The Gaming Den

I'm not questioning the murder part, but it suddenly occurred to me how specious the hobo part is. By second or third level a PC spending only about 10% of their gold can secure a constant supply of good food and nice inns. By fifth or sixth level, it's closer to 1% that will keep them living a plush lifestyle whenever they're not risking their lives for fun and profit. And I assume they would because parting with a tiny fraction of your earnings to have a High lifestyle (MUCH MUCH more expensive to live the good life in Shadowrun incidentally) seems like a pretty sane thing for every PC to do. Basically, even fine accommodations are ludicrously cheap in D&D. I haven't mathed it out or anything but I'm pretty sure the profits from fencing a single +2 shortsword are enough for you to live like a king (or at least an obnoxiously rich noble) for years.

So yeah, why murderHOBOS?[/b]

They're usually drifters without an actual home (camping and occasionally staying at an inn doesn't make them not homeless), often because the players don't want to spend any of their magic item budget on a house or apartment you'll never actually see or use during the campaign.

Partly it's that adventuring parties don't have a permanent home, partly it's a non-zero amount of the money THAT I EARNED, and players aren't spending non-zero money on something that doesn't go on their character sheet in some way.

I spent too much time on that post, apparently.

'Hobo' connotes but does not require poverty. Most were poor, but some did pretty well for themselves. The term refers to a transient worker, and most adventurers are 'of no fixed abode' (at least before 9th level) and nebulously 'for hire,' so the term broadly fits.

The question only really comes up when the adventurers spend less time doing for-hire work and more time on self-directed grave-robbing and other get-rich-quick shenanigans. At a certain point they cease to be hobos and become 'tramps' or even 'bums.' But, as they are generally able murderers, we afford them the benefit of the doubt as regards the more dignified term.

Your basic adventurer whose family are all dead and who has no other connections to any living being outside their adventuring party isn't going to set down roots that the GM can use to affect them. It's a sort of paranoia.

Orca wrote:Your basic adventurer whose family are all dead and who has no other connections to any living being outside their adventuring party isn't going to set down roots that the GM can use to affect them. It's a sort of paranoia.

This. Pretty sure Dogbert has done one or more comics on the subject.

Also what I think was a signature on GitP I saw about I'd rather spend my weight in gold for another +1 hit and damage and sleep in my cloak.

Is a good reason for murder hobos precisely because they can solve problems that the locals can’t? Whether those reasons are superficially political, religious or otherwise. Like, why send your sons and daughters into the sewers when these absolutely expendable nobodies are always wandering into town? If the culture has some proscription against handling the (un)dead, then adventurers are part of that lower class. They never rise in station in a rigid caste system, so even living ‘well’ is relatively not as great as normal members of society. Murderhobos also sort of feed into the pastiche of lots of movies where the white male football/war hero shows up to fix the problems the ignorant natives can’t fathom or solve on their own.

Shadowrun even has a Street-Lifestyle, which is basically you putting down some sort of bedding in a relatively dry and not wind swept place to hunker down in . . or living out of your vehicle or something . .

Harshax wrote:Is a good reason for murder hobos precisely because they can solve problems that the locals can’t?

Yes.

Harshax wrote:Whether those reasons are superficially political, religious or otherwise. Like, why send your sons and daughters into the sewers when these absolutely expendable nobodies are always wandering into town?

Because it can be cheaper to pay them less than the cost of replacing the people/equipment that would be lost sending locals down there than giving these wanderers a few plus whatever they can haul off in a sack. Plus if they die that's that much more loot for the next pack of murderhobos to cart off.

Harshax wrote:If the culture has some proscription against handling the (un)dead, then adventurers are part of that lower class. They never rise in station in a rigid caste system, so even living ‘well’ is relatively not as great as normal members of society. Murderhobos also sort of feed into the pastiche of lots of movies where the white male football/war hero shows up to fix the problems the ignorant natives can’t fathom or solve on their own.

The caste system thing do not really apply as they start to rise in power (levels), these murderhobos start becoming the driving military/social/economic powerbases of the land.*

*Stolen blatantly from Tome threads in this very forum.

Harshax wrote:Is a good reason for murder hobos precisely because they can solve problems that the locals can’t? Whether those reasons are superficially political, religious or otherwise. Like, why send your sons and daughters into the sewers when these absolutely expendable nobodies are always wandering into town? If the culture has some proscription against handling the (un)dead, then adventurers are part of that lower class. They never rise in station in a rigid caste system, so even living ‘well’ is relatively not as great as normal members of society. Murderhobos also sort of feed into the pastiche of lots of movies where the white male football/war hero shows up to fix the problems the ignorant natives can’t fathom or solve on their own.

That's not really a reason for murderhobos. Unsavory jobs that need doing is why they're tolerated and not just mass-imprisoned in the next vagrant sweep, but it doesn't explain why they exist in the first place.

Your classic reason for adventurers is that the medieval situation has a lot people who have 'no place in society.' Among nobility, the (paraphrased) proverb was 'first son gets the land, second son gets the church, third son gets the shaft.' But it wasn't true only among nobility; peasants and guildsmen had similar concerns about maintaining the standard of living of their descendants. Primitive economies have no particular growth, and primitive medicine means people need to have a lot of kids, so if you're on the lucky end of the infant mortality curve, you wind up with more heirs than you can provide for. Frequently, the extras get handed a weapon, a purse, and an inspiring speech about 'going seek their fortune.' Then they try to shenanigan themselves into enough money to have some sort of a standard of living.

I mean, you also get banished criminals and peasant-revolt remnants and so on, but those are comparatively rare compared to the all-pervading 'we can't afford you, son.'

The Reason for Murder-Hobos is Convenience.
The Hobo might not want to stay at a certain place.
The locations might not want but need people with his skillset around for a single task . .
Mercenaries, Bountyhunters . .

They're called murderhobos because they carry all of their personal possessions around in a magical Bindle of Holding.

It's only paranoia if it's irrational. Sometimes it's not fear, exactly, but simple creative fatigue. If my DM pulls out some beer, pretzels and graph paper and says "Don't get too attached to your characters" because we know we're gonna roll old-school Greyhawk style I'm prepared to try and have fun with that but I'm sure as shit not going to write a 3 page backstory that's going to get binned the second Dirk the Daring fails an athletics check.

From a DM perspective: A considerable percentage feel themselves narratively constrained if adventures are limited to a same zip code (also, d&d has never been conductive to urban adventures).

From a player's perspective: There's only so many tombs to plunder within a same zip code, so no point in setting gold on fire in real estate you won't use for more than three gaming sessions (and by the time you can cast Teleport, you're already on the home stretch for Mordekainen's Mansion and Demiplane so why bother?).

Quite frankly, you have murder hobos because the player characters are fundamentally not rational actors.

PCs fundamentally are controlled by players who want to keep playing the game. Therefore, players continue to be "adventurers" long after any rational actor would have settled into a life of luxury.

However, PCs don't retire because the motivation of the player controlling them is to keep adventuring.

Specifically to the hobos part, unless your game includes specific rules that relate to lifestyle or owning a home players won't bother. If your game includes rules for owning a home or lifestyle and those rules aren't competitive with saving your resources and buying more magic swords or other directly obviously useful magical gear players won't do it.

This is also the reason why its almost impossible to make a working economy that makes sense for both players and NPCs. NPCs, in order to be believable as inhabitants of the game world have to give a shit about things like cosmetic appearance and fashionably, long term reliability, expected future value, and the comfort and ergonomics of the stuff that they buy.

By comparison, player characters don't give a shit about any of that unless it provides a mechanical benefit. You might be able to get players to care about the cosmetic effect of their choices on their character, but this is actually easier in MMOs where players will go to great length to customize the look of their avatar. In pen and paper rpgs this really matters even less.

You can see this dichotomy really well in 2E/3E D&D products. In many of these you will find a lot of towns were one or more of the businesses is run by a former adventurer who is in the level 5-8 range. These characters are quite often, various author's actual freaking characters. These characters have acted rationally and traded a life of danger for stability.

Dogbert wrote:From a DM perspective: A considerable percentage feel themselves narratively constrained if adventures are limited to a same zip code (also, d&d has never been conductive to urban adventures).

From a player's perspective: There's only so many tombs to plunder within a same zip code, so no point in setting gold on fire in real estate you won't use for more than three gaming sessions (and by the time you can cast Teleport, you're already on the home stretch for Mordekainen's Mansion and Demiplane so why bother?).

This makes me want to make a lower leveled spell, Mordekainen's Timeshare. It functions like MMM, except there is only ONE in existence, so if you cast it and another party on the other side of the material plane cast it, you're both having to having to share the place. Or stab each other in the face.

The problem is Rope Trick exists so people would stick to that.

D&D's rules are best for killing in tight dungeon environments

everything else is better handled by Munchausen or FATE core

Neurosis wrote:And I assume they would because parting with a tiny fraction of your earnings to have a High lifestyle seems like a pretty sane thing for every PC to do.

That's you. That's not PCs, you're just thinking "hey, if I could spend 2% of my income and live a nice life, imma do that".

PCs, tomorrow, are walking in full knowledge into a deathtrap-filled face-eating monster generator, which will make them exponentially richer if they survive it and dead otherwise. That 2% of their income is shit like wands of cure light wounds or a couple of random scrolls that'll maybe save their life one day. Maybe it's even part of why they have a +5 cloak of not dying tomorrow instead of only a +4 cloak of probably dead already.

Having a nice life for a few days, for a few years, nah. People who believe in pyramid schemes will sell everything and live on ramen to put more of their money into the (not actually, but pretends to be) exponential money generator. Real people really do value their present comfort in comparison to future infinities and just do without it. Just like PCs do, every day.

Unless you change the system off 3e's murder hobos and let people buy a nice life without it costing them their infinite future riches via combat power.

Iduno wrote:Partly it's that adventuring parties don't have a permanent home, partly it's a non-zero amount of the money THAT I EARNED, and players aren't spending non-zero money on something that doesn't go on their character sheet in some way.

I mean, I do. And most of the D&D players I've played with have, when it's come up, shelled out the gold for comfortable accommodations, even a permanent home. (Although as a player, personally, I'd rather clear out a cool dungeon and make that my base, but that's really for cool factor and not to be economical.)

I've also seen numerous Shadowrun players that were REALLY keen on their PCs having High Lifestyles and living it up with hookers and blow. And it's important to note that in Shadowrun, High Lifestyle is fucking EXPENSIVE. It is a serious chunk of change. Not like in D&D where by the time you're Level 5 you can live like a king for maybe 2% of the gold you're supposed to make adventuring.

So what I'm saying is this is clearly a thing that SOME gamers care about. Source, I have played with at least a dozen gamers that care about this.

hogarth wrote:They're called murderhobos because they carry all of their personal possessions around in a magical Bindle of Holding.

But wouldn't landed gentry and/or homeowners of comparable wealth to PCs also avail themselves of the incredible fucking convenience that is a bag of holding?

tussock wrote:Unless you change the system off 3e's murder hobos and let people buy a nice life without it costing them their infinite future riches via combat power.

Pariah Dog wrote:The caste system thing do not really apply as they start to rise in power (levels), these murderhobos start becoming the driving military/social/economic powerbases of the land.*

*Stolen blatantly from Tome threads in this very forum.

See the dichotomy illustrated by these two quotes is what I'm talking about. Yes, I'm very much aware that if you're a Wizard by a certain level you can cast a spell that just makes you a fucking castle. But assuming you're not a Wizard, and your party doesn't have a Wizard, or your party's Wizard doesn't particularly like you...as you start becoming the driving military/social/economic powerbases of the land, wouldn't it be a logical thing to do (I know that D&D and logic are a little like oil and water)to throw some of your booty towards buying a cool castle or something?

Anyway, by Level 10 a PC party is well on their way to becoming one of the driving military/social/economic powers in the land. So again, why murderhobo? It connotes poverty and PCs are fucking RICH, at least transiently, even if they do ALWAYS choose to spend ALL of that money on magic items, a Level 7 party leaving a Level 7 dungeon probably has enough found loot on them to feed 7,000 peasants for seven years. That is not poverty, even if you're going to spend it all on magic items.

Personally, I feel the term "murdernomad" is much, much, much more accurate. (With the understanding that a) no one is going to start using that and b) the term murderhobo was I believe originally intended to denigrate Dungeons & Dragons as a game and I think that's a big part of why "hobo" got used in the first place.)

We prefer the term "Treasure Transient", actually.

You understand that the term 'hobo' is used specifically because it originally referred to migrant workers, right?

Neurosis wrote: But wouldn't landed gentry and/or homeowners of comparable wealth to PCs also avail themselves of the incredible fucking convenience that is a bag of holding?

Would you?

Probably not.

If I could spend a couple grand to get a dufflebag that could hold a dozen full dufflebags, I'd wonder "why bother?" I mean it'd be only for the interdimensional aspect, not because it is actually that useful to me.

Other than carrying crap on road trips... not really that useful to someone who isn't needing to carry around massive amounts of things on my person. Now if I was a thief or something, that'd be super handy to have.

I've had too many GMs have all my friends, family, possessions, and household pets murdered offscreen without me having any ability to prevent it or interact with it in any way to want to put any effort into it. If my character gets a nice apartment or other attachments it's only because I trust the person running the game to not do that.

Count Arioch the 28th wrote:I've had too many GMs have all my friends, family, possessions, and household pets murdered offscreen without me having any ability to prevent it or interact with it in any way to want to put any effort into it. If my character gets a nice apartment or other attachments it's only because I trust the person running the game to not do that.

This

One reason that people play murderhobos is that they don't care about stuff like permanent lodgings (what does it matter if I only come here once in a blue moon?)
But another is simply bad GMs that go "Oh, while you were away your house was broken into and all the stuff in it was stolen. Tee Hee"

It's the same reason why many murderhobos also have all their family members dead and no friends at all. Because they've learned "If I give the GM an opportunity he'll kill them off and have the BBEG gloat about it"
Or why players with a trigger-happy GM stop making backstories or new characters. Just the old character with the names changed. "Why should I expend the time making a new one if I can't be sure they'll live to next session, or even to the end of this one?"