Hobo Grapes

Hold it. Before I start, a word of stylistic caution to the creator of this video. For a man whose visage already would not seem out of place in Game of Thrones, it may be a bit much to lock eyes with the camera and deliver edicts in an "evil squire" tone alongside a blood-red cartouche reading
Murder Hobos (!)

Somewhere, a panicked grandmother is dialing the police.

Anyhoo...
Aside from my amusement at world-of-the-game webcomics like The Order of the Stick and my appreciation of D&D cRPG adaptations, I've had no truck with tabletop role-playing games. However, as someone to whom gaming implies a darkened room, Mountain Dew, eye strain and not speaking through an entire weekend, I've nonetheless nursed a guilty fascination with the rites and rituals of communal roleplaying. Just how do the two experiences diverge?

After giving in to my murder-hobo nature earlier this year by playing through Arcanum as a "fugly rageaholic" half-ogre bombardier, I got curious about how tabletop gamers view the issue of randomly wandering the land stabbing things. Sure enough, that video on the How to be a Great Game Master channel offers a list of ten ways to nip such behavior in the pew-pew. Two of them caught my attention.

His last rule advises letting players buy or build a home and populate it with NPC servants, and I could not agree more. First off, it gives players at least one corner of the world they probably won't want to destroy. (Completely.) Second, the act of constructing and populating such a place makes one actively consider the impact of various gaming styles. What kind of imprint would my chaotic neutral transhumanism leave upon the landscape? Third, even if setting up a murder-lair doesn't eliminate murder-hoboing, the possible link between the two can improve it. Being constantly on the lookout for troll skulls, bloody rags, torture tools, witches' heads and jars of butterflies to decorate my forge-lit basement can make me consider each act of murder or plunder more carefully. It expands upon the aesthetic (and not just profiteering) aspect of draconian butchery.

However, he also advises GMs not to fear sending overpowered NPCs against players to punish bad behavior, and here the realms of table and desk-top could not be farther apart. By 2004 even Blizzard Entertainment, some of the most skillful sleazebags when it comes to lowering their customers' expectations, admitted what a terrible idea it is for any designer to give raid bosses infinite hit points, to deny players a fair chance at winning a task set before them. Fairness or parity being an ethical principle so universal that most higher mammals can grasp it intuitively, promoting an unfair situation can only ever serve to highlight a better option. A flesh and blood GM can be negotiated with - in fact the whole point of setting your players up for a fall would be to make them seek other options, to gradually compromise toward some sort of better alternative than an obviously nonsensical fight. But what if there's no-one to throw the offensive cucumber back at? No-one to schmooze for grapes? In a video game, the lack of such personal recourse leaves the player to contend with the disembodied will of the (game) universe. When the entire universe is against you, it either prompts cheating (if even one NPC gets god mode then I deserve it too) or capitulation which is to say uninstalling, seeking a better option in a better game.

Now, this means that:
1) GMing a tabletop game apparently gives you license to be even more of an asshole toward your players than people are on the internet.
2) The real universe is a video game which everyone's constantly trying to turn into a pen and paper game. What is religion but an attempt to fabricate a game-master in the sky with whom to negotiate a better plot thread than the certain doom we all face? Of course, what we really should be doing is seeking cheat codes.