I fully believe that modern video games are the primary cause of murder-hobos. Video games have functionally trained modern players to only interact with the world in very specific ways. If your video game character only has three actions, and all three of them are some form of attack, you’ll inevitably end up using those attacks to interact with the world.

Video games have basically trained players to follow a very specific set of rules: See a barrier to progression? Try your primary action (usually an attack) on it, and see what happens. If it breaks, you were correct. If you bonk, try your second action, (again, usually an attack). Then your third. Etc… By the rules of the game, if you’re meant to get past the barrier, one of your pre-determined actions will get you past it. So you as a player are taught to just throw things at the barrier and see what sticks.

And the barrier can be any number of things. An enemy to defeat, a cracked wall to smash, a door to lockpick, a grapple point to swing across, a giant spider web that will burn away when you use a fire attack, etc… All of them are just barriers to progression on the player’s trek from A to Z. And every barrier (if it is intended to be passable) will have some sort of corresponding key. It may be a literal key you need to find somewhere in the world, (like in a Zelda game, with a locked door needing a Small Key to pass), but it may also be a more symbolic “key”. A grapple point needing a grapple to pass a large gap, a chunk of ice needing a fire attack to melt, a molten pit of lava that you need an ice attack to solidify, a small gap that you need to transform/shrink to fit through, etc… But as long as you as the player have collected the correct “key” for the barrier, you can pass.

And the issue with translating that to a tabletop session is that the DM doesn’t lay out any specific corresponding key for a given barrier, (unless it’s something literal, like a vault door requiring a special magical key). It is usually left open to the player to decide how they want to approach a given situation. The DM sets up the scenario, and then leaves the players to approach it however they see fit. And when the players encounter a barrier, they fall right back into that video game mentality: Check your character sheet for potential keys, and start throwing things at the barrier to see what sticks… And almost all of the “keys” they find are some form of offensive or defensive combat ability. Because the character sheet isn’t going to list the mundane things that anybody can do. It only lists the special things that your specific character can do.

Let’s say you encounter a guard in front of a door. You check your character sheet, and see a LOT of ways to approach the situation. 95% of them are some sort of combat ability. Your character sheet often doesn’t directly list things like “walk up and politely introduce yourself”, “bribe guard”, or “attempt to intimidate the guard” as direct actions. Because those are things that any character can do without needing a special action for them. Sure, the game has ability checks set up for those kinds of options, (in D&D’s case, Persuasion to talk or bribe your way past, Intimidation to try and get the guard to back down, Deception to try and lie your way past, etc…) but they aren’t directly listed as special actions on your sheet. They’re just “soft” actions that any character can attempt.

So what happens is the player sees a barrier (a guard), looks for a corresponding key on their character sheet, (their list of special actions) and sees a lot of combat abilities that their specific character has earned. Unless you’re specifically playing as a Face character, you often don’t have any social actions listed on your character sheet. So they do the video game thing. They start picking actions to throw at the barrier, to see if they work. Because video game logic dictates that if you’re meant to pass this barrier, (the guard), you should have a key for it (your actions and abilities).

All of this means the party sees a guard, then the barbarian immediately goes “I try to hit them with my +1 battle axe.” The DM sighs, because the guard would have simply let them past if they had tried talking. The guard already had orders to let the party pass, because they’re on a mission for the duke and need to interrogate the prisoner being held here. The duke anticipated this, and alerted the local guards to expect the party. But now they’re in combat, because the barbarian already rolled his dice and celebrated his Nat 20, before the DM could even say anything in response. There were plenty of other options available, but many of them were “soft” options (like talking) that aren’t listed on your character sheet. But the barbarian has “Multi Attack” listed right at the top of their available actions, so that was the first key they tried on the barrier.

And I say video games are the primary cause of murder-hobos, because there are 100% players who are only interested in combat. If that’s the expectation going into a campaign, that’s fine. The DM and the rest of the party can plan for that accordingly. DM sets up a scenario with hostile creatures, and combat starts. The “plot” in a campaign like this is often just used to loosely tie the encounters together. And if that’s what everyone in the group is looking for, that’s great. You’ll all have a wonderful time. If you have an entire party of roll-players (as in, players who just want to roll their dice in combat) then it’s not inherently a bad thing that they’re murder-hobos. Because the DM will design the game world accordingly.

The issues arise when you have a mixed bag of some players (and the DM) wanting to roleplay and dive into a complex plot, while one or two roll-players are just finding every opportunity to make attack rolls. And those roll-players inevitably end up dragging the entire party into combat, even when the party Face could have easily talked their way through an encounter (or at least acted as a distraction long enough to set the rest of the party up for a surprise attack) instead.