And yes, Dwip's general point about journal entries should be taken to heart. I understand where you're going with this and have myself tried to impose similar conditions in my earlier mods. It didn't end well. I usually had more questions about stuff than I was hoping for. I got stuck on the same thing with Bruin that Dwip did - I simply didn't recall where he said he was going to wait and gave up searching the city and was on my way to leave when there he was.
I know it seems somewhat harsh, but I gave up the desire to keep notepads filled with clues after the Ultima series. This is part of why I've never managed to finish Ayleid Steps either. Not enough stuff in the journal now for me to even remember what I was doing. Windfall had this problem in spades and I had to guess at random on where to resume that quest when I picked it up several months later because the journals had no info and the structure of the mod made scouring the CS for clues almost impossible. I stumbled over my objective there entirely at random. I very nearly chucked Windfall out of my load order before completing it because of this. I don't want RST to end up being the next victim of this problem - and I'll be totally frank - it's already getting that way because I've had to stop, exit, check the wiki, and when that doesn't help check the CS instead in order to know what I missed.
I am with you on the desire to leave out the Bethesda GPS System though. I don't much care for it except in cases where you should absolutely know where the target is anyway.
I agree with this. One of the joys I thought PC would bring was NOT having to keep volumes of hand written notes, etc. when playing. I don't like TES4's vanilla hand holding. But a mod full of quests where the clues are buried amid vast amounts of books, dialog, etc., with no automated method of retrieving this data, when it becomes clearer whats important punishes players who don't have awesome memories. I have been frustrated, a number of times, with this in RST. Also, players need a primer just to know how to begin. Get torches if dungeons are dark, cause they won't be issued. (Military brass all have infravision, i guess.) Know that activators, many times, don't show... (are invisible). For me, this makes much of the game click-fest city (not like). And that's not what I seek in an adventure. I don't want to struggle with the system, or the interface... RST is so close to being a classic. But clickfesting, and way-to-broad ranging 'hunts' diminish the other fabulous quests, scripting, design, graphics, and storytelling here. Finally, with so many new locations added, out of town manors, etc., perhaps an in-game-map, or an in-game-guide about these added locations would diminish players need to constantly access on line faq, etc. Certainly, the champion of Cyrodiil has enough good will to ask locals where things are (manor by skingrad, imperial manor, new apartment in IC, engineering office.