Coming Soon to a Bonepit Near You...

[Kotenku]

A pillar arises beside the Bonepit.

On it are scribed these words:  

In blood compose thine name upon this altar,
and know the Hunt thee join.

Great power and riches await the ruthless,
but be ware forever the Sport:
All Hunters know the fear of their blood
and that their lives are assuredly short
 

This is a scripted template applied to characters in the fashion of Covenants from the "-Souls" series, and I will adopt that term from here on.

Anyone may join this Covenant, regardless of race or class, though some factions might be leary of those who do.

Upon "signing" the altar, a message will be broadcast to all hunters currently in-game, and the PC will be given a unique, weightless token that drops on death. It might be an Ear (in homage to Diablo 2), or some other trophy appropriate to the covenant.

The PC's name will also be added to a list of names, sorted as most recent first, going back to the original name written. There will also be a list of PCs currently in game, and a number indicating how many trophies each holds. These details may only be viewable by a member of the Covenant

Members of the Covenant will have a tool by which to identify other members of the Covenant, but it must be used in person and at touch range (2.25meters), though the action does not actually require physical touch to apply. It may be used as a free action, and while in combat. It may be considered a supernatural ability, behaving like scent, but may be interpreted as a sixth sense, a precious stone, an instinct, intuition, or otherwise, within reasonable restrictions.

No hunter may have fewer than one trophy ((a few ways to handle this: make all items in the trophy shop cost at least 2 trophy points and immediately refund one if you hit 0... sounds buggy..., have "trophy points" be analogoues to favor, insubstantial, and favor points are just claimed by getting the killing blow on another Covenant PC))
All trophies held by a Hunter are forfeit to a victor on death.

Trophies may be redeemed in varying amounts to a Covenant-only shop, with larger trophy totals representing significant value, but smaller trophy totals being significant enough that foregoing them in favor of banking is a substantial risk.

One of the trophy-rewards is to hide from the Hunt, and have your name removed from the lists of all active Hunters for a period of time.
Another trophy-reward of considerably higher value is to immediately and permanently quit the Hunt, no longer be tracked, and no longer receive the benefits of the Covenant.
The Ultimate trophy is to be retired as a victor, and have a statue of yourself in your honor posted up in the Bonepit.

Additional flavor ideas:
    Each new Hunter is gifted with a class-appropriate gift of their choosing, which is undroppable, always-equipped, and has substantial damage vulnerabilities and damage immunities, plus class-appropriate effects.

    Monster PCs are automatically entered into this hunt. The exceptions are Were-creatures with the apped intention of remaining discreet, and generally more civil 'humanoid' types, eg genasi, tiefling, aasimar, etc. In other words, primarily the goblinoid, and reptilian races.
   
    Perhaps a special EXCEPTION to the PvP rule surrounding quest-areas. All members of the Covenant are known to all others, so everyone has a VERY GOOD reason to not trust questing with another one, and should not have the protection of it being a quest-area to reassure himself that he won't be murdered the instant his back is turned.

Managing bullshit:
    Stand-out concerns:
        "Feeding" - players generating characters to feed eachother. Apart from being desperately obvious to anybody that it's happening (it's a semi-public leaderboard, transparent to the DMs), it's also a ban-worthy offense on the same level as transferring items between characters. If problematic, could be handled by joining characters being limited to one per CD key per month.
       
        Single PCs dominating - That's the point though, to make legends of the certain characters who get the farthest in this challenge. The only way lower levels will ever get to team up is either having a high-level dominator to unite against, or one to unite UNDER. I'm talking about rival gangs grouping up around their powerful leaders and duking it out for survival in the apocalypse, like fucking Mad Max or something.
       
        Min-maxed/Dull PCs - Does EFU not have enough safeguards against that already? I don't know, I'm actually not sure how to deal with this one. I'd like to believe we're better than that, and that even the min-maxed builds are at least played right.
        Is there anything you fear more in-game than a group of min-maxed half-orcs roaming around looking to justify a fight?
       
        If it's not fair, it's more interesting
        That's been the secret motto of EFU for 10 years
       
        Nobody may coerce another into joining the covenant by force, for the immediate intention of murdering them and taking their trophy.
            Corollary: If you're going after somebody who isn't a Hunter just to make them a Hunter and take their trophy is called being a shitlord, not a villain.
           
        Any character may join the Covenant at any time (or level), but may have less favorable choices from the set of trophy-rewards and/or startup gifts (if included) if they join at higher levels.
       
Meta-justification:
    This is also something that would be good to have in place in times and seasons when DM attention is not very available,
        where PCs can go out and murder eachother in the wilds all they like, get rewarded for it, and then get on with playing
        Where PC watchers have criminal chasing to do, or become Hunters themselves, using their position and influence to exploit or murder weaker Hunters.
        Where gangs are incentivized to exist for survival, because death can finally be senseless, but still justified within our rules (a very clear and intentional 'Opt-in', with rewards commensurate to the risks).
   
   

[zDark Shadowz]

A kind of PvP-sign-up board huh?

The Bonepit might be a bit too close to Sanctuary, I think maybe stationing this at the Mound (which has 4 exit directions and Teleports unrestricted) might be better and prevent pillar-camping due to NPC 'protection'.

How about with that favour system, the items that are given and dropped we make it a bit simpler in terms of scripting -

Flag the token given initially as ownership to the player, if you use the unique power of your own token nothing happens, if you use the unique power of someone else's token that's when it is consumed and favour points added to your character in the Database.

Solves the potential favour store issue and simplifies a number of other processes. Never mind, killing blow to award favour as a DB seems the best option. Do need to make sure it works properly with the current subdual system though.

If we do it by CDKey then just make it that the character can't obtain favour from a CDKey they've obtained in the past.

How much of the scripting for this is already done, if any?

Maybe set up the favour to increase by +1 once a week after a certain amount of logged in playing time (no more than 1 hour without breaks) as a survival bonus, starting from the time they signed up (and they start at 0).

Then killing someone within the first 30min they signed up isn't rewarded, and letting people live to kill them later when they're more valuable, at the risk of them falling to someone else, would be encouraged as well.