What do I do about “murder hobos” in my games?

I encourage them.

Many referee’s wring their hands about this topic. Personally, I let players do what they want, and then face the consequences.

Fictional characters doing horrible things to other fictional characters is hilarious.

I like movies like Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, and Pulp Fiction. I always laugh when Vincent and Jules are arguing about who should be cleaning Marvin’s brains out of the back seat of the car.

When players do that sort of thing in my games, I cackle with glee. It’s funny to me when Stilgar the Red Monk sets donkeys on fire to create a distraction and cause some problems for an invading army. I know most people struggle with this in tabletop role playing games.

It is probably not for you, but many of us like it and we’re tired of pretending that we don’t.

Murder hobos in my games make me laugh.

Murder hobos might be the most realistic thing in fantasy role playing games.

Murder hobos in real life are horrible but they did exist. Verisimilitude may be a reason to include them in your games.

Consider the Vikings.

The fact is that in the Vikings’ own language, Old Norse, vikingr just meant pirate, marauder. It wasn’t an ethnic label, it was a job description.

But while most Vikings were Scandinavians, most Scandinavians definitely weren’t Vikings, not even part time.

Laughing Shall I Die: Lives and Deaths of the Great Vikings by Tom Shippey

One of the most famous and historically important vikings was Harold Hardrada. Harold fought his first battle at the age of 15. He was on the losing side and had to leave Norway to avoid being executed by the winners.

After a career of killing people for fun and profit in the Eastern Mediterranean, Harold went home, killed some relatives and become king. Not satisfied with that, he invaded England with the intent of taking over there too. That was the end of the line for Harry because he was killed along with most of his army at the battle of Stamford Bridge.

It doesn’t get more murder hobo than that.

Entrepreneurial peasants were the OG Murder Hobos.

Between the 6th century and the 10th, most of Western Europe had become a subsistence economy. There was trade but it was minimal, mainly in luxury goods, which peasants and craftsmen didn’t buy. There was no middle class. In that era, most peasants never so much as touched a coin. They bartered and paid taxes in kind. Trade started picking up in the 10th and 11th century.

The majority of merchants who emerged from that era were vagabonds. They were landless peasants who migrated looking for seasonal farm work. As trade started to grow. They bought whatever surplus production they could from the peasants in the hinterlands, carried it to the few population centers that existed and sold it.

Here is where the murder hoboing comes in. Some of those early merchants were beachcombers or breakers. Many were part time mercenaries. Many simply robbed people and sold their stuff.

They weren’t Robin Hood types stealing from the rich and giving to the poor. They were stealing from everybody and running like hell to unload the stolen goods. They used the proceeds to buy something they could sell elsewhere at a profit.

Mostly, they got away with it.

These “peasant entrepreneurs” banded together for safety and mutual benefit.

As they gathered more wealth, made better connections, and were able to move large amounts of commodity goods, the “murder hobos” went legit. The merchants became the driving force of urbanization in the middle ages. They built cathedrals, universities, ports, guild halls, city walls and roads.

They became respectable but started as a bunch of homeless wanderers doing what they had to in order to survive.

Any of this sound familiar?

The player characters are a first level band of nobodies with enough coin to buy gear and some rations.

They go looking for a way to earn because they are broke and plodding along beside an ox under the hot sun sounds like a boring and miserable way to live. They have adventures. Acquire some stuff and sell it in town. They go looking for more adventure and the cycle repeats until they are high enough level and have enough coin to build their own keep or thieves guild or wizard tower.

I don’t know if Gary intended to mimic the historical rise of merchants in the middle ages or if that structure just emerged but it is interesting to see a similar pattern.

I account for murder hobos when worldbuilding

Don’t forget about the “Asshole Rule” of worldbuilding.

Sometimes, the assholes are the PC’s.

My favorite way to run a campaign is to build a “world”, drop the PC’s in at a spot where there are a bunch of assholes doing asshole stuff and see what the PC’s do about it.

Sometimes they fight the assholes. Sometimes they join in the assholery.

What I do about player character murder hobos.

I ask myself, “What do the people in my game world do about murder hobos?”

People want to be able to raise their families, grow crops, take care of their animals, and live their lives without a merry band of murderers mucking things up. A village of peasants where someone has raised the hue and cry will run to the local lord and demand he do his duty and deal with the problem.

The lord is going to be pissed when his labor force is being fruitlessly inhumed. When his steward comes back from the annual tax collection and says, “Sorry my lord but all the peasants in that village are dead and someone stole their coin so I don’t have any grain or taxes for you.” The lord doesn’t care about the peasants but he needs them to harvest his rye and pay their rents.

No peasants means no harvest and no gold. He’s calls up his warband and off he goes to heroically murder the murder hobos. He puts a price on their head when they move out of his reach. Soon every adventurer in the land starts on a chase to get the bounty.

If the PC’s are going around murdering people, have the people murder them back. Simple.

Maybe the PCs win the fight and become even more murdery. OK. Well, that draws the attention of more powerful and more determined figures of Law. Eventually, the tragic end of the murder hoboes comes unless they decide to do something else and become an asset the great and powerful assholes of the realm.

This creates all kinds of possiblities. The player characters go from being jerks who rob anyone they can find to “legitimate businessmen” in the gong removal business serving his majesty and all the royal cesspits in the kingdom.

Murder hobos are fun.