Does anybody here have any stories of using torture to interrogate NPCs, or PCs? if so, please share them. And try to keep the troll sodomy to a minimum .

Truthfully, I've never been in a situation where torture was required.

Granted, I've made some NPCs think I was going to, but I've never, in character, had the need to resort to torture.

-Siege

Had one nasty case of intimidation involving the promise of a blowtorch, aided by stepping on a wound, but that's about it. Some of my players once broke some fingers and applied bleach to a guy's face before kiling him, but that's about as bad as it got. It's pretty tought to torture someone. Not many characters have had it in them.

I know it's taking the easy way out, but if you've got the mojo to sling without drain, a combination of high-force Agony and Chaos can make anyone's life a living hell. It also works well when there's an onlooker; when the nine-foot Troll is writhing on the ground screaming and retching up anything in his stomach, are you going to keep your mouth shut when the man asks you a question?

~J

Lol i suppose torture could work but as you say not many characters tend to want to do it in any rpg (me talking from dnd experience but the theme and message is the same)

Hmmm the ways of magical torture? I like the sound of that.

Hot potato and a piece of metal illusioned to look like it's glowing hot can really make people question their sanity after a few days without sleep. Put it in their hand, force their hand closed (though leave LOS somehow), wait for sufficient pain, then take it away. If you're quick, cast an illusion of horrible burns and then drop it when they aren't paying attention.

I get these ideas randomly, so I'll probably be making a lot of short posts.

~J

The first game I was ever in ended with the troll biting the fingers off of this corper dude, one by one by one... It was rather funny... That was 7 years ago..

*sigh*

My PCs do it the old fashion way... serious stun damage. If the guy is seriously stunned, his Willpower roll should fail.

Who needs torture when they have Mind Probe?

Mind Probe works better with torture.

Actually everything goes better with torture.

More ideas:

Keep someone for a few months, sustained solely through periodically-recast Nutrition spells. The spell specifically states that it doesn't relieve feelings of hunger or thirst, just the actual need.

Keep someone in a totally dark room. Every so often cast Flash in. Staple eyelids open if required.

Foreboding on a room with the prisoner. Leave them in there for a few weeks. Make sure you take them out to question before they crack completely.

~J

Edit: Fortune, you're missing the point. Mind Probe is less satisfying.

Repeated Alter Memory spells... actually, this one works better if the person isn't a captive. Sneak in at night, cast, have them deal with the altered memories the next day ("But you said he was a Fuchi suit so it was okay for me to bring my deck!" "I told you specifically that he was Renraku and not to bring anything with Fuchi's label anywhere near the meet."). Continue until life is destroyed.

~J

Problem is torture doesn't work. It is completely unreliale. people in pain will tell you whatever they think you want to hear, even if they have to make ut up, just to get the pain to stop. Or by the time they tell you the real answer they have told you so many lies trying to get you to stop you have no idea what the truth is.

Er, I think most people will drop the cunning routine as soon as the prospect of their face getting burnt off comes up.

Oh yeah, and the first person who can guess the movie reference from the topic title gets a cookie.

Again, it doesn't matter what the person you're doing it to tells you. The person you ask questions is the person being tortured's partner who is watching it all.

~J

Enie Menie Miney Moe, where can my rubber glove possibly go?

One of my players built a torturer right out of the gate. Her backstory was she was a chemestry student at the UW, and ended up having to run the shadows before the Tuition Monster ate her. (alot more to it, but for the sake of simplicity...) She took alot of knowledge skills in things like Herbal Intoxicants, hallucinagenic chemical compounds, stuff like that. Mind Probe is fun (almost as fun as anal probe), but tying someone to a chair and slowly brainfragging them does have its entertaining qualities.

I think the sick part is that she went the voodoo path and picked Ghede as her totem. Can you guess where her sense of humor kicks in?

If you've got karma to burn, Quicken a high-force Chaos spell on someone and release them in downtown Seattle. There's always the possibility that someone will realize what's going on before the person gets themselves killed, but the odds are very much not in their favour...

Note: even better if you tell them beforehand.

~J

You know, this thread reminds me of something I read once. I stumbled across it while surfing the Web, but unfortunately I can't remember where it was.

Group of PCs--a racist, nationalistic Elf Adept/assassin, a Human Adept, and an Ork Streetsam, IIRC, although how a racist Elf from Tir Tairngire (I think) ended up on a runner team which wasn't composed entirely of Elves is beyond me-- were paid by a corporate type to grab an NPC researcher from a rival corp and put the squeeze on him for some information on his employer's latest secret project.

The scene opens with the researcher waking up after being kidnapped (the ol' Narcoject pistol loaded with Gamma Scopolamine gag, I think), and discovering that he's in a hotel room, tied to a chair, with three very nasty-looking Shadowrunners looking him over like a pride of lions on a fresh kill.

Adept: "We know who you are, where you work, and all about the top-secret project you're working on. Our employer wants us to find out all we can about that project. Now will you tell us willingly, or do we have to employ special methods to get what we want?"

Researcher: "I can't! If I told you anything, I'd lose my job!"

Anyway, it went on in this vein for several more minutes real time before the player playing the Human Adept turned to the guy playing the Elven Adept/assassin and said (with a straight face):

"Ert, get out the genital press....".

The GM was so impressed by their improvisational skills that he decided that the NPC researcher had suddenly become VERY cooperative (not to mention scared half to death ), and decided to tell the 'runners what they wanted to know.

It ended with the following footnote:

"To this day, none of us knows what a genital press is, or even what one looks like--and we're not exactly certain that we want to find out."




--Foreigner

One of my players is a troll with high skills in Sodomy, Torture, Chemistry, Painful Dick Piercings, and some other stuff that I can't recall. He likes to pierce them with his cyberhorn to dose them with the hyper in its venom sac before he starts widening holes. He's come up with some pretty funny routines, including "always reward good struggling with cookies".

Then again my current game is quite silly.

Given enough motivation or incentive, torture is easy.

The question becomes -- what is sufficient motivation for you?

-Siege

Remember kids. gamma-scopalimine is a truth serum.

*raises eyebrow*

Take person, strip them naked, dunk them in salt water, tie them to a table at goat-height. Release goats into area. Goats will lick salt off of person; abrasive tongues will remove quite a bit of skin in the process, over time. When goats lose interest, redunk in salt water and repeat.

~J

Our favorite method includes a nailgun, some gasoline, and a videocamera. Enjoy.

With the techniques you all have described here, it sounds like the player characters do not have to roll Interrogation. Is that how you play it?

I have to bow to the ingeneous nature of the saltwater goat torture...

I have several characters who have in one of their bolt holes (not their primary homes) a sizeable room entirely covered with bathroom tile, with a drain in the centre and moorings to bolt down a chair. Apply liberally beaten subject to chair, tie arms (not handcuff) behind chair, then bring out the metal bucket full of water, and the AZ-150 stun baton.

Got to love the classics.

Sadistic torture is easy--especially magical torture where you can be really creative. But I like eye torture such as this or, even better cutting them inside their eyelid so the scabbing scratches their eyeball and causes them pain whenever they blink.
However, the more important question is:

How do you clean up the mess and dispose of the body? Especially after they urinate and/or defecate themselves.

This is why the interrogations from these characters are conducted in the tile room. Blood, urine, etc are washed down into the drain, which is connected to a flush system. As for the body itself, pack it in road salt for rapid decomposition. A deep freeze does for storage prior to dumping as well. Selling to ghouls is the option for people who don't care about witnesses.

My characters discovered the beauty of organlegging a subject with "no active information potential" without my prodding. Sick bastards. Even took the time to aquire a refrigerated truck from a brewery they were hitting to make sure they were delivering the freshest meat in the buisness. From the back of our van to your waiting hand.

Disposing of the bodies may not be so important, depending on who died and for what. If your opposition is up to their arms in their own dirty deeds, the last thing they may want is for Lone Star to show up and uncover some of their dirty work during their investigation. Nothing wrong with broadcasting the Troll with Vasoline Torture Comedy Hour on the matrix directly to the friends, family and employer of the torturee, then FedExing his genitals and other assorted odd bits over the course of the next week to prove a point. A corp or other large organization on the whole may not fear a team of runners, but they tend to contain alot of pleebs who cow really easily when you threaten their children Being discreet and ninjalike is all well and good, but there are times when a running team just needs to pull out the dog and pony show to get things done.

I tolerate (and somewhat expect) a certain amount of sick and amoral behavior out of my players, tho.

In the last game I was in, Uriel, Gabriel and Lucifer (see "perfect team" thread) used a variety of techniques to get the information we needed. We often worked the "bad cop, worse cop" routine (Gabriel as bad cop, Uriel as worse). We used the classics (arc welder and steel wool under running water, joint breaking, etc). We also employed things like "tell us what we want to know and you can walk". When they refused to answer, immediately kill one and move onto the next. Works best when you have several, and you're fairly sure none of them really know any more than the rest.

We also tended to use a variety of techniques in rapid succession, changing course quickly and unpredictably. While the subject is recovering from a short bath with the car battery and Gabriel, Lucifer would work to get him physically aroused and frustrated while Uriel described the consequences for the subject's family for not cooperating.

As for mind probe, we had several magicians who would keep their mouths shut for the right price, so if we needed something really fast, we'd use them. Otherwise, we'd use "conventional" techniques and mind probes in concert. Each method could provide direction and refinement to the overall process. Finding what questions needed to be asked, how they should be asked, etc, to achieve best results.

Body disposal was easy. We owned a delivery business that included on-site vehicle maintainence. This included a full-on car wash, so that was a good place to bolt a chair, with easy water and drainage access. Then, more often than not, I would just sell the body to my contacts in Tamanous for cash.

The classic "Good Cop, Bad Cop" is good! Also known as the "Mutt and Jeff".

Bad Cop: "Come on, you hoophole! What the frag are you working on?!"
Good Cop: "I can't really stop him, you know! He tends to calm down when people talk, know what I mean?"

I had a character take a knife and slide it in between the multiple bones that make up the foot... then twist the blade sideways. Seperates those bones quite well and the pain would excrutiating. This can also work for the hands.

Slipping a blade behind the knee cap and ripping the cap out works real well. Chances are just explaining that one might be enough.

A rock that's sat in a fire and strapped behind the knee is not only very painful, but warps the tendons and ligaments permanently.

12" by 1/4" diameter stainless stell spikes are also a good tool. You can slip them into various pain centers while missing vital spots if you have a good enough grasp of anatomy. They'd also work great going through testicles.

Of course, if you have a good mage on hand, you make sure the target knows that you can keep this up for a very looooooooooong time.

The only character I had who really got into torture was my shapeshifter (tiger). Didn't want information or anything. She'd just beat the person up, let 'em run for a bit, catch 'em, beat 'em up... Didn't worry about dealing with the body either, because she'd eat all the evidence. Yum.

Generally speaking, I won't let characters get away with torturing others for information unless they have some skill in it. It's too easy for us to think of horrid things to do that hurt a lot, but there is some skill involved (and very few people take it).

I can't believe Tom Collins has'`n't found this yet. Oh well I get to beat him to it. To make it
short the team had a mage that they were pumping t`for information. Mage tries casting some
spell on the party so Tom cuts his tongue out with the only thing handy, a butter knife. After
this it came down to putting needles into the man's eyes. The mage cracked very quickly.

Sorry to crush anyone's idealism, but torture does work. It works extremely well. If you are stupid about it, it is entirely possible that the victim will lie to you to get you to stop, but with a little cross-verification you can make sure that doesn't become an issue. The intelligence agencies all around the world know this, and don't expect anyone to be able to hold out for more than 24 hours. Or, to quote an interview I once read of a guy in the KGB, "I can break anyone, and all I need is a stripped power cord and a broom handle."

Which isn't to say there isn't a serious moral issue involved, but you can't really argue against torture on utilitarian grounds. It's worked for three thousand years, and while there have been cases where the torturers were completely off track (the Inquisition comes to mind), by and large it works.

In game, the problem I have with it is that there is no way to RP it without being tasteless and needlessly grotesque. With D&D at least you can hit the players with alignment shifts if they use torture, but SR doesn't have that option.

Actually, come to think of it, it does. I'd start corrupting any Awakened participants - torture is just plain evil, and I'd think that might start affecting one's aura. And I'm sure that all sorts of nasty free spirits and things can smell that sort of thing from miles away...you could really creep out some of the characters that way...

I wish I'd thought of this before. I have a player in a game I run that bought a safe-house that has a room with a drain in the floor for that very purpose...

Well in a very Shadowrun like part of a mechwarrior campain our little group captured a unconscience assassin and took him to a hotel room to find out who hired him.

He was then healed so he was alive. At which point the pliers came out (my character left the room at this point) and his teeth were removed (he could have a cyanide capsule they said, damn psychos). Then the hacksaw came. slowly one pull at a time through the femer each time he was asked who hired him over and over. My buddies got a third of the way through before he broke. They then blew his head off and just left him there in this hotel, I feel sorry for the maid the next morning.

The idea of the effectiveness of torture has come up before. Yes, it's not hard to hurt someone, and someone with no willpower will spill the beans pretty quicklike. I would argue that it would be difficult to get a hardened pro, or anyone who can really appreciate the value of the information they carry, to divulge that in a reasonable amount of time unless you have some skill in it. Firstly, you need to balance the amount of pain done to the poor person; too much and he goes unconscious (or dies), not enough and he shrugs it off. But more importantly, you need to play the psychology game. If he thinks giving away information will certainly result in worse torture, or in harm coming to someone he really cares about, he'll hold out through quite a bit. If he thinks holding out for a couple of hours will buy safety for his wife and child, he'll probably manage it.

Yes, torture has been around for thousands of years, but so has farming; it still probably requires some skill. I don't have any real experience, but it seems that, with the information so well guarded that it requires torture, it's a bit more difficult than just sticking sharp objects into the guy 'til he gives up. (All of this is obviously barring things like 'where do you hide the safe' stuff, which really isn't that important in the grand scheme of things. I'm talking about really serious secrets on which your very life hangs.)

ingredients:
1 syringe
64 oz high salt solution/rubbing alcohol if you dont have salt
1+ person(s) to answer your questions

Fill syringe halfway with fluid.
Insert needle just under finger/toenail.
Apply pressure gradually at first, then slam the plunger home.
Pick nail up off ground, and show person with answers.

or for those of you with money:
hire a lawyer.

I've got a few good torture techniques. Glue a carrot to a stick. Holding the stick end, sodomize them with the carrot. If that doesn't get them talking, make them eat the carrot. If they have a datajack or chipjack, slot a really hardcore gay porn sim and make them play it. For really unlimited torture, give them some of that magical drug in M&M which gives a person the regeneration power. As a bonus, this also will permanently reduce their physical overflow boxes, making them easier to kill later on. Cement their anus closed. Pour rating 1 acid on them. Take them out into the wilderness, tie them up, and threaten to just leave them there. Play Yanni music. Give them a drug which just makes them really depressed. Slice their dick off, then start dripping acid on it as they watch, threatening to ruin any chance of having it reattached.