There are three stages:

1) Torch to Groin

2) Cut a hole in their skull and push wires into their living brain to extract the information painlessly

3) Mind-rape, with emphasis on making them relive traumatic memories

[/edit]Then, of course, there is Dr. What. But that's just evil.

Watch an episode of Law & Order sometime and watch the good cop/bad cop and other such tactics the detectives use on suspects.

Or better yet, watch the show "The Closer." GREAT example of interrogations done right, without any torture whatsoever.

Our group does a little "good cop, really bad cop" when we have to interrogate. Usually this is after bribes have failed, mind you.

When you beat up on them too much they'll tell you they're Santa Clause if you ask 'em to. We try to strike a happy medium. Sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, degradation, mixed with a little "this can all end, if..." ...that sort of stuff. We try to stay away from the lemon zesters.

Generally, we start out by tying them down and having the troll pelvic thrust right at their face. Then, they can either give the information or the troll takes off his pants.

If the troll method doesn't work, we do a combination of items. They are locked, naked, in a damp stone dungeon with a bed that has just wiremesh. Food, what little they get, comes at random times. They are allowed no light and get a combination of a random beating, randomly being shocked, and the occasional piece of us saying they could get out of this alive by giving us the information. The entire time, we are trying to track down and capture family and/or friends.

If that fails, we force them to watch as we implant cranial bombs in their family/friends. Then we implant them with biomonitors, a transciever with the frequencies of the other bombs, and a cranial bomb as well. We then stick their family/friends in a room with an electrified floor. Every time they talk and tell the truth, we turn off the electricity for five minutes. Every time they lie, they get to watch gore splatter around the room.

Once we get the information from them, we do another surgery and leave them and any other surviving hostages to be picked up by the police. Of course, we tell them that attempting to tell others what happened will set off the bombs. Telling anyone about the bombs will set them off. The police finding out about the bombs will set them off. We wait until they are back in their home and send a final detonation code.

If they talk early, we merely send them to a benraku parlor instead.

Don't get too lost in your art or you might forget the purpose is to extract reliable information.

Um... none of the above. Well, maybe drugs; but the primary trick, whenever possible, is Mind Probe.

For the sheer sadistic joy of it.

Low force elemental spells to various bodyparts
Threating to post comprimising photos of them on the Matrix. Backing it up if need be
Rubbing them raw with steel wool and squirting lemons and/or rubbing salt in their wounds
Sleep deprivation
Keeping the stench spell on them
"Butt stuff"
Cigarette burns
Doing the Clockwork Orange "rehab" on them
Making them eat little bits of themselves

After they talk we verify it with a few mind probes. Multiple casters are the

Personally, my style is very much the psychiatrist.

My characters will have the subject in a very controlled environment, but will otherwise treat them very nicely.

The subject will get regular feeding, bathing, etc.

They'll sleep in a vaguely comfortable room. Never mind that it's surreptitiously filled with surveillance tools. They even get a normal bed, with sheets and pillows.

Meanwhile, they're talked to. Very nice about it.

Oh, yes. Did I mention that I use drugs and simsense to an extensive degree?

Drugs to relax them and release their inhibitions.

Simsense enables them to "more clearly explain" matters.

Most people, y'see, are brought up to be generally honest, particularly with doctors.

Combine the more mundane methods with very occasional and specific magic use, and you can do fun things.

Naturally, the whole encounter is followed up with a very large dose of Laes.

Handy Overview

This also depends on how much you want to find out (how many of you are there? will lend itself to different interrogation techniques to Teach us how to build an X?)

Shoot the first couple guys who don't talk. Pretty soon somebody gets the message . . . .

Of course, it doesn't work so well when there's only one guy who has the info. Guess that's what Mind Probe is for.

Marv style interrogation (Sin City).

Shadowrun dosen't have players and GMs. It has criminals-in-training and devious Masterminds.

Or, in the case of the Dumpshock forums, it has serial-murderers-in-waiting and villianious overlords.

That reminds me... I need to have a talk with my group about collateral damage. If they are going to count a whole city block, at the very least they could burn down the fire station as a distraction.

I still use the old interrogation rules handed down from family member to family member through the generations. Nothing beats the good old Malleus Maleficarum

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malleus_Maleficarum


Birdy

my favorite interrogation scene, was watching my players interrogate a guy by hooking up to an ascend/descent harness, with a rope and pulley, and than zinging him into the ceiling at a rapid rate, every time i he gave an answer they didn't like. It wasn't lethal, but it was painful, and I imagined incredibly irritating, since they'd do it while the NPC was in mid-sentence.

I can't remember i he coughed up the information or not...

My characters prefer good old "beat-the-victim". It's nice to rely on the characters interrogation skill though, as i as a player don't have much knowledge of it.

Another player usually has some sadistic methods, including burning coal, a knife and a bottle.

You can really mess people up the emotion BTLs. Get the depression emotion tracks and the extacy emotion track -- play the blues when they're being stubburn, and give them a pink rosy when they give up answers. Demonstrate by asking simple questions like "What color is my tie?" When they answer correctly, give 'em the good, when they answer wrong, or don't answer, give 'em bad. This is best when combined with moderate sleep depravation. With enough time, you can have them trained quite well and they'll spill whatever you want them to, so they don't have to crash into the blue.

I am in the presence of some sick bastards.

I like to actually interrogate people. Torture's, well, boring.

I like to have the 'interrogation' skill, or at minimum, time and a high negotiation. Then, when I have the information, I hand him over to Colonel Bob, the 400lb troll with a affinity for sharp objects (who politely escorts the gentleman to the door.)

Crazy, I know, but I do like reliable information and don't like snuff films.

And if they're attractive women (or men, if you swing that way), you keep them around as 'toys' after you finish breaking their minds.

It all depends on the amount of time you have - these simsense or elaborate torture ideas are all well and good but you need plenty of time, resources and somewhere to work. As long as you've done your homework you can find someones price, after all - you can move the world with a long enough lever.......

Any number of methods work.
Also, you don't need a lot of time with simsense involved as you control the perception of time. Just create a simsense of being subjected to long periods of dreary dank conditions and little sleep or food, typical long term interrogation type stuff, with the only brief happiness involving the interrogator, like a piece of chocolate, some pain meds, hell maybe a good night's sleep in a clean bed for a full 8 hours. Have the subject experience this at an accelerated rate, their brain thinks months have gone by when maybe it's only a few days. (IV drips and Depends are a must in this situation). When you pull them out, they will tell the interrogator anything they want to know, you can compress 6 months of the absolute most reliable method of brain-washing/interrogation in a few days with the right tracks.

Used Car Salseman - anyone has an example for that?

Or better yet, it's got 2Kg of C-12 and 20 Kg of ball bearings wired to blow when the key is inserted.

I find it depends on what I need to do. If I'm trying to break the subject mentally for whatever reason, I find simsense feeds or Chinese water torture particularly effective, depending on how much time is available to me. But if I'm after information and I'm in a hurry, I tend more towards the chemical approach: sodium pentathol, etc.

The best interogation I have seen was in D&D. The victom was a radical who was into pain, so torture and threats did not work. So the cute little elven pleasure slave (She was a gift to the boy scout fighter from a prince, lets just say we had a lot of Tenchi moments) asked for a turn. She did not hurt him, nor did she give him anything, But she got the information. Lets just say a high charisma elf girl who has spend decades learning how to work men is a scarry thing.

I spent one year in Iraq doing interrogation. It's best just to simply match wits with the guy. Trick them into giving it up. The average Iraqi was always far more mentally prepared for a lot more than we could or would do to them. Under torture someone will tell you anything to get you to stop. Or it could have the reverse effect of making you so despised they will do anything to spite you, especially if they don't think they'll walk away alive. For the professional that is, against anyone less fanatical or with less counter-interrogation training it might be somewhat effective.
Of course, in shadowrun, it's easier if you have the time for some chemicals like nightshade or even novacoke. But I love using a mage to control thoughts-tell us everything. It's easier and more subtle than mind probe and more effective than compel truth or analyze truth.

Sometimes, you're in a real time crunch...say you need an access code to a vault, and your overwatch lets you know that Star is inbound...you have a corp type there who knows the code...no time for much in the way of fancy...sometimes you have to go with tried and true methods...high velocity delivery of internal body jewelry...extremeties work the best for this method...and you can reward the person with an end to his suffering and not having to see his boss when it's all over, because if you're there, he's already toast.

Long time ago we had taken a mage hostage and needed some info. Our interrogation method? First, we injured him moderately and then removed some stim patches from their wrappers and threatened to apply them. He was a hard nut to crack, but eventually we got the info we needed and let the guy go, but not before making an enemy who was halfway toward becoming a burnout. We coulda killed him, but making enemies makes for a much more interesting game.

It amazes me what you guys come up with to "crack" a target.
The important thing is, NO ONE has a good method of torturing people for information. Long term, not especially damaging things seem to work the best. But, most runners don't have a few weeks to let sleep deprivation work. Drugs help, as does alcohol, in some cases.
You can of course hurt some one enought to make them tell you anything you want to hear, but that's all you're doing. You can NEVER count on it.
If you just enjoy being sadistic, go ahead, but don't make up excuses. And GM's shouldn't reward it.

Successful interrogators are poker players, just like the guys on TV. They'll bluff until they can find a lever, then they'll work that lever. If the target is afraid of pain, they'll threaten a lot, maybe hurt him a little, letting him know that it's only going to get worse. If that's going to break a person, you never have to get past the cigarette burn stage. If they can be bought off with money or favors, buy them off. Then negotiate down. If they are afraid of some one else more than you, you've gotta convice them that either you're worse than their other fear, or that you can protect them.
Everyone has a chink in their armor, and a good interrogator can slip a lever in there and start working it back and forth until you are naked.

And seriously, if you're torturing some one, you are the bad guy.

Edit: what 6thDragon said. /edit

Bearclaw is on the right track. You have to find out what makes someone tick and use that against them. And a bluff is a lot more convincing if backed up by a little truth. If you have two people play them off against each other...so-and-so said this about you. Find out what is important to them and use that against them. But I love simple trickery. My personal favorite IRL from my time in Iraqi you will probably all laugh your asses off, most people do. Interrogating a sheepherder that we picked up during a raid that was of little value but we thought he might have information about his brothers we could use against them.
Me: So you're a sheepherder, do you ever have sex with your sheep?
Iraqi sheepherder: No, that is against Islam.
...later in the conversation (I wasn't convinced by his response)
Me: Do you ever watch your sheep have sex?
Iraqi sheepherder: Yes, it makes me horny so I go and have sex with my wife.
Me: Do you tell your wife you watch the sheep have sex.
Iraqi sheepherder: No, she would get mad at me.
Me: Would your wife not sleep with you if you had sex with your sheep?
Iraqi sheepherder: Probably.
Me: Do you know other sheepherders who have sex with their sheep?
Iraqi sheepherder: Of course! Every sheepherder has sex with their sheep before they get married.
Me: Does that mean you had sex with your sheep before you were married.
Iraqi sheepherder: ....(biggest shit eating grin I ever saw)

Again, watch "The Closer" sometime (it's on TNT Monday nights) for some good examples. The tactics that Kyra Sedgwick's character uses sound very similar to the psychological tricks, tells and other things that 6thdragon talked about. All without laying a hand on somebody.

"As any good interrogator will tell you, as hard as a secret is to uncover, it's even harder to keep."
-Sedgwick's character, "The Closer"

Really, the only time I had to use even the threat of force was something like this;

A group of us were going through the 'Total Eclipse' adventure, & at this one particular point, the NPC was just being surly. Fortunately, we had our Troll StreetSam, Einstein (yes, that was the ctr.'s name ). I whispered an idea to the player, then described what was going on to our GM;

Me; "After a short whisper to Einstein---"
Einstein's Player: "--to which I agree!"
Me: "I approach our 'contact' in a calm, but in-control stride."
Einstein's Player: "I remain just behind Tangent, giving him plenty of room."
(the other players looked at us for a moment of bewilderment, then realisation beammed across their faces)
Me, IC; "My freind, you can tell us what you know....."
GM, IC of the contact; "Or whut?"
Me, IC; "Or.....you can 'talk' to.....HIM." {indicating the LARGE Troll behind me}
Einstein's Player: "Einstein cracked his knuckles...for effect."
The GM: "Hmm. There's the unmistakeable sound of a tree-trunk being slowly ripped apart in half, or at least what passes for it in the Sprawl. Roll for Intimidation against....(mental calculation)...a TN of 7."
(The three of us rolled our various dice)
Einstein's Player: "I got a 4, 5, 5, 6 an' 6. Rerollin' the sixes, got a total of 8 and 7."
Me; "Rolled a 4, 4, 6, 6, 2, 3. Re-rolling the sixes, that makes them 9 and 8."
GM: The contact's eyes go WIDE, almost cartoonish, when Einstein cracks his knuckles. Two other members of your team wince in involuntary reflex, but the guy gets the hint. He starts babling like a run-off pipe at a toxic waste plant."

6thDragon, Bearclaw:

How are drugs, sleep deprivation, stress positions, etc. seen by professional interrogators?

As you've said, torture is ineffective...But what about those other techniques?

most of that stuff is to make the subject 'tired and slow'. You add in some simple social psycology (for example, when you see the interrogator you get a cup of coffee/tea/hot chocolate (or whatever) and your life is pretty suck all the rest of the time). It makes you 'relax' when in the presense of the interrogator. So you are mentally and physically worn down, and 'relaxed' in the presence of the interrogator, most people will tell the interrogator exactly what he wants to know.

[edit]
The current Angels 2200 shows a fine way to get the job done.
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