A lot of what gets called murder hobo these days is also a byproduct of liking a style of play that was more popular in the past than it is now: some folks, myself included, just really like the parts of fantasy RPGs that take place in the dungeon. I like managing my light sources, camping supplies, rations, and other resources against the time, hazards, and environment of the dungeon. I like having to stop and think about whether a room might have a lurking ambush predator in it, I like when the game is about sneaking up to see if the monsters in this room seem like a threat or if we could take them out with minimal risk, and I like dealing with traps, mazes, and other things you can find while traversing the ruins of some insane wizard's laboratory or ancient city-turned-tomb. I don't really care for character dramas and schemes and intrigue. Usually between media literacy and a life of having to manually study social queues I can sus out the guy who's secretly evil or has some other secret anyway, and I know the GM and the other players aren't going to enjoy their plot twists if I go "oh hey Rudolphus is definitely plotting something, see X Y and Z reasons why" and ruin the reveal. Since I do a lot more GMing than playing these days I've got a few things I know can keep the murder hobo happy while letting more social players get their kicks in where I create the opportunity for them: mainly, these people want to feel useful and accomplished by doing something that is more in line with the subculture of "professional dungeon delver" that a more civilized/domesticated person would never think of or would assume wouldn't work. Murder hobo types tend to want to feel unacceptable or unconventional by normal standards but skilled in the lifestyle they chose in a way that makes them valuable. More destructive or counter-productive behavior like robbing storefronts or bullying friendly NPCs tends to be an expression of feeling like the fantasy of being a dangerous, uncouth outsider isn't being met. You can feed this in a lot of ways. Maybe the NPC your players want to talk to has a bodyguard who needs to be kept busy, so you set it up where the murder hobo can get their attention and intimidate them into breaking their focus. Maybe your group will need a distraction at the fancy get-together and sending their foul-mouthed ruffian friend to go goad the young military commanders into starting a fistfight is just what can buy you some time; just remind them that it'll be a lot easier and cheaper to bail them out for punching someone than it will be for putting a knife in a nobleman's ribcage. Maybe you give your party a need to get somewhere unannounced, and while the murder hobo might not be a great person to be seen on the premises, they remember seeing the exit of a sewer system directly underneath where they need to go and can be the one who gets their team in and out without having to deal with checkpoints and guard patrols. Things like that can make it feel like your role pays off, and that satisfaction helps a lot.

I tackled this problem by switching to a system that doesn't have countless videos and reddit threads that teach noobs how to min-max and a genre that focuses on anything but combat. Call of Cthulhu is not designed for action. Good luck finding an "optimized build" for the Alien RPG. Oh, you don't wanna play min-maxxer? Damn. Such a shame to lose you.

I replace treser items in chest with assassin's that only target my power players.

15:30 Glad somebody is talking about it. Elder Scrolls has a strangely ever-present group of fans (at least here on YT) who can't stop talking about The Protocols through 'find and replace' Jew with Altmer. Don't get me wrong some of them are extremely funny if you imagine it's a joke made in good faith. But it's a real shame to ruin a setting with such rich historical, mythical, and philosophical conflicts between the races with Daily Stormer circle jerks. I'll just say it's strange that seemingly 1/4 of the TES fandom is very passionate about the esotericism and lore, 1/4 love how racist it is, and another 1/4 chooses to hate on the first group rather than the second. The last 1/4 are the casuals but I didn't count them cuz I'm one of the lore-heads :P Good conversation overall, I'm definitely going to contact Mr. Hines and see if I can't get a copy of his paper. I'm excited to share it with my group and have some equally interesting conversations.

wow nice dice i had to rewatch the dice throw at the start 3 times to admire them

One of the good things about DnD 5e is that your character will always have crippling weaknesses no matter how much you minmax them. Both in and out of combat. Even if you max AC...Str, Dex, Con, Int, Wis, and Cha saves will completely bypass your defense, putting you on an equal level with everyone else. And every build will have at least 2 vulnerable saves. The only issue is that it takes a DM actually engaging with that system in order to keep things balanced. If a DM ignores saving throws and just has every enemy using attack rolls, then you will easily see imbalance between characters that have maximized AC and those that didn't. But when an enemy with Dex saves rolls in, suddenly everyone is on the same playing field. Same thing goes for skills. One person can't be a master of all skills. But it actually takes a DM working in multiple skills fort this to actually matter.

I know as a power gamer that I just love pushing the theory of what can be done in a game, not in a test RP boundaries but mechanical ones. I have a rogue / cleric multiclass that has a 28 passive perception and it’s entirely designed to allow him to be this detective-style character who can just see things, our DM turned that singular powerful skill into a means to push the story instead of bypass the story. So in my head I want to do exactly that, allow their skills to enable new scenarios instead of make light work of existing ones.

I dealt with a DM that had a game that was almost instant death and impossible to kill all the enemies in encounters. I came up every time with counters, and he came up with bs to stop me. As a gm my self and its no fun. But the power gamer groups are fun. I have one now. Who came up with an evil set to put the combos on the entire game day? Lol. An they almost killed them selfs. Took a mountain down on a great worm

As a player who "power-games" (I love min-maxing), I am always conscious of ensuring that my character _is_ a specialist. My characters are good at what they do, but just as importantly, are willing to lean on other characters in areas that they aren't good at, even if it's with an arrogant "isn't that _your_ job?" As an example, one of my favorite 'combos' is a wizard with a level-drop into cleric. This means that they can wear armor and doesn't overly impact their spellcasting, but rather _enhances_ it with a handful of low-level cleric spells. The limitations are that this is a combat-mage build, designed to get into the fight and inflict damage. Their spells are rarely support or non-combat, and I ensure that I don't take over the healer's role (unless we don't have one). And being a squishy wizard, they can't dive into melee, but must used ranged spells as a rule. The armor simply makes it harder to hit them _if_ the enemy gets in close, increasing survivability, and I usually have Inflict Wounds on my cleric spell list to make them regret it. But if they were to get swarmed... They're gonna need the tanks and DPS to back them up and fast. It's also important to be aware of this in non-combat encounters as well. If I'm playing a noble, then _that's_ their expertise... But they're going to have some issues dealing with commoners, regardless of their Charisma, simply because its not in their wheelhouse. At the end of of the day, it's just as important for the players to be aware of how their characters mesh with the party. These games are *cooperative* games. As such we must _all_ cooperate.

Sadly lots of murder hobos are just people who enjoy ruining other people's fun. They ate the pnp version of griefers in video games

Problem with murder hobos is their condition is contagious, from a player standpoint if one of my teammates is murder hoboing then odds are the entire party has to live with the consequences leading to the other players either quitting or more than likely becoming murder hobos themselves to try and get the additional loot they need to keep up with the original murder hobos shenanigans

I'm afraid I may have become a murder hobbo accidentally

I believe the root cause of most of the problematic, non-goal-based behavior like eating random mushrooms and killing random people, comes from DMs not being equipped to gain the player character's lore and use it to direct the player's interest toward a plot hook which speaks to that lore. Revenge for a beloved npc, discovering something about their history, etc.

Love this video! Very interesting discussion 🤩

Extra Credits, but it’s D&D.. Noice! 😎

Another thing DM's can do is ask their players what type of adventure they like. Such as Dungeon Delver, heists, exploring so forth.

Nice video, great job.

For the algorithm! On a serious note. Burnout sucks, and sorry to hear you dealing with it. When running my games, I can't run any more than once every two weeks or I start to burn out. Anyways, hope you are able to recoup, just remember that even though the grind might be calling, sometimes you need to just relax for a bit.

First!

Really interesting!

Excellent interview. Your "How do you advance?" question got me thinking about some interesting features to add to the game: 1. Catholic priest candidates must have a bachelor’s degree in philosophy or an associated discipline, and a master’s degree in theology. (Anglicans too, I think.) it would be cool to have deity specific "schools" that rival the wizard academy. 2. And certain Eastern religions require that a person be accepted by the community before being recognized as a community leader. I think this would be a great way to introduce a new players to the mechanics of the game before earning the role of Cleric - rather than just picking it. 3. And what about "Chaplain"? I think the military only requires they be a deist. Maybe the PC doesn't have to pick a deity until lvl5. And that's when they're awarded a territory to care for.

Very interesting and insightful interview.

Awesome!

I had a character with a limp who used it to bost about his courage. He said that it was proof that he would never run from battle

Jung is bunk.

Fantastic topic 👏

Although I appreciate the world-builing rationalizations, I also feel that sometimes a rationale is not needed. The conclussion I've reached is that sometimes the most rational feature of a fictional world, would not serve the storytelling or it's consumers. Bare with me. Take Star Trek for example. Star Trek is about a future society in which humanity has solved all of it's internal issues and reached a new era of enlightenment that allows it to chase the furthest stars! What do they find among the stars? ... more humanity. New alien races that basically face the same struggles humanity did in the old days. It does this because those are the struggles and questions the _audience_ struggles with. Star Trek is not about aliens, it's about humans. And meant for a _human_ audience. That's why it has human-like aliens, with human-like issues. Does it make sense that the Vulcans have the same Earth races we do here on Earth? No. That they are humanoid at all? no. Would Star Trek be in any way better if its alien races were "realistic" spec-evo project races with alien starfish bodies and unfanthomable alien minds? No! Even though in-world consistency is a possitive thing, people want to see themselves and their issues in these stories. The story is for them, not for the sake of it's own fictional world. Sometimes that's reason enough and you just need to leave your suspencion of disbelief hanging at the door.

Disability is sort of a weird concept in DnD though, isn't it? Like, in a world where psychics, deities, ghosts and curses exist, hearing voices in your head is... pretty commonplace? And clerics regrowing amputated limbs is so common (what with the all-surrounding peril) that being born without an arm is merely a temporary inconvenience. Your parents can scrabble together a gold piece and the spell components for the local paladin to go "Alakazoo, alakazan, give this kid another hand!" and what would've been a life-long disability no longer is.

Which game system are you using to say goblins are ADHD? I use D&D materials and goblins are represented as weak, bullying but competent.

A unique perspective that adds to solid worldbuilding! Thanks for making this

It is funny to me that people who would argue the loudest that magic healing would wipe out all disabilities are the ones who would probably get upset that their Badass Fighter wouldn’t have that badass scar on his face by his own logic.

Then there is the economic argument. You might have the cleric available, but you might not have the 5 gp diamond available - the only source of diamonds is a single mountain controlled by a dragon...thus, you have a quest for your PC or NPC to defeat the dragon so you can have medical care.

Genuine criticism; I appreciate research, but most of it is irrelevant to the topic. I feel like my time was wasted. The thesis/title is too narrow in scope. There's no need to focus on clerics. Nor on dnd alone. Only at the end did you show uses for disability in a narrative. You should've split the video into sections; 1 Why so this? 2 historical examples (don't waste too much time here.). 3-Recommended "do's and do not's" of disability in a narrative. 4- disability at play. Giving multiple examples of character achitipes for views to get inspired.

In a world where magic can cure anything there are no disabilities for the moderately well off.

I love your goblin!😊

As someone with ADHD, are you calling me a goblin? (Please say yes)

Thanks for all the positive comments!

this is Genuinely how goblins should be played. but don't get me started on how many GMs play them as highly competent mobile stealth archers. when it doesn't fit their character.

The description of this video is missing a summary with chapters, with each of the 10 points summed up. Some people have ADD and just don't have the time.

the level of detail in this video is outstanding!

This is a really solid video and it not only gave me ideas about how my goblins should act, but also gave me the idea of creating an alchemist character who has a goblin that's with him who helped him develop a chemical compound roughly analogous to Adderall that makes the goblin feel more calm.

Are the ADHD characteristics you mentioned typical, stereotypical , or gathered from goblin tropes . I know nothing about ADHD.

I will remember to carry a Bic Clic!

I am NOW able to subscribe!

Honestly really solid breakdown on goblin behavior. I alwase forget to make gobo's more antsy in my games, this was a good reminder to season them properly. Thank you for your wisdom 🙏

Cool video/channel idea!

There adhd has adhd

The fundamental problem with this guy's take is that if what exists in fiction is rooted in the real world how is it that we have created countless things in fiction that don't exist in the real world. You might worm your way to dragons via real world animals, but not something like a beholder. Time was hat social things in fiction were as well made completely from the imagination, but conspiracy-brained people like this guy bend interpretation until they make erroneous connections. Also, if you want to talk to the troglodytes just explain that to the other players and wait for your turn. Being in initiative doesn't wire your character's mouth shut.

"Misogyny" just code for understanding female nature to a politically incorrect degree.

Hi, is it possible to read your response to the ludic beastiary anywhere? I feel like I would strongly disagree with your point about hags, but that might be because you mentioned it only briefly in the video.