Judgement calls vs "railroading"

[pemerton]

If I understand it right, in your game before play starts each player comes up with some goals for her character, and once play starts the DM is somewhat bound to have those goals and their resolution be the central theme of what gets played - am I right so far?

So, first: do the players (out of character) always know what everyone else's goals are even if in-character they are for some reason hidden?

Second: what "scale" are these goals expected to be on? Swearing vengeance on the lizardmen who overran your family farm sounds all very noble but by 3rd level it could be done and dried (not much of a campaign there), so are the goals expected to be longer-term sorts of thing?

Third: what if two (or more) characters' goals directly conflict?

In BW, each PC has 3 Beliefs. These are authored by the player for the PC. The expectation is that these are public at the table. A player can rewrite a Belief at any time, but (i) the GM is allowed to enforce a delay in this if s/he thinks that the player is trying to avoid a hard decision, and (ii) there is an expectation that the changes in Beliefs will reflect and express something about the fiction, and how the character is responding to that.

The GM is meant to frame the PCs into situations that put their Beliefs to the test. The players will follow their Beliefs, or maybe break them (especially if the GM puts them into conflict, which s/he is expected to do).

The GM also authors Beliefs for important NPCs (eg the dark naga has beliefs). These play a role in playing the NPC a little bit like alignment in traditional D&D (DMG, p 23: "The overall behavior of the [NPC] character (or creature) is delineated by alignment").

In my main 4e game, I told the players that each PC (i) had to have a reason to be ready to fight goblins (because I wanted to run Night's Dark Terror), and (ii) had to have one loyalty. For some of the PCs, (i) and (ii) were the same things; for others not. These motivational elements of the PCs have driven the game. They've also evolved, as the characters and the fiction develop.

The interaction of PC beliefs and goals, and their evolution, can lead to conflict. I've given the example, upthread, of the assassin/wizard and the mage in my BW game: the former wanted to be avenged on her former master (the mage's brother); the mage wanted to redeem him. In the 4e game, one of the PCs (the paladin of the Raven Queen) will do whatever will promote his god's interests; some of the other PCs, though, do not want the Raven Queen to become ruler of the cosmos.

It's my job as GM to frame the PCs into situations that generate pressure and interweave these conflicts. The players have a degree of responsibility, too, to try and manage these differences and conflicts, within reason. But ultimately if conflict breaks out, then it has to be resolved (BW is better for this than 4e - the latter doesn't have good mechanics for resolving conflict between PCs. But it does allow PCs to push the fiction in differen directions, eg in a skill challenge, and this is a part of my main 4e game).

I completely fail to understand how else it can work

<snip>

When the idea of going to the barbarians suddenly emerges from nowhere - and that's the case here; this idea of going after the barbarians comes right out of the blue - 4 possible results can occur:

1. The barbarians exist, and the DM has known this all along
2. The barbarians exist, but the DM just now decided that on the fly
3. The barbarians do not exist, and the DM has known this all along
4. The barbarians do not exist, but the DM just now decided that on the fly

Or, to clarify, are you disagreeing that designing the game world and its content is the DM's responsibility? If yes, then how in your eyes does the game world get designed?

A preliminary comment - I wouldn't expect the idea of going to the barbarians to suddenly emerge from nowhere.

But what other possibility exists? Here's one: the player just declares "I head north, to meet the barbarians."

That particular action declaration has never occurred in one of my games (that I can remember), but in my BW game one of the players - when his PC was in a difficult situation in the Bright Desert - declared "Everyone knows that Suel tribesmen are thick as fleas on a dog in these parts" and then rolled a Circles check. (It failed - hence the PCs ended up, briefly, in the custody of Wassal.)

Here's another: the player conjectures, "There are barbarians in the north, aren't there?" and then makes a Northern Wastes Lore (or whatever skill is appropriate) check. If it succeeds, the conjecture is true. If it fails, the GM gets to narrate a consequence for failure as usual - there are no barbarians, perhaps; or there are barbarians, but they are democrats who kill all those among them who display pretensions to kingship. (I just made that up, in about twice the time it took to type it.)

I'm sure there are other ways too.

I can't imagine trying to run a game in a setting that hasn't got at least some pre-design to it even if it's only a town, a dungeon or other adventure, occupants of both, and some geographical features around and between the town and dungeon) Who decides where the cities are? Where the dragons are? Where the next dungeon is after this one, and what it consists of? Who rules the realm, if anyone, and what the ruling or political structure is?

Well, I'm running a game set in Hardby, and I don't have a map, or anything but the info in the GH booklets (pp 23, 25, 41 of the Boxed Set Guide to the WoG):

[T]he heir [of the Landgraf of the Selintan] was wed to the daughter of the Gynarch (Despotrix) of Hardby, a sorceress of no small repute. Their descendants ruled a growing domain . . . In 498 it [Greyhawk] was declared a free and independent city, ruling a territory from Hardby . . . to the Nyr Dyv . . . These holdings have been lost over the intervening decades . . . The Despotrix of Hardby now pays tribute to Greyhawk to avoid being absorbed into the growing city state once again . . . Portions of the [Wild Coast] have been under the control of . . . the Gynarch of Hardby . . . at various times.​

Here are some locations in Hardby that have been part of our game:

The tower of Jabal of the Cabal: narrated as described upthread, as part of playing out the consequences of a failed Circles check when the mage PC tried to make contact with the leader of his sorcerous cabal.

A cheap inn near the docks: narrated as a place the PCs were able to find to sleep when they had been banished from the city by Jabal and so couldn't sleep inside the wallas. The need to make a check to see how well they could sleep despite the noise and fleas was established following a poor Resources check (which established it as a cheap dive).

The catacombs: established as part of the narration that followed from a mummy attack on Jabal's tower (the mummy was looking for the feather that the mage PC was carrying, which had been stolen from its pyramid tomb in the Bright Desert). The player of the mage succeeded at some checks to find a useful inscription on the wrappings of the mummy, and read it; these established that the mummy had been taken from the Bright Desert and reinterred in the Hardby catacombs. The player then succeeded at a Circles check to meet a gossipy noble who was able to help him escape the city without being seen (ie via the catacombs). Since then there have been Catacombs-wise checks, some successful and some not. Catacomb-dwelling cultists have been fought and then befriended. At one point when I needed a map for the cultists' hideout, I used a section from the Caves of Chaos.​

A similar approach has worked for things like the pool of the (friendly) Naga the PCs found in the Bright Desert; the waterhole at the edge of the Abor-Alz, where the foothills meet the Bright Desert; and probably other stuff I'm forgetting.

The ruined tower, on the other hand, was established by the player of that PC, as part of establishing PC backstory before the game started. (Including a cool picture, of a ruined tower in arid hills in India.)

 

[pemerton]

I'm just saying that it's nowhere near a fact that it's not substantive. You stated it as if it's a fact.

I said "It's not a substantive input from the players into the shared fiction."

Dictionary.com offers the following salient definitions of substantive:

7. of considerable amount of quantity;
8. possessing substance; having practical importance, value or effect.​

What is considerable would seem to be a matter of judgement: I expressed mine.

What amounts to practical importance, value or effect likewise would seem to be a matter of judgement: again, I expressed mine.

Are you saying that it's objectionable for people to make posts that use evaluative adjectives?

 

[Xetheral]

...he can wait and see what I do as GM (but my player tends not to like waiting to see what I will do as GM, because he tends to suspect - rightly, most of the time - that it won't be good for his PC!).

That implies a much more adversarial relationship between GM and player than I prefer.

I'm not sure why being able to turn into a falcon is excellent for escaping prisons per se - it depends a bit on the prisons' construciton, doesn't it (eg Gandalf atop Orthanc vs being thrown into a dungeon)?

I'd consider dungeons and open-air tower-tops as "prisons" only in a metaphorical or conceptual sense. I was using the term more literally to refer to the type of building, stereotypically characterized by barred windows. That being said, yes, the utility of shapeshifting will depend on the specific construction. But if I haven't already introduced a falcon-proof prison, then I'm not likely to create a falcon-proof prison without a good IC reason (like the city in question being at war with (or fearing) druids or vampires or otherwise commonly needing to contain shapeshifters).

No action was negated. Nor was any build choice. The player didn't declare "I change into a falcon and escape!" - he asked "Does the prison have bars I can squeeze through?" and I answered "No." It's a moment of framing, not of action resolution - and the framing is the direct consequence of a series of failed checks (to get through the city; to persuade the guards to help with the bodies rather than treat them as cause for suspicion).

The distinction between action resolution and framing doesn't matter to me as a player (nor do I find the distinction particularly meaningful as a GM)--when the GM places an obstacle (e.g. the falcon-proof prison) with the intent of thwarting the use of one of my PC's abilities, I consider that railroading.* In application, I don't see your choice to make the prison escape proof as practically different than a similar decision by a GM who wants to run a "captured by guards!" adventure. Sure, the genesis was completely different, but the consequence is the same: the shapechanging PC ended up in a shapechange-proof prison simply to thwart the ability the shapechange.

*Caveat: if an obstacle is designed to thwart a spotlight-hogging PC's abilities in order to give an underrepresented player's PC a chance to shine, I consider that perfectly acceptable, even if it may still qualify as railroading. Care should still be taken to make sure it doesn't appear to be deliberately thwarting the spotlight-hogging PC (or, if hiding it is impossible, the reasons explained privately OOC).

If the player had declared, in the encounter with the guards, "I change into a falcon and fly away!" this would almost certainly have succeeded. But he didn't do that, in part because he didn't want to lose track of the bodies he was carrying . . .

So, when it became aparent that the attempt to talk past the guards had failed, and that the PC was going to lose the bodies anyway, was there any IC reason the PC couldn't change into a falcon and fly away at that point? I understand it would violate your stricture of "no retries", but it seems to me that application of that stricture can cause railroading as a consequence. Consider:

Once the PCs failed their checks to talk their way past the guards, you determined that the consequence would be to haul them off to prison. You may feel justified in doing so by the mechanics of the system, but, from this moment going forward, you're thwarting the PC's ability to avoid capture in order to impose a specific outcome: imprisonment. That seems to fit the definition of railroading that I understand you to be using. The only difference is that the outcome the PCs are being railroaded towards was the result of the combination of a failed check and the "no retries" rule, as opposed to having been chosen for story purposes. The consequences to the players after the failed check are identical: either way the character ends up in prison despite having an ability to avoid it.

If your definition of railroading is nuanced enough to distinguish between examples with identical consequences, that would suggest to me that it is overly-nuanced, to the point that it would appear defined specifically to exclude your playstyle. (Or, alternatively, that it is defined in a way that produces distinctions only relevant to your play style.)

More generally, I'm struggling to see how framing the game world (e.g. the falcon-proof prison) or resolving PC actions (e.g. preventing a subsequent shapeshift after social interaction failed) to thwart player intent as a result of a failed check (as opposed to simply narrating the failure itself) is ever practically distinguishable from framing the game world or resolving PC actions to thwart player intent to send the story in a particular direction.

If a fighter's hit points have been reduced to zero by application of the action resolution mechanics, it's not railroading to deny the player of that character the opportunity to declare attacks. Mutatis mutandis in this case.

I agree. But not because the mechanics say so, but because, IC, the character is not conscious. (As evidence, note the 3e controversy that being dead didn't mechanically prevent actions. It still wasn't railroading to decree that a dead character couldn't act.)

It seems to me there are three options.

(1) Prisons that are narrated always have bars, small gaps, etc such that shapechanging PCs can escape them (ie can never be held in prison).

(2) Prisons that are narrated never have bars, small gaps, etc.

(3) Prisons that are narrated sometimes have bars, small gaps, etc; and sometimes not. Given that my setting is a trad fantasy one where timber is more prevalent than worked metal, (3) seems the most logical.

Then, within 3, there is the question - how do we decide which prisons are which?

As above, I'd decide by relying on the established elements of the game world to decide whether the designers had a reason to either purposefully or incidentally (e.g. a dungeon instead of a prison) design a shapeshifter-proof prison. If yes, I'd strongly telegraph these reasons. If not, the prison simply won't be shapeshifter-proof.

 

[Campbell]

Burning Wheel Beliefs are not exactly character goals. There are statements about how they view the world to be tested through play. A good belief will also state how a character seeks to confirm their belief. Conflicting beliefs are not something to be avoided. They are to be embraced. They set up play for the sort of conflicts we want to see. That includes internal character conflicts, conflicts between player characters, and conflicts with the greater world. It is not unusual to see Burning Wheel characters acting in opposition to one another. Sometimes we even encourage this by instructing players to write at least one belief about another player character.

 

[Maxperson]

I said "It's not a substantive input from the players into the shared fiction."

Dictionary.com offers the following salient definitions of substantive:

7. of considerable amount of quantity;
8. possessing substance; having practical importance, value or effect.​

What is considerable would seem to be a matter of judgement: I expressed mine.

What amounts to practical importance, value or effect likewise would seem to be a matter of judgement: again, I expressed mine.

Are you saying that it's objectionable for people to make posts that use evaluative adjectives?

You expressed it as a fact, though. "It's not a substantive input from the players into the shared fiction.". That's an absolute statement. Had you said it like, "To me, it's not a substantive input from the players into the shared fiction." or "I don't think it's a substantive input from the players into the shared fiction.". Those would be opinions. You presented yours as a fact.

 

[pemerton]

Burning Wheel Beliefs are not exactly character goals.

They can be. Eg Character Burner (for BW revised), p 32; and BW rev, p 56:

I shall rule this city from the Black Wizard's Tower as Master Assassin.

I will one day restore my wife's life.​

But they don't have to be. One of the Beliefs of the wizard/assassin in our game (who was a PC, but has moved to NPC status) is Don't get in my way. (Another of hers is a goal: I will find and flay my former master, and send his soul to . . ..

A Belief that is not a goal tends to be hard to close off, and hence hard to earn a Persona point for resolving. The Adventure Burner describes them as "Fate mines", because you play off them in the game and earn a Fate Point. The snake-handler shamanistic PC in my game has the Belief "Sorcery is the venom of the fangless" - when he does magical stuff to advance his interests, protect himself, etc, then he gets a Fate point.

In my experience, it can take a bit of time to settle on a good set of Beliefs that make a character work, both in itself and in interaction with the other PCs.

A player should expect the ingame situation to bring his/her PC's beliefs into conflict. That's part of the point of play. Players should also expect a degree of conflict between PCs - I wouldn't necesssarily say that's part of the point of play, but it's an obvious way to increase the pressure on the PCs (and thereby the players).

The third Belief of the wizard/assassin is that Companions are like tools - useful, but not always reliable. That's pretty much guaranteed to produce moments of tension or conflict with other PCs.

One mechanical feature of BW, that differentiates it from (say) 4e, is that it has very robust mechanics for resolving PC vs PC conflict (whether physical, magical or social). Which means these conflicts can be incorporated into the play of the game, rather than causing it to grind to a halt.

For instance, when the black arrows were discovered, and the apparent truth about the brother's evil thereby revealed, the wizard/assassin (with help from the elven ronin) persuaded the mage that he had to give up the attempt to redeem his brother, and instead help her to find and kill him (she promised, in return, to help wreak vengeance on the balrog). Mechanically, this was handled as a Duel of Wits between the two PCs (with the ronin providing helping dice to the wizard/assassin).

 

[pemerton]

You expressed it as a fact, though.

I'm asserting a valuation, that I believe to be the case. If you dispute my valuation, then go ahead. Explain your reasons. Tell us what your conception is of the players having substantive input into the shared fiction.

I don't understand what you think the point is of pointing out (repeatedly) that my valuations are mine. I would have thought that's self-evident. (And as a matter of English usage, it is quite permissible to say "X is not a substantive instance of Y" without adding the qualifier "for me" or "in my view".)

 

[pemerton]

That implies a much more adversarial relationship between GM and player than I prefer.

I like Luke Crane's description of the role of the GM (BW revised, p 268), which includes, as elements of the GM's job:

To challenge and engage the players . . . [and] to meaningfully inject resonant ramifications into play.​

The next page of the book describes "the sacred and most holy role of the players", including:

to offer hooks to their GM and the other players in the forms of Beliefs, Instincts and Traits . . . [and] to drive the story forward . . . to push and risk their characters, so they grow and change in unforeseen ways.​

As a GM, it's not my job to look after the PCs. That's the players' job! If the player wants his PC to turn into a falcon and escape, nothing is stopping him - but a falcon can't carry bodies! If he wants to keep ahold of his bodies, he'll have to go with the watch to the prison. (Which is what happened.)

if an obstacle is designed to thwart a spotlight-hogging PC's abilities in order to give an underrepresented player's PC a chance to shine, I consider that perfectly acceptable

<snip>

Care should still be taken to make sure it doesn't appear to be deliberately thwarting the spotlight-hogging PC (or, if hiding it is impossible, the reasons explained privately OOC).

I would regard that sort of thing as primarily something for the players to sort out among themselves. It's certainly not something I would do secretly. If there is a table issue - of one player commiting some sort of faux pas, like hogging spotlight (and surely this is a player thing, not a PC thing - the "spotlight" is a property of the real world, not an in-fiction matter), then I don't see that as something the GM is meant to resolve via secret manipulation of the gameworld.

I'd consider dungeons and open-air tower-tops as "prisons" only in a metaphorical or conceptual sense. I was using the term more literally to refer to the type of building, stereotypically characterized by barred windows. That being said, yes, the utility of shapeshifting will depend on the specific construction. But if I haven't already introduced a falcon-proof prison, then I'm not likely to create a falcon-proof prison without a good IC reason (like the city in question being at war with (or fearing) druids or vampires or otherwise commonly needing to contain shapeshifters).

Well, as I posted once or twice upthread, it's a pretty trad fantasy setting - which means, among other things, that timber is far more readily available than worked metal. So I would say that a solid timber dungeon-esque door is more verisimilitudinous than a modern steel-bar-style cell block.

I don't see your choice to make the prison escape proof as practically different than a similar decision by a GM who wants to run a "captured by guards!" adventure. Sure, the genesis was completely different, but the consequence is the same: the shapechanging PC ended up in a shapechange-proof prison simply to thwart the ability the shapechange.

<snip>

Once the PCs failed their checks to talk their way past the guards, you determined that the consequence would be to haul them off to prison. You may feel justified in doing so by the mechanics of the system, but, from this moment going forward, you're thwarting the PC's ability to avoid capture in order to impose a specific outcome: imprisonment. That seems to fit the definition of railroading that I understand you to be using. The only difference is that the outcome the PCs are being railroaded towards was the result of the combination of a failed check and the "no retries" rule, as opposed to having been chosen for story purposes.

To the extent that I follow this - and I'm not sure I do - I don't agree.

The PC was fleeing across the city carrying two bodies (one headless), accompanied by another PC carrying two vessels of blood (one also with the head in it). I called for a check - Beliefs were at stake. The player failed the Hauling check: in the fiction, the burden of the bodies slows him down, and the PCs come across the night watch.

More checks are made and failed. The watch aren't persuaded to help them; they think they're suspicious. When one of them says "One of these bodies is decapitated", the snake-handler PC replies "It's OK, I've got the head" - picking up a Fate point in the process.

An attempt to call on spirits to distract the guards so the PCs can escape also failed. And the players chose not to escalate to violence. Hence they get thrown into prison.

Imposing consequences for failure isn't railroading as per the OP - it is not the GM shaping outcomes to fit a pre-conceived narrative. There was certainly no preconception: half-an-hour before, when the action of the game was still focused on the decapitation and the events in the room of the tower, who knew that running across the streets with bodies was even going to happen?

If I understand you correctly ("the genesis was completely different, but the consequence is the same") you are saying that there is no relevant difference between narrating some element into the fiction as part of framing, and narrating it as a consequence of a failed check. I don't think I've ever seen this asserted before.

I also don't understand why you describe the prison as "escape proof". The imprisoned characters nearly escaped (but for a failed lockpick check - sometimes the dice run cold) - that is not a marker of an "escape proof" prison.

That the prison can't simply be squeezed out of in falcon form makes it a genuine challenge/obstacle - and that's because being in prison is a consequence of a failed check.

the character ends up in prison despite having an ability to avoid it.

The character didn't try to fly away. Or to fight. I know why he didn't try to fight - the player wasn't sure he could win against half-a-dozen opponents. My conjecture as to why he didn't try and fly away is that he didn't want to lose the bodies.

when it became aparent that the attempt to talk past the guards had failed, and that the PC was going to lose the bodies anyway, was there any IC reason the PC couldn't change into a falcon and fly away at that point?

It wasn't canvassed - as I said, I'm guessing that the player didn't want his PC to lose the bodies.

And I don't know why you say "the PC was going to lose the bodies anyway". The wizard/assassin (one of the bodies) was thrown into prison with him, and has regained consciousness, reached an agreement about summoning the brother's dead spirit, and came close to getting the two of them out of prison. What has happened to the other body (ie the decapitated brother) isn't known yet, but there's no reason to think that body is lost.

I'm struggling to see how framing the game world (e.g. the falcon-proof prison) or resolving PC actions (e.g. preventing a subsequent shapeshift after social interaction failed) to thwart player intent as a result of a failed check (as opposed to simply narrating the failure itself) is ever practically distinguishable from framing the game world or resolving PC actions to thwart player intent to send the story in a particular direction.

I'm not sure what you mean by "simply narrating the failure itself". The failure is the failure of intent.

From BW revised p 34:

When the dice are rolled and not enough successes are generated to meet the obstacle, the character has failed at this task. What does this mean? First and most directly, the stated task goal and intent do not come to pass. However, in failure intent is more important than task goal.​

The PCs were trying to cross the city with the bodies and blood, without being obstructed or apprehended. This failed - the PCs were stopped. The PCs tried to persuade the watch that they should help with the bodies - this failed, and the watch's suspicions were increased, not reduced. The shaman tried to summon a spirit of wind and lightning to push the guards away and distract them so the PCs could escape - this failed, and he was himself struck by lightning. The PCs chose not to fight, and allowed themselves to be taken into custody.

I'm not the one who sent events in this direction. The players kept failing their rolls. (Some were hard checks, but that can happen when you're trying to carry decapitated and unconscious bodies through a city.) And they didn't want to stake their PCs' lives by fighting the guards. So they get caught and imprisoned.

If that's railroading, you seem to be saying that it's railroading whenever the players don't get what they want for their PCs.

If a fighter's hit points have been reduced to zero by application of the action resolution mechanics, it's not railroading to deny the player of that character the opportunity to declare attacks. Mutatis mutandis in this case.

I agree. But not because the mechanics say so, but because, IC, the character is not conscious.

I don't see the force of your distinction, for two reasons. First, the inability of an unconscious character to act is also something determined by the mechanics. Eg maybe the character has self-healing abilities that can operate when s/he falls unconscious (various Rolemaster and 4e PCs have such abilities).

Second, the only way that you know the character is unconscious is because there is a mechanical state (0 hp) that tells you as much. I've never heard anyone suggest that it's railroading simply to apply hit point deductions to a PC hp total because NPCs or monsters are rolling hits and damage against the player's PC.

If your definition of railroading is nuanced enough to distinguish between examples with identical consequences, that would suggest to me that it is overly-nuanced

It seems to me that any account of railroading has to be looking at something other than consequences. Consequences are simply events in the fiction. Railroading is about the method whereby the fiction is established. When players fail checks, bad things happen to their PCs. Speaking in general terms, it's the GM's job to establish those bad things. In my preferred approach, those bad things themselves speak to the evinced concerns of the player and PC - eg in this case, the PC ends up in prison with the assassin/wizard with whom he hopes to strike some sort of post-decapitation deal (because she is the only person whom he thinks he is going to be able to persuade to summon the dead spirit; he can't do it himself, as he's not a summoner).

If the player had succeeded at the social check, such that the PC persuaded the watch that nothing suspicious is going on, and I nevertheless had narrated them as taking the bodies, or locking up the PCs, or in some other way had dishnoured the player's successful check, well that would be railroading (among other things).

 

[Maxperson]

I'm asserting a valuation, that I believe to be the case. If you dispute my valuation, then go ahead. Explain your reasons. Tell us what your conception is of the players having substantive input into the shared fiction.

I don't understand what you think the point is of pointing out (repeatedly) that my valuations are mine. I would have thought that's self-evident. (And as a matter of English usage, it is quite permissible to say "X is not a substantive instance of Y" without adding the qualifier "for me" or "in my view".)

There's no point. I'm not going to persuade you, and you ignored the substantive portions of that post in order to argue the portion that wasn't substantive at all.

 

[Lanefan]

The system isn't one that uses spell components (which are also optional in many versions of D&D).

By "many" you mean just 4e and 5e? 0-1-2-3e's certainly had them and thouugh they may have been optional in 3e I think it was an opt-out situation: components were default unless the DM opted not to use them.

The assassin has never had lockpicking tools. The check to open the prison lock suffered the system penalty for no tools (a double-obstacle penalty, taking it from Ob 2 to Ob 4). I can't remember exactly what she was actually using for the attempt - maybe a buckle or pin from her armour (which hadn't been taken from either prisoner).

Didn't take their armour? Were they just wearing light armour e.g. leather, in which case I can sort-of see this, or were they in heavier armour under which they could hide any number of things?

I get it about the tough check, though.

Lanefan