How do you RP the NPCs? We often hear about murder hobos but the other side of the coin is NPCs who are *****. I've have one DM who had the NPCs be super aggrssive / abrupt / even destroyed our property and then acted all surprised / admonishing when we reacted to the provocation.
Sure, if your players are attacking and killing random, innocent NPCs who are just minding their own business, then that is one thing, but if your NPCs are kind of ***** then don't be surprised if your players don't like them.
Equally, another cause of murder hobos is simply boredom. Do your players care about your NPCs? Are they invested in their story's or plights? If not, why not?
Make a level 20 character, any you like. Have them walking innocently down the street. Let the party have a chance to walk right past, and expect them to attack. When they do, good news - you just got yourself a Terminator. This badass level 20 person is now set on revenge, and you better believe that they are going to be more than a match for you guys!
Consequence. That's the name of the game. If they kill people - fine, but deal with the consequences. That includes being shunned, having bounties on their heads, being arrested, maybe hanged. How would the world deal with such an issue as a group of powerful individuals who are set on murdering everyone? They might strike a deal with a dragon to get rid of the murderhobos, or ask for help from a guild of heroes, or a powerful mage. A cunning NPC might set them a task which is guaranteed to kill them, including tipping off the dragon that someone's coming to their mountain.
If you let them kill everyone willy-nilly, then it will never stop. Make it a big deal. Make them regret doing it, as soon as they do it. You killed someone, and now you're being chased by guards. You do it a second time, and the guards are equipped to deal with them - antimagic nets, for example. Perhaps an elite team of rogue-hero-hunters will be called in.
At any rate, make them realise that there are consequences, and make them bad ones, and it may help them to stop.
Also, talk to your players. Tell them you're gettign a bit fed up with them killing everyone and tell them that it's not how you wanted to run the game, and say that if they want to run a murder-hobo game then they will have to run one themselves, if it comes to it.
Honestly... just talk to your players. Tell them that you don't appreciate them killing every NPC they stumble across... they're making everything more difficult for you and making it not fun for you to run the game. After all... the DM is a player too, not just a computer that processes rules and situations to entertain others.
If your players WANT to just murderhobo across the land and have no interest in roleplay or engagement with the game world beyond that, then maybe they're just not a compatible group. If you want, you could try to just play the game the way they want... just create a chaotic, lawless world where it doesn't matter if someone slits the barkeep's throat rather than pay for their drinks. Maybe someone else in the group could take up the mantle of DM and you could try out murderhoboing with your friends as a player. But at the end of the day... if you don't want to play with a group of people who casually murder everyone they come across, and they don't want to play a game where they're not allowed to murder everyone they come across... maybe it's time to either find a new group, or just switch to playing some kind of war game.
If you don’t like seeing the game you run devolve into murder hobo body count sessions, then stop running games for them.
There are tons of groups online looking for dungeon masters and players, you can find many of them here. I’d advise playing a game you like, with new friends, rather than enduring a game you aren’t enjoying.
It depends on Where they are killing the NPC's. Are they killing them indiscriminately in the city, then there would be screaming from the townsfolk and all them would arm up and hunt them down. What they kill the townsfolk? The mayor uses message to beg the capitol for help the town is being ransacked by adventurers and two dozen level 20 adventurers show up to capture, subdie and imprison the murderers. IF they are going that insane, do it once, and ask them what would happen if they went on a killing spree in a city in Real Life?
Do they always kill the bad guy before he gives information to the party, you can always leave a nagging suspicion like "If only you had talked to him you feel you missed something of great value". Keep doing that, perhaps have a competing adventurer party come to town and have them show the fabulous treasure they got from the same dungeon, but they talked to one of the guards early on after having to flee so they knew where the secret vault was.
Do you set consequences for their action and do you think it through how the NPC's would behave in a situation. Yes its frustrating with murder bots, but you can always focus fire down on them when they always go aggressive for no reason have the NPC say "You dare attack me when I was asking you about where you got those cloaks, Men kill the necromancer, I want his head". Have everyone literally focus fire him till he's down and cut off his head. Would that be my first action, by all means no. I go with more in game methods, and if that doesn't work I'd break the 4th wall and tell the guy directly that killing the NPC's is screwing the game up and eventually its going to probably cost your character his head. Let other people talk, and hold his dice, he'll get to roll soon enough, but he's taking away knowledge and increasing your work to figure out how to keep people occupied for things like Role Playing, it is one part of the game just like Exploring and Combat.
Have other adventurers hunt them down. Ask yourself, what are the consequences for murdering people in real life. Ask what would happen if a group of people were wandering around your town killing indescriminately. Even if common people (or common guards) aren't a match, someone would come and try and stop them. There is always someone who is bigger and badder that was busy with other problems. Well, now your players are their problems and now they've come to solve the players.
One metagamey option to use might be to tell them of a potential consequence if they kill a plot-important NPC that you'd transfer to a parallel world where all the background characters are the same but all the player characters are different. Your NPC can effectively come back to life while all the players have to work on new characters. Why should you do the work? If you don't want them just to come back in with the same characters you could still use the standard array for stats but get players to roll dice in the remainder of the session to determine which stat each score goes into. Yes the players will get metagame knowledge about the significance of an NPC... but it saves you work. Perhaps for everyone, this might be a better alternative of a potentially long, adversarial episode of the forces of law hunting characters down while the plot lines intended antagonists are left unopposed.
Combat is a method of conflict resolution, which implies that there is conflict between PC and NPC. Further conflict might lead to more combat on behalf of the PCs fighting off the town guard because of their actions. By the end of the conflict, you may be facing executing a PC against the player's wishes and will have solved absolutely nothing, primarily because your problem is not in game. It manifests in game but it began when your player decided to make a character that would act as they are acting. Your player decided that it was ok for their character to react to NPCs with lethality, which may or may not be warranted. (We don't have enough information to make that assessment.)
Talk to the player. Out of game. Ask questions that would describe the PCs thought process that led to the action. Look into how this could be detrimental to the collective enjoyment of the game if it were to escalate or continue. If there is some type of miscommunication, or lack of managed expectation solve it with the player, not the character. For all we know, you as the DM, are what is unintentionally initiating the aggression towards the NPCs by virtue of misreading the PCs reactions and thoughts. "I have a problem, please help!" isn't too much to work with.
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“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
three letters should solve the issue. tpk. i don't mean it to be a dick. if they are killing all the npc's then give them more. and more. and more still. make them the most wanted mass murderers on a continent. assassin guilds, adventurer guilds and bandits alike will attempt to kill them to collect a reward. this narratively will make sense. and give them more people t kill which is there playstyle. if they play clever they live. if not then they die. this also teaches them that actions have consequences so they may start thinking about what they do. i did this once and my players had a blast
I think thats a good idea and all, but its really hard to tell them to stop and get them to listen and to give them consequences for their actions.
I get it, but if they're your friends and they care about you having fun too they should be willing to listen. Still, there are alternatives... sometimes people just want very different experiences with the game. If they're not willing to listen you're not obligated to DM for them.
I just thought of a particularly good counter to this, which may even help make a good storyline.
The party gets sent after a treasure. This treasure has been specially created by the worried people of the world for these adventurers.
The party will arrive at the place and will need to get a treasure which has every appearance, including deceptive magic which, through plot armour, defies any identification spells. Alternatively, the treasure might be gold, which few players ever try to identify!
Basically, when they go back, quest complete, they will find themselves cursed to be incapable of harming any innocent people. If they try to attack, then the attack misses, somehow. If they try to cast fireball, then the innocents somehow emerge unscathed.
The mayor of the town is now accompanied by a mage, and is ecstatic that the magic worked. The party is now cursed to only ever harm those who would mean them harm, and the world is saved, and the murderhobos are frustrated that they've lost their agency but they might realise why it was done and learn from it. Either way, they aren't going to be murdering any more!
If they then declare that they are leaving the game because they wanted to murder everyone, explain to them the work you're putting in to create worlds for them and the importance of most of the people in there, and tell them they can either stay and sort out their murderous ways, or they can leave and let you DM a civilised game.
I think thats a good idea and all, but its really hard to tell them to stop and get them to listen and to give them consequences for their actions.
So you don’t want to actually solve the problem?
Ok. It’s your game, too. So if this behavior continues, and you don’t want it to, then it’s on you my dude. You’ve been told a bunch of ways on how to handle this and now you’re backing out on them.
My advice? Adjust to your murder hobo game, because you don’t actually seem to want to fix it.
I think thats a good idea and all, but its really hard to tell them to stop and get them to listen and to give them consequences for their actions.
+1 for talking to the players
"Hey guys, this is a cooperative social game, and I don't have fun when you murder all the NPCs I come up with. You will get plenty of actual enemies you can 'terminate', but please don't just randomly kill everyone."
If that doesn't work, you'll have to accept that this is the only way they *want* to play. Then you have to make the call if you prefer to play with your friends, or if you want to play the way you want to (and find another group). Either way is fine, if you can live with it.
I am doing a campaign but all my friends kill all the NPCs please help me.
DM
Dude your the necromancer that will have a rein of terror :|
=^.^=
you think he isnt trying to storm the city with zombie orcs already?
DM
How do you RP the NPCs? We often hear about murder hobos but the other side of the coin is NPCs who are *****. I've have one DM who had the NPCs be super aggrssive / abrupt / even destroyed our property and then acted all surprised / admonishing when we reacted to the provocation.
Sure, if your players are attacking and killing random, innocent NPCs who are just minding their own business, then that is one thing, but if your NPCs are kind of ***** then don't be surprised if your players don't like them.
Equally, another cause of murder hobos is simply boredom. Do your players care about your NPCs? Are they invested in their story's or plights? If not, why not?
Let them create their own BBEG.
Make a level 20 character, any you like. Have them walking innocently down the street. Let the party have a chance to walk right past, and expect them to attack. When they do, good news - you just got yourself a Terminator. This badass level 20 person is now set on revenge, and you better believe that they are going to be more than a match for you guys!
Consequence. That's the name of the game. If they kill people - fine, but deal with the consequences. That includes being shunned, having bounties on their heads, being arrested, maybe hanged. How would the world deal with such an issue as a group of powerful individuals who are set on murdering everyone? They might strike a deal with a dragon to get rid of the murderhobos, or ask for help from a guild of heroes, or a powerful mage. A cunning NPC might set them a task which is guaranteed to kill them, including tipping off the dragon that someone's coming to their mountain.
If you let them kill everyone willy-nilly, then it will never stop. Make it a big deal. Make them regret doing it, as soon as they do it. You killed someone, and now you're being chased by guards. You do it a second time, and the guards are equipped to deal with them - antimagic nets, for example. Perhaps an elite team of rogue-hero-hunters will be called in.
At any rate, make them realise that there are consequences, and make them bad ones, and it may help them to stop.
Also, talk to your players. Tell them you're gettign a bit fed up with them killing everyone and tell them that it's not how you wanted to run the game, and say that if they want to run a murder-hobo game then they will have to run one themselves, if it comes to it.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
Honestly... just talk to your players. Tell them that you don't appreciate them killing every NPC they stumble across... they're making everything more difficult for you and making it not fun for you to run the game. After all... the DM is a player too, not just a computer that processes rules and situations to entertain others.
If your players WANT to just murderhobo across the land and have no interest in roleplay or engagement with the game world beyond that, then maybe they're just not a compatible group. If you want, you could try to just play the game the way they want... just create a chaotic, lawless world where it doesn't matter if someone slits the barkeep's throat rather than pay for their drinks. Maybe someone else in the group could take up the mantle of DM and you could try out murderhoboing with your friends as a player. But at the end of the day... if you don't want to play with a group of people who casually murder everyone they come across, and they don't want to play a game where they're not allowed to murder everyone they come across... maybe it's time to either find a new group, or just switch to playing some kind of war game.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
Oh no my he's the one who wants to kill an NPC to use as his skull on his staff. (Necromancer)
=^.^=
If you don’t like seeing the game you run devolve into murder hobo body count sessions, then stop running games for them.
There are tons of groups online looking for dungeon masters and players, you can find many of them here. I’d advise playing a game you like, with new friends, rather than enduring a game you aren’t enjoying.
That’s my experience, I hope it helps.
Another way is to use multiple different no-kill technques.
Specifically, feel free to to have badguys have information that is essential to the good guys. And have actual consequences for that.
Kill the NPC that knows where the Princess is being held? Princess gets possesed by a 19th level ghost and goes after the party.
Kill everyone indiscriminately? Have bounties placed on the party. Suddenly people will no longer sell them anything. Not food, not healing, nothing
And when they go to sleep at the inn, the inn gets surrounded by guards.
It depends on Where they are killing the NPC's. Are they killing them indiscriminately in the city, then there would be screaming from the townsfolk and all them would arm up and hunt them down. What they kill the townsfolk? The mayor uses message to beg the capitol for help the town is being ransacked by adventurers and two dozen level 20 adventurers show up to capture, subdie and imprison the murderers. IF they are going that insane, do it once, and ask them what would happen if they went on a killing spree in a city in Real Life?
Do they always kill the bad guy before he gives information to the party, you can always leave a nagging suspicion like "If only you had talked to him you feel you missed something of great value". Keep doing that, perhaps have a competing adventurer party come to town and have them show the fabulous treasure they got from the same dungeon, but they talked to one of the guards early on after having to flee so they knew where the secret vault was.
Do you set consequences for their action and do you think it through how the NPC's would behave in a situation. Yes its frustrating with murder bots, but you can always focus fire down on them when they always go aggressive for no reason have the NPC say "You dare attack me when I was asking you about where you got those cloaks, Men kill the necromancer, I want his head". Have everyone literally focus fire him till he's down and cut off his head. Would that be my first action, by all means no. I go with more in game methods, and if that doesn't work I'd break the 4th wall and tell the guy directly that killing the NPC's is screwing the game up and eventually its going to probably cost your character his head. Let other people talk, and hold his dice, he'll get to roll soon enough, but he's taking away knowledge and increasing your work to figure out how to keep people occupied for things like Role Playing, it is one part of the game just like Exploring and Combat.
Have other adventurers hunt them down. Ask yourself, what are the consequences for murdering people in real life. Ask what would happen if a group of people were wandering around your town killing indescriminately. Even if common people (or common guards) aren't a match, someone would come and try and stop them. There is always someone who is bigger and badder that was busy with other problems. Well, now your players are their problems and now they've come to solve the players.
One metagamey option to use might be to tell them of a potential consequence if they kill a plot-important NPC that you'd transfer to a parallel world where all the background characters are the same but all the player characters are different. Your NPC can effectively come back to life while all the players have to work on new characters. Why should you do the work? If you don't want them just to come back in with the same characters you could still use the standard array for stats but get players to roll dice in the remainder of the session to determine which stat each score goes into. Yes the players will get metagame knowledge about the significance of an NPC... but it saves you work.
Perhaps for everyone, this might be a better alternative of a potentially long, adversarial episode of the forces of law hunting characters down while the plot lines intended antagonists are left unopposed.
Combat is a method of conflict resolution, which implies that there is conflict between PC and NPC. Further conflict might lead to more combat on behalf of the PCs fighting off the town guard because of their actions. By the end of the conflict, you may be facing executing a PC against the player's wishes and will have solved absolutely nothing, primarily because your problem is not in game. It manifests in game but it began when your player decided to make a character that would act as they are acting. Your player decided that it was ok for their character to react to NPCs with lethality, which may or may not be warranted. (We don't have enough information to make that assessment.)
Talk to the player. Out of game. Ask questions that would describe the PCs thought process that led to the action. Look into how this could be detrimental to the collective enjoyment of the game if it were to escalate or continue. If there is some type of miscommunication, or lack of managed expectation solve it with the player, not the character. For all we know, you as the DM, are what is unintentionally initiating the aggression towards the NPCs by virtue of misreading the PCs reactions and thoughts. "I have a problem, please help!" isn't too much to work with.
“Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.” - Mark Twain - Innocents Abroad
three letters should solve the issue. tpk. i don't mean it to be a dick. if they are killing all the npc's then give them more. and more. and more still. make them the most wanted mass murderers on a continent. assassin guilds, adventurer guilds and bandits alike will attempt to kill them to collect a reward. this narratively will make sense. and give them more people t kill which is there playstyle. if they play clever they live. if not then they die. this also teaches them that actions have consequences so they may start thinking about what they do. i did this once and my players had a blast
I think thats a good idea and all, but its really hard to tell them to stop and get them to listen and to give them consequences for their actions.
DM
I get it, but if they're your friends and they care about you having fun too they should be willing to listen. Still, there are alternatives... sometimes people just want very different experiences with the game. If they're not willing to listen you're not obligated to DM for them.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
DUde just don't dm if hthey are trying to kill everyone.
=^.^=
I just thought of a particularly good counter to this, which may even help make a good storyline.
The party gets sent after a treasure. This treasure has been specially created by the worried people of the world for these adventurers.
The party will arrive at the place and will need to get a treasure which has every appearance, including deceptive magic which, through plot armour, defies any identification spells. Alternatively, the treasure might be gold, which few players ever try to identify!
Basically, when they go back, quest complete, they will find themselves cursed to be incapable of harming any innocent people. If they try to attack, then the attack misses, somehow. If they try to cast fireball, then the innocents somehow emerge unscathed.
The mayor of the town is now accompanied by a mage, and is ecstatic that the magic worked. The party is now cursed to only ever harm those who would mean them harm, and the world is saved, and the murderhobos are frustrated that they've lost their agency but they might realise why it was done and learn from it. Either way, they aren't going to be murdering any more!
If they then declare that they are leaving the game because they wanted to murder everyone, explain to them the work you're putting in to create worlds for them and the importance of most of the people in there, and tell them they can either stay and sort out their murderous ways, or they can leave and let you DM a civilised game.
Make your Artificer work with any other class with 174 Multiclassing Feats for your Artificer Multiclass Character!
DM's Guild Releases on This Thread Or check them all out on DMs Guild!
DrivethruRPG Releases on This Thread - latest release: My Character is a Werewolf: balanced rules for Lycanthropy!
I have started discussing/reviewing 3rd party D&D content on Substack - stay tuned for semi-regular posts!
So you don’t want to actually solve the problem?
Ok. It’s your game, too. So if this behavior continues, and you don’t want it to, then it’s on you my dude. You’ve been told a bunch of ways on how to handle this and now you’re backing out on them.
My advice? Adjust to your murder hobo game, because you don’t actually seem to want to fix it.
+1 for talking to the players
"Hey guys, this is a cooperative social game, and I don't have fun when you murder all the NPCs I come up with. You will get plenty of actual enemies you can 'terminate', but please don't just randomly kill everyone."
If that doesn't work, you'll have to accept that this is the only way they *want* to play. Then you have to make the call if you prefer to play with your friends, or if you want to play the way you want to (and find another group). Either way is fine, if you can live with it.
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