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Bounties
Kresslack
Florida, United States
So most cities have a sort of unofficial bounty project run by Projects and confirmed by a peer based verification system of deathsights. I would like to suggest a more official and more easily verifiable approach to this. It's simple enough: someone becomes enough of a pest to an organisation for that org to offer a bounty for said person. Now, the org would have the ability to offer it to the public, or to restrict it to their membership (i.e. a city could make a bounty for a notorious city enemy only available to citizens to claim and redeem).
Bounties would work based on two-tiered system: Wanted & Most Wanted. Wanted criminals would be those such as horse thieves (uncultured swine that they are), thieves in general, and other petty offenses, deflowering the local Baron's maiden daughter, etc. Most Wanted would be for more serious crimes, such as murder, defilement, raiding, etc. Bounties offered for those of a higher wanted nature would obviously net a higher reward potential than lower criminals, but completing enough lower tiered bounties could still add up; risk is rewarded, however.
So you check the bounty listings available, and you see that a reward for bringing Naga Florentino to justice for the assassination of some Prelate or Bishop has been offered. You accept the bounty (which others can still claim and complete before you, pushing towards a competitiveness) and set off to pin down a Naga, maybe torment him a bit by hovering the point of his own dirk dangerously close to his exposed eye all the while feigning clumsiness (nothing personal @Florentino, you just seemed like a good person to use as an example for a person of interest!). Don't have too much fun, though, because you have to claim your reward, and your job is only half done.
Bounties would require no less than the head of the wanted to be confirmed and promptly rewarded. You could turn in the full dead body, should you be able to secure it and turn it in quick enough, but collecting the head as evidence that the nuisance has been dispatched off seems simple enough. First person to turn in proof of completion gets the reward, simple as that.
Denizens that already exist, such as the Ratcatchers throughout each city could be used for the purpose as well, or new denizens can be introduced to each city for this specific purpose. Rewards can be offered in two ways as I see:
- City official who posts the bounty sets a lump sum reward for the wanted, gold is given to the bounty handler to be rewarded to the first person to accept and complete the bounty.
- Bounties work on a point based system, the end of each year which the top three ranked bounty hunters are rewarded on a gold per point accumulated basis.
These are, of course, open for discussion; I'm simply going off what I've seen of bounty projects to date. Some examples of associated commands to operate bounties:
- BOUNTY LIST: Standing before the bounty handler, you would request to see a list of the current bounties and be shown the current wanted.
- BOUNTY ACCEPT <#>: Accept a listed bounty.
- BOUNTY COMPLETE <#>: Head of the criminal in hand, you would be able to complete the bounty and claim your reward *(providing another bounty hunter has not completed it before you).
- BOUNTY RANKINGS: See how you stack up against other bounty hunters in the realm.
**NOTE: Only one bounty would be able to be set for a person at any given time for the same offense. This is to say, if Person kills a citizen of a city, then a couple of days later commits theft from a citizen of that same city, two bounties could be issued for the separate offenses. Until those bounties are accepted and completed, they will remain and no more for the same offense can be issued (though the reward amount can be increased as incentive towards completion).
As it stands now, bounties tend to be issued for individuals with no pre-determined expectation of -when- these bounties will no longer be valid, which leads to multiple slaying of an individual for one crime. Thus, only being able to issue one bounty per person per offense would give a clear indication of -why- the person is being hunted and that they can reasonably expect such pursuits to end once they've either paid their fines to the city they wronged, or the bounty has been collected and turned in, similar to contracts. Basically, once completed, there's no reason to continue killing that individual under the premises of criminal acts, which have already been resolved.
I think this sort of system would be easier for city officials to manage as well as more encouraging for people of those cities to participate in. Of course, if you have thoughts or comments, please feel to leave them below, whether to voice your support, objection, alternatives, or slight adjustments to the above proposed.
TL;DR: Add an official bounty systems where bounties are posted by city, accepted by city bounty hunters, and heads are returned as verification of completion in order to receive a reward.
9
Comments
I vaguely remember something about heads being turned in for something, and a lot of people complaining that it would make some classes that don't actually produce heads off their kills complaining. Vivisection, tzantza, cleaving, incinerate, aurification, maybe jack-in-the-box and broken star (note: I'm not certain about most of these).
It would be much easier to skip the head part, and go straight into the same sort of mechanism Marks operate off of.
This is a good idea, also from the point of view that sometimes people post the bounties and you see them when you log on, not knowing that it's already been claimed once or twice or whatever. So the guy ends up getting potentially griefed - to a degree. This way, when it's completed, anybody else that claimed it would be notified that the bounty has expired.
After seeing the City Crimes thing implemented, I don't see why this couldn't be as well.
It's a really cool idea.
Well the head part is the easiest, most effective verification I could think of, that doesn't require a peer based deathsight verification. There aren't that many skills that prevent you from decapitating, and as a bounty hunter one would need to be aware of the need to bring back proof you killed them, and work towards completing the bounty within the requirements to get rewarded.
I am pretty sure this is exactly the system that was in place before Marks were introduced?
Regarding that, there's absolutely no reason that you couldn't add a mechanic in to CUT HAND FROM <bountytarget> (or similar) to get the proof you need to turn in.
My point was, you don't need evidence of a kill for verification, the verification is coded into the kill itself. Accept a bounty, you're flagged as hunting that person down. You get a kill on that person, you get the reward, just like a Mark does. Mark's don't need to "verify" the completion of their contracts with someone watching deathsight or with a decapitated head (or any other severed body part), so why would a bounty hunter?
Also, this fixes the problem of people who might kill and decapitate a person, hand the head/hand/whatever to someone else, and that person claims a bounty they don't deserve. I'm not sure why someone would do this, but it's possible, and likely not very desirable by whatever city wants to implement it.
But yeah, typing that all out, this is almost exactly what a Mark does, except for individual offences rather than city offences. Maybe extend the Mark system, create a list of "open" contracts that a Mark in that city can accept, paid for out of the city coffers?
Bolded doesn't mean it wouldn't be fun or worthwhile to add to bounties. Italicized isn't actually a problem.
I got issued for this, and lost. Bounties are not legal. People can raid your city, and you can't touch them after the raid save if they are infamous or mark.
I think part of the point of this is to make such a thing legal. Kind'of like witnessing a shrine, but think more like witnessing a blown up room, or something of that nature, if I understand correctly.
Since everyone absolutely hands down refuses to use the war system, I think something that legitimizes post-raid responsibility for one's actions is a great idea. Personally, it never made any sense to me that a group of Ashtani raiders can come into our city, kill a dozen citizens without any actual provocation, destroy a room or three, then claim that nobody has any cause to attack them 5 minutes later after they all leave.
Bounties would help a lot with this, not just for Targossas, but for all cities. Or we could just fix the war system and use that instead.
I wouldn't mind bounties, but only if marks can carry them out. Otherwise you have people just going around ganking people just because they got put on a list. Thats just like going after city enemies just because they are enemied.
I think it's fine if "cause" for any official bounty system works the way it does now; a person being on a bounty list doesn't give you a valid reason to attack them, it just gives you an incentive/reward for killing them when you already have a valid reason. Then there's no need to limit how many times it can be turned in or automatically remove someone from the list, and it shouldn't lead to griefing any more than it does now.
"One-time" bounties would serve a different purpose (closer to orgs being able to hire marks) than the player-run bounty systems I've seen.
It'd give people away to retaliate for raiding without just having a blank check with no limit. That's what I was trying to say above, but it was poorly worded. One death for one raid is perfectly reasonable.
Now, it'd be neat if the bount was open to all marks (and/or bounty hunters and/or soldiers), but could only be completed once. Once it was fulfilled, it would go away.
Really? It has been a norm for quite some time now that all participants of offensive actions are hunted down later.
People have been pretty cool about it (mostly because 90% of raiders are marks anyways), but it's still issuable. I'd imagine the reason for this is because there's no limit on how much retaliation is acceptable, and there's no way for people to tell how many times someone has already been killed for this, or an accepted time-frame.
Alternatively just rework the writ system and let any org leader hire mark (of the same city, but random from that cities list of marks) for them. So that would cover cities, houses and orders.
Artemis says, "You are so high maintenance, Tharvis, gosh."
Tecton says, "It's still your fault, Tharvis."
They were removed because a way of resolving cause was introduced instead. Bounties were incompatible with the evolving cause system. With the reduction of the PK/causes system to "get some valid IC justification" I can see it not causing too many problems, but on the whole it does open up a system of abuse. You could justify the kill on "there was a bounty placed on player X's head" but does that mean that the person who placed the bounty is ultimately responsible for the death? People with authority who simply dislike someone could place unlimited bounties on them. Generally IRE (atleast in m Achaean experience) tends to err on the side of caution in these situations, making system protection measures against abuse, as in the writ system.
If there were heavy handed admin response to abuse, I could see something like this happening, but that is generally not the way that it works. It is much more likely that such an abuse prone system would never be reimplemented than admin would step in and as such it will be a legacy of the past.
And yet they are still run as projects in nearly every city. Did you not catch that part of the OP? Cities like Ashtan, Mhaldor, and Shallam/Targossas have had active bounty projects since about 2007 iirc, which usually offer those who do well a chance to net more credits during city credit sales. My issue with that is, basically there's no limit enforced or suggested on how many times you are expected to kill someone who there is a bounty offered for, especially if they are worth a lot of points. Bounty kills can be confirmed via raids, duels, ganks, etc; it doesn't matter. My solution to this is to offer the same sort of program, but with more reasonable restrictions on -how- they're completed and to what extent they're pursued. This way, cities can still offer bounties from people who constantly cause trouble and commit crimes, but that person won't be harassed indefinitely by multiple people on a general basis.
Also, if you have accepted a bounty, and someone else completes it before you do, you get a notification warning you that that person is no longer Huntable.
I don't think this needs to be restricted to marks either, because it feels like an entirely separate thing.
I also think there will be several rogue players who don't want to be tied down to any org who will find RPing a bounty hunter fun.
I think this idea adds a lot, without many, if any, drawbacks.
The flavour value is worth serious consideration even on it's own.