I was GM’ing this game. The premise was that the goddesses created the world as this perfectly idyllic place – an absolute utopia that I frequently compared to Mayberry RFD – until the shit hit the fan. An ancient evil awakened and turned it into an absolute post-apocalyptic wasteland. Except for the single most populous city which the goddesses managed to shield from the corrupting influence of the ancient evil (before themselves succumbing to the corrupting influence). (A few fortunate pockets here and there also escaped the corruption.)
The PCs were the most murder-hobo of murder hobos. There was a town of halflings who continued their happy lives from before the calamity by day but turned into demons by night, not remembering anything come morning. The party marched them all (children included) into the schoolhouse, barricaded them in, and set fire to it. When they ran across a few dwarves who had retained their sanity, they robbed them blind. In the one city which was fully shielded from the ancient evil, they fireballed a procession of a dozen or so devout monks to take out one cultist hiding among them. That all just to name a few of their heinous crimes.
Of course, in response to all of this, the central city put out arrest warrants on the party. They were going to be dragged into court and hung out to dry whether they liked it or not. I had a whole court scene planned.
But it never happened.
They sneaked into town, publicly executed the mayor and the sheriff, and installed the local crime boss as the new mayor.
I’m sure you don’t need to be told, but for those who are reading and need to hear it: the most powerful and healthy thing a GM can do is say no. The GM gets to arbitrate the tone of the game and setting, and healthy boundaries are conducive to both fun and creativity.
Actually OP handled it pretty well, at least in the end . PC face consequences for their actions (a trial with the risk of being hung) and end up having to act to solve the problem. It’s somehow created more game opportunities.
It’s a world of gods that intervene with mortals, so a GM is perfectly justified in-universe in smiting any players who get out of hand.
But, sometimes it’s more fun to let the players go. Especially if they keep the game and the table separated.
Cross lines in game, but keep the table clean? Then keep going.
Cross lines at the table, and the game ends until everyone has talked it through. And sometimes the game is just over.
This story sounds like it stayed in game enough, but may have been scratching at the table. Enough to pull back and talk for a moment, but not enough to kill the game.
Jfc, that group goes hard
I am so sorry you had to endure that. I’m all for combat. And I do enjoy when my DM crafts a session with it in mind. But to just, hijack(shit all over) the story the DM has made just doesn’t sit well with me.
That is why it is necessary to be on the same page about the expectations for the group.
Agreed, but even with managed expectations it’s a balancing act. Both from the players and the DM. Everyone is trying to get something out of their experience at the table, and it needs to have give and take. Murderhoboing just seems like the most selfish thing a player can do. It takes away from everyone else involved. You destroy plot hooks from other players, derail the story from the DM, sabotage combat for the combat players, outright deny roleplay for the RP players, and disregard a DMs crafting. I can even ‘understand’ spotlight hogs. But murderhobos seem to only get enjoyment from denying others.
When all the characters are murder hobos it isn’t about being selfish, just how they approach the world. If everyone is on the same page, including the DM, that style can be a blast for everyone!
It is only an issue when people aren’t on the same page, then it can result in the things you mentioned.
Was it fun for you to GM that game?
Short answer: yes.
I was definitely looking to do a game that was basically as far from “railroad” as possible. And Dungeon World (the system in which we were playing) definitely encourages that sort of way of playing. (Though to be fair, we weren’t doing Dungeon World quite how it was supposed to be played. There was player churn at the beginning of the campaign, so trying to ) It definitely ended up being more “comedy” than I anticipated, but the players loved it and I got some great stories out of that game. (Well, mostly the one story I just told, but yeah.)
Eli5?
Bahamut is a commonly recurring Draconic deity of Good dragons who often appears in a humanoid shape with 7 yellow birds hanging about.
If you’re on his bad side, you’re going to get fucked up.
Hah, I see. Thanks!
IIRC, the seven canaries are all disguised ancient gold dragons, and Bahamut himself is known as “the platinum dragon,” so murderhobos should prepared to get their shit rocked.
One of my favourite lines from the internet I’ve enjoyed recently …
“If you don’t fuck around … how are you ever going to find out?”
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Putting a “random” encounter that didn’t exist five minutes earlier in the path of your players, knowing it will be a TPK, is the DM version of murder hobo-ing. You’re ignoring the logic of the game and the feelings of the other players so you can have fun killing things. You’re not fixing the problem, you’re becoming part of it.
Bahamut isn’t going to kill them unless they force him to, and even then one of those “canaries” will have ressurections prepared specifically for that contingency. Bahamut is going to force them to atone, and stop getting the attention of literal gods.
It’s called teaching a lesson. Murder hobos do not respect the game. By giving them this encounter, they will get down from their high horses learning that sometimes things are not what they look like and they should be more careful and smart about what they’re doing.
That’s not the lesson they’ll learn. The problem is that they don’t care about the game as a living story, but as a game they can win through violence. Using this encounter will just tell them that the DM can cheat to win.
To quote the show Sharpe: “Flogging teaches a soldier only one lesson. How to turn his back.”
The dm can cheat to win yes. That is also the lesson. Which means trying to beat the game is a hopeless goal. And if you think this is the game, you’re gravely mistaken.
The comparison to flogging is simply dumb. It’s completely irrelevant.
Now you can be a dumb player and refuse to learn anything from this encounter. It can spark a discussion then.
That’s better communicated through… communication.
I don’t know about you, but if I were playing a game to win and my “opponent” reveals that they can just cheat and instakill me whenever they feel like, I’m more likely to just stop playing the game than to try to play it for fun. Even if I did try to play it for fun, it would be hard to really enjoy it when I know that any encounter can just be a big middle finger.
If you don’t explicitly tell people what they’re doing wrong and how to fix it, it’s unlikely that they’ll figure it out on their own.
opponent
???
when is the DM an opponent?
Ok, 3 things.
First, who ever said that this encounter was ever meant to end in a tpk? Not me. Not anyone I read mentioning this encounter. Bahamut is a benevolent god, not a moronic asshole like murder hobos.
Second, murder hobos are not playing to win, they’re playing moronic assholes in a power fantasy. But anyway, both murder hobo and playing to win make problem players.
Third and finally, this encounter is a narrative tool that can take a campaign back on track. A discussion alone doesn’t have this power, because the characters changing their behaviour suddenly would break the story.
Whether it ends in a TPK isn’t relevant. If you’re playing capture the flag and your opponent reveals they can just teleport your flag to their base it’ll have roughly the same effect. If the GM can just say “you lose now” it’ll seriously demotivate anyone who is trying to enjoy the game, for whatever reason.
Overall, the difference between having an in-character “please stop being murderhobos” moment and having an out-of-character “please stop being murderhobos” moment comes down to how likely it is for the players to take the message to heart. If it’s just some dude that’s telling them to stop being murderhobos and is an unwinnable fight if the players refuse, that sets a distinctly different tone than the GM pausing things for a moment to explain the current situation to the players.
Both can work, but keeping it as a narrative element has a higher chance of failure, since it’s possible the players could interpret this as just another NPC encounter instead of the GM’s thinly veiled wishes for the future of the table.
Overall, the only people who care about the story are the people at the table, and having a moment of jarring change in the characters to set the narrative back on track is fine. You’d probably want to do something like that anyway to paper over the past behavior, otherwise the players could listen to you and be understanding of what you want, and still get punished for the stuff they’ve already done.
You should really try to understand what game you’re playing. Ttrpg are not competitive games, so your comparisons with competitive games are missing the point entirely.
I’ll state bluntly : if you consider the game as a competitive game, you are a problem player.
It is a good thing to show the players that the game is not a competition because as a dm you are the one to decide how hard it will be.
The game cannot be competitive. Do you get that?
I don’t know why you think punishing misbehaviour through senseless violence to “teach them a lesson” is irrelevant. Especially since you’re not teaching them to behave like you think you are; you’re just teaching them to be powerless and resent you. If they think the game is “win or lose” and you tell them “you can’t win”, they’ll stop playing. They’ll turn their back.
Now, what were you saying about “refusing to learn anything”?
Because you’re not hurting people but imaginary characters that have been exceptionally evil.
If you can’t see the difference you’re a complete idiot. Do you know what a story is? What a game is? What morale is?
Do you know what allegory is? Just because you don’t match a story 1:1 doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from it.
And yes, I know what morale is. It’s that thing you destroy when you twist the game to punish the players for not doing what you want. Especially since the players don’t see the world or characters as anything other than a game, so they don’t think of the GM as punishing anyone but them.
I’m trying not to sink to your level and insult your intelligence over and over, but you really should be able to pick this up if I spell it out to you enough times.
You know what? You’re the only one here thinking that this encounter is meant to end in a tpk. Which tells a lot about the kind of person you are.
Your comparison is simply stupid. Deal with it. You don’t understand the point I’m making and you’re crying like an entitled player would if he couldn’t do anything he like at the expense of everyone else. What am I supposed to tell you? You’re defending a spoiled kid making a mess here and using dumb comparisons to make your point.
This encounter can serve as a narrative tool to put the campaign back on track. It gives the characters an opportunity to change. If you can only see that as a punishment you have the maturity of a child.
i don’t see the issue, in theory. if players have chosen to live by the sword, the dm is meeting them on their level by allowing them to die by the sword.
and you never know, maybe it’s an op party that could make it a close match. maybe the players had warnings and brought the god’s wrath on their heads anyway.
as with all things, there are contexts where it is appropriate and contexts where it is a wild overreaction. but this is a meme comm, not a nuance factory.
Then the meme doesn’t make sense. The DM doesn’t look like they’re having fun, they look spiteful. If the DM’s actions aren’t spiteful, the meme is poorly made.
It’s telling you think the only thing that can come from that situation is a TPK. Nobody’s ever made a threat to “straighten up or else”, as the most basic and uninspired alternative possibility.
The post is about a seething GM putting their players who always start a fight against someone unassuming, but undefeatable. What exactly do you think the DM in the meme is trying to do?
Starting a fight with an undefeatable opponent does not guarantee a TPK. They could be swatted around a bit, learn a lesson, and move on. They could realize it immediately and handle the situation without violence. They could do lots of things.
You are right that the point is to offer them a chance to fuck around and find out, but that doesn’t always mean TPK.
“They hated him because he told them the truth”
I agree, there are tons of different approaches a DM should take instead of just killing their party for no reason.
The main one would be to have a discussion with their players about what kind of campaign they want to run, so that everyone is on the same page.
Everyone at the table has the right to have fun, players and DM alike. But it should be a team effort.
I never get more hate than when I say “hey, this toxic DM behaviour is bad and you shouldn’t do it.” This time, it’s “responding to violent PCs with an unreasonably powerful NPC out of spite just reinforces a player vs DM mentality.”
See also “the illusion of choice isn’t a brilliant trick, it just removes player agency” and “if one person’s idea of fun doesn’t match the rest of the group, remove that person, even if that person is you.”
