I've played DnD for about 5 or 6 years now, and I've never really encountered any legitimate murder hobos. Because of this, I don't really know anything about them - aside from the fact they like to kill NPCs and take their stuff. This may come back to bite me, as I believe the players in a campaign I just started are all probably murder hobos themselves. That's not bad, it's just a low-seriousness meme-game we play and laugh about, but I'd like to learn more about how murder hobos typically act to craft a game better suited for them. If anyone's got any tips or stories about murder hobos, I'd be happy to hear them.

If you're OK with having your party act in this manner, then just go with it. Be aware that if you introduce new players, this behavior might be off-putting.

Just play the game, you don't have to craft anything special for them, they will do it all on their own.

Encouraging players to be murder hobos is not hard.

1. Make character advancement XP based
2. Give XP for anything they kill
3. Stock NPCs with tons of loot
4. Never have their there be any consequences in the game world for killing NPCs, beyond the immediate scene.

Quote from Vedexent >>

1. Never have their there be any consequences in the game world for killing NPCs, beyond the immediate scene.

 IMO there should still be consequences, but have the benefits (lewt, xp) outweigh them. Makes for a more fun game.

I agree with death_grips. I play with a group that has strong murderhobo tendencies (we don't go full out, but we do have considerably less concern about collateral damage than a "good" party should), and usually our shenanigans backfire on us in spectacular ways - but then we have tons of fun figuring out how to extricate ourselves from this newest calamity. We understand that our characters are behaving somewhat ridiculously, and watching that come back to bite our characters in the ass is hilarious!

I don't agree with those who say that murder hobos arise because the DM is doing badly. I have only encountered this type of player once, and there were two of them. They had been told by another "DM" that one should run around taking everything that isn't bolted down, killing everything and they encountered for XP, and so on and they had gleefully accepted this. I informed the players that if they behaved that way in my campaign their characters would probably be caught by powerful authority figures very quickly, and then executed for wanton theft and murder. They ignored this advice and their characters were caught, imprisoned and executed. I never played with them again but that was not because they played badly. It was because I disliked them somewhat as human beings after that session. D&D is not "Grand Theft Mordor".

Back in those days we used to call people like that "goth nerds" or something similar (its hard to translate to English). The only contemporary american term that seems to fit a little bit is neckbeard. They are antisocial, rude, awkward and amoral in the way that they conduct themselves, to one extent or another and are often interested in fringe things, like being Bronys, playing collectible card games geared toward children. Back then it was often computer programming, the emerging Internet and trying to seem intelligent and clever that was the thing with this archetype (if you could call it that). Players like this are of the anhedonic type because they don't really like playing D&D (or doing anything at all really) so they pretend to enjoy ruining the game and/or the DMs campaign theme when in fact, they are overgrown babies without a real capacity for enjoyment and fun. I avoid such players like the plague and I've developed somewhat of an instinct at detecting them.    

Quote from DMsven >>

The only contemporary american term that seems to fit a little bit is neckbeard. They are antisocial, rude, awkward and amoral in the way that they conduct themselves, to one extend or another and are often interested in fringe things, like being Bronys, playing collectible card games geared toward children. Back then it was often computer programming, the emerging Internet and trying to seem intelligent and clever that was the thing with this archetype (if you could call it that). Players like this are of the anhedonic type because they don't really like playing D&D (or doing anything at all really) so they pretend to enjoy ruining the game and/or the DMs campaign theme when in fact, they are overgrown babies without a real capacity for enjoyment and fun. I avoid such players like the plague and I've developed somewhat of an instinct at detecting them.    

 Damn, that's the funniest (but true) description of a Neckbeard I've heard in a long time LOL :P