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Message: <blockquote data-quote="ThePlanarDM" data-source="post: 7616724" data-attributes="member: 6988694"><p>Sorry, having serious formatting problems and unable to quote the previous post, but I agree with the idea that this relates to how information is disseminated in D&D. I would add the that the rules and norms of D&D shape the default play style in a defined way. Of course the DM should change it to suit her table, and I suggest a number of ways to do that. And probably most good DM's are already doing many of the things I suggested -- and more -- since they are not groundbreaking suggestions.........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................  ..................................My goal was to link these game elements with our understanding of how torture works in real life, and thereby discourage a real problem that I have seen in DND games. I seem to have distracted from my larger point about torture by saying that D&D's mechanics encourage it, which I intended to be a smaller point, but at least this seems to have raised some interesting discussion, so I'll expand upon my thoughts. Beyond what I wrote in the article, I believe that D&D's rules and norms support a style of disseminating information that often puts players in a position to consider torture for the following reasons:.................................................................................................................................................................................................................................D&D's rules encourage combat over other pillars, 5th edition encourages combat with multiple enemies and underlings (at least compared to 3rd, I never played 4th), the adventuring day encourages multiple combats to burn resources before reaching a boss, social interaction is a defined skill (the game could make remove all social skills for example), success/failure is binary, dice rolls are designed to be exciting and public (i.e., the d20 and bounded accuracy system), skills are large investments of player resources and thus there's the expectation that the DM that the DM will reward skill checks. ................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................................The impact of all this is that adventures often involve tracking down an ultimate bad guy by first engaging in combat with a bunch of his minions, then working through binary skill checks to gain information in a game that does not give the DM a lot of tools for dispersing it. When you fail an initial binary skill check, such as persuasion, torture and more intimidation checks becomes a clear option. And hopefully this is where good DM's use a variety of tricks and tools to create more interesting choices for the players, or have avoiding the situation entirely by already having done so.</p></blockquote><p></p>

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