Andrew Doull over at ASCII Dreams, a developer of roguelikes, spurs an interesting discussion revolving around the decision to implement monster surrender in their upcoming games.

Now this AI could also be used to allow a monster to surrender to you if you have sufficiently injured it. Unfortunately, this is directly contrary to a lot of the design and game play for a roguelike – you basically want to be able to kill stuff – so I’m interested in whether having monsters surrender could ever be an interesting choice. Do you know of any games where the surrender mechanic does work successfully?

As you know I am a fan of choice in games, I can honestly say that this intrigues me.  I can’t think of a single game I’ve played that has allowed me to accept the surrender of any enemy (outside of a plot-driven sequence), and it’s interesting to imagine how it would work in practice. How would gamers react when suddenly given an option beyond the simple kill or be killed we’ve almost always known?