[Molly]

Asking the players is of course the obvious thing to do, and a fact is that the entire system I described in my first post - (including the Killer flags) - was a proposition put together by our present PK players. Feelings and tempers sometimes run high in a mud, and there was a situation with a non-PK player that some of them were desperate to get at, and so the Killer Flag entered the suggestions.

However, the responses here and on TMC have made us all realize that the Killer Flag system - (which is a somewhat nostalgic relict from the stock Circle code) is not a good idea after all, and that it will be better to keep non-PK players totally protected by the code in the future too. So we'll just work on the other parts; a ranking system and whether you get to loot everything from the victim's corpse or just a few items.

One very good thing came out of our internal discussions however; a suggestion for a PK system where all players would fight on totally equal terms, and where only the personal PK skills and reflexes would count, not level, number of remorts or equipment. A totally new player would have the same chances as a 6 years veteran, as long as they had some PK experience from other Muds and had the time to get reasonably familiar with our skills and spells system. It would have to be run as a sort of Arena - we've already named it 'The Gladiator Pit' - but it's a system that is easy to code and as far as I can see totally foolproof. It seems to have great potential, and we aim to implement it as soon as possible.

I want to thank you all for the input, it has been really helpful to see opinions from people that are totally unbiased and detached from the internal politics of a Mud.