How Do I Have Consequences for Murderhoboism?

[Gizmogidget]

I am actually perfectly fine with murderhobos since most of my games are improv anyways, but I have issue with how to demonstrate that acting this way in just about every society is likely to not condone this behavior. See at level one if they murder random people, I can have the town guard come after them to demonstrate this.

But if Dave the Murderhobo 14th level Barbarian and his buddies come to town, ordinary guards ain't gonna cut it. However it feels cheap to have 20th level paladins appear out of the woodwork. So how should I demonstrate that doing crazy things can lead to consequences without creating ridiculous worlds in which a tiny village has 10th level fighter cops?

[Grim Portent]

Assuming the setting lacks level 20 town guards waiting in the wings, the simple thing to do is have the common folk be terrified of the PCs much like they would be a Dark Lord or Necromancer King that wandered into town.

People hide in cellars and attics, tell their children and spouses to go into other rooms and stay out of sight when the players walk into a room, exercise superstitious practices normally reserved for ghosts and demons but targeted at the players.

To the normal man someone who can kill a dragon, butcher an army and walk through a blazing fire unhindered like a 14th level Barbarian can is basically some kind of inhuman monster in a man's skin. If it has a reputation for butchery and savagery they're going to treat it as something to avoid, placate or ward off.

[Lord Raziere]

well if they're murderhobos, people being angry at them won't work- they will just see it as more free exp.

Instead, show how they won't get any fights from it, and nothing of value from their murderhobo endeavors.

People will only run in fear, cower in the corner or die too easily for combat to be anything noteworthy. they don't get any loot they can use, no magic items or amounts of money that is useful for PC level stuff (cp and sp). and that basically their legend of terror will be established, so that when they go looking for another village to do the same thing? they will find it empty of everything- life, valuables, food, because everyone has evacuated to get away from them while the kings mobilize their thousands of soldiers to eventually come for you all at once instead of in manageable tactical chunks of a few dozen, who employ scorched earth tactics by destroying anything the PC could possibly loot, knowing how adventurers work and what motivates them.

and basically the entire thing becomes a slow realization where nothing they do gets them things that they value, that everyone considers them monsters to keep well away from and that they can't dwell in civilization anymore, until a shining knight comes along and calls them bandits, or raiders. for that is what they have become in character.

[Winter_Wolf]

Are the player characters looking to be villains? Make the npcs treat them like they're monsters: they're openly afraid of the pcs, take pains to avoid them if possible like say crossing to the far side of the road or quickly detouring awand from the pcs' paths. The braver npcs might just flat refuse to deal with them at all. I know a few people in real life who'd take a beating rather than deal with people they dislike, and have actually taken the beating. Subtle discrimination like higher prices, lower quality goods and services, even "begging m'lord's pardon but were just fresh out of what you seek."

Maybe a bigger fish comes after the murder hobos because the frightened npcs pool their resources/beg salvation from someone powerful to save them.

Not really sure what else I could offer, I'm pretty comfortable with confrontation even when I suspect I'm going to get my arse kicked; I'm probably lucky I haven't been shot yet to be honest.

Edit: wow I guess I need to type a lot faster to get in before the ninjas.

[Regwon]

When they're level 14 throwing their weight around in Backwater #4, its unlikely that any of the inhabitants will be able to do anything. Even if you make something up, it will come across as really contrived. However, assuming that there are other adventurers in your world, the characters acting like bullies will eventually draw their notice. Your characters presumably have stuff that some other people would like, and defeating the local tyrants is an easy excuse to try and take it. If the characters are really behaving badly, they will get the attention of the Temple of the Good God, or the Wizard Organisation, or the Monarch, who may have the resources to deal with them. Otherwise, theyre probably powerful enough to do as they wish.

Remember, its not your job to punish your players due to the actions of their characters. You shouldnt think "They did this bad thing, and they need to pay.", but if there are laws that they are breaking, or if they are doing something that somebody In Your World finds reprehensible, then there should be mechanisms from your world to deal with threats like that. Usually it's 'Pay a bunch of adventurers to do it for you'.

[veti]

When the party comes to town, most people - won't "cross by on the far side of the road" or "look at them fearfully". They'll be gone. The party will walk into a ghost town, total population three flatulent goats who couldn't be moved quickly enough.

This will apply to all small towns and villages. Word of the maniacs' whereabouts will spread quickly, watchers will be set, and everyone is ready to light out to the hills/forest at a couple of minutes' notice.

When the party comes to a large town or city - then they run into the full military might of the local civilisation, whatever that might be. Not just the 20th level general, but also several 15th level officers, and literally hundreds of grunts to back them up. Depending on the local culture they may try to arrest or capture, but if that fails (or the party resists) they'll be fighting to kill. And they'll have had time to prepare, so break out your very best traps and tactics.

What with one thing and another, a shopping (or loot-selling) trip becomes quite tricky...

[Gizmogidget]

Thank you for all the replies:smallsmile:

I like the idea of townsfolk avoiding them and what not and the whole the players get nothing for slaughtering a bunch of random villagers. Though the main reason my players murderhobo is because they want to instill fear in the commoners. They don't care about the EXP or gold, they just want to be the scariest things on the planet.

In response to the villagers pooling resources I am not sure that will work, because even the good guys are largely selfish too (i run a grim and gritty swords and sorcery world). But thanks for the suggestion.

Lord's suggestion was excellent, but I fear as stated above that their main thing is becoming famous. However since they only terrorize small backwater villages it doesn't make much sense that the king is going to send his army to save a village of less than 50 people.

[Lord Raziere]

Alternatively, you can use reverse psychology on them:

a noble comes by and says:
"Great job! you killed a bunch of lower class rabble, good riddance, as we nobles say. I can tell your a fine bunch of individuals that understand that such common, unwashed masses are completely expendable and extraneous. I'm a man who likes to hire bandits you see, and I was wondering if I could persuade you to pillage some of my rivals villages for me under the guise of plausible deniability so as to hurt his position, there is a lot of gold init for you. I do it all the time, heheheheh."

its possible that they think they're being special by doing this and going off the rails, when if they find out that what they're doing is just part of the status quo of A Song of Ice and Fire-esque medieval world then they might have second thoughts.

[oudeis]

There absolutely should be consequences for this sort of thing, but you have to have thought the matter through and prepared for it. This includes informing your players that the kingdom (or whatever your default national unit is) has laws, or at least an accepted way of doing things, and that a challenge to the established order of sufficient magnitude will result in a response of corresponding level and force from the people in charge.

In the Kingdom Size thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?513888-Kingdom-Sizes), it is suggested that centers of power be roughly a day's journey apart. So, allowing for travel time there and back and adding a day for logistics and organization, about 2-3 days after your players have had their fun they are going to be visited by the representatives of whatever power structure is in place. It could be an army of high enough level, abilities, and numbers to genuinely threaten the players, the Big Damn Heroes come to save the day, or just a squad of cold-eyed mercenaries recruited specifically to take down the PCs. Your party might think they are the specialest of special snowflakes but they should remember that snow always melts.

[Morty]

Even if the people in charge are selfish and don't care for the plight of the people under them, they'll mobilize a response for two reasons:

1) If the murderhobos destroy enough small villages and towns, it's going to become a significant dent in their income and influence.

2) There's no guarantee they don't come for them next. Or something more important than a backwater town. Even if you, the GM, know the PCs won't do it, the people in power don't.

[tyckspoon]

Thank you for all the replies:smallsmile:

I like the idea of townsfolk avoiding them and what not and the whole the players get nothing for slaughtering a bunch of random villagers. Though the main reason my players murderhobo is because they want to instill fear in the commoners. They don't care about the EXP or gold, they just want to be the scariest things on the planet.

In response to the villagers pooling resources I am not sure that will work, because even the good guys are largely selfish too (i run a grim and gritty swords and sorcery world). But thanks for the suggestion.


So let them become famous. Eventually, they become the Bad Guys. Every wanna be do-gooder starts gunning for them. Every retired hero starts thinking about picking up the sword again, just for one last time.. because this isn't a random warlord or necromancer doing some nebulous Bad Things off on the other side of the planet. This is jerks making a mess in their homes. And then all the people who think they might be tough enough to take them also start showing up, not for altruistic reasons - but because your players are a huge source of xp and treasure for other people, and they've made themselves big enough outcasts that nobody really cares if somebody ends up killing them. So all the people who themselves want to be rich, powerful, and famous start trying to find them too.

It's possible this won't be perceived as 'punishments' for your players. It may in fact be the game they want to play. In that case.. cool. Your players are having fun. Roll with it.

[icefractal]

If the PCs were unknown before this, it will probably be several steps of escalation before people are taking them seriously. They kill some villagers, the rest flee and some of them go running to a larger town to report the threat.

Now the baron, or whatever, of the larger town probably think they're exaggeration. So he sends a small force of soldiers (a dozen or less, levels 2-5 or so) to put down the threat. The soldiers get slaughtered, probably. So now he calls on the king for help against the menace.

Again, the king might underestimate, and first send out a larger group of soldiers (a few dozen, with a few 5th-9th level knights leading them), which is also going to be insufficient. There might also be a delay, depending on what else is going on in the kingdom.

After the more serious group gets slaughtered, there are a few ways the kingdom could react:
1) Decide the PCs are too much trouble and ignore them unless they start wrecking villages on a major scale.
2) Send a larger amount of troops with elite support out to deal with them. Not necessarily anyone 20th level though, it depends on how powerful the kingdom is.
3) Make contact, attempt to gain the allegiance of the PCs, perhaps offering them noble titles in exchange for turning their destructive tendencies toward the kingdom's enemies.
4) Send assassins to kill the PCs.
5) Send spies to try and trick the PCs into attacking somewhere else.

If all these tactics fail, the kingdom's going to start getting desperate. Resorting to scorched earth tactics in an attempt to exhaust the PCs' resources, calling on allied kingdoms to help, hiring expensive mercenaries, conjuring demons or whatnot to go after them, etc. At this point, other power-groups would start taking notice too - someone who's smashing up a kingdom for the lolz is potentially a threat to everyone.

[Max_Killjoy]

If the PCs are level 14, then someone else is level 16.

Congrats to your PCs, they just became the villains that another adventuring group sets out to bring down.

[Grim Portent]

It's also possible brigands, bandits and other outlaws as well as monsters like ogres and goblins will start rallying to their banner and pledging service as part of a rampaging army that exists to overthrow the existing kingdom and burn everything down when they start fighting actual authorities like Barons and Counts.

Lot of people who respect and follow strength and would see this as a chance to ingratiate themselves with what they see as attempted usurpers who'll need loyal servants when they become rulers themselves.

Rough sequence of events I could see happening if the PCs get to the point of realizing they could go full usurper:

The common folk near the area they operate will become terrified and superstitious around them.

Then the local Baron will raise his forces of a hundred men or so and 2 or 3 knights to go and try and deal with the problem. This will likely fall as we're talking peasants with a leather cap and a simple spear plus a few low level actual soldiers.

When this fails the Baron, assuming they're not dead, sends a request for aid to their liege, likely a Count, who raises their forces and those of their other vassal Barons. Maybe they call in favours with other Nobles to get more forces. This is an army of a thousand or several thousand peasants with leather caps and spears, a few dozen knights and some actual full time soldiers. Still nothing really threatening. About this time those with no love for law or liege might decide to try and join the PCs, because they show signs of being strong enough to overthrow the realm if they want to, each successive victory will just attract more such people unless the PCs murder anyone who tries to join them.

When/if the Count's army fails and they ask their liege for help, the process repeats until you hit the King being asked for aid by one of his vassals who is at the top of the chain that started with the original Baron. Thing is that his army is still mostly peasants with little training or morale, and useless against the actual PCs, indeed they'd just make it harder for any actual threats to fight the PCs. Watching a dozen men get bisected with one attack or shamble back to life as undead is disconcerting even for a hardened warrior. If the King is a warrior king of some sort they might pose a threat on a personal level, but I generally think of kings as low level Aristocrats or Fighters. Skilled enough to fight a normal warrior, but mostly relying on good gear to beat normal men. A high level adventurer is basically an unstoppable monster by comparison.

If the King decides his forces have no way to win, they'll seek out something that has a chance. Try to bribe a dragon, bargain with demons, strike a pact with fey, offer the PCs land and wealth if they'll leave the realm alone, seek out powerful wizards or divine champions, so on and so forth. Or possibly just surrender to the PCs and try to come to terms that allow the realm to survive with some of King's power intact, like just giving them the land of the defeated nobility to rule as their own sovereign realm, at least until the King feels he can take it back by force.

[Mechalich]

But if Dave the Murderhobo 14th level Barbarian and his buddies come to town, ordinary guards ain't gonna cut it. However it feels cheap to have 20th level paladins appear out of the woodwork. So how should I demonstrate that doing crazy things can lead to consequences without creating ridiculous worlds in which a tiny village has 10th level fighter cops?

This is a more generalized D&D design flaw that has little to do with murderhoboism and everything to do with the overall power curve. At a certain point, leveled characters reach the point where they have overpowered reasonable civilization because level 1 characters are about as much threat as ants to them (meaning they only matter if you're will to construct a swarm-type 'mob' monster, and maybe not even then). Good adventurers can have this same problem when they can take on the entire undead army by themselves. This is why actually D&D worlds don't look anything like the Forgotten Realms and resolve into bizarre Tippyverse-analogues when you actually follow the power.

So if you're not willing to embrace that, you have to accept that there's going to be some level of ridiculousness. 10th level town guards is one solution. Equally arbitrary, but perhaps a bit more lore-friendly, is having the gods (or just some cabal of really powerful wizards) have a program in place that punishes anyone who destabilizes society too blatantly - meaning flattening whole towns, not just being evil. Dropping high-powered outsiders on such disruptive individuals (Inevitables and Rilmani are good for this sort of thing, lore wise) to get them to exercise some restraint is hopefully suitably enlightening.

[tensai_oni]

This isn't your party being murder hobos, this is playing with an evil party. The players are deliberately playing evil characters and are totally fine with that. And from the OP, it seems you are as well - good, you're all on the same page then.

If the players are powerful, have societies turn against them. Whole armies mobilize to take them down, and of course send high level adventurers against them, because fighting high level villains is what high level heroes do.

But here's the thing. Don't think of it in terms of consequences, as in players acting in some way "wrong" and having to be punished for it. Think of it in terms of game opportunities, adventure hooks and tricky situations the players need to get out of.

[Max_Killjoy]

This isn't your party being murder hobos, this is playing with an evil party. The players are deliberately playing evil characters and are totally fine with that. And from the OP, it seems you are as well - good, you're all on the same page then.

If the players are powerful, have societies turn against them. Whole armies mobilize to take them down, and of course send high level adventurers against them, because fighting high level villains is what high level heroes do.

But here's the thing. Don't think of it in terms of consequences, as in players acting in some way "wrong" and having to be punished for it. Think of it in terms of game opportunities, adventure hooks and tricky situations the players need to get out of.

Depends on if one is using "consequences" as colloquial slang for punishment, or if one is using "consequences" to mean "the natural result of the PCs' actions".

[Kelb_Panthera]

First, the bad news: in a standard D&D world, murderhoboism is a perfectly viable lifestyle, particularly when you get to mid-levels and higher. The vast majority of folks can't do anything about such characters and the reach of laws are only as long as their grasp, that is; not very. Unless they're being particularly egregious to the point their alignment is starting to sink, there's not much for society to do but put up with it as long as it does at least as much good as harm.

There is good news, however. There -are- both equally powerful and even more powerful characters out there in the wind and at least -some- of them are attached to powerful organizations while otheres are plenty mercenary enough that they won't care who they're taking down as long as they get paid. You can use this.

Say, for example, that your murderhobo party hits a town and torches the whole thing after an altercation with the guards (entirely by accident, of course :smallwink:). It's not at all implausible that a caravan passing through should happen to have belonged to a powerful merchant-lord from a neighboring city. If his merchandise was damaged, he's not gonna be happy. In fact, he might be so irked as to send mercs to redress this act of social disregard.

Alternately, suppose the bar they turned inside-out belonged to a deacon of the local church of Cuthbert. Certainly he'll mention this incident to his parish priest, who, in turn, would express his concern over such lawless behavior to the home office. When they recieve word, it would, of course, be their duty to send out a justicar and his entourage to bring such brigands to heel and teach them the importance of The Law.

And, of course, there's always the old trope of someone they've wronged just happening to -be- a powerful adversary in his own right. You don't want to overuse it, of course, but there's no reason to just throw it away.

If they -are- dipping into evil then you can open the throttle up and actually send the odd questing paladin or cleric of heironeous or the like to ram Justice down their throats until they get the message. The trick here (since they're likely to see this as free XP if you handle it poorly) is to hound them with an -obviously- superior foe, nipping at their heals. They won't necessarily stop being evil but they might at least start being -smart- evil.

Most importantly though; the common consequence for murderhoboing in such a relatively savage world as these are is to be straight-up ganked. You -have- to be willing to PK or even TPK them to have any chance at all of getting the idea across.




Final note: I'm presuming you're aiming for something more realistic than what you're currently dealing with but otherwise having a good time in spite of it. If their murderhoboing is actually causing you any distress then you need to skip -all- of this and just talk to them. Clashing expectations between players and DMs' can only drain the life out of a campaign. Get on the same page, ASAP.

[sleepy hedgehog]

One other consequence, albeit minor is that quests they get won't be for around here.
"There's a dragon down south, a few weeks away, in the middle of an enemy country, why don't you go over there, and kill it, don't bother coming back"
The PC's could literally play ping pong between a few rival nations, as neither side wants them there.

[Mai]

Assuming this isn't killing your fun and ruining the mood for you, and your aim is to merely give them realistic IC repercussions to IC deeds, here is my suggestion. I am new to DMing, still working up to my first campaign. So feel free to ignore a newbie's input.

Inform them out of character that this may effect their characters alignment. Have a small talk and just say "hey... Your performing a lot of evil deeds keep this up and your character's alignments will shift." If we are talking about justifiable murder... Which I doubt based on what you said, then... No real need. Either way, I'd follow all the above's advice. Slowly ramp up the tension and fear in the common man. Even if they were justifiable, Joe the butcher and Jane the farmer don't know that. (Probably)

If they ignore your warning, tweak their alignments. Rando-murdering people sounds pretty chaotic evil if you ask me. And if any of them have classes that are alignment restricted.. Well they are going to loose some real power. Random good diety-sn't going to be likely to keep giving divine powers and whatnot to murderers. So maintaining thier powers may mean that as they slowly descend into evil thief views became more similar to -random evil diety- and they now worship him/her/them/etc (It sounds like this has beengoingon for a while, so clearly you could say if they keep it up after the warning that they've been slipping this whole time.)

At which point you now have a campaign against the questing paladins and such. Doing this is fair. You aren't punishing them, you are merely enforcing the laws of your world. They knew that going in, and if not, certainly did after your warning.

[ShaneMRoth]

Remember that, as the DM, you are entitled to enjoy the game, too.

One of the simplest approaches is to tell the players, Out Of Character, that they are making it hard for you to enjoy the game and could they please take a pause for the cause? If their goal is to terrify or intimidate the village, tell them that the village is duly terrified and they have achieved their stated goal, and now can we please get on with something more adventure-y?

I’m assuming that you are providing enough interesting things for the players to do. I am also assuming that you are respecting the players’ agency by allowing them to set their own timetable for when they take on more traditional encounters.

When I was running my campaign, I didn’t award XP for murderhobo behavior. If the players were in an ostensibly safe setting (like the Village of Hommlet or the Free City of Greyhawk) my rule was that the players would be awarded no XP for killing people in those settings, until I said explicitly otherwise.

When you say your players don’t care about XP or gold, I believe you, but... I don’t believe your players. They care about XP. Some players don’t care much about gold, but all players care about XP.

If your players know that killing in a safe setting is costing them XP, that fact will tend to inform their actions in-game. If you award even a single experience point for killing people in a town, then every villager and town guard becomes an Experience Point Pinata and the players can’t be faulted for treating them as such.

Sometimes, a lack of reward can serve as a consequence.

[Pugwampy]

There is good news, however. There -are- both equally powerful and even more powerful characters out there in the wind and at least -some- of them are attached to powerful organizations while otheres are plenty mercenary enough that they won't care who they're taking down as long as they get paid. You can use this.

You can put on a plastic smile and let them have their fun of raping and pillaging . Next session bring out adventurers of their level or even higher to chase em down because they are evil and not because of sweet XP and magic loot .

They want to be bandits and monsters thats fine . I will bring out a party to kill em and laugh when they want someone to raise them .

Hub towns give lots of support to heroes . Temples taverns and job opportunities.

Honesty I would just stop the game and give em the finger because the path of evil is way less fun for DM or players . You just wasting time and beating a dying horse .

I dont spend hours thinking up NPC,s characters and unique hub towns so players can kill em as they like . I get hurt and cry on the inside .

Dm is the evil guy and monster . Players are the Heroes . That should be clear from the start . If someone has to be evil then make him DM .

[Efrate]

No offense Pugwampy, but evil characters and the evil campaign is perfectly viable and great fun for all. You just treat it as such. Not your cup of tea but a lot of people just wanna be the badguy. That is fine, just play the evil game them. You have you armys of paladins, clerics and celestials, you can just change windowdressing.

So they want to be the most respected scariest thing in the world? Well they need the mcguffin of smiting the evil good guys and gods, held in the profane sacred temple of the demon angel army of evilness goodness. They must overcome the legion of eryines astral devas and defeat kill the high ranking marilith planatar so they can accomplish their goal. Along the way they get help from the elvan goblin army on the layout of the place and get a favor from the local favored soul dread necromancer aasimar tiefling.

A lot of monsters are neutral or easily usable in either adventure, and just go to angels instead of demons to get a variety of encounters.

In terms of consequence, well D&D is not a system to generally make those relevant past maybe level 10. You are just stronger than most the world. The tippyverse is the logical result of a the setting, anything less PCs break without trying past a certain out.

They murder and pillage, a continent, a world,a plane, then heaven. Good for them. They attract the notice of dieties on both sides and can make for an epic struggle in the end for good or evil to rule all, and honestly, that is doable if they were mr. goody twoshoes as well.

Eventually they will get their army of horrible creatures following them to the slaughter of all that is nice and good, and then they face the High Cleric of Pelor or whathaveyou in a pitched battle for the fate of existence.

OR, they kill everything, good and bad, no allies anywhere, and they try to rule over everything both good and evil and kill everything thats not them. An empire of (un)dead is still an empire, and heck corpses don't bug you with all this chatter about stop murdering my children in front of me and force-feeding me their bodies and souls, stop razing my orphanage, and so on. Heck there is a lot of loot in the world, so what if you cannot buy it, go kill who has it. That is a whole line of quests right there. If its the lichlord of the dark forest of the high paladin of the gateway to Celestia, someone has what you need. Find it, kill them, take there stuff, and keep going.

Just remember undead do not know fear, so you need to leave a few people alive. Likely in some sort of cages where you can drop them into the slavering hordes if you feel the whim.

[Darth Ultron]

Though the main reason my players murderhobo is because they want to instill fear in the commoners. They don't care about the EXP or gold, they just want to be the scariest things on the planet.

The thing about fear is you need to be careful not to go to far, because if you do that leads to despair. And that is people just shutting down and doing nothing (''so what? kill me..kill the whole town...kill eveyone in every town...it does not matter..")

Even more so in small towns, if some one goes there is often no replacement. Kill Bok the taverkeeper, then the tavern closes.




However since they only terrorize small backwater villages it doesn't make much sense that the king is going to send his army to save a village of less than 50 people.

Well...it might make sense for the king to have a couple rangers that do just that sort of thing. you know like 16th level rangers.

You do also have the gods, and they can send a celestial or a cleric to help the people.

[Professor Chimp]

Maybe this idea is too complex to implement, but how long would a region be able to economically sustain a group of murderhobos even if they can stave off repercussions from the authorities? How long can shops stay in business when they get picked clean and their employees murdered every week? Who they do go belly up, would anyone want to replace them? How long before people start moving away because the village, town or even entire region is undergoing total economic collapse?

So yeah, congrats, the players have effectively destroyed the place through their actions. Now what? Where are they going to get their stuff from now? Move to another place and start over? That's not sustainable either, provided they don't run afoul of a bigger fish sooner or later.

[Bogwoppit]

If they want people to be afraid, then let them. Let them run riot over the setting - for a while.

The population starts abandoning the region. Refugees flee. Economies collapse. There's no food or drink to be had. Nasty consequences that it sounds like they'll enjoy.
The setting becomes a depopulated crap-sack world, with suicidal fanatical resistance fighters, prepared to lay down their lives to inconvenience the party - burning down buildings rather than letting the party use them, killing the mounts of the party, desperately trying to steal the party's magic items.

Meanwhile, the powers of the rest of the world will be bending their wills against the party, appealing to higher powers, summoning outsiders - whatever is appropriate for your setting.
Without wanting to fall foul of the forum rules on modern politics - think about the global reaction to international terrorism. Look at how opponents of such terrorism apply massive resources to hunting and destroying terrorists. Imagine how that level of commitment would apply in your game setting. Can we summon angels? Can we divine where the party are? What spies can we use on the ground? etc, etc.

Lots of players will enjoy being hunted, escaping, outwitting the powers of authority.

[Eldan]

In many worlds, at level 14, your PCs are up there among the world players, if not in politics, then in raw personal power.

The standard murder hobo avoidance is for low-level adventurers, in my book. At this level, your players, if they really try, can devastate landscapes, not villages. If your players want to be feared, heck, run with it. Give them a reputation, a proper one. Have cities offer them tribute to just leave. Have a fiery novice priest rant at them and sprinkle holy water over their tracks. Have lowly evil creatures come to them, offering to be henchmen. Goblins, kobolds, the typical minion races. If they are lawful, have an agent of Bel approach them, offering them a generalship in one of the proxy wars fought on the mortal plane between infernal and abyssal powers.

If they go around challenging backwaters, challenge them. They are trying to be big fish in a small pond, when they could be bigger fish in the ocean. Have them meet a ravaging horde of nomads who laugh at them for thinking so small. Or a succubus tempter, whispering to them about how much better they could be at this.

[Mai]

In many worlds, at level 14, your PCs are up there among the world players, if not in politics, then in raw personal power.

The standard murder hobo avoidance is for low-level adventurers, in my book. At this level, your players, if they really try, can devastate landscapes, not villages. If your players want to be feared, heck, run with it. Give them a reputation, a proper one. Have cities offer them tribute to just leave. Have a fiery novice priest rant at them and sprinkle holy water over their tracks. Have lowly evil creatures come to them, offering to be henchmen. Goblins, kobolds, the typical minion races. If they are lawful, have an agent of Bel approach them, offering them a generalship in one of the proxy wars fought on the mortal plane between infernal and abyssal powers.

If they go around challenging backwaters, challenge them. They are trying to be big fish in a small pond, when they could be bigger fish in the ocean. Have them meet a ravaging horde of nomads who laugh at them for thinking so small. Or a succubus tempter, whispering to them about how much better they could be at this.

Yes! All of this!

[Logosloki]

Another alternative, is that the region powers just hire them. Murderhobos need logistics and they want loot/power. Bring them in, offer them some guidance to their trail of tears and destruction by having them clear out high level threats inside your go getting princeling/kingthing's territory whilst using them to creatively expand into new frontiers. Whether those new frontiers are being run by pesky [not us] or other regional powers is minutia that they don't need to know (keep a score on it). Use them as both a propaganda piece of pride and fear! Have a few corrupt barons and such who your adventurers can either align with (usurping those who pay you less is good if you can get away with it) or disrupt (a couple of barons down and you have your party some nice digs and a small territory (probably at the back end of the kingdom but beggars can't be choosers)).

The other thing you may need to do is to find out why the party has gone a murderhoboing. Is it because they want to play team evil? Do they find the pacing of the campaign lacking? Is the setting a bit on the low side for them? Are they bored of their characters and want a reroll or a retrain? Like I typed in the first paragraph your players might just need some guidance. Sit down as a group and find out what people want from a game session. Do they want more regional goings ons? They just want some interesting crawls? Maybe they want a place to call their own, or they want to have a campaign that goes towards something more concrete than lofty goals. Plenty of reasons to go a hoboing.

[Pugwampy]

No offense Pugwampy, but evil characters and the evil campaign is perfectly viable and great fun for all. You just treat it as such. Not your cup of tea but a lot of people just wanna be the badguy.

I dont like heroes switching sides and then forcing other players to do so because of all for one and one for all . They try to steal something but get caught , then they try to kill the witnesses ? Uncool dude .

Pick a side at the start of the campaign not because you are bored or want some fun in the middle of it or think i am going too easy .

[Bogwoppit]

I dont like heroes switching sides and then forcing other players to do so because of all for one and one for all . They try to steal something but get caught , then they try to kill the witnesses ? Uncool dude .

Pick a side at the start of the campaign not because you are bored or want some fun in the middle of it or think i am going too easy .
I got the impression from the OP and their subsequent posts, that the players haven't ever been trying to be heroes.

[CharonsHelper]

When the party comes to a large town or city - then they run into the full military might of the local civilisation, whatever that might be. Not just the 20th level general, but also several 15th level officers, and literally hundreds of grunts to back them up. Depending on the local culture they may try to arrest or capture, but if that fails (or the party resists) they'll be fighting to kill. And they'll have had time to prepare, so break out your very best traps and tactics.

This. There are plenty of low level spells which are a threat to even high level characters when used en masse.

If you're playing 3.5 - the various Orb spells come to mind, especially with a mid level bard buffing them for extra accuracy & damage. Heck - unless the PCs have Spell Resistance or Shield currently up, a few dozen casters with Magic Missile should shred them. 4 dozen level 3 casters will chuck out an average of 336 points per round in Magic Missile damage.

If the city knows they're coming - they could have their mage guild hiding in the town wall looking out arrow slits - all readying actions for a signal.

[Delta]

But if Dave the Murderhobo 14th level Barbarian and his buddies come to town, ordinary guards ain't gonna cut it. However it feels cheap to have 20th level paladins appear out of the woodwork. So how should I demonstrate that doing crazy things can lead to consequences without creating ridiculous worlds in which a tiny village has 10th level fighter cops?

A lot of this depends on your game world, but usually, if they go around murderhoboing their way through life, sooner or later word will spread about those murderhobos and at some point, some authority will hear about it. Yeah, your normal city guard won't cut it, but if King Rex the Kingly hears about the group of homicidal maniacs rampaging through his kingdom, he will do something to stop them, and the people he will send will most likely not be Level 1 commoners...

I'd recommend not just letting them run into some high level NPCs out of thin air, that would feel unfair. But let them know they've been noticed, people bar their doors when they see them approaching (even without tv and cameras, most adventuring groups aren't exactly low profile and can be recognized easily from description), they can hear that the king has put a price on their head or that the local high cleric has sent for a paladin to rid the land of evildoers, and so on. If they keep on doing what they do without precautions, then you drop the 20th level Paladin and his retinue on them, they've had ample warning, after all.

[Segev]

Just to add to all the good advice so far, another way to think about it is this: How do you think the modern world would react to high-level adventurers (or superheroes/villains of equivalent power) who don't kowtow to civilized mores?

On the lower end, think of Old West towns ravaged by Black Bart or other equivalents. They live in fear of him. He swaggers around like a minor king, because the local law can't touch him. It simply lacks the power. Or look to 7 Samurai (or its Western retelling, Fistfull of Dollars), where the bandits essentially replace the local lord because the lord is not doing anything about them (or can't), and the people have to find somebody to help them.

Now scale up the bandits to be super-beings. Able to shrug off mortal weapons for long periods of time. Able to level buildings with a word.

Even in the modern era, the cops would eventually run into morale problems of their own; how often do you fling wave after wave men and materiel at the unstoppable monster before you just turn your efforts towards evacuation?

Let them walk in and own the bar. Assuming the bar patrons didn't hear they were coming and LEAVE, along (perhaps) with the barkeeper, who just hopes they don't wreck his establishment too badly while he's gone.

Big enough threats will go from police to SWAT to the National Guard. If THAT fails, the FBI will team up with them. If THAT isn't enough, Congress might write special laws to allow full military intervention.

In a Kingdom, that last step isn't needed, as the King can already bring his full military force to bear anywhere in his Kingdom he wants. As long as the cost is worth it. So, are they a threat to the king? Can he find a better way to deal with them than using his full army?

And yes, by the time you even get to Fistful of Dollars/Seven Samurai levels, the PCs have become the quest impetus for a mysterious old man to hire other adventurers to deal with. "These monsters are terrorizing towns all across the East; Smalltown is next, and we will pay you to take them out before they get to us."

[CharonsHelper]

On the lower end, think of Old West towns ravaged by Black Bart or other equivalents. They live in fear of him. He swaggers around like a minor king, because the local law can't touch him. It simply lacks the power. Or look to 7 Samurai (or its Western retelling, Fistfull of Dollars), where the bandits essentially replace the local lord because the lord is not doing anything about them (or can't), and the people have to find somebody to help them.

Not an old west fan? :P

Black Bard (despite the name) was actually known as a gentlemanly bandit. He was famous because he spoke poetry etc - and from what I understand he didn't even load his pistol when robbing people. And unlike some - he made sure to wear a mask.

Plus - I'm pretty sure that the western remake of The 7 Samurai was The Magnificent Seven. (I haven't seen the recent remake - but the original was pretty good.)

[Segev]

Not an old west fan? :PDecidedly not, actually. I have rarely found a Western that didn't irritate and bore me. Sorry for my mislabelings due to that. (I'm a sci-fi fan, and I can't get past the Western trappings of Firefly enough to enjoy it, even. I literally was bored to sleep by the first three episodes of it.)


Black Bard (despite the name) was actually known as a gentlemanly bandit. He was famous because he spoke poetry etc - and from what I understand he didn't even load his pistol when robbing people. And unlike some - he made sure to wear a mask.Ah. I stand corrected. That's interesting to know.

Jesse James had a similar "good PR" thing going for him in the Missouri area; what brought him down was that he thought it would be universal, and it wasn't, so when he took his show to another part of the country, he found that the authorities actually had the common folk on their side, and he was swiftly hunted down with no safe havens. (I forget if he managed to high-tail it back to MO, or if he was caught.)


Plus - I'm pretty sure that the western remake of The 7 Samurai was The Magnificent Seven. (I haven't seen the recent remake - but the original was pretty good.)Gah, you're right, and I did know that. I just brain farted. Thanks for the correction.

[Koo Rehtorb]

This. There are plenty of low level spells which are a threat to even high level characters when used en masse.

If you're playing 3.5 - the various Orb spells come to mind, especially with a mid level bard buffing them for extra accuracy & damage. Heck - unless the PCs have Spell Resistance or Shield currently up, a few dozen casters with Magic Missile should shred them. 4 dozen level 3 casters will chuck out an average of 336 points per round in Magic Missile damage.

If the city knows they're coming - they could have their mage guild hiding in the town wall looking out arrow slits - all readying actions for a signal.

I'm suddenly reminded of the time when the barbarian was rampaging through the wizard school kicking open doors and shouting and hitting people with a greataxe.

And then he kicked open the door to the mess hall where the 100 terrified 1st level mages were who had all readied their CL 1 magic missile were cowering.

[CharonsHelper]

I'm suddenly reminded of the time when the barbarian was rampaging through the wizard school kicking open doors and shouting and hitting people with a greataxe.

And then he kicked open the door to the mess hall where the 100 terrified 1st level mages were who had all readied their CL 1 magic missile were cowering.

Unless he's got SR or just drank a Shield potion - that's one less murderhobo in the world.

I don't think that many barbarians have over 350 HP.

[loodwig]

I figure you have your response, but I'll throw in my two cents anyway:

The level 14 barbarian comes from this world that s/he's dominating. They became this way because they killed enough low level stuff that they leveled up. There's a certain "rule of exceptionalism" that comes into play.

Superman didn't become a cheap all-powerful superhero by defeating enough bad guys; Superman was born that way. This means a few things can be true.

1 - your level 14 barbarian is "Superman" or the evil equivalent. Introduce other superheroes, because evidently you live in a world where it's rare to become this. Superman has no story without General Zod or Lex Luthor or Batman. Superman can be killed. If the level 14 barbarian is cheap, the world should be too. This takes away some agency, but your player has already broken the game by becoming a "giant in the playground" (had to).

2 - your level 14 barbarian is common. Throw in level 10 guards, level 15 bandits, level 18 farmers with vorpal gardening sheers. This shatters agency and turns the game into one big grind, and it removes a lot of the suspension of disbelief that the villagers would magically end up rich & powerful, despite tons of game rules saying they can't be. But hey, your barbarian already broke reality by being level 14 and being a murderhobo.

3 - your level 14 barbarian is exceptional, but not unique. This is probably the most player-agency supporting option, but it's one that troubles me. If your level 14 murderhobo is yet another wandering monster, how on earth are there farmers? How is it that someone can plow a field, when there's an adult dragon that flies by occasionally and attacks travelers on the road like a level 14 barbarian? Is there a local college of liches, and a government subsidy to breed trolls, ogres, and giants? This takes away that grounded immersive realism you'd find in (earlier) "A Song of Ice and Fire," which can turn your tabletop game into world of warcraft or final fantasy in a hurry. But if your players are murderhobos, they can have yet another run in with Shinra on their way to fighting off Sephiroth, and treat every town like a place to buy potions and sell their vendor trash to nameless inhabitants.

[Yora]

In response to the villagers pooling resources I am not sure that will work, because even the good guys are largely selfish too (i run a grim and gritty swords and sorcery world).

Doesn't seem like there's a problem then.


Plus - I'm pretty sure that the western remake of The 7 Samurai was The Magnificent Seven. (I haven't seen the recent remake - but the original was pretty good.)
A Fistful of Dollars is the remake of Yojimbo. Another Akira Kurosawa samurai movie with Toshiro Mifune.

[Gizmogidget]

Assuming this isn't killing your fun and ruining the mood for you, and your aim is to merely give them realistic IC repercussions to IC deeds, here is my suggestion. I am new to DMing, still working up to my first campaign. So feel free to ignore a newbie's input.

Inform them out of character that this may effect their characters alignment. Have a small talk and just say "hey... Your performing a lot of evil deeds keep this up and your character's alignments will shift." If we are talking about justifiable murder... Which I doubt based on what you said, then... No real need. Either way, I'd follow all the above's advice. Slowly ramp up the tension and fear in the common man. Even if they were justifiable, Joe the butcher and Jane the farmer don't know that. (Probably)

If they ignore your warning, tweak their alignments. Rando-murdering people sounds pretty chaotic evil if you ask me. And if any of them have classes that are alignment restricted.. Well they are going to loose some real power. Random good diety-sn't going to be likely to keep giving divine powers and whatnot to murderers. So maintaining thier powers may mean that as they slowly descend into evil thief views became more similar to -random evil diety- and they now worship him/her/them/etc (It sounds like this has beengoingon for a while, so clearly you could say if they keep it up after the warning that they've been slipping this whole time.)

At which point you now have a campaign against the questing paladins and such. Doing this is fair. You aren't punishing them, you are merely enforcing the laws of your world. They knew that going in, and if not, certainly did after your warning.

Yes it is rather fun, and they are all perfectly okay with having evil as their character alignment. In fact they used to play exclusively good characters before it got boring for them.

Edit: Forgot to finish post, the main issue at hand for me isn't the murderhoboism or the evilness it is how do I justify things. Most of the time I imagine that characters levels 1-4 make up 1% of the population, 5-10 0.01% of the population 11-16 0.0001% of the population and finally 17+ 0.000001% of the population. And the players aren't dumb either, they have several back up plans just in case including but not limited to a fortress of ingenious design that exists on the Astral Plane. They also have several people in their employ, so it isn't just them it's them and an army. At this point they are a world power, and it feels like it is only going to get worse. What about when they reach epic status, do I tell them that now armies of 17th level characters come after them?

By they way I like the reverse-psychology suggestion, I might consider trying that.

[Grim Portent]

If they have an actual army and fortress themselves, especially one in another plane, then they're basically untouchable by mortal kings. You may need to think in terms of politics or extraplanar powers to get appropriate challenges.

By the sounds of it they like conflict, discord and battle, so you could have a fiend come and offer them a chance to help fight the Blood War, the immense and perpetual battle between devils and demons either in one of it's proxies or one of the actual battles in the lower planes.

They're incredibly powerful individually by this point, and can access places fiends normally have trouble reaching, slay generals and commanders of the lower planes with some difficulty and slaughter hordes of lesser fiends.

With the patronage of a powerful lord or the lower planes they could even become strong enough through such a war to disrupt the natural balance of the planes, and possibly help one side achieve some great and climactic victory over the other, such as leading demons to seize the first layer of Hell from the devils, or helping the devils form a great bastion in the Abyss.

Once that's done, and the basic battlefield of the Blood War is changed, there's less stopping the side they aided from looking to the other planes with thoughts of dominion and war.

[Max_Killjoy]

If they have an actual army and fortress themselves, especially one in another plane, then they're basically untouchable by mortal kings. You may need to think in terms of politics or extraplanar powers to get appropriate challenges.


For anything a PC is able to do, generally assume extant NPCs capable of doing the same.

"PCs can be exceptional." should not be taken as equivalent to "PCs are unique".

[Grim Portent]

For anything a PC is able to do, generally assume extant NPCs capable of doing the same.

"PCs can be exceptional." should not be taken as equivalent to "PCs are unique".

The OPs post above mine said the PCs are in a level range occupied by 1 person in 10,000, and they're close to the 1 in 1,000,000 range. That's not many people who can threaten them, and most of them will probably not be kings, because kings don't do anything much with themselves that a peasant doesn't, a lot of them will live very far away, a lot of them won't even be civilised races, but monsters instead, and a big chunk of the remainder will themselves be evil and not care.

Their immediate area, as in several weeks ride in any direction, probably contains only about 6 people who pose a threat to them by class level. The likelihood of those people knowing each other, obeying the king, not being monsters like orcs, goblins or kobolds in the first place, of a healthy age, not crippled by prior injuries, not being selfish evil unwilling to risk death against them and all the other things they'd need to be both a threat and willing to fight the party strikes me as realistically being rather low.

[Max_Killjoy]

The OPs post above mine said the PCs are in a level range occupied by 1 person in 10,000, and they're close to the 1 in 1,000,000 range. That's not many people who can threaten them, and most of them will probably not be kings, because kings don't do anything much with themselves that a peasant doesn't, a lot of them will live very far away, a lot of them won't even be civilised races, but monsters instead, and a big chunk of the remainder will themselves be evil and not care.

Their immediate area, as in several weeks ride in any direction, probably contains only about 6 people who pose a threat to them by class level. The likelihood of those people knowing each other, obeying the king, not being monsters like orcs, goblins or kobolds in the first place, of a healthy age, not crippled by prior injuries, not being selfish evil unwilling to risk death against them and all the other things they'd need to be both a threat and willing to fight the party strikes me as realistically being rather low.


So the setting is broken. Got it.

[Grim Portent]

So the setting is broken. Got it.

High powered warlords in the prime of their youth being rare is the setting being broken? :smallconfused:

[Max_Killjoy]

High powered warlords in the prime of their youth being rare is the setting being broken? :smallconfused:

As rare as indicated, and giving them the sort of edge in power over anything that might challenge their rampage? Yes, it is broken.

[icefractal]

It's not broken, it just changes the situation. Instead of "You are some outlaws that need to stay under the radar.", it's "You are a significant power in the world - now what do you do with that?"

Think of the PCs as a very small, but powerful (especially for their size) and mobile kingdom. So what kind of situations can they encounter? Lots of things!
* Other kingdoms may go to war with them, or threaten to.
* Other kingdoms may want to ally with them.
* People or other creatures may show up and want to join them.
* Various organizations will spy on them and/or try to steer them in certain directions.
* Some villages will offer to surrender and become part of their empire when they show up. Do they accept?
* Assassins, definitely assassins. Even if they're lower level than the PCs, they can still be a menace.

[Thrudd]

You appear to be at the natural end of this campaign, with players having reached near the maximum level: they "win". Give them something to do that challenges them, or end the campaign and start a new one.

They are all-powerful evil characters, they can do almost anything they want - ask them what their long-term goals for the future of these characters is - do they want to be the tyrannical rulers of a kingdom, or multiple kingdoms? Do they want to just continue wandering and looting whatever they feel like, like invincible Bandit-kings? Whatever they were wanting for the characters, make that the status-quo for the beginning of the next campaign, make those guys NPCs, and start with new characters at level 1.

Do they want to become gods? let them start adventuring on other planes, start exploring multi-dimensions or something, where impossibly powerful creatures and characters are more common, and give them a challenge to shoot for. IN other words, design a new setting appropriate for these characters.

So there's two options. Start a new campaign with new characters appropriate for the setting, or create/expand the setting so it is appropriate for the high level characters.

[Grim Portent]

As rare as indicated, and giving them the sort of edge in power over anything that might challenge their rampage? Yes, it is broken.

I'd personally say it makes far more sense than the alternative, because the alternative is that the entire world is filled with people who can tank a charging rhino to the chest, outwrestle ogres and slay dragons, not to mention what it implies for the amount of conflict going on to get that many high level people in the prime of their youth.

Honestly I'd have high levels be even rarer than the OP does, with 10+ being one in a million, so a country the size of medieval England would have about 3 people of that power, with things like dragons being similarly rare and relying on their sheer unquestionable power to dominate the land on the rare occasion they can be bothered to do so. Level 10+ is basically Beowulf or Merlin in power level as far as folkloric traditions go, and unless you're going for a Greek style 'the gods have sired 50 heroes in the last month while disguised as a breakfast muffin' type scenario such individuals should be so rare that most people believe them to legend.

It also means that when the PCs decide to press into politics and beyond they aren't squabbling with other high level sellswords inexplicably working for a level 3 Count, but rather ancient beings of power and prophecy. I'd rather the players fight the realms equivalent of King Arthur or the Marble Emperor and their hosts of otherworldly warriors than fight contemporaries who are inexplicably equal to them in power despite dangers to the land being rare enough that humans can survive at all.

[Deepbluediver]

Do consequences have to show up immediately? I admit it's tough when the PCs can threaten most people with grievous bodily harm and charm anyone who they can't threaten, but if you do to much of that then eventually you become the kind of people that get bounties placed on their heads and other people get hired to hunt down.

Also, people (aka the plot) can inconvenience a party in a dozen little ways if they don't like them (and vice-versa, help them if they are in good standing). Forget to mention that the pass the party is planning to travel through has been shut down by an avalanche. Underestimate the number of orcs in the area. Tell them you're out of stock of healing potions, etc. You just gotta get creative.

[Mai]

Many think in terms of good versus evil,but evil also fights evil and good, good. Powerdull greedy forces out there could crave the renown and power they would gain from taking them down.

Sucessfull evil can make other evil greedy for their power and wealth. Like 2 organized crime groups, when one flourished they gather the attention of the other, or several street gangs duking it out for power or territory.

Sure some evil forces may seek them out and ally themselves with them,but others might see the players as growing threats and decide to take action against them. If they get stuck being attacked by both fronts things could get fun.

[Deepbluediver]

Sucessfull evil can make other evil greedy for their power and wealth. Like 2 organized crime groups, when one flourished they gather the attention of the other, or several street gangs duking it out for power or territory.
Yeah that's a good point- one of the biggest explanations for how good and evil balance out in my setting is that while good has a lot more things it won't do, evil tends to be much less cooperative.

[Max_Killjoy]

I'd personally say it makes far more sense than the alternative, because the alternative is that the entire world is filled with people who can tank a charging rhino to the chest, outwrestle ogres and slay dragons, not to mention what it implies for the amount of conflict going on to get that many high level people in the prime of their youth.

Honestly I'd have high levels be even rarer than the OP does, with 10+ being one in a million, so a country the size of medieval England would have about 3 people of that power, with things like dragons being similarly rare and relying on their sheer unquestionable power to dominate the land on the rare occasion they can be bothered to do so. Level 10+ is basically Beowulf or Merlin in power level as far as folkloric traditions go, and unless you're going for a Greek style 'the gods have sired 50 heroes in the last month while disguised as a breakfast muffin' type scenario such individuals should be so rare that most people believe them to legend.

It also means that when the PCs decide to press into politics and beyond they aren't squabbling with other high level sellswords inexplicably working for a level 3 Count, but rather ancient beings of power and prophecy. I'd rather the players fight the realms equivalent of King Arthur or the Marble Emperor and their hosts of otherworldly warriors than fight contemporaries who are inexplicably equal to them in power despite dangers to the land being rare enough that humans can survive at all.

Welcome to level-based minion-to-godling character progression. There's no way to have it all at once... something WILL be broken.

BUT, I always take this tact with these sorts of things: if the PCs can do it, so can other characters.

.

[Jay R]

Obviously, they can conquer and pillage the entire village. It won't even be hard. But when they start, make it clear to them what they are starting.

Tell the players in advance. Explain what effects this kind of action can have. Don't hold back. There should be no "gotcha" moment when suddenly things happen they never considered possibilities.

"Hold it. Are you really planning to murder the blacksmith because you don't like his prices? You've decided to become villains? OK, you can certainly do that. If that's your decision, change your alignments to evil, and we'll have to stop here for today. I have some re-writing to do, since I made the campaign for heroes. Obviously, you can pillage and destroy this entire village if you decide to. Nobody here can stop you, and there's no adventure involved, so we won't waste time on details. Just tell me how many innocents you plan to murder, how many homes you plan to destroy, how many people you plan to terrorize or enslave, and how many businesses you plan to burn. You will succeed at all of it, and get no experience points, since these are simple villagers. If you level the entire village, you can collect roughly 200 gp in value, distributed as 19,000 copper pieces and 100 silver pieces. You can take all the food you can carry, any amount of poor quality peasant tools, and not much else. Do you plan to guard the roads and keep any survivors from escaping to tell the king of the new bandits in his lands? Also, the cleric isn't given spells by his Lawful Good god any more."

And then don't back down. Keep telling them, over and over again until they believe it, that murder and pillage aren't a one-time-only vacation for nice people who go back to being heroes the next day.

[Mai]

Obviously, they can conquer and pillage the entire village. It won't even be hard. But when they start, make it clear to them what they are starting.

Tell the players in advance. Explain what effects this kind of action can have. Don't hold back. There should be no "gotcha" moment when suddenly things happen they never considered possibilities.

"Hold it. Are you really planning to murder the blacksmith because you don't like his prices? You've decided to become villains? OK, you can certainly do that. If that's your decision, change your alignments to evil, and we'll have to stop here for today. I have some re-writing to do, since I made the campaign for heroes. Obviously, you can pillage and destroy this entire village if you decide to. Nobody here can stop you, and there's no adventure involved, so we won't waste time on details. Just tell me how many innocents you plan to murder, how many homes you plan to destroy, how many people you plan to terrorize or enslave, and how many businesses you plan to burn. You will succeed at all of it, and get no experience points, since these are simple villagers. If you level the entire village, you can collect roughly 200 gp in value, distributed as 19,000 copper pieces and 100 silver pieces. You can take all the food you can carry, any amount of poor quality peasant tools, and not much else. Do you plan to guard the roads and keep any survivors from escaping to tell the king of the new bandits in his lands? Also, the cleric isn't given spells by his Lawful Good god any more."

And then don't back down. Keep telling them, over and over again until they believe it, that murder and pillage aren't a one-time-only vacation for nice people who go back to being heroes the next day.

Exactly, though it sounds too late for this, you can get the feel across.

[Jay R]

Note that this is a crucial part of the plan:


Just tell me how many innocents you plan to murder, how many homes you plan to destroy, how many people you plan to terrorize or enslave, and how many businesses you plan to burn. You will succeed at all of it, and get no experience points, since these are simple villagers.

We're not going to play it out, so it won't be fun for them to do.

[Gizmogidget]

Enjoy the suggestion about the blood war, but is there a way to run the game like this without it becoming tedious?

I kind of imagine that if I do it incorrectly it could be immensely boring. Like if I have to roll to attack for every single balor or dretch or ghoul etc on the battlefield, combats with 15 participants is bad enough, but near infinite seems to be a problem.

I have also heard people say that my problems are inherent of the D&D system in and of itself, what systems would you recommend to address the progression from characters who can get killed by a housecat, to characters who can conquer worlds on a whim while reading a book?

[Kish]

I found this (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/04/shadow-dolts.html) amusing.

But it's starting to sound like your party is in the Xykon range. Have a goblin ask them to get involved in a world domination scheme if you don't want them to continue their random rampages.

[Deepbluediver]

Enjoy the suggestion about the blood war, but is there a way to run the game like this without it becoming tedious?
Some of that comes down to the players- you should discuss what sort of game they are expecting and what sort of game you want to run before everyone sits down to the first game session. If you group wants to act like bulls in a china shop, design at gameworld (or at least a campaign) that lets them. If all else fails, shunt them into an alternate dimension for a while where none of their murderhoboing matters.


I found this (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/04/shadow-dolts.html) amusing.

That is amusing, but the root cause is a failure in communication between the DM and the players. If the world you want to run isn't the world your players want to run in, then something has to change, and if you insist on trying to force round players into square campaigns, everyone is gonna have a bad time.

[Grim Portent]

Enjoy the suggestion about the blood war, but is there a way to run the game like this without it becoming tedious?

I kind of imagine that if I do it incorrectly it could be immensely boring. Like if I have to roll to attack for every single balor or dretch or ghoul etc on the battlefield, combats with 15 participants is bad enough, but near infinite seems to be a problem.

I have also heard people say that my problems are inherent of the D&D system in and of itself, what systems would you recommend to address the progression from characters who can get killed by a housecat, to characters who can conquer worlds on a whim while reading a book?

Mass combat can be resolved in two main ways,

1) The mass combat is more of a backdrop, the battle is won or lost by the PCs fighting the enemy champions and breaking the enemy morale or shattering the strongest point in their battle line. The hordes of the Abyss would quail to see their Balor commander cast from the air with their back broken and wings tattered for example.

2) A lot of systems have rules in them for mass combat resolution based on a simple roll off with modifiers for army composition, access to magic and terrain. If you can't find one that's specific to your system any generic one should do. Stuff like +1-5 for outnumbering the other army by certain amounts, +1-4 for having magic in varying amounts, +3 for favorable terrain, that sort of thing.

You could also use a spreadsheet to work out which NPCs would win and then just extrapolate that out so battles are won based on which side averages out to more damage in Excel, but that takes more work and is less able to accomodate changes in circumstances.

[tomandtish]

Thank you for all the replies:smallsmile:

I like the idea of townsfolk avoiding them and what not and the whole the players get nothing for slaughtering a bunch of random villagers. Though the main reason my players murderhobo is because they want to instill fear in the commoners. They don't care about the EXP or gold, they just want to be the scariest things on the planet.

In response to the villagers pooling resources I am not sure that will work, because even the good guys are largely selfish too (i run a grim and gritty swords and sorcery world). But thanks for the suggestion.

Lord's suggestion was excellent, but I fear as stated above that their main thing is becoming famous. However since they only terrorize small backwater villages it doesn't make much sense that the king is going to send his army to save a village of less than 50 people.


Maybe this idea is too complex to implement, but how long would a region be able to economically sustain a group of murderhobos even if they can stave off repercussions from the authorities? How long can shops stay in business when they get picked clean and their employees murdered every week? Who they do go belly up, would anyone want to replace them? How long before people start moving away because the village, town or even entire region is undergoing total economic collapse?

So yeah, congrats, the players have effectively destroyed the place through their actions. Now what? Where are they going to get their stuff from now? Move to another place and start over? That's not sustainable either, provided they don't run afoul of a bigger fish sooner or later.

And these two together hit the important thing to understand. Sooner or later, ANY ruler, regardless of alignment, is going to care about their actions. Whether they care about the people being killed (good rulers), see them as a threat to their own power, or even are just worried about the loss of revenue from taxes, at some point their actions are going to annoy the ruler(s) enough that they'll take action. What that action will be depends a lot on the ruler and their goals.

Truly good rulers will probably try and bring them to justice.

Evil rulers might try and bring them under their banner ("Come be a murderhobo FOR me"). If that fails they'll eliminate the competition.

Neutral rulers might just want to get them out of the territory by any means possible.


Yes it is rather fun, and they are all perfectly okay with having evil as their character alignment. In fact they used to play exclusively good characters before it got boring for them.

Edit: Forgot to finish post, the main issue at hand for me isn't the murderhoboism or the evilness it is how do I justify things. Most of the time I imagine that characters levels 1-4 make up 1% of the population, 5-10 0.01% of the population 11-16 0.0001% of the population and finally 17+ 0.000001% of the population. And the players aren't dumb either, they have several back up plans just in case including but not limited to a fortress of ingenious design that exists on the Astral Plane. They also have several people in their employ, so it isn't just them it's them and an army. At this point they are a world power, and it feels like it is only going to get worse. What about when they reach epic status, do I tell them that now armies of 17th level characters come after them?

By they way I like the reverse-psychology suggestion, I might consider trying that.

This actually makes it easier*. At these levels/ratios, they have set themselves up as one of THE challenges in at least the kingdom, if not the continent. They are casting spells only 1 in a million people can cast. When high priests and paladins are asking their gods what the biggest threat in 100 miles is, THEY are the answer.

To clarify, using the ratios you gave, for every 100 million beings with PC classes, 1 is level 17 or higher, 100 are in the level range of your characters (11-16), 10,000 are levels 5-10, and 100,000 are levels 1-4. So actually, unless you have a hugely populated world, there may NOT be anybody able to come stop them who is substantially more powerful.

(Incidentally, if you are curious, our estimated world population for 1500 AD was 585 million, so even rounding up that would be 6 characters of level 17 or higher). We hit 1 billion sometime between 1800 - 1850, and 2 billion sometime between 1900-1950. By comparison, the surface of Farerun according to the FRCS has 68 million humans and demihumans.).

So anyone actually wanting to stop them with force is probably going to have to do it with numbers, or something other than a "character".

*Are they aware that they are in a campaign where the level ratio is that rare (as opposed to D&D defaults)? This is why communication and a "Game Zero" is important so everyone is playing under the same expectations.

Esit:


I found this (http://irolledazero.blogspot.com/2013/04/shadow-dolts.html) amusing.

But it's starting to sound like your party is in the Xykon range. Have a goblin ask them to get involved in a world domination scheme if you don't want them to continue their random rampages.

Forgot to hit post so came back, posted, then saw this and read it.

Kish, you owe me a keyboard. Snarfed my soda on it!

[Delta]

Edit: Forgot to finish post, the main issue at hand for me isn't the murderhoboism or the evilness it is how do I justify things. Most of the time I imagine that characters levels 1-4 make up 1% of the population, 5-10 0.01% of the population 11-16 0.0001% of the population and finally 17+ 0.000001% of the population. And the players aren't dumb either, they have several back up plans just in case including but not limited to a fortress of ingenious design that exists on the Astral Plane. They also have several people in their employ, so it isn't just them it's them and an army. At this point they are a world power, and it feels like it is only going to get worse. What about when they reach epic status, do I tell them that now armies of 17th level characters come after them?

You're going about this the wrong way. Yes, people/entities who will be able to keep up with them will get rarer and rarer the more powerful they get. But that doesn't actually matter because when they get more powerful, more powerful beings will take notice of them by default.

The level 10 group pillaging their way through random peasant villages will not be challenged by your standard city guard, but the next bigger city may well have some capable adventurers for hire a noble may hire to stop them from killing his subjects. If they're level 20, yeah, those random adventurers won't cut it. But now they're no just random pillagers either, they're the BBEGs of their region at that point, and sooner or later word about them will reach the main temple of the god of justice where the legendary Lord High Paladin Righty the Righteous may well consider it a holy quest to try and take down this epic threat to the world. Where's the problem with justifying that?

You say they're a world power, so other world powers will take notice of them and react accordingly. If they get to epic level, well misusing powers as theirs for such epic murderhoboiness may well draw the attention of some divine or otherwise "special" entities.

So basically, it comes down to a problem that doesn't really have anything to do with them being murderhobos, it's just about finding an appropriate challenge. A lawful good Level 17 Paladin can maraud through armies of low level Orc bandits without a problem just as the chaotic evil Barbarian can mop the floor with the whole city guard.

[Deepbluediver]

Edit: Forgot to finish post, the main issue at hand for me isn't the murderhoboism or the evilness it is how do I justify things. Most of the time I imagine that characters levels 1-4 make up 1% of the population, 5-10 0.01% of the population 11-16 0.0001% of the population and finally 17+ 0.000001% of the population.
That sounds like a design problem. Personally I prefer a world where adult humanoids start at level 3 (albeit most of them have 3 levels in NPC classes) and there are plenty of other adventuring groups around.

Here's another question though- why do you want to stop them? You built the world, but if your players want to turn evil, why is that a problem? Most groups don't get to level 20 and frankly if they have gotten that far, taking over the world (or at least a continent) seems like the next logical progress, even for some PCs that stay good.

[Grim Portent]

Here's another question though- why do you want to stop them? You built the world, but if your players want to turn evil, why is that a problem? Most groups don't get to level 20 and frankly if they have gotten that far, taking over the world (or at least a continent) seems like the next logical progress, even for some PCs that stay good.

OP never said they want to stop them, just work out where their players can go next. As is they're inter-planar warlords already, but they're spending their time bullying peasants in the material, which is all well and good, but it lacks ambition or challenge.

Given what has been said of the level proportions there's not really much in the material world that can oppose the players apart from the very rare powerful monsters and a few dozen beings with classes, which is why a few of us have suggested beings from the spiritual and metaphysical parts of reality start approaching them and directing them towards actual planar warfare.

[daniel_ream]

In several AD&D and BECMI modules, an Immortal/god showing up and granting the party quests (along with any necessary additional magic items to handle it appropriately) is a common quest starter.

Since the gods of the region the PCs are currently slaughtering their way through are likely none too pleased about the loss of worshipers, one or two of them sending an angelus to the nearest temple, church, itinerant knight's tent or Templar castle would not be amiss.

[Jay R]

Edit: Forgot to finish post, the main issue at hand for me isn't the murderhoboism or the evilness it is how do I justify things. Most of the time I imagine that characters levels 1-4 make up 1% of the population, 5-10 0.01% of the population 11-16 0.0001% of the population and finally 17+ 0.000001% of the population. And the players aren't dumb either, they have several back up plans just in case including but not limited to a fortress of ingenious design that exists on the Astral Plane. They also have several people in their employ, so it isn't just them it's them and an army. At this point they are a world power, and it feels like it is only going to get worse. What about when they reach epic status, do I tell them that now armies of 17th level characters come after them?

If there is nobody left who can threaten them, then there are no more adventures, they can earn no more experience points, and the game is over.

[Deepbluediver]

If there is nobody left who can threaten them...
Until you become gods, there is always someone stronger (and even then, maybe not).
If there is no one on THIS PLANE who can threaten your heroes, feel free to insert some stuff about "your reputation proceeds you" and then start porting in demons, angels, aberrations, etc, whatever you need to hit them with a real threat. Or have the God of Chaos/Battle/Adventurers port them to another plane because he/she/it wants to see what they are REALLY capable of.

Your characters being a higher level really just means that the "local area" where they can find competition in has increased.

[Arkhios]

If townsfolk see the PC's as a threat, they might just refuse cooperating with them, as previously suggested, closing their doors before them, merchants refusing to sell them their wares or a local inn might claim it's full, and local guard might send a patrol to keep a close eye on their every actions. Not engaging directly unless absolutely necessary, but if they did, just have their whole militia to show up. If the players are as unhinged as they seem to be, and murder the whole town, start spreading wanted posters around the region, and lo, you've made a reasonable explanation for a high level group of paladins to show up and mete out justice.

[Frozen_Feet]

Forgot to finish post, the main issue at hand for me isn't the murderhoboism or the evilness it is how do I justify things. Most of the time I imagine that characters levels 1-4 make up 1% of the population, 5-10 0.01% of the population 11-16 0.0001% of the population and finally 17+ 0.000001% of the population. And the players aren't dumb either, they have several back up plans just in case including but not limited to a fortress of ingenious design that exists on the Astral Plane. They also have several people in their employ, so it isn't just them it's them and an army. At this point they are a world power, and it feels like it is only going to get worse. What about when they reach epic status, do I tell them that now armies of 17th level characters come after them?

Let's get to the root of this. For any setting, one of four basic scenarios is true:

1) The world has low power and a low power cap.

At some point, murderhoboism runs into diminishing returns: the PCs have killed all the extraordinary folks, and can get no more powerful by killing the ordinary ones. In this case, the PCs will eventually become the strongest murderhobos around. However, even the strongest murderhobo can be threatened by masses of normal people. So as the PCs grow more infamous, they first lose co-operation of the rule of law, then co-operation of common people, and finally co-operation of other murderhobos. If they do not stop their murderhoboing, this eventually turns into a losing game: one day, someone will get in that lucky shot and they will die.

2) The world has low power but high power cap.

Diminishing returns doesn't exist. In this scenario, you can reach arbitrarily high power by killing normal people and taking their stuff. The strongest murderhobos cannot meaningfully be threatened by ordinary people. There are two subscenarios depending on answers to two questions:

2a) did the PCs hit the cap first? If yes, they have, by now, destroyed anyone who could oppose them and can prevent any new threats from rising. They are, in practice, invincible.

If not, they will now have to face the original murderhobos who hit the cap first - and those might just as invincible to them as they are to common people.

2b) Is murderhoboism sustainable, AKA do the PCs need anything from the common folk anymore? This is important because as has been alluded to by other posters, sufficiently indiscriminate murderhoboing will run the society and surrounding environment to the ground. If the answer is yes, the PCs will have to rethink their strategy so that they can sustain their lifestyle, which might equate to quitting murderhoboing alltogether.

If no, the PCs are effectively gods. They do not need the world and can do whatever they want with it.

3) the setting has high power but low power cap.

There are genuine gods and other supernatural things around in abundance, but the PCs can't close the gap. This is similar to the first scenario expect the time window for murderhoboism is much shorter. The PCs will rather rapidly run into something they can't kill and can't steal from and will have to rethink their strategy.

4) the world has high power and high power cap.

This is the world where yes, you will be sending 17th level armies against the PCs, because despite high-level characters being proportionately rare, in absolute terms their numbers are infinite and they can co-operate and concentrate forces to oppose the PCs. This is how Planes in D&D are set up: there are multiple realities that are infinite, so no matter how powerful a character gets there's always an arbitrary number of other characters just as powerful out there somewhere.

---

Based on your description of your game, you are operating on either 2) or 4). This is a choice you have to make and everything will follow from that choice.

I propose you pick 2). Now, answer the questions: did the PCs hit the power cap first and is their lifestyle sustainable?

[Gizmogidget]

Part of the reason for the small number of very powerful people was that because of the curve it is kind of hard to make sense of the world. From a game standpoint a party of 14th level characters and a squad of decently powerful soldiers as well as countless resoures can well be challenged by only a few things, so from a game stand point the party is rarely going to encounter anything that challenges them. But fi I go the reverse, and have beholders come out as random encounters, then how do I justify the existence of commoners or people on the real low end of the power scale?

I know some people have mentioned that my problems are a fault of the D&D system, are there good systems that have say a lateral progression wherein a 20th level character or whatever while powerful isn't a demigod disguised in mortal flesh?

[Quertus]

XP, treasure, and corpses to animate - there's 3 consequences right there.

You need more? Ok, fine. In RPGs, there's this little thing called role-playing. At the risk of oversimplifying matters, it involves characters taking the actions that it would make sense for the character to take. That'll give you all the consequences that you could ever need, and probably all the extra consequences you should ever use.

What is in character for the denizens of your world to do in this situation? Um, it's your world - you tell me. Same answer to the question, "what can they do?".

[Frozen_Feet]

@Gizmo: there's a simple answer to "why do/how can ordinary people co-exist with powerful creatures?"

Any creature powerful enough to both be unthreatened by them and to not need anything from them can just ignore them.

There is an analogous phenomenom in the real world. Ants, like humans, famously go to war. However, ants only war against other ants of similar size. They do not fight other ant species which are much smaller or larger.

Why? Because differently-sized ants occupy different ecological niches. They do not compete for the same resources.

Similarly, a big shark could easily devour plenty of smaller fishes, but they don't because there wouldn't be a point to it. Because of this, some smaller fish actually flock to sharks to escape other predators, such as seals, which are big enough for the shark to eat.

Same applies to monsters. F.ex. a dragon living on a mountaintop might be happy to leave human farmers alive as long as they produce delicious cattle for it to snack on. It will only take serious steps to eliminate those humans which become powerful enough to climb to its nest or which have treasure to steal.

A vampire or a mindflayer actually needs humans, so they would at some point try to cultivate them to have a lasting supply - and in the process, drive off, destroy or subjugate other monsters which might threaten human existence.

Once you examine the foodchain of evil in detail, you might come to notice that you can actually have huge amounts of powerful monsters who are mostly harmless to humanity because they are deadlocked in combat with other powerful monsters or just don't give a crap. It's only when the PCs cross the treshold to becoming powerful monsters in their own right that the hammer comes down and suddenly they have to fight all the other big fish.

[Max_Killjoy]

@Gizmo: there's a simple answer to "why do/how can ordinary people co-exist with powerful creatures?"

Any creature powerful enough to both be unthreatened by them and to not need anything from them can just ignore them.

There is an analogous phenomenom in the real world. Ants, like humans, famously go to war. However, ants only war against other ants of similar size. They do not fight other ant species which are much smaller or larger.

Why? Because differently-sized ants occupy different ecological niches. They do not compete for the same resources.

Similarly, a big shark could easily devour plenty of smaller fishes, but they don't because there wouldn't be a point to it. Because of this, some smaller fish actually flock to sharks to escape other predators, such as seals, which are big enough for the shark to eat.

Same applies to monsters. F.ex. a dragon living on a mountaintop might be happy to leave human farmers alive as long as they produce delicious cattle for it to snack on. It will only take serious steps to eliminate those humans which become powerful enough to climb to its nest or which have treasure to steal.

A vampire or a mindflayer actually needs humans, so they would at some point try to cultivate them to have a lasting supply - and in the process, drive off, destroy or subjugate other monsters which might threaten human existence.

Once you examine the foodchain of evil in detail, you might come to notice that you can actually have huge amounts of powerful monsters who are mostly harmless to humanity because they are deadlocked in combat with other powerful monsters or just don't give a crap. It's only when the PCs cross the treshold to becoming powerful monsters in their own right that the hammer comes down and suddenly they have to fight all the other big fish.


Maybe the OP's players end up destroying villages that "belonged" to a Great Wyrm, coven of Elder Vampires, or a nest of mind flayers...

[Lord Raziere]

A vampire or a mindflayer actually needs humans, so they would at some point try to cultivate them to have a lasting supply - and in the process, drive off, destroy or subjugate other monsters which might threaten human existence.


Now this actually explains well why vampires would be relative protectors in certain worlds-if your options are a bunch of parasites who need humans to live and a race of being who don't are bent on your complete extermination, the vampires look like the better option. I could easily imagine some less cosmic morality-esque fantasy worlds where the vampires are no secret but fulfill the basic role of feudal nobility: protect people from outside threats and whatnot in exchange for commoners who give up some of their blood as tribute. you'd hardly have to change anything about feudal politics for it to work. though how inheritance and dynasties work might change, they ARE undead after all, so their heirs will have to work differently. It probably means the people currently in power have a lot more control over who gets to succeed them though, since the infection has to be intentional.

[Jay R]

Any creature that preys on people will work. Dragons would protect the humans from genocidal PCs for the same reason that humans protect cows from wolves.

[Frozen_Feet]

Indeed. The conditions for a monster mafia to form are pretty broad. Sapient monsters may create sophisticated rules for managing prey, similar in purpose to human hunting laws. These may involve an ethical aspect, similar to human principles of ethical hunting.

Due to this, it's not a given a powerful anthrophage is purely detrimental to a human community. They may take active part in preserving or improving human conditions because happy humans taste better.

[2D8HP]

I...because happy humans taste better.


So sig-worthy!

[Pauly]

Another solution is to play out murder hobo events in excruciating detail with lots and lots of checks. Point out every rock that rolls, every door that swings. Make them spend tedious hours murdering the village.
For 0 XP
For 0 GP

Justify it by saying there's a rumor from a villager that a great mage is in the area.

The consequence becomes a meta game consequence. Instead of murderating the village in a 1 minute, "yeah we made a bunch of attack rolls and the village is exterminated ho-ho-ho" and now lets get onto our main adventure. It becomes "The ladt time we did this it was no fun, so how about we skip it".

[Jay R]

Another solution is to play out murder hobo events in excruciating detail with lots and lots of checks. Point out every rock that rolls, every door that swings. Make them spend tedious hours murdering the village.
For 0 XP
For 0 GP

Justify it by saying there's a rumor from a villager that a great mage is in the area.

The consequence becomes a meta game consequence. Instead of murderating the village in a 1 minute, "yeah we made a bunch of attack rolls and the village is exterminated ho-ho-ho" and now lets get onto our main adventure. It becomes "The ladt time we did this it was no fun, so how about we skip it".

Intriguingly, I would do the exact opposite, for the same reason.

DM: OK, you kill whoever you want, pillage what ever you want burn whatever you want. Nobody there can affect you. That night, ...
Player: Wait. First we want to...
DM: I don't need any details. Nothing can stop you; there's no adventure. You finish. That night, ,,,
Player: But we wanted to...
DM: Don't waste time. Total pillage is not enough money to affect you. That night, carrion eaters come in - wolves, ravens, etc. What do you do?
Player: But we wanted to play through it.
DM: You did. Nothing stopped you; you did anything you wanted to the town. That night ...


Again and again, refusing to let them "play" something with no adventure. No attack rolls, no spot checks, nothing.

[Deepbluediver]

Intriguingly, I would do the exact opposite, for the same reason.

DM: OK, you kill whoever you want, pillage what ever you want burn whatever you want. Nobody there can affect you. That night, ...
Player: Wait. First we want to...
DM: I don't need any details. Nothing can stop you; there's no adventure. You finish. That night, ,,,
Player: But we wanted to...
DM: Don't waste time. Total pillage is not enough money to affect you. That night, carrion eaters come in - wolves, ravens, etc. What do you do?
Player: But we wanted to play through it.
DM: You did. Nothing stopped you; you did anything you wanted to the town. That night ...


Again and again, refusing to let them "play" something with no adventure. No attack rolls, no spot checks, nothing.
I feel like we might be drifting off of the OP's original intent. There's a difference IMO between just being dirty violent jerks and actually being down-and-out evil. And if your player want to play an evil campaign, is that wrong? Ideally you should have discussed it with them ahead of time, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong from a gameplay perspective if their characters want to do a swan dive into the deep end of the alignment pool. It might change their motivations and maybe the sorts of enemies they start facing, but it's not a wrong way to play.

[Koo Rehtorb]

The GM does not have the sole right to frame scenes. Cut that bull**** out.

[Max_Killjoy]

The GM does not have the sole right to frame scenes. Cut that bull**** out.

Nor do the players have the right to make the GM go through the slaughter of the innocents in detail.

(And it depends on what you mean by "frame scenes".)

[Delta]

Intriguingly, I would do the exact opposite, for the same reason.

DM: OK, you kill whoever you want, pillage what ever you want burn whatever you want. Nobody there can affect you. That night, ...
Player: Wait. First we want to...
DM: I don't need any details. Nothing can stop you; there's no adventure. You finish. That night, ,,,
Player: But we wanted to...
DM: Don't waste time. Total pillage is not enough money to affect you. That night, carrion eaters come in - wolves, ravens, etc. What do you do?
Player: But we wanted to play through it.
DM: You did. Nothing stopped you; you did anything you wanted to the town. That night ...


Again and again, refusing to let them "play" something with no adventure. No attack rolls, no spot checks, nothing.

To be honest, this sounds like a terrible idea to me that will end up frustrating both DM and players.

Basically, the players are telling you: "We'd like to play this!" and the DM telling them: "No, we're not gonna do that. No discussion, shut up, you don't get to have an opinion here.", in my book, that's not exactly a foundation for a game everyone will have fun with.

[Jay R]

I feel like we might be drifting off of the OP's original intent. There's a difference IMO between just being dirty violent jerks and actually being down-and-out evil. And if your player want to play an evil campaign, is that wrong? Ideally you should have discussed it with them ahead of time, but I don't think there's anything inherently wrong from a gameplay perspective if their characters want to do a swan dive into the deep end of the alignment pool. It might change their motivations and maybe the sorts of enemies they start facing, but it's not a wrong way to play.

This isn't primarily about wanting to play an evil alignment. It's about players who want to waste time being bullies where there is no challenge and no consequences. Specifically, I'm replying to an OP who asked about a 14th level barbarian against ordinary town guards.

I will not waste time on cheap, easy pillage. You want an evil campaign? All right, I'll set up some paladins on your level to fight. But I will not invent 140 four-hit-point targets so your 14th level party can kill somebody on 19 attacks out of 20.


To be honest, this sounds like a terrible idea to me that will end up frustrating both DM and players.

Basically, the players are telling you: "We'd like to play this!" and the DM telling them: "No, we're not gonna do that. No discussion, shut up, you don't get to have an opinion here.", in my book, that's not exactly a foundation for a game everyone will have fun with.

Not at all. I'm telling them we won't waste time on "encounters" with no challenge.

If players want to be villains, or play an evil campaign, that's fine, and I can build some serious challenges for them. That does not mean I will waste time on them pillaging a village of 1st-level commoners. This has nothing to do with alignment, as I will also not waste time on a high-level party of heroes ambushing random kobolds or commoner thieves.

Pillage a defenseless village? Fine. That takes one sentence. You will not roll for every attack against peasants for the same reason you won't roll for each chop of the axe when cutting firewood.

[Winter_Wolf]

Here's a thought: as regular folk move out of the area it creates opportunities for monstrous races to move in. Monstrous races with highe hit dice and combat abilities. 'Cause frankly if we're going full Evil anyway it's not more wrong to kill the non combatants of say a bugbear village than it is to kill humans or demihumans. What's got higher racial HD and forms settlements above ground?

Say a war band comes around and finds everything abandoned, but the brighter among them notices that everything's still useable and man this place is a lot nicer than the crappy lands we've been living in. Let's bring the families and make our headquarters here. Then the PCs roll in and find that the lowly villagers aren't quite as lowly anymore.

[Jay R]

Here's a thought: as regular folk move out of the area it creates opportunities for monstrous races to move in. Monstrous races with highe hit dice and combat abilities. 'Cause frankly if we're going full Evil anyway it's not more wrong to kill the non combatants of say a bugbear village than it is to kill humans or demihumans. What's got higher racial HD and forms settlements above ground?

Say a war band comes around and finds everything abandoned, but the brighter among them notices that everything's still useable and man this place is a lot nicer than the crappy lands we've been living in. Let's bring the families and make our headquarters here. Then the PCs roll in and find that the lowly villagers aren't quite as lowly anymore.

I like it.

It's the idea behind an old castle full of monsters, and therefore the basis of dungeons in the first place. Using the village the PCs pillaged as a base for a group of higher-level brigands or demihumans makes sense, and just extends the traditional D&D approach.

[NichG]

I feel like the issue of how to challenge a party of murderhobos and the issue of how to portray the consequences of murderhoboism are completely independent.

That is to say, a party of non-murderhobos will also be challenged, no? So don't make the mistake of assuming that because the party has engaged in murderhoboism, now suddenly all of the challenges they face must originate from that decision. If an elder evil is bent on destroying the world, even a party that kills shopkeepers and orphans will still have to deal with it if they want a place to keep their stuff.

Once you abandon the idea that consequences = direct challenge, then I think things become much easier. Your job is then to convincingly and evocatively portray 'what happens next' now that a great and unstoppable force of evil has descended upon the countryside (e.g. the PCs). So, what are some things that could happen? I'm going to assume for the following that the usual proofs of power have occurred (guards/forces of the kingdom/etc tried to stop the PCs and were summarily obliterated and their entire chains of command assassinated). So this is a high level, PCs-are-effectively-an-evil-empire take on things.

- Those who hold grudges against others, those who are drawn to power, and those who have cracked under the strain and are seeking self-preservation flock to the PCs' side, trying to preemptively buy their way into the PCs' good graces. The more extreme the PCs actions and the more they turn on or abuse these new allies, the higher percentage of 'crazy' is present in these recruits.

- Occasionally, someone will try to convert or redeem one of the PCs - not through force, but by attaching themselves to the party in some capacity and trying to become important to the target PC (via attempting to romance them, providing resources or information in exchange for a few minutes of moralizing, etc). These individuals may in turn become corrupted themselves in the attempt, as they make more and more compromises in order to try to get the PCs to identify with them.

- Attempts at indirect rebellion are likely - things like sabotaging places the PCs are liable to be interested in when they're not around to stop it. There's likely to be a guerilla warfare phase where the remaining hardcore opposition struggles to find some way to spite the PCs despite not being able to directly confront them.

- People with strong ethical constraints living in the area will tend to do one of three things. Some will go out in a blaze of glory attempting to stop the PCs (no need to even run this as a fight, its basically the NPCs committing suicide rather than living in compliance with the world the PCs have created). Some will leave the region immediately, understanding that they'll face impossible decisions if they stay. Some will go into hiding and try to secretly help those who might run afoul of the PCs - move businesses underground, provide means of escape from the region for those in fear for their livelihood or lives, etc.

- Generally people will begin to simply let the PCs have their way and won't even provide token resistance, but in turn there will be almost no enthusiasm or loyalty to it. People will do exactly what the PCs tell them to, no questions and no resistance, even if it goes strongly against their ethics and personality. So a shopkeep might hand over all their goods for free, but then they won't bother restocking and if the PCs e.g. blackmail them to order some custom item, they'll comply but at a higher chance of failure than otherwise. Any kind of sustained action on the PCs' behalf requires some kind of method to make the threat of the PCs' presence persist even when they leave (e.g. secret surveillance, geases, etc).

- Pretenses of society will tend to break down. At first it will be 'okay everyone, we don't charge these guys, just give them what we have and hope they go away' but that sort of exception will gradually erode social order in general, leading to corruption or fragmentation into small fiefdoms and autocracies. This will in turn cause infrastructure to decay - communication between towns and cities will become sporadic or inconsistent, trade may shrink down to essentials or seize up entirely. This sort of decay can be prevented if the PCs actively take charge rather than just laying waste to things and leaving.

- People may abandon the region - ghost towns, abandoned farms, etc might start to become more common sights. If the PCs have a particular preferred victim (they go after shops for their inventory, etc), then that kind of business will tend to dry up and disappear more quickly than the PCs can actually pull resources out of it.

- Various forces of evil both mundane and cosmic may start to default to non-hostile or make overtures with the PCs. An archdevil might send a few imps or lower-tier fiends to serve the PCs as a gift and to keep lines of communication open, etc. If the PCs kill them too, then this stops pretty rapidly, otherwise those forces may try to draw the PCs into their schemes.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Pillage a defenseless village? Fine. That takes one sentence. You will not roll for every attack against peasants for the same reason you won't roll for each chop of the axe when cutting firewood.

Yes, it is reasonable not to make rolls over forgone conclusions. That is not what you're suggesting, though. You're suggesting more than skipping over making attack rolls. You're suggesting skipping over the entire scene.

And what you're doing with that is denying players the chance for characterization. And the example conversation you posted with you repeatedly cutting the players off mid-sentence and bulldozing over their own desires is particularly grating.

[Max_Killjoy]

I feel like the issue of how to challenge a party of murderhobos and the issue of how to portray the consequences of murderhoboism are completely independent.

That is to say, a party of non-murderhobos will also be challenged, no? So don't make the mistake of assuming that because the party has engaged in murderhoboism, now suddenly all of the challenges they face must originate from that decision. If an elder evil is bent on destroying the world, even a party that kills shopkeepers and orphans will still have to deal with it if they want a place to keep their stuff.

Once you abandon the idea that consequences = direct challenge, then I think things become much easier. Your job is then to convincingly and evocatively portray 'what happens next' now that a great and unstoppable force of evil has descended upon the countryside (e.g. the PCs). So, what are some things that could happen? I'm going to assume for the following that the usual proofs of power have occurred (guards/forces of the kingdom/etc tried to stop the PCs and were summarily obliterated and their entire chains of command assassinated). So this is a high level, PCs-are-effectively-an-evil-empire take on things.

- Those who hold grudges against others, those who are drawn to power, and those who have cracked under the strain and are seeking self-preservation flock to the PCs' side, trying to preemptively buy their way into the PCs' good graces. The more extreme the PCs actions and the more they turn on or abuse these new allies, the higher percentage of 'crazy' is present in these recruits.

- Occasionally, someone will try to convert or redeem one of the PCs - not through force, but by attaching themselves to the party in some capacity and trying to become important to the target PC (via attempting to romance them, providing resources or information in exchange for a few minutes of moralizing, etc). These individuals may in turn become corrupted themselves in the attempt, as they make more and more compromises in order to try to get the PCs to identify with them.

- Attempts at indirect rebellion are likely - things like sabotaging places the PCs are liable to be interested in when they're not around to stop it. There's likely to be a guerilla warfare phase where the remaining hardcore opposition struggles to find some way to spite the PCs despite not being able to directly confront them.

- People with strong ethical constraints living in the area will tend to do one of three things. Some will go out in a blaze of glory attempting to stop the PCs (no need to even run this as a fight, its basically the NPCs committing suicide rather than living in compliance with the world the PCs have created). Some will leave the region immediately, understanding that they'll face impossible decisions if they stay. Some will go into hiding and try to secretly help those who might run afoul of the PCs - move businesses underground, provide means of escape from the region for those in fear for their livelihood or lives, etc.

- Generally people will begin to simply let the PCs have their way and won't even provide token resistance, but in turn there will be almost no enthusiasm or loyalty to it. People will do exactly what the PCs tell them to, no questions and no resistance, even if it goes strongly against their ethics and personality. So a shopkeep might hand over all their goods for free, but then they won't bother restocking and if the PCs e.g. blackmail them to order some custom item, they'll comply but at a higher chance of failure than otherwise. Any kind of sustained action on the PCs' behalf requires some kind of method to make the threat of the PCs' presence persist even when they leave (e.g. secret surveillance, geases, etc).

- Pretenses of society will tend to break down. At first it will be 'okay everyone, we don't charge these guys, just give them what we have and hope they go away' but that sort of exception will gradually erode social order in general, leading to corruption or fragmentation into small fiefdoms and autocracies. This will in turn cause infrastructure to decay - communication between towns and cities will become sporadic or inconsistent, trade may shrink down to essentials or seize up entirely. This sort of decay can be prevented if the PCs actively take charge rather than just laying waste to things and leaving.

- People may abandon the region - ghost towns, abandoned farms, etc might start to become more common sights. If the PCs have a particular preferred victim (they go after shops for their inventory, etc), then that kind of business will tend to dry up and disappear more quickly than the PCs can actually pull resources out of it.

- Various forces of evil both mundane and cosmic may start to default to non-hostile or make overtures with the PCs. An archdevil might send a few imps or lower-tier fiends to serve the PCs as a gift and to keep lines of communication open, etc. If the PCs kill them too, then this stops pretty rapidly, otherwise those forces may try to draw the PCs into their schemes.


All very true, and well detailed. My comments about challenges (and those too will arise as consequences, even if separate from your examples) was more a rejection of the idea that the PCs can ever guarantee their own superiority over all threats -- if the PCs can do something, someone else can do it too.

But really, society should start to break down around the PCs, exactly as you describe, until they realize they broke it and it doesn't work any more. Another example -- if they don't know how to fix their own gear and everyone who could fix it is either dead because "LoL, Y pay when U can kill?" or have gone out of business or have fled the region... then the PCs have broken gear.

[Max_Killjoy]

Yes, it is reasonable not to make rolls over forgone conclusions. That is not what you're suggesting, though. You're suggesting more than skipping over making attack rolls. You're suggesting skipping over the entire scene.

And what you're doing with that is denying players the chance for characterization. And the example conversation you posted with you repeatedly cutting the players off mid-sentence and bulldozing over their own desires is particularly grating.

I once had a player who wanted to play out a sexual assault against someone who had no way to resist his character. I pretty much took the same approach as Jay R.

Me: "Really?"
P: "Yeah!"
Me: "Looking at your character, there's no way she can resist or get away or even kill herself to stop you. The crowds outsides are..." rolls dice, hoping... "too loud for anyone to hear her screaming."
P: "Great, so I start by..."
Me: "Fine, you do it, you have your way with her."
P: "OK, so I..."
Me: "It's done, you did it, you succeeded, refer to crass slang here. What next?"
P: "But..."
Me: "If you need to think about what you do next, I can move on to another character for now."


Depending on just how far the players are willing to go once they start killing town guards and shopkeepers to get their way, they're going to hit a moral event horizon and as the GM, I wouldn't play out their actions in detail.

[ArgentumRegio]

I am actually perfectly fine with murderhobos since most of my games are improv anyways, but I have issue with how to demonstrate that acting this way in just about every society is likely to not condone this behavior. See at level one if they murder random people, I can have the town guard come after them to demonstrate this.

But if Dave the Murderhobo 14th level Barbarian and his buddies come to town, ordinary guards ain't gonna cut it. However it feels cheap to have 20th level paladins appear out of the woodwork. So how should I demonstrate that doing crazy things can lead to consequences without creating ridiculous worlds in which a tiny village has 10th level fighter cops?

The PCs are not the FIRST characters to reach level 14. There are many even ahead of them in terms of level; these are scattered through the world but they are there. While the murdered person or the guard who confronts them initially may be low level (and likely is) they may have friends, or overlords who take murdering their subjects rather seriously.

Young persons, observing the murder of their relatives could swear an oath of vengence, make pacts with powerful patrons, bring chaos to the murderhobo's future.

When level is high, it can be overwhelmed by massively superior numbers; government often frowns on wanton murder and may take a stand.

[NichG]

All very true, and well detailed. My comments about challenges (and those too will arise as consequences, even if separate from your examples) was more a rejection of the idea that the PCs can ever guarantee their own superiority over all threats -- if the PCs can do something, someone else can do it too.

To me, the issue here is there's a sort of double standard which risks things spilling out into OOC. If we assume that before this rampant murderhoboism began, the campaign was following along lines in which some kind of tension placed the fate of X (city, country, world, etc) in the hands of the PCs and the PCs alone. That implies that as long as the PCs are breaking things up to and including X in scale, there actually aren't other threats ready to come to bear against those who threaten the peace. If suddenly they come out of the woodwork because they PCs are misbehaving, but didn't come out to help protect against whatever the PCs were originally supposed to deal with, then there's a dissonance.

To a player, that dissonance reads as 'whatever the DM says, really this is happening because they're ticked off that we played murderhobos'. That particular line goes to a few different places depending on various factors, but none of them are really good gaming.

That's not to say 'don't challenge the players', but do watch out for developing an instinct as DM to respond to anomalous behavior from the players by pushing back against it more strongly than when they do the expected. Instead, often a pull can be more effective and surprising to the players - rather than spend those extra cycles thinking about what could go wrong, thinking about what could go too right can be a way to avoid that trap.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I once had a player who wanted to play out a sexual assault against someone who had no way to resist his character. I pretty much took the same approach as Jay R.

Me: "Really?"
P: "Yeah!"
Me: "Looking at your character, there's no way she can resist or get away or even kill herself to stop you. The crowds outsides are..." rolls dice, hoping... "too loud for anyone to hear her screaming."
P: "Great, so I start by..."
Me: "Fine, you do it, you have your way with her."
P: "OK, so I..."
Me: "It's done, you did it, you succeeded, refer to crass slang here. What next?"
P: "But..."
Me: "If you need to think about what you do next, I can move on to another character for now."


Depending on just how far the players are willing to go once they start killing town guards and shopkeepers to get their way, they're going to hit a moral event horizon and as the GM, I wouldn't play out their actions in detail.

What you're doing here is avoiding the actual topic in a way that's probably bad for the group. If you're uncomfortable with something don't try to pass off playing it because there's "no challenge". Say "I'm uncomfortable playing this out in detail. Let's gloss over it and move on." Don't disguise it as the GM having the exclusive right to frame what scenes happen.

Apart from anything else, that gives no framework for players to request glossing over a scene they're uncomfortable with. Everyone has the right to request that the group moves past something uncomfortable for them, including the GM. This is not part of the GM's job.

[Gizmogidget]

To be honest, this sounds like a terrible idea to me that will end up frustrating both DM and players.

Basically, the players are telling you: "We'd like to play this!" and the DM telling them: "No, we're not gonna do that. No discussion, shut up, you don't get to have an opinion here.", in my book, that's not exactly a foundation for a game everyone will have fun with.

This right here, I don't mind the evilness I would just like to sensibly challenge them.

[Elvenoutrider]

In a world where superpowered people like the player characters exist, the local governments would have to have a contingency in place to deal with them. They might not be able to show up immediately but if the pcs start killing villagers, he lords and king will eventually get together to come up with a way to end the threat - they will hire other heroes to go kill them safe as any roving monster. In a high magic setting the villages could even have an alarm that signals a wizard that he needs to teleport in with 5 friends to deal with a high level threat.

Watch a superhero show and see how local governments deal with heroes and villains. You can see some inspiration

[Calthropstu]

When word of this adventuring group trouncing local police, murdering at will and making a mockery of the city guard, generally I would begin setting a trap. A 20th level character would likely become indirectly involved.

Have a 20th level caster throw a few divinations and some bindings. have them all set up in a town town the pcs are sure to go to. Use angels.

When the pcs walk into town now filled with nothing but angels disguised as humans and dogs(see hound archon), and they begin their assault, the angels will suddenly pummel the crap out of them.

As a side note however, I could easily wipe a 14th level party with a bunch of low level characters.

a 5th level mage supporting a cadre of 50 1st level warriors? Fire arrow, give each warrior a potion of true strike and you're looking at 1 dead barbarian.

[ShaneMRoth]

...
Pillage a defenseless village? Fine. That takes one sentence. You will not roll for every attack against peasants for the same reason you won't roll for each chop of the axe when cutting firewood.


...
You're suggesting skipping over the entire scene.

And what you're doing with that is denying players the chance for characterization. And the example conversation you posted with you repeatedly cutting the players off mid-sentence and bulldozing over their own desires is particularly grating.

I would also skip over the entire scene.

I don't see the opportunity for characterization to be had from pillaging a defenseless village.


I once had a player who wanted to play out a sexual assault against someone who had no way to resist his character. I pretty much took the same approach as Jay R.
...



What you're doing here is avoiding the actual topic in a way that's probably bad for the group.

... Don't disguise it as the GM having the exclusive right to frame what scenes happen.
...
This is not part of the GM's job.

I respectfully disagree.

Framing scenarios and encounters is the GM's job. It's more of a duty than a right, but the authority to frame scenes and encounters is vested in the GM... in role-playing games in general, and in D&D in specific.

No other single player is in a position to perform this function, and the function is necessary to keep a game from foundering.

For example, I believe that it's bad for the group to allow one player to suck all the oxygen out of the game room by letting him play out a sexual assault in pornographic detail.

Instead...

Me: "Yeah, you raped the defenseless girl. You raped the **** out of her, Anti-Hero. And... SCENE."

And, I too, would cut off the player in mid-sentence if he didn't take the hint. (Spoiler Alert: It's always a he.) I might even throw in a Sarcastic Slow Clap just to drive home the point that I, as the GM, am goddamn done with that particular encounter.

As to the notion of the players making a "unanimous" decision, I don't believe that it's "unanimous" if the GM votes no. Because, as GM, I consider myself a player, too.

I submit that what's bad for the group is for the GM to be treated sub-ordinate to the will of any one player, or even to the collective will of the other players present.

Having said that, I also don't believe that the GM's authority is absolute. That authority is founded on the trust of the players. And if the players lose their confidence in my ability to serve as GM, then my authority (that is, my ability to perform my duty) is lost.

If you don't trust your GM's judgment-- at all-- then the game was over before it even began.

Look hard enough and you will find a reason to distrust your GM, because all GMs are prone to making bad decisions from time to time.

When I'm serving as GM, I try to prevent the perfect from being the enemy of the good. And I consider it my duty (as opposed to my right) to preserve the narrative flow of the game. And I use my authority as GM to that end, and that includes framing scenes, scenarios, and encounters.

Time management is the most fundamental aspect of being a GM. There are players, and I mean good players, who will flog a personal agenda into the ground and consume the bulk of a game session on that agenda if the GM doesn't set boundaries and doesn't manage time.

...and... SCENE.

[Coidzor]

Matt Mercer had a nice little section on that before how to run an evil campaign.
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFBKCvD5D3o)
Maybe talk to your group about letting off some steam by just intentionally setting out to be evil bastards for a while?

[JMAP94]

Well i mean, yeah at first theyd just be killing run of the mill guards left and right, but eventually the villagers would start complaining about what is essentially a group of genghis khans ravaging the countryside to the king and the level 20 paladins would probably be stationed in towns nearby to deal with what is essentially an invasion. you could even have dieties involved, maybe the count, realizing that his king cannot save his people from attacks, makes a deal with a demon idk. if your players are getting murderhoboy on your world, make a murder hobo campaign, and get murderhoboey on your players.

[Koo Rehtorb]

I would also skip over the entire scene.

I don't see the opportunity for characterization to be had from pillaging a defenseless village.

And just because you don't see it doesn't mean that the players don't see it. If they want to play it through, clearly they see something that interests them in the prospect.


Framing scenarios and encounters is the GM's job. It's more of a duty than a right, but the authority to frame scenes and encounters is vested in the GM... in role-playing games in general, and in D&D in specific.

No other single player is in a position to perform this function, and the function is necessary to keep a game from foundering.

Of course no other single player is in a position to frame scenes. This is why it's the responsibility of the entire group. The GM can do it. Players can also do it. "Does anyone have a scene they want to get done now?" should be a frequent question in all groups and all games.


For example, I believe that it's bad for the group to allow one player to suck all the oxygen out of the game room by letting him play out a sexual assault in pornographic detail.

I don't disagree (With the caveat of there potentially being some weird outlier group that's all totally on board with it. I don't judge.) What I disagree with is it being the responsibility of the GM to shepherd the sweet innocent group around these pitfalls. If some weirdo wants to play out rape scenes everyone in the group is allowed to object to it. This is not the GM's job. This is the job of a group of presumably mature adults engaging in a social activity together. The GM is not in charge of the group. The one exception is if there is another reason beyond them being the GM why they should have a position of social authority. Like the GM being an adult GMing a group of literal children.

Edit - actually, probably the other exception is if you're playing a one-shot and you need to keep the group hyper focused because there's an extremely limited amount of time to get to a satisfying conclusion.


As to the notion of the players making a "unanimous" decision, I don't believe that it's "unanimous" if the GM votes no. Because, as GM, I consider myself a player, too.

I submit that what's bad for the group is for the GM to be treated sub-ordinate to the will of any one player, or even to the collective will of the other players present.

Yes! Exactly! The GM is a player too. It's not that no one has the right to frame scenes or object to offensive material. It's that everyone does, including the GM.

People need to not confuse "GM authority" with "people authority". If you use GM authority where people authority is appropriate then it sends all kinds of unfortunate messages.

[Max_Killjoy]

What you're doing here is avoiding the actual topic in a way that's probably bad for the group. If you're uncomfortable with something don't try to pass off playing it because there's "no challenge". Say "I'm uncomfortable playing this out in detail. Let's gloss over it and move on." Don't disguise it as the GM having the exclusive right to frame what scenes happen.

Apart from anything else, that gives no framework for players to request glossing over a scene they're uncomfortable with. Everyone has the right to request that the group moves past something uncomfortable for them, including the GM. This is not part of the GM's job.

Given my gut reaction, what I did was the least-bad immediate response.

But later...


After some time to think about it, I decided that the NPC girl (yes, girl, like 15 or 16 as I recall) threw herself into the river in despair, and her spirit started haunting the town. When the PCs came back through the area, the priest PC was begged to deal with the angry spirit, and dutifully summoned her up to find out why she was haunting the town...

[Koo Rehtorb]

Given my gut reaction, what I did was the least-bad immediate response.

Sure. I don't think it was some horrible game ruining mistake or anything and I can absolutely appreciate how being put in an uncomfortable situation unexpected can throw people off their game. It happens all the time. I just think there was a slightly better way that it could have been handled is all.

Like I said earlier, if something is making you as a person uncomfortable then that's a player level problem. And people shouldn't use GM level solutions on player level problems.

[Cluedrew]

The scene skipping stuff seems passive aggressive in the most unhelpful way. If it is about getting them to stop murderhoboing (although I don't think it is) than ask them to and if they don't bow out of the game. Don't mix in and out of character like that.

[Agrippa]

The scene skipping stuff seems passive aggressive in the most unhelpful way. If it is about getting them to stop murderhoboing (although I don't think it is) than ask them to and if they don't bow out of the game. Don't mix in and out of character like that.

I think its about not wanting to have his players going into detail about raping and murdering defenseless non-combatants, which is perfectly understandable to me.

[ShaneMRoth]

And just because you don't see it doesn't mean that the players don't see it. If they want to play it through, clearly they see something that interests them in the prospect.

Those players need a different GM, then. I’m not that guy. I’m not going to pretend to be that guy.


... "Does anyone have a scene they want to get done now?" should be a frequent question in all groups and all games.

If you are hosting the home version of Who’s Line Is It Anyway? Perhaps. Not D&D.


... What I disagree with is it being the responsibility of the GM to shepherd the sweet innocent group around these pitfalls. If some weirdo wants to play out rape scenes everyone in the group is allowed to object to it.

This is a case of mistaking silence for consent.

For the record, if I’m a player and some other player wants to play out some rapey encounter and the GM facilitates that encounter? That’s the GM giving a green light to that player. There’s any number of things I might do if it made me uncomfortable. I might go so far as to roll my eyes, or excuse myself from the table for a few minutes to check my phone. I might talk about my discomfort to the GM between sessions. I might just stop attending without comment. I wouldn’t be comfortable interfering with the agency of that player in real time. I wouldn’t feel like it was my place, because it wouldn’t be my place.

As I see it, it is the GM’s job (and duty) to read the room and get a sense of how the players, as a group, are responding to what is happening at the table. And adjust accordingly.


... It's not that no one has the right to frame scenes or object to offensive material. It's that everyone does, including the GM.

It’s the GM’s job to set reasonable boundaries in real time at the table.

Players of D&D have their hands full just playing their individual characters. The GM has to be the advocate for the viability of the campaign as a whole.


People need to not confuse "GM authority" with "people authority". If you use GM authority where people authority is appropriate then it sends all kinds of unfortunate messages.

As I made clear in my last post, I consider “GM Authority” to spring directly from “people (player) authority”. If the GM doesn’t enjoy the trust of his players? He won’t be GM for very long.

...and SCENE.

[Max_Killjoy]

The scene skipping stuff seems passive aggressive in the most unhelpful way. If it is about getting them to stop murderhoboing (although I don't think it is) than ask them to and if they don't bow out of the game. Don't mix in and out of character like that.


In my case, I don't think there was anything passive about it...




I think its about not wanting to have his players going into detail about raping and murdering defenseless non-combatants, which is perfectly understandable to me.


Or having to describe the scene myself, or the NPC girl's reactions, or... ugh. Just... ugh.

[Koo Rehtorb]

If you are hosting the home version of Who’s Line Is It Anyway? Perhaps. Not D&D.

Literally every game other than the most tedious railroaded bull**** that moves from fight to fight involves players framing scenes.

"While we're in town I'm want to go visit my sister and have a conversation" is framing a scene.
"Let's open on us sitting around in the clinic discussing what we're going to do about Vlad Moustachio" is framing a scene.

The GM is often MORE responsible for framing scenes. But it is not his exclusive right.


This is a case of mistaking silence for consent.

For the record, if I’m a player and some other player wants to play out some rapey encounter and the GM facilitates that encounter? That’s the GM giving a green light to that player. There’s any number of things I might do if it made me uncomfortable. I might go so far as to roll my eyes, or excuse myself from the table for a few minutes to check my phone. I might talk about my discomfort to the GM between sessions. I might just stop attending without comment. I wouldn’t be comfortable interfering with the agency of that player in real time. I wouldn’t feel like it was my place, because it wouldn’t be my place.

As I see it, it is the GM’s job (and duty) to read the room and get a sense of how the players, as a group, are responding to what is happening at the table. And adjust accordingly.

Well, obviously I completely disagree with everything you just said. It is absolutely 100% your place to object to something that other people are doing that's making you uncomfortable while participating in a social activity together. In fact, I find the notion that it somehow isn't downright harmful.

Now, that isn't to say everyone feels comfortable speaking up. It's their right to do so, but some people aren't comfortable being that confrontational. It's still not the GM's job to read their mind and adjusting the social situation. It's a nice thing to do, but it's not their job. And guess what, it's a nice thing for everyone at the table to do. The GM has no more responsibility than anyone else there. It's like saying that if the banker in Monopoly notices that someone is making someone else uncomfortable by making a bunch of off-colour jokes it's their responsibility to correct their behaviour by refusing to give them money from the bank. It's absurd.

The GM is not your parent, teacher, boss, or parole officer. Unless they actually are, in which case congratulations on your atypical game.

[Cluedrew]

In my case, I don't think there was anything passive about it...Perhaps in the literal sense of the word, but you didn't (in the transcript I read) address the problem directly either. This probably would have been either "I'm not narrating this." or "We are not having that in this campaign." depending on the tone and concept of the campaign.

I find that generally anything short of directly addressing the issue is ineffective. Of course I know very little of your particular situation so use the idea how you will.

[NichG]

The scene skipping stuff seems passive aggressive in the most unhelpful way. If it is about getting them to stop murderhoboing (although I don't think it is) than ask them to and if they don't bow out of the game. Don't mix in and out of character like that.

A player who is doing things which seem to actively be attempting to make others uncomfortable may be spoiling for a fight. Giving them a direct OOC confrontation about the behavior may play into that. Sometimes a passive approach is worth considering.

It depends on factors. If the player honestly doesn't realize that this would make others uncomfortable, sure, direct OOC conversation is the answer. But if their intent is to get a rise out of others at the table, that OOC conversation will go on circles without doing anything other than raising hostility at the table.

Before 'well, you should have it out and if that happens it's a reason to boot that player', sure, you can just do that. But if you want to keep the player for any particular reason, successfully making a point without making a fight is a useful thing to be able to do. Taking the fun out of being disruptive by making the disruption fail to get attention is a trick for that.

[Mr Beer]

Saying 'congrats, you raped the girl, no you don't get to describe it' is a perfectly reasonable way for a GM to handle the situation. It sends a pretty clear message to most adults, there's no need to have a big discussion about your feelings (rape is wrong mkay) if you don't want to.

EDIT

I care about enjoying my game time more than I value game immersion though, so I'd be more likely to just say 'no you can't do that' and when asked why I'd say 'because I'm not running a game where you get to rape people'. It's difficult to know exactly what I'd do because I don't play with the kind of people who get off on detailing out an act of aggravated sexual assault.

[daniel_ream]

The only appropriate response to a player wanting to "frame a scene" about their PC raping a teenage girl is "Get up, and walk away from this table. Now."

Actually, you can remove the words "a", "teenage" and "girl" from that sentence without loss of generality.

As for the OP, I'll point out again that gods exist in D&D, and have existed in every version of D&D, and have actively involved themselves in the affairs of mortals, sometimes personally, sometimes via intermediaries, since the beginning of the game.

If the PCs are getting a bit blase about level 20 paladins, see how they feel about the Archangel Michael dropping in for a chat.

[Koo Rehtorb]

Okay yes personally I would be more inclined towards "What the **** is wrong with you? Cut that out right now." as a response. A calm discussion about boundaries is more appropriate for less entirely objectionable content than a graphic rape scene. Fortunately I've never had to deal with that personally because I don't play with crazy people.

HOWEVER, the point stands, some sort of OOC response is what's called for in these situations, whatever it may be. Utilizing the game passive aggressively to replace that OOC response is not showing good judgement.

[Templarkommando]

There are a couple of things that come to mind for me. First, if you're talking about a gritty world, make it apparent to the party that they are doing evil. They need to see people that are suffering as a direct result of their actions. If your party claims to be good-aligned, this should be a definite way to sort of shepherd the party back on to the straight and narrow. This particular method isn't a real strong-arm tactic from the DMs bag of tricks, but at a meta-game level, it lets the party know that their actions for good or for ill are going to effect the campaign world. It's vaguely like Ebeneezer Scrooge seeing Tiny Tim in the Christmas Carol. For a more contemporary example, I'm reminded of the episode of Firefly called The Train Job where:

Mal and the crew steal a shipment full of pharmaceuticals that's on the way to a mining town. Now, they arranged beforehand to do this job for a bad guy, but they wanted the money for it. It's not until they get into town and see the plight of the people suffering from this disease that the medicine was supposed to cure that they realize that they have to return the medicine if they ever want to feel good about themselves and who they are again.

Another option is to go with a Columbo-type character. If you haven't seen Columbo and you like detective shows, it's worth a watch, but basically, you have a fellow that represents THE LAW that shows up and starts asking a bunch of uncomfortable questions. As he gets new evidence and becomes more acquainted with the case, his questions get more and more probing... more personal. Here's the thing - Columbo doesn't carry a gun. He's just this disorganized guy in a trench-coat that asks questions and snoops around. You could really cause worries for the party if he shows up at the scene of a crime they just caused, and he's trying to put two and two together. The problem for the party comes when they decide to do something where he can basically figure out what's going on, or if they decide to kill him, it calls down all sorts of heat from higher up the law-enforcement food chain. This is another less-than-strong-arm tactic in the DM's toolbox.

The next option is bounty hunters. At some point, the party attracts enough attention that someone offers a reward for their heads. Maybe the local government doesn't have enough cash to deal with this, but if you get a bunch of towns to pool their resources, or if they're ruled over by some noble that wants the problem dealt with while not getting their own hands dirty, bounty hunters are a good option. The thing about bounty hunters, is that they come in all sorts of numbers, shapes, and sizes - if you really want to tailor encounters to your party, you can send basically any size of party after the PCs with any race/class mix and special powers that you can think of depending on how egregious the party's violations are and who they've managed to annoy.

I typically like to avoid anything much stronger than that, just because I want to let my party know that there are consequences to their actions without destroying their play style, but you can crank things up a few more notches depending on what all is being done. For example, military special forces units could be an option. Dragons are possible - especially if the party manages to either A.)acquire treasure that a dragon wants, or B.) put their nose into a dragon's business. You can substitute basically any sentient monster in place of dragon in this case.


There are some meta-game options as well. This may be received well or not depending on your players. If you are wanting to run a heroic campaign, just lay that out to your players. "I want my campaign to be a story of the good guys against the bad guys. That's the kind of game I want to DM for. I can tolerate a little bit of shenanigans here and there, but I really can't stand the feeling that I'm basically the warden over the super-max prison and it's all I can do to keep the inmates from stabbing each other just to get a chocolate bar. I realize you want this game to be fun for you, but I want it to be fun for me too, and right now, I'm not having fun. Now, if we can adjust our play-style some, I'm willing to keep DMing, but if we can't, I'd like to suggest that maybe one of you try DMing instead of me. We can still be friends... it's not an earth-ending thing if I don't DM, I just don't want to administer the game if it's going to be like this."

[Max_Killjoy]

Saying 'congrats, you raped the girl, no you don't get to describe it' is a perfectly reasonable way for a GM to handle the situation. It sends a pretty clear message to most adults, there's no need to have a big discussion about your feelings (rape is wrong mkay) if you don't want to.

EDIT

I care about enjoying my game time more than I value game immersion though, so I'd be more likely to just say 'no you can't do that' and when asked why I'd say 'because I'm not running a game where you get to rape people'. It's difficult to know exactly what I'd do because I don't play with the kind of people who get off on detailing out an act of aggravated sexual assault.

I stopped gaming with him not long after that. I have no idea where that person is these days.

This happened a long time ago, like more than 20 years. I was trying to be "a good GM" (we'd had a GM who had a bad habit of telling players "your character wouldn't do that" multiple times a session) and more than a bit stunned at the turn of events.

[Delta]

Depending on just how far the players are willing to go once they start killing town guards and shopkeepers to get their way, they're going to hit a moral event horizon and as the GM, I wouldn't play out their actions in detail.

Absolutely in agreement here, I just don't think your case and OP's are quite in the same ballgame here. In your situation, yeah, saying "No, we're not gonna go into any detail on how you rape that girl" should be very self-explanatory and leave little room for debate, for obvious reasons.

But in general, I'd say it's always better to just take a step back and say to a player "That thing you like to do, you can do it but I don't want to play through this because <reasons>, so if you want to, we can just say your character does it, that's the result and move on, okay?" rather than impersonate the strict principal of RPG High and just tell him to shut up and play on, basically.

[ImNotTrevor]

Saying 'congrats, you raped the girl, no you don't get to describe it' is a perfectly reasonable way for a GM to handle the situation. It sends a pretty clear message to most adults, there's no need to have a big discussion about your feelings (rape is wrong mkay) if you don't want to.

EDIT

I care about enjoying my game time more than I value game immersion though, so I'd be more likely to just say 'no you can't do that' and when asked why I'd say 'because I'm not running a game where you get to rape people'. It's difficult to know exactly what I'd do because I don't play with the kind of people who get off on detailing out an act of aggravated sexual assault.


Saying 'congrats, you raped the girl, no you don't get to describe it' is a perfectly reasonable way for a GM to handle the situation. It sends a pretty clear message to most adults, there's no need to have a big discussion about your feelings (rape is wrong mkay) if you don't want to.

I don't see how saying "I'm not comfortable doing a rape scene, so we're gonna go ahead and skip that." Is a big discussion as opposed to a sentence you say.


For the purpose of avoiding such things in my own games (since I do play Apocalypse World, where most of the NPCs are ALSO murderhobos) I make it very clear that if someone says "Skip," (outside of obvioue context) we will just skip the scene, no questions asked. If they feel the need to explain exactly what it is in particular, they can. If not, they don't have to.

It's super simple stuff.

If players are doing dastardly BS you don't want to GM, refusing to do a particular scene or two is at best like putting duct tape on a leaking tire. It might work for a while but it is not an adequate solution. It's a problem of disparate expectations between the various players (GM included within the umbrella of Players) and that can only be solved by either getting the expectations aligned again, or conceding that expectations will not be able to align in this case and the game be halted at that point.

As for scene framing that's one that is kinda a mind-boggler to people who have been told the GM=God of the Table myth that D&D promotes (and which is plainly bad GM practice in and of itself) and so I'm not surprised there is opposition to the idea.

Part of it might also be that people aren't really sure what Scene Framing is. As an attrmpt to add clarity to the discussion:
Scene Framing is about determining what parts of the adventure/story/goings-on we get to interact with as players (GM included.)

While traditionally the GM gets to determine ALL scenes, it's a quick way to ensure that players are only permitted to be reactive. If you want players who are active participants, one of the quickest ways to do so is to give them some scene-framing ability. I have a few new players in my group who are new to tabletop in general (this is their first actual campaign) and already they are more active participants than any of my old D&D players because I purposefully reference scenes and allow for some scene framing if they ask, and I myself usually ask as we get close to wrapping up.

Just last session I asked if anyone had any scenes they wanted to do, one of my players said yes, and it lead to probably the most tense and dangerous situation that character has ever been in, because he happened to WANT to be in exactly the spot where I was hoping to lure that character into a trap later. But lo and behold, they wanted a scene there. And it was a great way to end the session. One that wouldn't have happened if I'd not asked.

The other great thing is that it teaches your players How to GM! Which as a perma-gm I am so glad for. I've got two players right now well on their way to becoming GMs and I'm super pleased about it.

So yeah... I'm firmly in favor of letting players frame some scenes.

[Max_Killjoy]

As for scene framing that's one that is kinda a mind-boggler to people who have been told the GM=God of the Table myth that D&D promotes (and which is plainly bad GM practice in and of itself) and so I'm not surprised there is opposition to the idea.

Part of it might also be that people aren't really sure what Scene Framing is. As an attrmpt to add clarity to the discussion:
Scene Framing is about determining what parts of the adventure/story/goings-on we get to interact with as players (GM included.)

While traditionally the GM gets to determine ALL scenes, it's a quick way to ensure that players are only permitted to be reactive. If you want players who are active participants, one of the quickest ways to do so is to give them some scene-framing ability. I have a few new players in my group who are new to tabletop in general (this is their first actual campaign) and already they are more active participants than any of my old D&D players because I purposefully reference scenes and allow for some scene framing if they ask, and I myself usually ask as we get close to wrapping up.

Just last session I asked if anyone had any scenes they wanted to do, one of my players said yes, and it lead to probably the most tense and dangerous situation that character has ever been in, because he happened to WANT to be in exactly the spot where I was hoping to lure that character into a trap later. But lo and behold, they wanted a scene there. And it was a great way to end the session. One that wouldn't have happened if I'd not asked.

The other great thing is that it teaches your players How to GM! Which as a perma-gm I am so glad for. I've got two players right now well on their way to becoming GMs and I'm super pleased about it.

So yeah... I'm firmly in favor of letting players frame some scenes.


Expressed that way, I see no issue with it. Back before there was any formal terminology for that sort of thing, we were doing it in Vampire and similar games all the time, very much character and player driven. We got so used to it that when I ran for a group half comprised of those players and half comprised of players used to the "GM drives the bus" style, it created a disconnect between players, and put a lot of work on my plate trying to bridge the gap and make sure the more passive players got involved. But without the formal expression of "scene framing", it comes down to nothing more contentious or controversial than "So what are your characters up to?" I think that aspect is foreign to some players because they've never been in a game that doesn't involve getting from A to B to accomplish X, bang bang bang. For its faults, Vampire was a GREAT game for breaking players out of that mindset, because it's usually stationary in location and more heavily involves character (internal and external), politics, intrigue, subterfuge, and social interaction.

Sadly, I also see the same term used to mean something else, and I think it's confusion with that usage that might be (part of?) the reason for backlash against the term when people see you use it here in this context and with the meaning you're using. Specifically, I've seen it used to mean something that sounds to a lot of players like a kinda of metagaming, and also that can be very detrimental to the sort of character-immersion and world-exploration goals that some (many?) players prioritize -- the idea that players have a hard-coded and specific ongoing role in deciding what's behind the next door, what the NPCs decide to do, etc.... a piece of the heavily-author-stance (to use terms I don't care for), cooperative-storytelling games.

(Sorry if I seem to be struggling here, I'm trying to word this as neutrally as possible and avoid terminology tangents and arguments...)

[ImNotTrevor]

Expressed that way, I see no issue with it. Back before there was any formal terminology for that sort of thing, we were doing it in Vampire and similar games all the time, very much character and player driven. We got so used to it that when I ran for a group half comprised of those players and half comprised of players used to the "GM drives the bus" style, it created a disconnect between players, and put a lot of work on my plate trying to bridge the gap and make sure the more passive players got involved. But without the formal expression of "scene framing", it comes down to nothing more contentious or controversial than "So what are your characters up to?" I think that aspect is foreign to some players because they've never been in a game that doesn't involve getting from A to B to accomplish X, bang bang bang. For its faults, Vampire was a GREAT game for breaking players out of that mindset, because it's usually stationary in location and more heavily involves character (internal and external), politics, intrigue, subterfuge, and social interaction.

Sadly, I also see the same term used to mean something else, and I think it's confusion with that usage that might be (part of?) the reason for backlash against the term when people see you use it here in this context and with the meaning you're using. Specifically, I've seen it used to mean something that sounds to a lot of players like a kinda of metagaming, and also that can be very detrimental to the sort of character-immersion and world-exploration goals that some (many?) players prioritize -- the idea that players have a hard-coded and specific ongoing role in deciding what's behind the next door, what the NPCs decide to do, etc.... a piece of the heavily-author-stance (to use terms I don't care for), cooperative-storytelling games.

(Sorry if I seem to be struggling here, I'm trying to word this as neutrally as possible and avoid terminology tangents and arguments...)

There are indeed some games that encourage scene framing of the sort that's a bit closer to "Everyone is the GM." Which is a great way to run a game if everyone is onboard and wants to play that game. I've played games like that before and they're loads of fun. (Provided, obviously, that everyone is ok with equal GM rank.)

They aren't "teh best gaym evar omg!!!1!!" But then again I have no games that sit in that place for me. I have games that are good for some things I might wanna play and some games that are good for others. But that's kinda tangential to the point.

I found two ways of defining Scene Framing for TRPGs in my searching. The first was pretty much a way for the GM to define no-touchy zones and keep the story on his railroad tracks. Which is no-bueno in my book but something something strokes and folks and differences therebetween.

That the PCs get to play the world is not exactly Scene Framing. For instance, if I ask "What does Jace's room look like?" While we're having a scene there, and Jace's player describes the room, then clearly we have a player framing the environment.

Some games give interesting ways for PCs to influence their environment mechanically. For instance in Stars Without Number there's a Luck save, used whenever there's some probability of chance that a thing might be, but the GM isn't sure if it is. For example, if you desperately need to find a ladder within this elevator shaft and the GM isn't really sure if the shaft would have one or not and hadn't considered that before, he can disclaim responsibility and make it a luck check. Essentially saying "I don't know, so lets see if you just happen to luck out and find a ladder in there."

In short, Scene Framing as Me and Koo are talking about it has to do with circumstances primarily for character interaction or seeking out their own goals. We do not mean players saying "There's two ogres in there."

[Quertus]

I don't see the opportunity for characterization to be had from pillaging a defenseless village.


And just because you don't see it doesn't mean that the players don't see it. If they want to play it through, clearly they see something that interests them in the prospect.

Well, while I don't know if every enjoyable moment in an RPG inherently qualifies as characterization, I agree that the hubris of "if I don't see it, it couldn't possibly exist" should go on a list of "things not to do as GM". Or as a human being, for that matter.

QUOTE=ShaneMRoth;21748581]Framing scenarios and encounters is the GM's job. It's more of a duty than a right, but the authority to frame scenes and encounters is vested in the GM... in role-playing games in general, and in D&D in specific.

No other single player is in a position to perform this function, and the function is necessary to keep a game from foundering.[/QUOTE]


Of course no other single player is in a position to frame scenes. This is why it's the responsibility of the entire group. The GM can do it. Players can also do it. "Does anyone have a scene they want to get done now?" should be a frequent question in all groups and all games.



I don't disagree (With the caveat of there potentially being some weird outlier group that's all totally on board with it. I don't judge.) What I disagree with is it being the responsibility of the GM to shepherd the sweet innocent group around these pitfalls. If some weirdo wants to play out rape scenes everyone in the group is allowed to object to it. This is not the GM's job. This is the job of a group of presumably mature adults engaging in a social activity together. The GM is not in charge of the group. The one exception is if there is another reason beyond them being the GM why they should have a position of social authority. Like the GM being an adult GMing a group of literal children.

Yes! Exactly! The GM is a player too. It's not that no one has the right to frame scenes or object to offensive material. It's that everyone does, including the GM.

People need to not confuse "GM authority" with "people authority". If you use GM authority where people authority is appropriate then it sends all kinds of unfortunate messages.


If you are hosting the home version of Who’s Line Is It Anyway? Perhaps. Not D&D.


Literally every game other than the most tedious railroaded bull**** that moves from fight to fight involves players framing scenes.

"While we're in town I'm want to go visit my sister and have a conversation" is framing a scene.
"Let's open on us sitting around in the clinic discussing what we're going to do about Vlad Moustachio" is framing a scene.

The GM is often MORE responsible for framing scenes. But it is not his exclusive right.


As a GM, I often go around the table, asking each player what they are doing. Yes, even in D&D. But, at the same time, when the player says, "I jump to the moon", it's the GMs job to say "no", or, at least, "um... how?".

QUOTE=ShaneMRoth;21749330]This is a case of mistaking silence for consent.

For the record, if I’m a player and some other player wants to play out some rapey encounter and the GM facilitates that encounter? That’s the GM giving a green light to that player. There’s any number of things I might do if it made me uncomfortable. I might go so far as to roll my eyes, or excuse myself from the table for a few minutes to check my phone. I might talk about my discomfort to the GM between sessions. I might just stop attending without comment. I wouldn’t be comfortable interfering with the agency of that player in real time. I wouldn’t feel like it was my place, because it wouldn’t be my place.

As I see it, it is the GM’s job (and duty) to read the room and get a sense of how the players, as a group, are responding to what is happening at the table. And adjust accordingly.

It’s the GM’s job to set reasonable boundaries in real time at the table.

Players of D&D have their hands full just playing their individual characters. The GM has to be the advocate for the viability of the campaign as a whole.

As I made clear in my last post, I consider “GM Authority” to spring directly from “people (player) authority”. If the GM doesn’t enjoy the trust of his players? He won’t be GM for very long.

...and SCENE.[/QUOTE]



Well, obviously I completely disagree with everything you just said. It is absolutely 100% your place to object to something that other people are doing that's making you uncomfortable while participating in a social activity together. In fact, I find the notion that it somehow isn't downright harmful.

Now, that isn't to say everyone feels comfortable speaking up. It's their right to do so, but some people aren't comfortable being that confrontational. It's still not the GM's job to read their mind and adjusting the social situation. It's a nice thing to do, but it's not their job. And guess what, it's a nice thing for everyone at the table to do. The GM has no more responsibility than anyone else there. It's like saying that if the banker in Monopoly notices that someone is making someone else uncomfortable by making a bunch of off-colour jokes it's their responsibility to correct their behaviour by refusing to give them money from the bank. It's absurd.

The GM is not your parent, teacher, boss, or parole officer. Unless they actually are, in which case congratulations on your atypical game.


A player who is doing things which seem to actively be attempting to make others uncomfortable may be spoiling for a fight. Giving them a direct OOC confrontation about the behavior may play into that. Sometimes a passive approach is worth considering.

It depends on factors. If the player honestly doesn't realize that this would make others uncomfortable, sure, direct OOC conversation is the answer. But if their intent is to get a rise out of others at the table, that OOC conversation will go on circles without doing anything other than raising hostility at the table.

Before 'well, you should have it out and if that happens it's a reason to boot that player', sure, you can just do that. But if you want to keep the player for any particular reason, successfully making a point without making a fight is a useful thing to be able to do. Taking the fun out of being disruptive by making the disruption fail to get attention is a trick for that.

There is no test, that I'm aware of, to ensure that the person with the best social skills is the GM. The existence of rotating GMs, GMs being players in other people's games, etc, strongly suggests that this is not always the case. Pardon the slight touch of politics, but "from each according to their ability" has some definite merit here. If you see someone is uncomfortable - including yourself - and you have the courage and social skills to do something about it, you bloody well should do something about it*. That should also being on a list of things having to do with being a human being.

Now, I'm'a claim that the issue of "sometimes a passive approach is best" (and all the "maybes" that preceded it) is probably beyond my social skills. I do agree, though, that sometimes more "subtle" approach is more effective. So it's best to at least look and see if anyone else is trying anything before charging in, if you have the courage and attentiveness, but lack the finesse.

*and if you don't, it is, IMO, something you should consider working on. But I could be wrong.

[Max_Killjoy]

There are indeed some games that encourage scene framing of the sort that's a bit closer to "Everyone is the GM." Which is a great way to run a game if everyone is onboard and wants to play that game. I've played games like that before and they're loads of fun. (Provided, obviously, that everyone is ok with equal GM rank.)

They aren't "teh best gaym evar omg!!!1!!" But then again I have no games that sit in that place for me. I have games that are good for some things I might wanna play and some games that are good for others. But that's kinda tangential to the point.

I found two ways of defining Scene Framing for TRPGs in my searching. The first was pretty much a way for the GM to define no-touchy zones and keep the story on his railroad tracks. Which is no-bueno in my book but something something strokes and folks and differences therebetween.

That the PCs get to play the world is not exactly Scene Framing. For instance, if I ask "What does Jace's room look like?" While we're having a scene there, and Jace's player describes the room, then clearly we have a player framing the environment.

Some games give interesting ways for PCs to influence their environment mechanically. For instance in Stars Without Number there's a Luck save, used whenever there's some probability of chance that a thing might be, but the GM isn't sure if it is. For example, if you desperately need to find a ladder within this elevator shaft and the GM isn't really sure if the shaft would have one or not and hadn't considered that before, he can disclaim responsibility and make it a luck check. Essentially saying "I don't know, so lets see if you just happen to luck out and find a ladder in there."

In short, Scene Framing as Me and Koo are talking about it has to do with circumstances primarily for character interaction or seeking out their own goals. We do not mean players saying "There's two ogres in there."

Right. I'm just trying to explain some of the disconnect, maybe shed some light on why people might be at such odds about a term. I had to stop and think about it myself, because I've seen the term "scene framing" used in that other way but I was getting the sense that wasn't what you and Koo meant.

My "sadly" isn't about the games, it's about the way the same term is used to mean two very different things, which leads to these disagreements. See also, the "narrative causality" thread, etc, etc, etc.

That thing Stars Without Number makes an official option, is something I've done for a long time as a GM... if I'm honestly at an "I don't know, and reasonableness isn't leaning either way, and I want it to be actual chance" moment, I'll say "call odd" or call high" or whatever, and then drop a die or ask the player to drop a die on the open table.

[Segev]

Given what you've said your issues are (and are not), OP, I suggest that you challenge them the same way you'd challenge them if they weren't being murderhobos.

Their consequences for murderhoboism is that people flee before them if they can. They hide in their buildings. Towns close their gates as panicked travelers race to get inside before these monsters get there. If they slip in undetected, people quail in fear when they realize that they're sitting next to the murderhobo. They can steal fairly easily, unless and until they come across the rare high-level guy who'll give them real grief for it.

The problems arise from having no allies. Not unless they go and develop them. And by all means, let them develop them. You're not trying to "teach them a lesson." You're just running the world as it is.

Heck, have some foolish amoral and vile sorts seek them out as potential mercenaries-for-hire, or even to sign up as their lackeys.


The game challenges for a truly heroic group wouldn't be the townsfolk, either. Use the same challenge sources. Just don't have the quests be motivated by "innocent cityfolk want you to protect them."

[veti]

I've spent a fair bit of time playing with evil parties. Sometimes just casually evil, sometimes there were some good elements trying to do better and drag everyone up the alignment chart, and sometimes just out-and-out bastards and proud of it.

Murder of innocents, up to and including children? Rape? Yep. The DM was firmly of the belief that it's not his job to censor PC behaviour. Heroism is always optional - if it's forced, it's not nearly so heroic - and the same goes for villainy.

But nobody, ever, wanted to describe those scenes, or make rolls for what was going on (unless PvP was involved, and yes, that happened too). The DM would just move on and ask the next player "OK, what are you doing?"

[Max_Killjoy]

I've spent a fair bit of time playing with evil parties. Sometimes just casually evil, sometimes there were some good elements trying to do better and drag everyone up the alignment chart, and sometimes just out-and-out bastards and proud of it.

Murder of innocents, up to and including children? Rape? Yep. The DM was firmly of the belief that it's not his job to censor PC behaviour. Heroism is always optional - if it's forced, it's not nearly so heroic - and the same goes for villainy.

But nobody, ever, wanted to describe those scenes, or make rolls for what was going on (unless PvP was involved, and yes, that happened too). The DM would just move on and ask the next player "OK, what are you doing?"


Part of what blindsided me was that the player wanted detail. *Ugh*

[Pauly]

Given what you've said your issues are (and are not), OP, I suggest that you challenge them the same way you'd challenge them if they weren't being murderhobos.

Their consequences for murderhoboism is that people flee before them if they can. They hide in their buildings. Towns close their gates as panicked travelers race to get inside before these monsters get there. If they slip in undetected, people quail in fear when they realize that they're sitting next to the murderhobo. They can steal fairly easily, unless and until they come across the rare high-level guy who'll give them real grief for it.

The problems arise from having no allies. Not unless they go and develop them. And by all means, let them develop them. You're not trying to "teach them a lesson." You're just running the world as it is.
."

There are two ways for the party to have consequences.
One is in game consequences.
The other is around the table consequences.

If I want to modify the behaviour of the characters I will try for an in game consequence.
If I want to modify the behaviour of the characters Imwill choose an around the table consequence.

As I read the OP it is more a player problem, not a character problem. Inside the in game universe the characters would know of the natural problems that murdehoboism creates. This strikes me more of the players not caring about any possible in game consequences because it is amusing to them. If they want to play comic book/mad max villains they should be doing it in a comic book/mad max world, hut the OP says it is a dark gritty realistic world.
Hence I think removing any amusement from murderhoboism is the path I would choose as DM.

[ImNotTrevor]

Right. I'm just trying to explain some of the disconnect, maybe shed some light on why people might be at such odds about a term. I had to stop and think about it myself, because I've seen the term "scene framing" used in that other way but I was getting the sense that wasn't what you and Koo meant.
That's A-ok. I was honestly just kinda aimlessly ruminating, there.



My "sadly" isn't about the games, it's about the way the same term is used to mean two very different things, which leads to these disagreements. See also, the "narrative causality" thread, etc, etc, etc.


I think part of this is because, despite the hobby being around for nearly 40 years, nobody ever really started trying to make a jargon for it until The Forge. (Which in part explains some of their failings in the same way many early chemists and astronomers were just... wrong.) While that portion of the Internet is long dead and there aren't really any people who actually follow their strictures and they're pretty much referred to with the same "ain't that nifty" sort of tone used when discussing Plato's forms, they did manage to start up some of the jargon for the deeper goings-on of trpgs. It's just that these terms are not really firmly grounded in all communities just yet and some terms need to be created still.

I think the version Koo and I are using is the more common of the two, in my experience, anyways.



That thing Stars Without Number makes an official option, is something I've done for a long time as a GM... if I'm honestly at an "I don't know, and reasonableness isn't leaning either way, and I want it to be actual chance" moment, I'll say "call odd" or call high" or whatever, and then drop a die or ask the player to drop a die on the open table.

Well, I never said it was novel. :P

What's interesting is that the luck save is actually different based on your class. (There are 3 classes so there's not all that much variance, but still.) So your Warrior and your Psychic might not have the same luck save as your Expert.

Just found that neat.

[Segev]

There are two ways for the party to have consequences.
One is in game consequences.
The other is around the table consequences.

If I want to modify the behaviour of the characters I will try for an in game consequence.
If I want to modify the behaviour of the characters Imwill choose an around the table consequence.

As I read the OP it is more a player problem, not a character problem. Inside the in game universe the characters would know of the natural problems that murdehoboism creates. This strikes me more of the players not caring about any possible in game consequences because it is amusing to them. If they want to play comic book/mad max villains they should be doing it in a comic book/mad max world, hut the OP says it is a dark gritty realistic world.
Hence I think removing any amusement from murderhoboism is the path I would choose as DM.

You're missing the point. The OP - if you read his post (and even parse the response I had to it which you quoted) - is not asking how to make the party stop being murderhobos. He is concerned that this style of play makes it hard to challenge the PCs.

In-game consequences are what he's asking for. Not to force a change in behavior, but just to have the campaign remain a challenging one that isn't a boring "stomp on the puny townsfolk" fest.

My advice to him was to not worry about the towns being "challenging" or not. If there's good reason adventurers or others might come after them, that's fine, but the towns should just react to these terrifying monsters in humanoid form the way you'd expect: running, hiding, and (when those don't work) cowering and praying they'll survive this.

The challenge in a murderhobo game can come from the exact same place as from a more "noble" game: Quests and monsters they pursue for the glory and gold they can garner. It just requires shifting how they get their quests, perhaps, since Mayor Smalltown won't be coming to them to ask for help with the dragon that's terrorizing their farmland. He's more likely to evacuate the town when he realizes that not only is the dragon around, but these monsters have come nearby. There's no hope left! So instead, he needs rumors of a dragon and its treasures to reach them; hopefully, the pure greed and chance to beat up on a 'real challenge' will appeal.

Failing that, discovering that towns they want to loot are empty might lead them to hunting for the villagers...who have nothing...because the dragon looted it all.

You get the idea.