I’m fairly new to D&D and especially DMing. I’ve started a new campaign with 2-3 people and more may be joining soon, which might make this question entirely useless to ask if the new players behave differently. The current players are more prone to violence than I was expecting. Two of the three choose violence over all other options most of the time.
I home brewed an open-world map with some complex characters and motives for them to explore, as well as an ongoing civil war, all wrapped into a post-magic-apocalyptic environment. What this means is that violence isn’t necessarily NOT the answer, it just makes the game boring as a DM to have all your NPCs hacked and slashed to bits by a goliath and barbarian who are more interested in combat than storytelling.
One example is they tried to attack a shop keeper to steal his flintlock pistol that they can’t afford to purchase. Luckily the bard of our group had just joined the game, and since I had already explained that this shop keeper was an ex-member of a mercenary group, he held his own until the bard could cast a spell to befriend the shopkeeper and stop the fighting. Luckily the bard player has DM’d for previous campaigns and has more experience with D&D, so he knows to not attack shopkeepers and perhaps takes the game more seriously.
Violence seems to be the option they’re most prone to choosing. While I don’t want to power-game them into a corner by making guards constantly spot them, or make the shop keepers over-powered warriors, how can I help guide them towards choosing alternative solutions to problems that don’t involve killing everything in their path?
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Should I have a discussion with them out of game about their characters actions (not ideal)?
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What type of scenarios can I place them in to potentially develop their characters away from that?
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Or, is this all a non-issue and I should just let them make their mistakes and get slaughtered / outlawed?
I told them they could do whatever they want and this would be an open-world campaign.