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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6397770" data-attributes="member: 2011">Yup because PCs matter (to actual players) and NPCs are so many bits on a piece of paper.At the power/skill levels of the PCs, this would have been a walk in the park though, just like it was for the skilled supervillain that did it.Doubtful. It has been a few years, so I do not remember all of the nit details.And seriously, this was an extremely minor thing in the grand scheme of things going on.Most of the middle of the United States was blacked out, all kinds of systems were running on backup power and reduced capability, many infrastructure systems were getting hacked into, supervillains were attacking and capturing superheroes in cities across the US (each of the PCs had been double teamed individually at the start of the adventure while separated, but they all managed to win their individual fights), supervillains were shooting military jets out of the sky, the authorities were having problems landing normal commercial planes, nobody knew which computer systems to trust and which not to trust. It was a very chaotic night. The US was under the worst attack in its history.Supervillains had broken into Stronghold a few weeks earlier, broke everyone out, and it was all kept hush hush (it actually took the authorities days to even find out about it). This was not known by the general population until dozens and dozens of villains showed up all over the place.The repercussions of the PCs not figuring this bomb out was that it took them longer to rescue the ISS crew. It was a likely outcome the entire time. It's not the DM screwing over the players. It's the scenario as written. One that they had a chance to modify, but missed. They modified a lot of other plot points. This was one little one which did not significantly affect the overall outcome. It modified some timelines, but it was no great shakes.That's because you are a perfect DM sitting there in your armchair and the rest of us are not.I know many dozens of players who would not even have broken a sweat over this. Possibly, you would have. That's what happens when players do not trust their DMs.In the big scheme of things, this was one minor plot point out of many many many dozens. As a DM, I do not feel it is my responsibility to hold my players hands and give them enough clues until they finally figure each little item out. The scenario is as it is and the players come up with ideas on how to handle it, what to investigate, and so on. Their PCs have a ton of versatility. You seem to be of the school that PCs should be able to figure out everything and if they are not spoon fed enough info to get them to that point, it's bad DMing. Meh.There are better calls. I am far from perfect. But this was not a terrible call. The other players did not think so.</blockquote>

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