Our gaming group explores hard-core RP
Well, I knew tonight could easily get messy. Last game session, my relentlessly thorough and clever players (eyebeams, kearsley, iskorpit, kuretzu, katmo, and Doug) happily kidnapped a pair of orcs that were part of the orcish clan that was laying siege to a town in my D&D setting. They needed more information before they decided if they'd flee the scene or do something rash like try to kill the orcish chieftain.
This is where things got messy. They started with pure intimidation, which seemed to work fairly well, but (in perfect Stanford prison experiment fashion) things started to escalate. The warforged in the party rigged a way to hang the orc from his shoulders while his arms were behind his back, putting stress on the rotator cups. This added bit of torture gleaned little new information, but did end when the dragonborn warlock told them to cut the orc down... NOW. The orc sagged to its knees in overwhelming pain, sobbing wildly. This led to a very heated exchange between the "good" characters and the "unaligned" characters.
The best part was that this debate was purely in-character and, during a break, the two sides basically concurred that they found torture heinous out-of-character but their characters are much too naive or jaded to really debate this civilly.
The end result? The two orcs were killed quickly and cleanly and all the characters walked away a little sobered by the situation, even those that were more cavalier than others about what they were doing.
I love my gaming group :)
This is where things got messy. They started with pure intimidation, which seemed to work fairly well, but (in perfect Stanford prison experiment fashion) things started to escalate. The warforged in the party rigged a way to hang the orc from his shoulders while his arms were behind his back, putting stress on the rotator cups. This added bit of torture gleaned little new information, but did end when the dragonborn warlock told them to cut the orc down... NOW. The orc sagged to its knees in overwhelming pain, sobbing wildly. This led to a very heated exchange between the "good" characters and the "unaligned" characters.
The best part was that this debate was purely in-character and, during a break, the two sides basically concurred that they found torture heinous out-of-character but their characters are much too naive or jaded to really debate this civilly.
The end result? The two orcs were killed quickly and cleanly and all the characters walked away a little sobered by the situation, even those that were more cavalier than others about what they were doing.
I love my gaming group :)