RE: torture

["Brandon Stenger" <bh010296@email.msn.com>]

Just like Andy, I have always ruled that interrogation and torture
were the same skill. However with a re-reading of the actual skill
in the manual, it is clear that Torture is intended to inflict pain.

"Causing pain is a fine skill to reduce the strongest man to a state
of submission."

Either we need a new skill, or as Andy suggests, a re-write of the
skill. I'm really not sure which would be best. A separate Interrogation
skill would have to be significantly different from Torture to warrant
its inclusion in the manual. Now, I would have said that since the ends
of the two skills are the same, there is no need to create a new skill.

But how many GM's have had a player use Torture purely for fun, not to
extract information from a prisoner? Even if you say no to that question, 
certainly you can see the possibility.

What does everyone think? Re-write or a new skill?

Brandon

-----Original Message-----
From: Andrew Luers [mailto:orc_food@yahoo.com]
Sent: Tuesday, March 07, 2000 11:01 PM
To: Benjamin Austin
Cc: gmlist@cioe.com
Subject: Re: torture




   Hi BJ,
      The torture and interogation are the same thing.
  I amout the skill is very badly worded as is. Many
GM's let you use the skill with out pain. Some give a
bonus for pain -- with death, without infor., for the
target. I think this would be a good one to bring to
Dan to fix the worlding on.

   Andrew L.
  
--- Benjamin Austin <jedi@ecn.purdue.edu> wrote:
> 
> While we're talking about some skills, I've got a
> character that has, on
> occassion, the need to extract information from
> people without having to
> hurt them.  Call it... an interogation.  Now, the
> torture skill does
> permit this not-so-free exchange of knowledge but
> there is no skill to
> allow a player to gather the information from an NPC
> or PC without that
> physical harm.  
> 
> Now, I'm not looking for a way around me just not
> being able to think
> of the right questions.  Rather, I'm looking for a
> skill that reflects the
> tatics used in an interogation.  Some of those
> tatics involve "mind games"
> or other attempts to get the person to trip up and
> devulge some
> information.  Other tatics employ the use of
> discomfort (which, in
> fairness, can be viewed as causing "pain") like the
> denial of
> water, the abundance of heat in a room, etc.
> 
> It has been suggested to me that I simply use the
> torture skill which has
> the same end result; just uses a different path.  Is
> this
> something that will generally be accepted by other
> GMs?  Would the  
> resistance check be harder to not harm the target or
> to simply imply pain?
> Or, is an interogation that much different than
> torture that it should be
> a separate skill in and of its own?
> 
> BJ
> 
> 
> 
>