It takes a lot less thought and work to hunt if animals are abundant than if they are scarce. However, because in most muds experience only comes from offensive actions taken, the hunter gains experience points much more quickly if they hunt where it is easiest. This doesn't make sense. Moreover, it is biased towards brawling, rather than other types of problem-solving (including other types involving fighting).

What you might do instead is to create a system where players can choose a goal - or quest - and then get experience for fulfilling that goal, however they go about doing it. It could be something as simple as "kill deer," in which they don't get experience points until they kill any deer in the mud, or it could be something more difficult or complex.

The key is that their experience gaining would rely heavily on them achieving that goal. Anything else they do between making their goal and achieving it (or changing it) would get them few or no experience points, because their goal is what their attention is focused on.

The number of experience points they get could then be determined by how long it took them to achieve their goal, how far they traveled in the process, as well as the type of mob they killed if such a thing was their goal.

Depending on the factors you use, you could allow for a lot of variation in playing styles. Moreover, the staff of your mud could put less time into determining what should be the proper experience points given by a particular mob given what it takes to kill it. Much of that would be placed on the player's shoulders.

This is a good point and one i whole heartedly agree with. How I planned to use this same idea is to have a "quest" required for each level. So it doesn't matter if you make all the experience from H&S or not. You still have to do a quest to go up a level. There will be autoquests for the first 5-10 levels. This includes things like:

Find and Kill
Find and Capture
Find and Deliver
Recieve and Deliver
Transport Message

The way our quest system works/will work. Is that when you get the quest, the target is generated then, and then stored in the game. The downside, and the realism is that if someone else kills that mob, or gets that object or anything like that, your quest is over, it's been foiled. So you either have to find the body if there still is one, maybe you have to mutilate it (Take an ear) or you have to start over. The actual number of exp isn't as important then, because the quest is still required. And you can't have more experience points than you need for your next level.