So Your Party is a Kleptomaniac-Sociopathic Monstrosity...

Do you know what time it is?

It's every Dungeon Master's nightmare.  Watching your fictional crops burn and NPCs get murdered either out of cold blood or revenge, this leads most Dungeon Masters to pure insanity and even quitting completely.  Some players, sometimes not always destructive, view your game world as a playground to destroy from the bottom up, starting with simple shopkeepers and eventually kingdoms.  Now there are tools that can help you recognize the issue, when it's too late for recovery and ways to help your game.

5 Ways to Identify the Problem

1) Your group contains a CN Murder Hobo:

The dreaded Chaotic Neutral character, who claims that free will dictates that they are allowed to do anything they want.  Murder Hobos are, in general, the most iconic of all Chaotic Neutral characters. They feel like you are impeaching on their rights as an individual when you threaten an alignment change and when they are punished for their crimes against humanity, they begin to take it out on the poor innocent farmers, innkeeps, merchants and eventually other players.

2) Your group contains Grim Darkness, the Sociopath:

Grim Darkness is a character whose past was so dark and terrible that it he takes out his aggression on society because of these events in his life.  It starts out innocent enough, the River Baron had enslaved his family and eventually killed them, but as an adult he now wants to kill all barons or tear down society because...of reasons.  Usually Chaotic Neutral and more likely Chaotic Evil,  Grim Darkness will also take his aggression out on different targets, but unlike the Murder Hobo, at least has specific targets.

3) Your Paladin fell:

Now this can range from really cool to something terrible.  When a Paladin falls, it should be a dramatic change to the archetype of justice to the archetype of destruction and ruin, in some cases, those that choose to become Anti-Paladins, seriously, that's the name, not Blackguards, but Anti-Paladins, they forsake the old virtues that they admired to become villains.  In general, get ready for people to play Chaotic Evil dicks.

4) The Trinity of Not-so-Evil:

Your party contains a Necromancer, a rogue or thief and a variation of some terrible half-breed monstrosity, great. They were told that it was a game where evil alignments were banned and now are going to play variations of good or neutral and completely destroy your game by stating that our "actions are good" every time something inexplicably evil happens.  For case and example, the Necromancer kills the rogue and raised him as a skeleton, because the rogue wanted to steal the Necromancer's spellbook so he can sell it for a high price and give his profits to an orphanage while the half-Minotaur-half-Dragon continues to intimidate the town for money.  It can be a fun archetype to play with, but you have to be willing to work with the impending Doomsday.

5) Your Party's Body Count Outnumbers the Current Warlord's:

All I can say, is when someone rolls a Knowledge (local) for population expect a massacre.

5 Signs That Your Game is Near Doomsday

1) Half of Your Town has Become Skeletons:

Remember that Necromancer, Formally-Once-A-Rogue-and-now-a-Skeleton and the half-breed monstrosity? Well, they, the Necromancer, decided that the town would be better under control and crime rates would be down if his army of skeletons were both the local militia and populace.

2) Murder House:

As he slides over the last index card the rest of the table remains quiet because, your party only has two characters left out of five, and one of them is the CN Murder Hobo.  The Murder Hobo currently has used his deceitful ways to lie out of every one of his murders, dominantly those of party members, and expects everyone out of game to appreciate him.  Good thing the money was good.

3) Anti-Paladin/Devil Caller

Your Anti-Paladin has aligned himself with a Devil Prince and has brought Armageddon upon the world.  I guess time to reroll characters to stop the end of the world...or you can just pack up your bags, take a deep breath, and enjoy life knowing that game is over.

4) War of Attrition

When the party's body count almost exceeds the world's population you have to realize that someone will want somebody dead in the morning.

5) Where's the Kool-Aid?

A cult has been built around the party, who plans to re-create Jonestown.  I guess it paid off to have a high charisma, think of all the loot.

5 Processes to Recovery

1) The L.O.F.B.

The Low Orbit Falling Boulder, it works to eliminate problem children before they are a problem.

2) Headhunting

When in doubt, read a G.R.R Martin Book, at least death is a plot motivator and not a plot ender.  Embroil the characters into a fight against each other or the law and have a king, leader or ruler get involved with their crimes.  Enjoy the tears when they realize that their special snowflake melted before it touched the ground.

3) Selective Traps

Have a person who is overtly greedy? Have a person who leads too often and want to punish a party? Don't punish the party, that's bad, bad DM.  They didn't do anything wrong.  Unless they are the party of Not-so-Evil.

4) Game Over

Allow players to fall into a game over and say "I'm sorry, come again" and restart from day 1.  Change some minor details here and there and laugh it off.  Great ways of game overs include, but are not limited to: Rocks Falling, Poison Gas Room, 10'x10'x'60' pits when athletics, jump or acrobatics is a low party skill.

5) Die Perfekte Gruppe

Become a Tabletop Nazi and dictate that alignments, races and classes are banned and all others are inferior.  It also allows you to channel out sourcebooks, "high tier" classes and as some players say, "fun".  You then can live out your fantasy of playing Super Smash Brothers with Fox Only, Final Destination and No Items.