Editing Adventurer (section)

===How to avoid Murderhoboism?===
Murderhoboism is invariably a metagame effect. There are two general reasons as to why. Firstly, it can be a conscious decision by the player to not have attachments that a [[That Guy|bastard DM]] could exploit [[Railroading|to force a dramatic action]]. Secondly, it can be a response of a player for whom the only interesting part of D&D is the combat. Role playing and fluff? Nah, they love crunch, mechanics, and big numbers, they made a character with enough DPR to one shot a lich and by GOD they're going to use it! These two different responses to gameplay need two slightly different responses from the DM. 

To head the first one off, the DM needs to make it clear to the players that such things won't happen (unless you're rolling psykers in [[Dark Heresy]]). It's up to you, Mr. DM, to design the story so the players have ample opportunity to stop harm from befalling their loved ones, and in turn you can get NPCs that act as quest givers and sources of aid and support. The second type of player is more difficult to deal with, as they fundamentally have a different form of engagement to your game than other players. That's not inherently a bad thing and countless groups have that one player who tends to be silent when there's not a puzzle or combat to be had. The problem is when they act out and let it harm the enjoyment of other players by murderhoboing when other players are engaged with the story and narrative. In this case, you should talk to the player on the issue, but at the same time, if they keep acting out: don't be shy to kick them out of the group for everyone else's enjoyment. In general, fighting murderhoboism is win-win for everyone, even players with slight murderhobo tendencies. 

Alternately, [[Just As Planned|you could lean in to it.]] A hypothetical party of evil adventurers would probably default to some degree of murderhoboism and mercenary work without a longer term goal to direct their purpose toward, and to be fair, sometimes being a cackling Skeletor villain with zero self-awareness can be funny. Even so, too much murderhoboism could also cause problems if the reaction to the murderhoboing causes the players to stop having fun. Just be aware of the kind of game you're trying to make and tailor the world, both in game and on a meta level, to what you expect will bring the most engagement to the players.