RE: torture

[Foo <fooboy@laf.cioe.com>]

I'd suggest a new skill.  The way torture is written, it's entirely based
on physical pain.  Tweaking someone's mind is a completely different
school of thought.  Instead of figuring out where someone's pressure
points are by sticking needles in a slave, you would have to read up on
psychology and learn what makes people tick; the situation would always
change as well, since different people have different psyches.  Pressure
points are the same for everyone.   I'd probably set the base cost at
around 150 or so. Definitely make it based off of INT.  

"I am ready to meet my Maker.  Whether my Maker is ready for the ordeal of 
 meeting me is another matter entirely."

- Winston Churchill

On Wed, 8 Mar 2000, Brandon Stenger wrote:

> 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
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
>