[Explanation] Murdering and the Bounty System

[Jack]

When a player kills another player who is innocent to them, the murder and bounty system is triggered.


Murders, Ping Pongs and Murderer Status

• A player who has 5 or more long term murder counts is considered a murderer. Their name will appear in red and they will be attackable by anyone. A murderer will be killed by guards on sight when entering the protection of the town guards.
  
  
• A player with 5 or more long term murder counts is considered a murderer. Long term kill counts decay every 40 hours and the player can become "innocent" again by dropping below 5 long term kill counts.
  
  
• A player with 5 or more short term murder counts is in "stat loss". Upon resurrection, a character in stat loss will receive a permanent penalty to their skills and stats of 9-20%, depending on how many short term murders the character has. Short term kill counts decay every 8 hours, when the player drops below 5 short term murders, they are no longer in stat loss.
  
  
• A player who goes from Blue -> Red notoriety (innocent to murderer), has their "Ping Pong" counter increased by 1. A player who has 5 or more "Ping Pongs" is known as "perma red", and will never lose their murderer status even if they drop below 5 long term kills. Long and short term kill counts still apply to the player.
  

Reporting another player for murder
When you are killed, you will receive a gump that will look something like follows. Clicking "Okay" on this gump will report the character for murder, regardless of whether a bounty is applied or not.

Paying a bounty for the murderer's head
If the following conditions are true, you will be able to put a bounty on the murderer's head:

• The person who killed you is, or will become, a murderer after you report them for murder (they must have at least 4 kills).
  
  
• You have gold in your bank box.
  

A murder gump like the below will appear. If you do not wish to enter a bounty, simply click okay without entering a gold amount (or enter 0). This will report the character for murder, without applying a bounty. If you do not wish to report a murder, press cancel. If you wish to enter a bounty, enter the amount and press okay, and a bounty will be added to the murderer's head. This will take the gold for the bounty directly from your bank box.
Before clicking okay:

The murderer's message after you click okay:

How to claim a bounty
In order to claim a bounty, the murderer must be killed and their head chopped off. The head is then turned into the town guards to claim the bounty.
In the screenshot below, we see EvilMurderer is on the bounty board for 120,000 gold pieces. (thanks to Blaise for help with testing)

A bounty hunter sees this message and decides to kill EvilMurderer. The murderer is killed and their head chopped off, then it is turned into the town guards by drag-dropping the head onto the guard. The bounty is cleared and the bountied player removed from the bounty board. The gold for the head is deposited into the bounty hunter's bank account.

Caveats

• Bounties will decay if the murderer has not been bountied in 14 days. The bounty still exists, it just will not appear on the bounty board or be claimable until the murderer is bountied again.
  
  
• After 1 day real time, any head that has been cut off can no longer be turned in for a bounty reward.
  
  
• Entering a bounty which is longer than the max length of an integer will result in no bounty being posted (eg, 99999999999). Otherwise, if you try bounty more than what is in your bank account, it will take every last piece of gold from your bank.