Nebraska Dave News and Reviews

I've seen a lot of posts lately from new DMs concerning how to deal with players who are murderhobo's/generally playing bad people.

My solution for new DMs is simple. Let them. You can do this in a couple of ways but it can be difficult to pair a bad guy player with good guy players… so approach your group about running a true bad guy villain campaign.

Your villain campaign will be filled with new and exciting challenges for both yourself as the DM and your player group. You will need to craft situations where your players are motivated by greed, lust for power, or vengeance. They can still be enlisted by a local villain leader and given tasks the same way as your good guy campaigns, but the manner in which they will go about it will be much different and will require a lot more outside the box thinking.

As wanted bad guy PC's they will not simply be able to enter any town and resupply. They will need to avoid guards and law enforcement, not be recognized in shops, and use the underground to get supplies and equipment. Food may be scarce, weapons can break and not easily be replaced, they might fight among themselves.

Honor among thieves is a real concept that must be respected, unless you want to cut off your only support system. Your taverns will be filled with other nefarious characters, and infamous reputations, mercenaries, rogues, and scoundrels. Your PC's will constantly be challenged to keep their cool in situations where people more dastardly than them challenge them at every opportunity, and losing that cool might involve and death and reroll.

It can teach your players valuable lessons about truly being a bad guy. After this campaign, you will find your player group may be less interested in being a murderhobo, maybe next they want to play a Paladin and fight for good, and really stick to your positive good guy PC storytelling in the future.

It will allow your playerbase to get it out of their system, and mature as roleplayers. Be flexible with your group and in turn they will be flexible with you. Even people who enjoy roleplaying the good guys will be okay with the challenge of being evil once in awhile.

Good Luck and Happy DMing.