I was GM'ing this game. The premise was that the goddesses created the world as this perfectly idyllic place -- an absolute utopia that I frequently compared to Mayberry RFD -- until the shit hit the fan. An ancient evil awakened and turned it into an absolute post-apocalyptic wasteland. Except for the single most populous city which the goddesses managed to shield from the corrupting influence of the ancient evil. (And a few fortunate pockets here and there who had escaped the corruption.) The PCs were the most murder-hobo of murder hobos. There was a town of halflings who continued their happy lives from before the calamity by day but turned into demons by night, not remembering anything come morning. The party marched them all (children included) into the schoolhouse, barricaded them in, and set fire to it. When they ran across a few dwarves who had retained their sanity, they robbed them blind. In the one city which was fully shielded from the ancient evil, they fireballed a procession of a dozen or so devout monks to take out one cultist hiding among them. That all just to name a *few* of their heinous crimes. Of course, in response to all of this, the central city put out arrest warrants on the party. They were going to be dragged into court and hung out to dry whether they liked it or not. I had a whole court scene planned. But it never happened. They sneaked into town, publicly executed the mayor and the sheriff, and installed the local crime boss as the new mayor.

I was GM'ing this game. The premise was that the goddesses created the world as this perfectly idyllic place -- an absolute utopia that I frequently compared to Mayberry RFD -- until the shit hit the fan. An ancient evil awakened and turned it into an absolute post-apocalyptic wasteland. Except for the single most populous city which the goddesses managed to shield from the corrupting influence of the ancient evil. (And a few fortunate pockets here and there who had escaped the corruption.) The PCs were the most murder-hobo of murder hobos. There was a town of halflings who continued their happy lives from before the calamity by day but turned into demons by night, not remembering anything come morning. The party marched them all (children included) into the schoolhouse, barricaded them in, and set fire to it. When they ran across a few dwarves who had retained their sanity, they robbed them blind. In the one city which was fully shielded from the ancient evil, they fireballed a procession of a dozen or so devout monks to take out one cultist hiding among them. That all just to name a *few* of their heinous crimes. Of course, in response to all of this, the central city put out arrest warrants on the party. They were going to be dragged into court and hung out to dry whether they liked it or not. I had a whole court scene planned. But it never happened. They sneaked into town, publicly executed the mayor and the sheriff, and installed the local crime boss as the new mayor.

I'm sure you don't need to be told, but for those who are reading and need to hear it: the most powerful and healthy thing a GM can do is say no. The GM gets to arbitrate the tone of the game and setting, and boundaries are healthy to both fun and creativity.

Putting a "random" encounter that didn't exist five minutes earlier in the path of your players, knowing it will be a TPK, is the DM version of murder hobo-ing. You're ignoring the logic of the game and the feelings of the other players so you can have fun killing things. You're not fixing the problem, you're becoming part of it.

"They hated him because he told them the truth"

Actually OP handled it pretty well, at least in the end . PC face consequences for their actions (a trial with the risk of being hung) and end up having to act to solve the problem. It's somehow created more game opportunities.

Was it fun for you to GM that game?

It's world of gods that intervene with mortals, so a GM is perfectly justified in-universe in smiting any players who get out of hand.

Putting a "random" encounter that didn't exist five minutes earlier in the path of your players, knowing it will be a TPK, is the DM version of murder hobo-ing. You're ignoring the logic of the game and the feelings of the other players so you can have fun killing things. You're not fixing the problem, you're becoming part of it.

It's called teaching a lesson. Murder hobos do not respect the game. By giving them this encounter, they will get down from their high horses learning that sometimes things are not what they look like and they should be more careful and smart about what they're doing.

That's not the lesson they'll learn. The problem is that they don't care about the game as a living story, but as a game they can win through violence. Using this encounter will just tell them that the DM can cheat to win. To quote the show Sharpe: "Flogging teaches a soldier only one lesson. How to turn his back."

The dm can cheat to win yes. That is also the lesson. Which means trying to beat the game is a hopeless goal. And if you think this is the game, you're gravely mistaken. The comparison to flogging is simply dumb. It's completely irrelevant. Now you can be a dumb player and refuse to learn anything from this encounter. It can spark a discussion then.

The dm can cheat to win yes. That is also the lesson. Which means trying to beat the game is a hopeless goal. And if you think this is the game, you're gravely mistaken. The comparison to flogging is simply dumb. It's completely irrelevant. Now you can be a dumb player and refuse to learn anything from this encounter. It can spark a discussion then.

I don't know why you think punishing misbehaviour through senseless violence to "teach them a lesson" is irrelevant. Especially since you're not teaching them to behave, you're just teaching them to be powerless and resent you. If they think the game is "win or lose" and you tell them "you can't win", they'll stop playing. They'll turn their back. Now, what were you saying about "refusing to learn anything"?

Because you're not hurting people but imaginary characters that have been exceptionally evil. If you can't see the difference you're a complete idiot. Do you know what a story is? What a game is? What morale is?

That's better communicated through... communication. I don't know about you, but if I were playing a game to win and my "opponent" reveals that they can just cheat and instakill me whenever they feel like, I'm more likely to just stop playing the game than to try to play it for fun. Even if I *did* try to play it for fun, it would be hard to really enjoy it when I know that any encounter can just be a big middle finger. If you don't explicitly tell people what they're doing wrong and how to fix it, it's unlikely that they'll figure it out on their own.

Do you know what allegory is? Just because you don't match a story 1:1 doesn't mean you can't learn something from it. And yes, I know what morale is. It's that thing you destroy when you twist the game to punish the players for not doing what you want. Especially since the players don't see the world or characters as anything other than a game, so they don't think of the GM as punishing anyone but them. I'm trying not to sink to your level and insult your intelligence over and over, but you really should be able to pick this up if I spell it out to you enough times.

Ok, 3 things. First, who ever said that this encounter was ever meant to end in a tpk? Not me. Not anyone I read mentioning this encounter. Bahamut is a benevolent god, not a moronic asshole like murder hobos. Second, murder hobos are not playing to win, they're playing moronic assholes in a power fantasy. But anyway, both murder hobo and playing to win make problem players. Third and finally, this encounter is a narrative tool that can take a campaign back on track. A discussion alone doesn't have this power, because the characters changing their behaviour suddenly would break the story.

Putting a "random" encounter that didn't exist five minutes earlier in the path of your players, knowing it will be a TPK, is the DM version of murder hobo-ing. You're ignoring the logic of the game and the feelings of the other players so you can have fun killing things. You're not fixing the problem, you're becoming part of it.

Whether it ends in a TPK isn't relevant. If you're playing capture the flag and your opponent reveals they can just teleport your flag to their base it'll have roughly the same effect. If the GM can just say "you lose now" it'll seriously demotivate anyone who is trying to enjoy the game, for whatever reason. Overall, the difference between having an in-character "please stop being murderhobos" moment and having an out-of-character "please stop being murderhobos" moment comes down to how likely it is for the players to take the message to heart. If it's just some dude that's telling them to stop being murderhobos and is an unwinnable fight if the players refuse, that sets a distinctly different tone than the GM pausing things for a moment to explain the current situation to the players. Both can work, but keeping it as a narrative element has a higher chance of failure, since it's possible the players could interpret this as just another NPC encounter instead of the GM's thinly veiled wishes for the future of the table. Overall, the only people who care about the story are the people at the table, and having a moment of jarring change in the characters to set the narrative back on track is fine. You'd probably want to do something like that anyway to paper over the past behavior, otherwise the players could listen to you and be understanding of what you want, and still get punished for the stuff they've already done.