by Mitchel Emley

The worst nightmare for any DM is to suddenly have a group of nothing but murderhobos. All that careful work and preparation for an amazing set of NPCs and the players just go and kill them the second they see them. It’s like being the narrator of a Monty Python skit except not nearly as fun. When you’ve spent so much time building a world and a campaign setting it can be really crushing to have the players completely disregard it. How do you salvage the situation? Is it a lost cause? Why not stay a while and listen, while we go over possible solutions?

Lean Into It

Counter-intuitive as it may sound, try leaning into the murderhobo tendencies of your players. Are they rampaging and murdering their way across the land? Have this be reflected in the world itself! Have bounty hunters sent after them, have the cities bar their gates to them, make sure that the guards have a notice posted everywhere about this band of lethal killers and to watch out. Make the shops not answer to them and all the “normal” stuff players expect no longer viable. Instead, make them play out their chosen path - make Drow their go to group and other Evil aligned characters the only ones willing to work with them. Flip the script! If they were supposed to kill the Lich and save the kingdom, make them suddenly work for the Lich to take out the kingdom. Flavor swap the original bad guys and give them the fittings of the good guys. Let the players really embrace their darkside here! If they win, really hammer home just how wicked their actions were and the consequences. Maybe they’ll think it was an amazingly fun time because of how you approached it? Maybe you had a fun time too!

Fight Back

Murderhobos doing their usual thing? Instead of letting them join the darkside, make them face consequences of a more direct manner. Players killed the shop keep in broad daylight? Send in the guards to arrest them. Escalate things so that the players understand there are consequences. If you don’t want to have a murderhobo game, give them opportunities through narrative consequences to change their ways. Sometimes, players genuinely don’t understand that this can be seen as negative behavior, so use it as a teaching opportunity. “If you steal from the smith, the guards arrest you and take all your stuff. And no, you don’t get it back.” If it still isn’t working, push further and make it so that instead of them outright killing level 1 NPCs, the NPCs turn out to be level 15 experts in their respective craft who then kick the crap out of the murderhobos. Pull a Gajeel; take this punk ass group under the wing of a strong character who tells them to knock it off and keeps an eye off them.

Communicate With the Players

Of course, the most obvious method is to just talk to the players themselves. Ask them why they are doing what they are doing and what in the world they plan to get out of it. If they’ve just burned a village to the ground, pause and reflect with them on the action, the expected reward for that action, and the consequences to the actual game. If you as the DM are miserable dealing with murderhobos and do not want to DM that kind of game, voice that. If the players want to stick around, tell them they’ll have to alter their behavior. Don’t be afraid to put your foot down. This applies to other players too - if you have just one murderhobo ruining things, consider both an IC and OOC perspective here. Maybe you should work with the DM to contain the murderhobo? Maybe your character turns the murderhobo into the city guard? Definitely don’t do this behind the players back though, make it very clear that you’re not having a good time and that this is meant to be collaborative storytelling that's fun for everyone, not just the one person.

Build Bigger Combat Encounters

It’s likely that your merry band of bandits happen to just really enjoy combat at the exclusion of all other things. Definitely consider expanding your encounter number per session, or even consider making combat the primary thing you do. Some players just really aren’t interested in the roleplay and genuinely just want to go smack around anything in their path. Throw them at The Evil Army and let them go crazy. Turn it into a world environment where there’s constant soldiers from The Evil Army attacking various points of the kingdom and then encourage them go to fight. If the murderhobos get bored, mix it up and throw in a dragon or two. Expand on the possible responses to the murderhobos until you have a solid repertoire you can toss in their path at any time. Listen closely to the players and understand when they’re about to have a murderhobo moment. As soon as they do, BAM! Sudden army ranger unit appears to attack! It isn’t guaranteed to work, but it’s definitely one method that can keep the murderhobo party entertained. Do keep in mind, this only really works if you as the DM are willing to DM a bunch of combats. Given how these can be so draining, it’d be understandable if this was something you didn’t want to spend too much time doing.

FInal Thoughts

Work with the players when possible, and when not possible consider carefully if this is a group you seriously want to DM for. If it isn’t, then be okay with stepping away and if it is, think about the different ways you can mitigate them. I always encourage leaning into things if you’re alright with it, as it can lead to a really unusual style of game compared to the very standard “good guys vs bad guys”. Build opportunities for moral grayness and think about how alignment can be affected by the actions of the collective group.

Dice Hard: The Caverns & Creatures Blog

Lean Into It

Fight Back

Communicate With the Players

Build Bigger Combat Encounters

FInal Thoughts