I'm just going to be lazy and dredge up my old response to a two year old corpsehiding thread.
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If you have any inclination to believe that your corpse is in a spot that is violating the rules (or, indeed, the corpse of someone you know is in such a spot), then you should contact a DM. They have the capability to easily identify such things and will take steps immediately to resolve it. The results of their labor will most likely not be made known to you - but they will look, and unless we're accusing DMs of being a secret cabal bent against certain players, they will make sure things are above board.
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As a more general address to the topic at hand, I won't pretend that corpse-hiding is a perfect solution. I also won't pretend that the negative experiences people have shared or implied are invalid. However, I do think that some people want a system where they always have the option to say "Time out! PvP is one of my red lights!" and frankly that's as damaging to a shared narrative as people getting punked and dumped for thin reasoning (whichyoucanreporttoaDM).
This issue is a part of the nature of being a large-scale shared narrative. Smaller communities can get away without systems like this because all of the players are reasonably able to be in touch with each other at all times, and those small communities typically have a very concrete shared mindset. I've seen enclaves on large, relatively consequence-free servers that emulate this as a necessity, while the rest of said server generally continues either in rather light storylines (because consequence is 100% at player whim) or what I call the "feedback loop of conflict", best described by Chumbawumba's 1997 hit Tubthumping.
"I get knocked down, but I get up again
You are never gonna keep me down"
For us, there need to be tools to provide an actual cessation/delay of conflict, to prevent the feedback loop. Some large communities do this via a "New Life Rule", whereby you can't simply stand up after getting knocked down and go to your local garda/newspaper/do-gooder and say "Here is my 20/20 description of the people who killed me and the dark secrets that I uncovered that I was killed for knowing" - some do it by having a system where after a certain number of deaths, you're just dead, incentivizing de-escalation. PotM's death system is how we handle it. And it could be better! As EO says, he's working on some changes.
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Without some means to ensure de-escalation, or to cease/delay conflict, stories very quickly become slug-fests that don't make much sense and take on a tinge of absurdity. Characters trend towards open disregard of persons and groups that should warrant a degree of care in dealing with and death cheapens (and it's not exactly expensive right now). Risk creates good stories - it's why people like Game of Thrones, Martin manages to make his characters feel like they don't have plot-armor, even if it's not true.
...a brief tl;dr.
- Report it to the DM if you suspect a body has been hidden in an illegal location, your's or others'
- Risk creates good stories - look at Game of Thrones
- Some system for de-escalation, cessation, or delay of conflict needs to exist to give stories meaning
- Opting-in to conflict can be done in more ways than you might think
- If you're being hunted, act like it
- Be excellent to one another
Now for some hot modern takes for 2022.
I think that there is some level of echo-chamber style stoking of fears that has led to people turning PvP into a Prisoner's Dilemma, and then failing to actually solve the Prisoner's Dilemma in the way best for the group (one would hope to prioritize the group over the individual in
collaborative storytelling, after all).
I reiterate that illegal corpsehiding does not happen nearly as much as is purported (or corpsehiding in general, even, though it
does feel like people are quicker to jump to it nowadays). DMs check if you ask - for illegal corpsehiding to be an epidemic, you'd need an almost fully corrupted DM team, and that's a bit too much of a conspiracy theory for me to buy.
The most important function of corpsehiding, IMO, and the most valid time to use it, is information control. Any idea proposed to "fix" corpsehiding needs to not just completely stack the deck against espionage roleplay. That's my main concern with things like a "grievous wound" system - that stops direct mechanical confrontation, but not immediately running to the garda/the underworld and smothering whatever plotting you stumbled on in the cradle, despite getting caught by the plotters.
The second most important function is enforcing some level of gravity to actions. Though it is technically reportable on Arelith, people snidely/indirectly brushing off getting their skull repeatedly turned concave is one of the things I always chafed with there. A bit of a double-edged sword in some respects, but we roleplayers have a tendency to get precious with our characters, and we've
all seen the unflappable, wise-cracking, pun-in-the-face-of-cosmic-horror type a few more times than is probably reasonable.
Vaulting is not done trivially. To my understanding it's more or less an
at least "three strikes you're out" sort of deal, barring exceptional circumstances. How often are you being executed by the garda?
I do not think the Ba'al Verzi would fly under modern sentiment, even if they were active (or existed?). Forced closure at the hands of DMs kicks up dust, corpsehiding gets a thread every six months, vaulting is the boogeyman, there's no way a Verzi hit would generate anything less than a tantrum (even though, to my remembrance, the price of a failed Verzi hit is the closure of the assassin themselves).