Running an interrogation.

[Teflonknight]

So my player has captured an enemy with the intent to find out what the military is up to. She has no intent of letting the prisoner live, for fear of him making it back to the army and revealing their position.

I don't know how to run an interrogation and make it interesting. I don't want to make a bunch of opposed rolls, making it very mechanical.

Any ideas would be appreciated.

[The Oni]

I'd say have a specific DC for each question or tier of questions. She can make intimidate checks at him by yelling/demanding answers, sharpening knives, casting particularly intimidating illusion spells, etc. She can get bonuses to those checks by actually dealing damage to him (a la Jack Bauer's Interrogation Technique) and when the Intimidate check matches his DC, he'll talk.

BUT, if she gives him too hard a lickin' in the head, his memory's all fuzzy and he'll give faulty information. Plus he may just outright lie, so Sense Motive would be a thing.

[hymer]

Sounds to me like the ball is in the player's court, not yours. If you want her to succeed, you need to avoid having the NPC stonewall or refuse to speak altogether, the best ways to foil an interrogation. If you want to really help, have the NPC make a suspiciously specific denial, or blurt out a way they can be made to talk. The latter can be like him thinking this is a test, and him giving it away. This opens up for bluffing the knowledge out of him. Or he could say something like "Please don't [do this thing which you can threaten to do to make him talk]!"

[Buddha's_Cookie]

You might check out the skill game in the Legend system found here on page 236 of the PDF. I feel it combines the use of talking and rolling skills. The skill game uses a bidding system, where the players and their captive bid social "tokens" to get a out come. The only goal of the captive is to stall until rescue (unlikely) or the information is less useful. Just remember that you can refluff and rework anything to fit your system, like the list of skill that can be used. Hope this was useful!

[TheStranger]

You may want to rethink roleplaying a torture session. That gets downright creepy really fast. "Interesting" is not your friend here - it leads to "uncomfortable" very quickly. Give your player some information and move on.

[The Oni]

Depends entirely on the propensities of the group and tone of the campaign.

[Agrippa]

You may want to rethink roleplaying a torture session. That gets downright creepy really fast. "Interesting" is not your friend here - it leads to "uncomfortable" very quickly. Give your player some information and move on.

Why do you think interogation automatically equals torture? In fact torture is an inefficient and ineffective means of extracting information.

[TheStranger]

Why do you think interogation automatically equals torture? In fact torture is an inefficient and ineffective means of extracting information.

I'm aware. Yet it tends to be the method of last (and sometimes first) resort for a lot of people when they want information. Especially if the player has already decided the prisoner has to die.

I'm just saying, I've had games where it got ugly, because players got frustrated by not getting the information they wanted, and the only obvious solution was to use some "enhanced interrogation techniques." I've also had games where the prisoners talked quickly and players were satisfied and the plot moved on. I've never had a game where the interrogation was challenging, dramatic, interesting, and not at all uncomfortable. Maybe that's just my bad luck, and everybody else has had very different results.

[Garimeth]

I have not had a problem with interrogation scenes being creepy. But my whole group is composed of infantry and intel dudes, so there is that.

I would just focus on playing the guy realistically:

1. What is is Int, Wis, and Cha? If they all suck, he's probably gonna talk easy. Also, see how good the player can convince him that he may live if he talks. If the guy is convinced that he is already dead, then if he is poorly trained/non-committed he may become desperate, if he is well trained/highly committed then he will probably stonewall. Knowing that you are dead no matter what makes a difference.

2. What is his level of training? If he is a peon, he's probably going to talk easy but not know much. If he is a spy/assassin type then he probably is going to not talk as much. He may know more, but if the organization's leader is smart then it may be highly compartmentalized, which means he may not know much either.

3. How much pressure are the PCs under? If they are not in a hurry or reporting to somebody else, they can take their time gaining the guys trust, which will be far more effective.

4. Why kill him? They can just leave him tied up for somebody else to find when they move positions or keep him captive indefinitely. The idea of killing him because he might reveal their location is short-sighted. If he is captive he can't reveal anything, he may give more information in the long run, or he may even be recruited to their side depending on the situation and his commitment level.


Here is the other thing too, you set the tone with how they are going to deal with other prisoners in the future. Take their alignments/reputations into consideration and reward or punish their actions as you see fit.

[Madwand99]

If this guy is threatened or thinks he'll be killed, he'll lie like crazy. He'll say anything to prevent his injury or death... and if he actually cares about not telling the truth, "anything" means lies. He'll concoct a story that makes it plausible for him to become the player's ally (perhaps he's disaffected with his current boss, or wants revenge?) so that he gets to live longer. Maybe he'll actually stay an ally, maybe he won't. He just wants to live, and not get hurt. It will help if the lies are actually half-truths... those are the most powerful lies.

If the player wants to actually get truthful information out of the guy, torture will only work if there is a way to immediately verify the information he gives as true. Otherwise, you have to resort to mind reading, or somehow convincing the guy to tell you the truth.

[Vamphyr]

If it does resort to torture, have a base DC in mind that the prisoner has to meet or beat to resist talking. For each method the player describes, add bonuses to that base DC so it becomes harder and harder to not talk. Once he hits the point where he starts talking, set up a percentage depending on his intelligence/morale or whatever that he'll lie about what he knows. Depending on how detailed they are about what they do, the percentage that he'll lie drops in whatever increment you feel is equivalent.

This puts it on the players to try and figure out what's true and what's false.

If your players don't want to resort to torture, you'll need to set up some talking points for this guy to use as leverage to keep them from killing him.

The prisoner will try everything possible to extend the time he has left. He could demand to be taken to a certain place before answering questions or ask a question for a question.

If a greater force knew where this battle was going to happen, they may have sent a clean up squad to rescue any soldiers left behind or sneak attack the remaining enemy. You could have the prisoner play for time until he can be rescued.

[MonochromeTiger]

If this guy is threatened or thinks he'll be killed, he'll lie like crazy. He'll say anything to prevent his injury or death... and if he actually cares about not telling the truth, "anything" means lies. He'll concoct a story that makes it plausible for him to become the player's ally (perhaps he's disaffected with his current boss, or wants revenge?) so that he gets to live longer. Maybe he'll actually stay an ally, maybe he won't. He just wants to live, and not get hurt. It will help if the lies are actually half-truths... those are the most powerful lies.

If the player wants to actually get truthful information out of the guy, torture will only work if there is a way to immediately verify the information he gives as true. Otherwise, you have to resort to mind reading, or somehow convincing the guy to tell you the truth.

true, but the issue with that logic in interrogations is absolutely anything can result in the person lieing like crazy, the only way anyone could be sure is a "lie detector" spell like zone of truth and that would defeat most of the point behind setting up an interrogation. the issue with the idea that they will never tell the truth under torture is that pain can do quite a bit to people, especially if you prove yourself capable of sustaining it without actually killing, eventually the person is likely to break down and tell the truth or at the very least make a mistake and let some information slip just to make the pain stop...then again I think of these things too easily since I prefer evil campaigns over good ones.

[Demidos]

Use detect thoughts, ask provoking questions, ??? profit?

Although admittedly that one is for your player, not you.

[lytokk]

Just my thoughts here, since not everyone is comfortable with torture. Does anyone remember the "torture" scene in the first punisher movie? Using misdirection to make the victim think he's being tortured, when in actuality no harm is coming to him. At the end of it all, you've shown only interest in the information, and no interest in harming someone who may not actually have it coming to him. Enemy turned ally, who in the end did more to further the heroes goals than anyone else.

[MonochromeTiger]

Just my thoughts here, since not everyone is comfortable with torture. Does anyone remember the "torture" scene in the first punisher movie? Using misdirection to make the victim think he's being tortured, when in actuality no harm is coming to him. At the end of it all, you've shown only interest in the information, and no interest in harming someone who may not actually have it coming to him. Enemy turned ally, who in the end did more to further the heroes goals than anyone else.

while I can kind of see that I don't think the idea of it somehow being less bad than torture is true when he immediately turns around to use any information given to him to butcher EVERYONE in his way for so much as looking suspicious. plus what's being described there is technically mental/emotional torture, it is using the fear of pain to get a result that was supposedly being brought about by the actual involvement of pain, the differences being that if he goes back after being tortured he can show the scars and say "I didn't give them a thing", if he goes back after being fake tortured those scars are all mental and the most he can show is that he was gone at just the right time to be seen as an information leak and killed. if causing pain is really so disheartening to a group that they can't bring themselves to do it then the only way to avoid that is to just politely ask questions and hope for an answer...heck the only way to avoid it completely is to never fight.