To authors who write RPG-style stories: I have a question.

[Dragonpig]

To authors who write RPG-style stories: I have a question. I have an idea for a story in that genre, but how do you honestly keep your protagonist from turning into a straight-up murder hobo?

 

[Wamba2K]

Why would the protagonist become a murder hobo?

 

[Fairemont]

Why would the protagonist become a murder hobo?

Grinding XP from kills.

 

[Corty]

By not being a psycho myself.

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

Well,

Your MC has to have some sort of moral code... It is that simple.

Power should not be their driving motivator either; just because they have the power to start being a complete murder hobo, doesn't mean that would be the first tool they reach for when they meet adversity. This is where your character development comes in.

You can also use Force Doctrine to determine your character's responses to different situations. When is it time to sit down and talk things out? Or when your character needs to go Old Testament? These will determine the appropriate responses to different situations.

Also, in a broader perspective, you can change how your levelling system works in the LitRPG world so that straight-up murder hoboing doesn't provide them with more xp. Use quests or reaching certain goals to allow them to gain power.

 

[Jerynboe]

By having them not be slaves to incentive structures?
My MC does actually get bonuses for killing a certain number of people. It’s explicitly built into the power system. However, he’s not a psychopath because he’s not a psychopath. I could get a decent amount of money if I acquired a gun and started shooting rich people to steal their wallets. However, doing that is dangerous and amoral no matter what the anarchocommunists might tell you.

He is in a fantasy setting. There are genuinely evil people. He does not even kill them casually. However, there are also pure evil entities such as undead and demons but he is way more gung ho about just slaughtering. One of his allies even tries, actively to get him to be more bloodthirsty, but he is a modern day person Isekaied. Hunting demons is a compromise and not even the focus of his lifestyle.

The first person he actually killed that he would classify as a person (read: enough free will that they plausibly could live in polite society without killing people) was an assassin he killed in self defense. It still fucked him up. Further, his decision not to kill people occasionally bites him in the ass, not unlike Batman. Also not unlike Batman, he struggles with that fact but not enough that he’s even going to seriously consider murder as default even if one of his most loyal allies and about 30% of my readers are yelling at him that he’s not being efficient.

 

[Evil_Spoon]

What's wrong with them becoming murder hobos?

 

[Juia_Darkcrest]

What's wrong with them becoming murder hobos?

Outside of any laws a nation may have?

It's boring to write, it's even more boring to read. Once in a while is good, but if your MC only has a hammer in his toolbox, every problem looks like a nail. If you already know what is going to happen, why bother reading further?

 

[Jerynboe]

What's wrong with them becoming murder hobos?

Eh, presumably if they are asking the question that’s not the kind of story they want to write. They are just trying to justify sanity.
Also if they are going to become murder hobos, it’s probably better to have them be not JUST murder hobos. Murder bourgeoisie is a decent description for a good number of kingdom builder stories with systems and those seem to do alright.

 

[foxoftheasterisk]

All you gotta do is make sure that whatever else they got going on is more important/urgent (to them at least) than grinding for power.

Which shouldn't be hard, because for most people, power is only a means to an end (if that). (The end usually being security.)


You can also, especially if they're starting to edge on it, give 'em the foil treatment: introduce a character that's gone full murder hobo to show how awful a lifestyle that is.

 

[NapLovingImmortal]

Let them gain XP by defeating, and not killing. Or involve cultivation with a quest system.

 

[PancakesWitch]

Just make what they kill a threat to humanity? like evil monsters, demons, and shit, it's not that hard

 

[ConansWitchBaby]

Damn. Having a conscious is impossible this day and age. Too expensive.

 

[Dragonpig]

Well,

Your MC has to have some sort of moral code... It is that simple.

Power should not be their driving motivator either; just because they have the power to start being a complete murder hobo, doesn't mean that would be the first tool they reach for when they meet adversity. This is where your character development comes in.

You can also use Force Doctrine to determine your character's responses to different situations. When is it time to sit down and talk things out? Or when your character needs to go Old Testament? These will determine the appropriate responses to different situations.

Also, in a broader perspective, you can change how your levelling system works in the LitRPG world so that straight-up murder hoboing doesn't provide them with more xp. Use quests or reaching certain goals to allow them to gain power.

Thank you.

Let them gain XP by defeating, and not killing. Or involve cultivation with a quest system.

Interesting.

Just make what they kill a threat to humanity? like evil monsters, demons, and shit, it's not that hard

I hear what you're saying. But if everything he has to kill has to be Basically a monster or evil. Then I'm doing nothing but writing a story about a videogame. I guess that's not what I'm trying to do here.

 

[Hans.Trondheim]

How to turn characters away from becoming murder hobos?

By giving them other sources of EXP aside from killing. You're already operating on a game-like system, so reality is not a priority. Adding creative ways to gain EXP is always possible; the sky is the limit.

 

[MC-Stories]

Give them someone to love, someone to protect, then the killing has some purpose.

 

[CharlesEBrown]

Well, in my pseudo-Western, the MC has a strange but strict code of honor - he does what he believes to be right at all times, is fiercely protective of friends and family, and is only interested in wealth from a survival standpoint, not from a "get rich" point of view.

Strange Awakening is, in part, literally taken from two different superhero RPGs, as the Jack Diamond stories. Unless you've created a character like the MC of the K-Drama Ca$hero, who uses money to power his abilities, or are running a VERY early golden age story, the heroes are not motivated by wealth AND tend to go out of their way to avoid killing.

Between Worlds has mostly modern PCs with lives in the real world who just can't afford to spend the time to murderhobo in another world.

The structure of the story and nature of the characters determines how hard/easy it is to devolve to murder-hobo status. If you're writing Conan or a pastiche (even the late night talk show Conan from what I've seen), then murderhobo is a reasonable outcome, but if you're writing Lord of the Rings, you'd have to really twist things to go that way.

 

[L1aei]

To authors who write RPG-style stories: I have a question. I have an idea for a story in that genre, but how do you honestly keep your protagonist from turning into a straight-up murder hobo?

Are pest exterminators fumigating a house of cockroaches considered murder hobos? How about hunters who are licensed to hunt only a specific number and type of deer because overpopulation affects trees? Like some others have said, give them a reason, and that murder hobo label mostly disappears. Everyone made good points already about any characters that kills endlessly with no social frame, no moral calibration, no consequence, and no interiority being as bland for readers' tastes as chewing on cardboard.

Wanna know something? My examples? They cost something. So give that violence a price tag. Like, maybe the act causes physical injuries, political backlash, reputation damage, some fun trauma, or even literal costs like economic repercussions. Something like if your character, or maybe a Goblin Slayer, were to wipe out a goblin camp, what were the losses? Even that lunatic accounted for what he used to perform his own version of pest control. And there have been cases where people retaliated for something as insane as killing a bunch of goblins because, who knows, maybe someone was thrilled a camp was there because it became an obstacle for a rival merchant trade route.

Since my mind is on it, social infrastructure is a key component here. Things like guilds, churches, city-states, or even those adventurer codes. Let's tap into another series, KonoSuba, because the guild there exists to bureaucratize chaos; paperwork civilizes slaughter.

Maybe since I'm now on paperwork, we can even look at the crafting or diplomatic aspects, even skip back to trades, or maybe research... OH! Hey! Territory management! Dude, look at Log Horizon's politics and economics sometime; those matter a helluva a lot as much as raids because combat in that series is like one-tenth of what those characters jump into. The first episodes of that series even revolved around the ethical code of how guilds should be ran because one veteran guild was abusing newbies for their free health potions.

So that would start getting into where the personal lines are also drawn such as refusing contracts involving children. Well, if you have a story like that, that's pretty damn dark... okay, now I got Dark Knight on my mind. Maybe instead they are someone like Batman who refuses to kill anyone, but they will beat the ever living shit out of them until they are mentally unfit for society; welcome to Arkham!

Yeah, that is another thing to consider; enemies have lives too. If every enemy is labeled a monster that evaporates into loot, that removes consequences with only gains to be had. But if you include culture, language, or even something as primordial as burial rites, that gives the character a moment to reevaluate what they are about to do; are they killing monsters, eradicating pests, or are they about to murder genuine people who have loved ones expecting them to provide for their family and kin? And if they have that depth, go back and consider the reasons they must be killed off and what happens as a result; the pros and cons.

There is a lot to consider here and plenty of examples in the RPG-style that displays characters who have to be more than just murder hobos.

Oh, one more thing: if someone here points out goblins are just monsters, not people... I believe a light-blue slime named Rimuru Tempest would like to have a word with you.

 

[Tabula_Rasa]

Grinding XP from kills.

That doesn't necessary translate to murder hobo tho.

E.G if training gain exp
how do I make it so that the mc don't just train 24/7 for 1000 years, and never leaving the house?
Just be a normal fucking human being.

Like wise
if he kills people he can take all their money
how do I stop him from murdering everybody?

if the MC see people just as EXP packs.
I am sorry to say, there is no turning into a murder hobo, the OP already wrote a murder hobo.

 

[Dragonpig]

Writers of SH. I want to thank all of you for your input. I guess I need to start reading better RPG because you all gave me some good ideas. Everything from the personal code of the protagonist to how his world works, good ideas. Now, about you people who mentioned Batman. Don't get me started with that guy, and I'm about to say some stuff you've heard before. He's cool as shit, but that speech he gave to Jason, you know, under the red hood. I swear, if I could become a murder hobo I would dedicate myself to tracking him down, killing him, and resurrecting him over and over. That was such a dumb explanation. It was said coolly, but it was so fucked up.