently, it is the fault of the GM because that GM holds the story power. The GM is responsible for causing the world to react to the character actions.
GMs who complain about murder hobos, let me ask you a question: When was the last time your characters got hassled by the guard for vagrancy? When did you last have your characters get treated as outsiders everywhere they went? When was the last time you asked for passport papers or official identification? Do they want to store things long term? Do they have families?
Every character has a back story. When was the last time they went home? When did you last use a custom hometown drawn from their back story? So often, GMs drop an NPC in from the backstory, but they put them into another city. What about that hometown? What about the character’s house? When did you last anchor your characters in the world? People don’t get a serious bond to a place until they’ve got a place of their own. Then they get protective. They want to settle down. They start to follow laws, because they own a portion of that society for themselves.
Those two paragraphs just help deal with the vagrancy issue. But what about the murderer problem?
The murder issue is similar to what happens with sociopaths. They feel no connection to others or any dedication to the world they are in. If you have characters slaughtering everything around them without a second thought, this is sociopathic behavior. So, treat it accordingly.
Murder is a crime. Even justified homicide gets investigated thoroughly. When was the last time you had the law get involved? Was there a trial? Do your characters have to justify their killing? They’re covered in blood but walk the streets without issue. Body counts become a source of terror in communities. As people get brutally murdered one after another for crossing the party, do people refuse to do business with them? Do people lock their doors and windows, refuse to come outside? Do mothers clutch their children? Does the society react at all to brutal slaying after brutal slaying? Do festivals get canceled? Are the streets always empty? Does trade stop? Does the inn shut down? Is life harder for the characters at all?
If your world never reacts in dynamic, subtle ways, the players will not connect with the world at all. And I don’t mean in punishing ways. Sure, you can throw your players in jail and punish them. They laugh at the table, and roll up a new character. They jump back in and kill the next person they see.
But if you make your characters feel the weight of their actions, they will start to care. If they feel like monsters themselves, they will start to question what they’re doing. Children run from them, or cry when backed into a corner. Townsfolk beg for mercy before the players have even started talking. They can only take on quests from the most brutal of organizations, and even they give strict orders on who dies and who doesn’t. Evil npcs start sending vicious jobs down to the party. “Kill this witness, and his entire family, while they’re sleeping.” If the murdering character refuses, the evil npc is genuinely surprised. “You’ve got a reputation for having no morals,” they say. “What’s one more family?”
You don’t need to be ham-fisted about this. You still want your players to enjoy the game. But the world should react to their behavior in a believable way. Give them plenty of chances for action as well. If they enjoy combat, if it’s their favorite part of the game, then make sure you give them plenty of chances to fight and not have to worry. Vicious wild animals or savage bandits attacking, maybe. But give them an outlet for that battle lust.
If the behavior has been deemed disruptive, where players are annoyed by the behavior of one or two individuals, you can be a bit less subtle about these consequences. Again, don’t ruin the game. But react, and use the behavior as a chance to tell a deeper story. Everything that happens in the game world is a chance to tell another story.
Use the actions of your players to deepen their connection to the story. Over time, the murder hobos may come to find a home of their own, and want to keep law and order in the town. They may want to prevent death in their city because they see the effect it has on their neighbors, the fear and suspicion, the locked doors and empty streets.
Reward what you want to see repeated
Do you reward characters with land or homes? When was the last time you made them guardians of the state and gave them a home, or a bit of land to farm? The reason kings hand out land like this is to encourage champions to settle down and take a personal interest in the state. It makes them want to keep order and peace around their home. They get to know the populace, and familiarity brings sentimentality and connection.
Ironically enough, this same murder hobo issue has been faced by rulers throughout the millennia in our own history. The way to combat rampaging murderers from a different culture is to give them a connection to your nation. Natural bonding and connecting will take over, and they will stop burning and pillaging. They may even turn against other invaders and defend your nation for you. Encouraging the strongest warriors to settle down and form a connection means that you are safe from them and from other wandering warriors.
Be more liberal with handing out rewards in this way. Speaking of rewards, what are you providing XP for? Combat only? Bingo, there’s the issue. I remember the drastic change that happened in one of my groups when this changed. We had a perpetual crew of murder hobos. We changed to a new GM within the same group, and the behavior continued. Until, that is, the GM started handing out EXTRA experience for cleverly beating challenges without combat, and calling this out openly at the table. People were floored, and after a few sessions, everyone was geared toward solving problems with their wits and minimizing combat. The holdouts at the table were policed by other players who encouraged them to be clever instead of brutal. And, when things turned deadly, the party pointed the remaining murder hobos at the issue and unleashed their full fury.
In summary
Murder hobo behavior can be a cry for attention, or an indirect request for deeper immersion. If your players are showing up, killing everything in sight, then going home without remembering the story, then you aren’t telling the story they want. If they’re just looking for combat, you should consider running a war game instead. If they say they enjoy the role play, then give them what they’re asking for and embrace their behavior by causing the world around them to react in deeper ways. Give them those connections they’re naturally looking for. Help them tell a story of brutality and redemption. Give them a home and a family, and a reason to feel connected.
GMs, learn to distinguish between behavior you personally don’t like and behavior that is actually disruptive to other players at the table. And learn to embrace all behaviors as fodder for deeper stories. In time, this won’t be an issue anymore, because you will be telling deeper stories regardless of what’s happening. Just make sure you’re rewarding the behavior you want, and having your world react believably to the behaviors being displayed.