I'm a newbie, but not a newbie to either RP or Muds in general. I've found that my deaths in PvP have generally been "just for the hell of it" kills. I don't have any good equipment or am i evil. But since i do enjoy the rp element of this mud i'm sticking around. I will eventually learn and whatnot.

My idea is simple tho i'm sure it may have been brought up before. When i used to play DnD we had one player that would like to kill other players if need be and the DM would always ask for a "grudge". So the grudge would be "He's a whiny wimp and i know he stole my gauntlets of ogre magi" or something to that effect. I was thinking this would be an interesting way to unlocking the PK ability and controlling the endless, reasonless death in the fields. A grudge could be anything from "i like his sword"(for evil greed) to his "his must be possed (a player speaking OOC) this would be like a more role orientated option but you would not be able to kill someone with at least some inner roleplay reflection. I understand this would require a certain amount of coding and might not apply to the psychopath evil, but possibly those affected by mental illness would have penalties to group xp or any other social activities.

So in review:
One must apply a grudge to a player:
grudge Horkovast "he has been murdering people and i will not stand for it any longer"
grudge Illithia "She has the sword i have been after"
once applied it unlocks the PvP.
If one attacks a non-grudge player, you get "You have to reason to attack him"

i'm sure my idea may not be suited for the current environment, but i do believe a certain amount of IC thought is put into having to "murder" another player.

Orcs might not have to worry about grudge nor thieves as they act in a certain way and one should always be wary of these classes.

So if in a group, and you are attacked by a player with a grudge against you your groupmates will be free to assist you.

Cabal enemies will have an automatic grudge. Or you could grudge an entire race with the proper role justification.

Who knows. sounds like alot of work and possibly too much policing, but quite a nice added RP element.