A post about changing Tribunal on 'those other boards' got me
thinking.

I'm not under the impression the bounty system has been used a
lot, if at all. I have a suggestion that may bring more life
to it and add colour to being wanted.

The first time you got wanted, you'd get a bounty. Perhaps the
first bounty would be something like 200 coppers. Then the
bounty would increase with say a 1,5 factor:

# wanted | bounty
----------------
  1      | 200  
  2      | 300  
  3      | 450  
  4      | 675  
  5      | 1013
  6      | 1519
  7      | 2279
  8      | 3419
  9      | 5129
  10     | 7694

Just to give you an idea of what I mean. Quite possibly other
factors would increase the bounty, like total time wanted and
current level.

RP-wise, it would be the Spire setting these bounties. Payment
would come from their vaults.

Maybe an automatic note could be sent for repeated criminals
(maybe 10+), something like:

WANTED: Joe the Criminal

Wanted dead for repeated assault within the protected cities.
Use any means necessary to bring him to justice. Payment will
be swift and discrete.

Spire Bounty Office


(I don't know if I can format only a part of the text)

.

And have a reference of rules to decide this by. So it still
would require some form of law Cabal.

Loosen up the laws a little. (i.e. corpse and pit looting
shouldn't be against the law in this case.)

Have the game place the bounty in an automated fashion, not
some retard standing around passing out flags.

Anyone actually in 'the bounty hunter cabal' would be able to
have powers related to tracking down those listed for the
bounties, not actual combat or maladictions.

Finally, uncaballeds should be able to collect on the bounties
(if only for the fact that they will hunt bounties in cities
and put bounties on their own heads.) Different laws broken
will have a different amount added to the bounty, but
furthermore the more laws broken will geometrically increase
your bounty. Thus if you're a pit looting whore you'll have a
small bounty. Looting corpses, small bounty. Stealing, medium
bounty. Serial killer? Huge bounty. On occasion the rewards
should (by imm change only) become gear that is, at most, as
good as what you would find outside of explore areas. That
probably means at most average 25 weapons, +50 hp gear or
saves gear, racial specific gear, minor healing progs etc.
Essentially they can be restrung versions of current limited
gear to start, that are made orderly only, and unique versions
can be created in the future.

The plus side to this is you eliminate experience penalty for
breaking the law. There is no way to get away with the law
other than killing your pursuers, or grouping with others that
have relatively large bounties on their heads. Thieves will
naturally get larger bounties than other classes. The
Anti-hero edge will become very valuable to those in this
bounty hunting cabal.

The minus side to this is, this entire idea probably falls
through due to a lack of playerbase to populate pk ranges with
10+ players 24/7. It will also likely skew the playerbase
further neutral/evil which the imms are trying to prevent.
(and in doing so are encouraging such griefing behavior such
as bothering lowbie evils trying to rank, out of range
healing, free gear to people who otherwise couldn't request
it, large ganks etc.) The bounty hunting cabal will by it's
very nature, become a veteran-based cabal like Battle is for
the most part, as opposed to giving newbies the ability to
ruin someone's day for doing what the freaking MUD was made
for, relatively unrestricted PK.

for every game hour they remain wanted to increase the bounty
payout.  500 for the original bounty that increases by 100
copper or so every real life hour of being wanted.  I like the
idea, I'd like for bounty to be used more.

I calculated it a bit further and it turned out you'd get 25
million coppers for someone who's been wanted for the 30rd
time. I guess that's a bit much :)

But ofcourse that was just to get the idea across.

it would require a tweak on being wanted. What about those
WANTED-only edges I heard discussed here? :) Also, I'd say
non-Tribs should not hunt these people in protected cites
--they get no bounty and would get WANTED themselves altho the
original target's flag would be gone too...

I think it would be cool to have this sort of thing.  You
could have rogue bounty hunters who will break the law in
protected cities and will skirt any possible attempt to get
caught just for the sake of getting payouts.  Maybe these
people get a reduced payout, or have to pay "bounty
fee's" (10 percent of the bounty collected) or something
but I think it would add unique roles to the game