I think what @garrett says makes much sense.
I confess that I am from an Old School of FRPG, where the GM framed things to a fare-thee-well, and the players rolled the dice at critical moments. I will not assert that is a good thing or as best thing or an optimally enjoyable thing, but it’s what I imprinted on in Bright College Days and have never completely gotten over.
(One of my favorite campaigns I ran had me giving characters, with built-in secrets and synergies and conflicts, to the players. In retrospect, that was not a good thing for me to have done. But I still loved that campaign.)
So, one of the things I’ve had to deal with in my past GMing and more present PCing is how to deal with the authorial impulse. For me, that’s “I have a cool story, so let me share it with others to go along with me on the journey.” There are two aspects to that. First, is it a good story? Second, do people want to be brought along in a story?
It’s a really amorphous balance how a GM can be both authorial and let the players participate in that creativity, even if the GM is “first among equals” in that endeavor. I distinctly do not have an answer to that balance point. But I know that Doyce is a writer, and that desire to create a really cool world and story line is strong in him, and I completely understand that.
(And, as a player, I often want that channel to work within, because that was the model I grew up with. But that’s not necessarily what anyone else wants.)
I like that <<“what interest do you the player, or your PC, have in this part of the scene?”>> thing, and it’s appropriate to maybe prompt or ask the player “Hey, this might be a temple your character visited on vacation when you were younger.” But that should be a prompt or a question, not a push or provocation or assumption.
And part of that is that this is still early days with these characters, so both the GM and the player (and the other players) don’t yet fully know who each character is, which may be in part why Kiln didn’t leap at the ostensibly logical opportunity. I mean, I’d feel fully comfortable at judging an Alycia opportunity if it popped up, and either telling Doyce, “Ooooh, that’s brilliant,” or “No, that’s really not what she’d do.” I don’t yet have that confidence with Joe, and I suspect @fragolakat doesn’t have it with Kiln, so I suspect when Doyce says, “Hey, here’s a thing I think will resonate with your character,” there’s a certain amount of “Hmm, I’m not sure, but maybe that makes sense, especially if that’s part of the broader story Doyce is trying to tell.”
(The exception to that I know of is @Margie, who often has a very strong sense of her character long before I do, and is more prone to push back internally at suggestions that don’t align with that sense.)
So I don’t know the right answer here (and the hour is not helping). Offering opportunities to engage, vs. directions to engage might be of use. The difference between “the temple might be one of a style you are familiar with … is it? If so, what do you do?” vs "the temple is of a style you are familiar with, what do you do?’ Which is tough because, as a story-teller, the opportunities and connections that the GM sees are horribly seductive for all the right reasons (“It would be awesome if the temple was one that Kiln knew of old! That’s so cool!”).
(And, just to throw a variable into the equation, it can also just be a matter of a player’s engagement in a given evening, not some grand metagaming issue.)
And that is probably enough babbling. Long past time to sleep.
