[MUD-Dev] PK / anti PK / justice?

[J. Coleman]

Okay, take the title with a grain of salt: I don't want to argue the
merits, just implementation. In my game world / rulesystem[1], PK is
(and in fact must be) possible, and in some cases encouraged, depending
on circumstances[2]. However, I want to afford new or lower-level
players some protection from random violence, and so we (the group
responsible for creating the rules) have developed a few approaches to
limiting / punishing PK. 

1. Characters have a limited number of lives, starting at 5 for a
brand-new PC, and increasing occasionally as the PC advances in level.
Lives will always stay below a predefined maximum of 10 (15 in the live
game). NPCs do not have this ability, due to the in-game mechanics of
reincarnation.

2. Characters (and monsters) must explicitly be "killed" via a
killing-blow that can only be delivered when the victim has run out of
health. If they remain at 0 health for a couple of minutes, they will
regain consciousness at 1 health.

3. No experience is given for a PKill[3].

4. Upon reincarnation, players lose one of their lives, and a random
number is produced to simulate any side-effects, most notably A) the
player gains that life back, or B) the player receives "revenant"
status. Revenants are only created in PK situations[4], and players are
given a choice not to become a revenant (in case they were RP'ing the
encounter, or whatever). The revenant is granted additional attributes,
health, and abilities that pretty much guarantee they can roll up and
smoke anything in the game. This is countered by the restriction that
they are ONLY able to kill the PKer who murdered them, and cannot take
any action other than the hunting and killing of that person[5].

In light of the above, I have spoken with several of my prospective
admins, and they seem to think that the above considerations will not
discourage PKillers sufficiently. Given the amount of experience they
collectively have, I agree. My question, such as it is, is this: where
can I go from here in creating a believable and effective justice
system?

I want something that preferably has the following qualities:

   *In-game. Something that needs little to no maintenance by admins.
   *Mechanically sound. Must be an in-game reason for the system to work
the way it does. 
    (although I daresay we could fudge this one if need be...)
   *Fair. Should hopefully allow for accidents to happen without too
much derailment.

I had thought about adding a spell that allows one to "speak with the
dead" and thereby discover what has killed any particular creature
(really only PCs or plot NPCs), and perhaps a very demanding or
expensive counterspell that would obscure one's identity if an
assassination needed to occur for plot reasons. Has anyone had any
experience implementing / running a similar system? Any comments would
be appreciated!

        -Justin

[1] The MUD will be based on an unnamed (as of yet we havent thought of
anything :) live-action RPG we're developing.

[2] Some NPCs exist only to cause problems for the players, and must be
assassinated. Also, some players will need to be killed, i.e. if they
cross the wrong NPC or guild. We want politics to work somewhat
realistically, after all...

[3] Experience and money are separate in our system, and experience
cannot be taken by anything short of plot interdiction. They *may*
obtain experience for *roleplaying* the killing, but not for the kill
itself.

[4] Revenants may or may not be created. Magical interdiction (I love
that word) is possible and may prevent the player from reincarnation
totally, may prevent any undead status from affecting that player, or
any number of other reasons.

[5] Of course, they can also stomp on anyone who gets in the way while
they are following their prime directive...



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