Playing Honor and Intrigue, a three musketeersish system.

One of my players had taken “tag” which allows a character to ‘tag’ their mark on something/someone. Like Zorro putting his Z mark on a bad guy, and thus refuces the morale of the opponent.

The PCs get into a fight on the flagship of a Pirate fleet, which they are supposed to be using purely as a transport to get them to the next island to continue the main plot. The PCs are clearly outclassed and outnumbered, and I give them 3 or 4 opportunities to talk the conflict down. But they insist on combat. And it starts going pretty well as could be expected.

However one PC (the weakest fighter) is in a duel with the NPC pirate captain who has much superior combat stats. The pirate captain who is described as fighting barechested. The PC is Spanish and knowing he can’t outfight the NOC and just goes straight for tags. He gets 4 tags in (each tag is a higher difficulty than the last) and stands up from the table and says, “Good sir, Llow me to introduce myself as Juan, but I will give you my full name - Juan Frederico Montana de Suiza to wear forever if you do not surrendur”.

My NPC suffers catastrophic morale failure, ends up surrenduring ship and crew to the PCs. The PCs decide to give up on the plot and become pirates. Keeping the NPC on as ship”s master.