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Message: <blockquote data-quote="prabe" data-source="post: 8036266" data-attributes="member: 7016699">That's a fair question.First, every NPC (except Black Irnod, who runs the eponymous library in Pelsoreen) that came into the campaign [EDIT: in that session] did so as a result of the PCs' actions and/or decisions. They decided to go looking for temples where the Orcphans would be looked after, and while I'd prepped the Cracked Shields, if the party hadn't gone looking for them I would have allowed the prep to lie unused. While I don't doubt that the NPCs' existence seems unilateral to you, it doesn't feel that way from where I sit, and I don't think it feels unilateral from the players' perspective, either. I have pulled out my notebook for that campaign and looked at the session prep I had. There were the names of the orcphans, one longish paragraph about the Cracked Shields, covering only the first interaction in the session--the party going back and seeing if they wanted to help clean out the House of Masks wasn't something I anticipated in my prep. I see a line "other information from prior sessions applies" but it seems likely to mostly apply to the Masked Ones themselves and the libraries in Pelsoreen; I'd have to pull up other session notes to see why I had so much pending from prior sessions. It's probably because the party did something other than what I'd prepped for, or did something I'd prepped for in more detail than I'd expected.Second, this is a highly research-intensive party. "Team Library" is a standing subset of the PCs. It's plausible that part of the reason there are so many libraries in the cities they've spent time in/around is because the party has gone looking for them (and it's made sense to me libraries would be there). Most of the stuff you've described them "needing to learn from the GM" emerged when they started looking for it. The narrative only reflects what did happen, not all the other things that could have happened if the PCs had chosen different paths or approaches.I know you think the campaign is "RPG-as-puzzle" because the players don't have any direct way to alter things in the way you prefer--there's nothing like a declaration "I look for a cleric in the temples who's willing to take in these orcish orphans" that leads to action-resolution that might lead to there being at least one cleric in the temples willing to take in orcish orphans--but part of the reason I have reacted so strongly to that description is that I read "puzzle" as only having one solution. While I do not DM with a fixed solution in mind that the players must guess to proceed, I cannot prove it to you in retrospect because all I can point to is what the PCs did and what happened as a result thereof; I don't have notes showing alternative paths because I don't have notes for any path, even the one the PCs took. My notes for the session I posted, for example, are less than a page and a half of notebook paper; the session before is just over four; the session before that I can tell was one that ended early because the party found a way to teleport to Pelsoreen and I hadn't prepped the city in much more detail than "it exists."</blockquote>

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