I've been thinking about this more and more.
I think I have a player, a grognard like myself (25 years plus playing), a min/max'r (not that there is anything wrong with it), a "play-to-win-story teller" type that may very well have bought a campaign source book, not just to have it, but to know it. It produces the worse kind of feelings in me and the bile rises from my gut at the thought.
And while this is nothing new, I have prejudices, as a grognard and as "always the GM, rarely the player" that this is cheating of the worse form in RPG gaming. And while this prejudice of mine has made me a better GM that can ad lib and stitch a story together, I'm saddened, because the campaign is one that I would like to sincerely run, out-of-the-box.
So, I have some great threads that will steer the party into the plot, I just don't want the railroad to be so obvious. Me thinks this is going to require a "scrape off the serial numbers" approach, and yet, what are the experiences of other GMs like the BGs in this situation?
Pondering spikes in character mortality rates has never been so tempting a statistic worthy of closer study.