Quote Originally Posted by Reversefigure4 View Post
Broadly speaking, it's because the players have less clarity than their characters.

For the character, the details of the werewolf interrogation that happened four hours ago in game time is pivotally important.

For the player, the werewolf interrogation happened two weeks ago in the previous session, and they're devoting more portions of their brain to "Does that girl at the donut shop like me?" or "the Smith project is due on Tuesday" or "need to remember to pick up milk", all more relevant details to their real life. It's MUCH easier for the GM sitting there with a pile of notes and knowledge of the "right" answer than it for players to remember and work out what direct answer they should be giving, so what's obvious to the GM is not obvious to the players.

It's a minor issue easily resolved with some basic GM questioning or reminders, but in Talakeal-land the issue is heavily compounded by:
1) The players don't like social scenes and NPC and like playing powerful characters, but are instead in a campaign where they are literal children heavily embroiled in Fae politics.
2) The players don't care (probably related to 1), are paying very limited attention and would rather be on their phones. They likely haven't even -heard- the detail about Muir Woods, let alone later remembered it AND connected that -that- is the information specifically that needs giving as opposed to other details.
3) Talakeal likes odd puzzles with specific non-obvious solutions, and in this case requires the Muir Woods password specifically to get the Fae aid, but is unwilling to directly communicate with players about it.
4) Even if he did communicate successfully, since the players heavily distrust Talakeal, directly telling them "You should tell the Faye about Muir Woods, since it's one of their holdings" will result in the players assuming it's a trick and not doing it intentionally.

At most tables, getting players to answer direct questions from NPCs is a trivial problem. At a Talakeal table, it was an unsolvable problem from the instant the campaign began.
This is probably the best answer I am going to get, and its mostly correct.

Although I will say that its not quite as bad as you are making it, for example it was less than an hour between the interrogation and the changeling encounter OOC, and as I said above it was not the only solution, it was merely the easiest; talking to the selkies or asking about the mysterious glade in golden gate park would have lead down the same path for example.

As for #3, I still don't know how to present obstacles so they don't come across as puzzles, either at the table or online. It is never my intent to have a puzzle with only a single solution, but for some reason it always comes across that way even though I can't think of a time when that was ever literally the case. Outside of a few printed modules; those are full of stupid mono-solution puzzles.