Surrender — new rule for Agora
Following Shreyas’ comments and some poking and prodding of my own, I realized that I’d left out explicit Surrender rules, and attached a few little bits and pieces there that should make things a little more interesting.
The following new section, and a couple smaller fixes, are included in the Playtest document.
Surrender
Scenes end when one side decides not to continue and surrenders. Players may only surrender between exchanges of Challenges and Stands; players may not surrender instead of taking a Stand. When a player surrenders, they lose their stakes but do get to narrate a cliffhanger to the end of the scene.
If a player decides to surrender when it is their turn to make a Challenge, they may attempt to gain a Surrender Epiphany. This is an advantage to be used later that the character is able to extract from the conflict despite losing the stakes. The surrendering player rolls their Burnout pool. If any of the dice roll ones, the player may keep one of them to use as an epiphany in a later scene.
If the player is the last to surrender out of a conflict, they earn the right to narrate a cliffhanger, a turnabout at the end of the scene that introduces a surprise or new element to the scene. A good cliffhanger suggests later scenes and conflicts. Cliffhangers cannot negate the stakes that the other side wins, but they can complicate them.
Example: Surrender
Jason can see that he’s going to run out of dice if he tries to push through another round. He does not think that he’ll be able to get Nathan to roll in his fourth ideal, so he decides to surrender. He waits until the round is over before he surrenders so he can try for an epiphany.
For the epiphany, he rolls his Burnout pool, which consists of a 1d4, a 1d6, and 2d8. He rolls two ones and keeps one of them as an epiphany. The die is recorded on the obstacle sheet for when the Horizon’s Teeth is used again in a later scene. It might be used to narrate a collapse of mining tunnels, some misplaced explosives, or similar advantage.
As his cliffhanger, he narrates that from their vantage atop the mountain range, the miners spot smoke from a settlement’s fires off in the distance. They have neighbors — and judging by the amount of noise they’ve been making, the neighbors know they’re there.