I was actually working on a similar idea as Dayz some years ago. The game was based on the idea of Karma. If you did good and negative Karma would work in your favour in several ways: Im just writing down general ideas here: Gain Karma by: Working in groups (+1 to stay within 30 m for 10 min) Avoiding to kill/hurt any living creature (No positive nor negative effect) Sharing items (+1 for food and water) Healing or reviving (+10 blood transfusion and revival) Donating money for the Dayz project :D (+10 for 1 euro) Loose karma by: Killing Zombies (-1 karma), Killing bandits (-2 karma), Killing animals (-3 karma), Killing survivors (-7 karma) Loot body of somebody you shot (-10 karma) Karma may affect your: 1) Emotions Negative emotions: would increase your adrenaline level and make you more and more paranoid and nervous. You will be sleep deprived due to restless sleeps and lack of rest. Due to high stresslevels and adrenaline the body produces large portions of pheromones that can be detected by sensitive individuals. Which means that other players may intutively sense a presence by increased heartbeat. Animals will run from the area, and zombies will attack at a longer distance. A stressed person will be less sensitive to the world - and loose contact with his sensitivity to dangers. Positive emotions will first of all counter the effect of negative emotions. In addition it will increase your mental clarity and your intuition. You will have an hightened sense of awareness - and be able to detect dangers early. Others will sense your warm compassionate nature and not attack you. 2) Appearance Negative emotions will have its impact your appearance. You will physically look aggressive, cold, stressed or fearfull. Negative also change how you physically animate your self. Tention will make you move odd and perverted. 3) Loot In Buddhist philosophy - all positive experience\s is due to well intentioned actions in the past. Because you helped somebody you may later experience some type of support or help. This way Karma can highly affect the loot you find. Positive karma will let you find more useful items, whilst negative karma will reduce the chance to find loot - which again means that you must kill more - to gain more - which turns into a negative spiral. 4) Health Quote Wikipedia:: Constant stress causes continual release of various stress hormones which can cause: A depletion of energy storage Stress-induced hypertension Effects on metabolic processes Ulcers (digestion) Hampered growth Decrease in testosterone levels in males and irregular menstrual cycles in females. Increased likelihood of infectious diseases. Since negative behaviour often have a tendency to lead to negative emotions and thinking - it is likely that the player character will suffer from the above effects. * He must eat and drink more often due to limited energy storage and bad metabolism. * Hes immunesystem will be weaker with a lower threshold for catching diseases. Im sure many of these suggestons have been posted before. It might be that its too complex as mentioned here- but I beleive that even a couple of these suggestions may be able to solve the whole skin problem.: