A friendly message to murder hobos.

But I think a lot of beginner GM's assume that good players will always force themselves to take the plot seriously and react appropriately.

There is a difference between expecting them to take it seriously and appropriately and just expecting them to participate in it at all. You're not a murderhobo if you're constantly cracking jokes and making light of the situation or causing grief for the NPCs. You're a murder hobo if you don't even try to interact with an NPC in a way aside from violence.

You could intimidate him, you could kidnap him, you could listen to him, you can haggle. Part of the problem of GMing for murder hobos is that it makes being the GM just really fucking boring. Everyone else gets to role play (as murderers, but still role play), and you get reduced to just mindless dice rolling because any character you would normally get to play just gets thrown into combat. You get little to no chance to develop a character or really participate in the story at all beside basically building up the sand castle that they get to come in and kick over.

/r/DnD Thread Parent