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Why were the PCs anywhere near Marcus? Isn’t he supposed to be close to the queen. And they have no status that would allow them to be close to her at this stage

I've modified the story quite a a lot. I wanted to get the players more involved with the queen, to flesh her out as a person rather than just some enemy hidden in a castle. To that effect I had Cressidia bring her to a small council meeting to provide testimony on their findings during "edge of anarchy" (In my version of event the players uncover a drug ring involving Boule, Lamm, the cowhammer boys and Devargo whose tatinted drugs are fueling the riots) This is also when the players decided to return the queens brooch. The players are seen as heroes for quelling the riots and stopping the drug ring and are therefore brought in as consultants to the queens council when the plague hits and when Old Korvosa revolts.

I ran the scene with blackjack rescuing the Trinia scapegoat from execution as a cut-scene and I thought the lack of player involvement made it kind of lame. So I decided to have the Marcus scene take place during a council meeting the players happened to be attending.

The Brotherhood of bones seems pretty problematic to me as well. The idea is that as worshipers on Zon-Kuthon they want to further the god of pain's ends while keeping a low profile so as not to attract the attentions of would be heroes. To that effect they want to collect Kazavon's bones and keep them safe and quiet in a hidden temple somewhere. Actually resurrecting such a high profile historic champion of Zon-Kuthon would draw too much attention, and I guess Kazavon was a loose cannon anyways.

All that in mind the only reason any group of PC's would be willing to work with the brotherhood of bones is out of desperation. Both the brotherhood and the players want to prevent the resurrection of Kazavon but that's all they have in common.

The brotherhood is evil, the players are probably good or good leaning. If they do work together it's likely both parties will double cross the other once the crown of fangs is actually in hand. The best case end in this alliance is that one party actually trust the other to keep the crown safe and not use it against them in the future.

The more likely outcome is that the players just murder the brotherhood member either in their first meeting, when they notice scrying sensors, or inside scarwall.

An immunity to disease is not an instant cure for a disease (presumably they were putting these on diseased characters for 1 round instead of making one for every diseased citizen). It merely suppresses the effects - the virus still passes through your body, but doesn't deal you the damage (and making the Fort saves to discover exactly when it's cured is mostly pointless).

I tried to argue this but gave up when the player who is usually our GM started citing developer posts. I didn't want it to turn into a drawn out argument and decided to roll with it. I decided to have the cultists each work on ways to enhance the disease, Ramoska went into the sewers and took wererat blood samples to compare to vampire blood and turned blood veil into a curse+disease like mummy rot, Rolth researched a way to make those killed by the disease come back as plague zombies, and Davaulus (whom I had replaced with the Bee-Man of Bellis) Looked into infecting bee stings with the disease. Each sacrificed a leukodaemon to finalize their alterations. I think it worked out pretty well.

With Marcus, he should have been entitled to a surprise round on everyone, unless the party were specifically expecting him to shoot the Queen.

Most of the party would have made a perception check to see him going for the bow and it would have wound up the same but this is a good idea. In my version of the events Marcus hasn't planned things out, he just fly's off the handle. Earlier in the story I had him kill another sable company member in front of the PC's for letting blackjack rescue a fake Trinia from the chopping block. I think my plan to fix this is going to have Yzahnum make an early appearance and attack the queen disguised as blackjack. The Queen will defeat him but spare his life if he bends the knee to her. The PC's will watch this play out from a distance so they don't interfere. This way the queen gets to intimidate everyone with her new found power and at the same time create the propaganda of her being merciful and forgiving to those who swear to serve her.

Looking for some advice, this is my first time running a game. My players are actually having a ton of fun with it and the player who usually gm's for our group says he's having a blast playing and has been inspired to make changes to his game so I guess I'm not doing a bad job.

That said, they keep skipping all the content that I think should be fun and interesting and go straight from one hack and slash fight to the next:

I was excited to run the rooftop chase with Trinia but my stealthiest player scouted out the rooftops beforehand and blocked the window exit of Trinia's room while the rest of the party successfully stealthed up the stairs kicked in the door and cast web before Trinia had a chance to wake up.

In Seven Days to the grave on day one the players crafted a periapt of health and argued that immunity cures disease rather than just preventing infection and then spent every consecutive day crafting another and distributing them to Archbanker Tuttle, Cressidakroft and Dr Davaulus in that order. So the plague basically never happened and the cultists were playing catch up trying to find a way to assassinate the party crafter (unsuccessfully) and enhance the plague to work around the periapt.

In escape from old Korvosa I made the mistake of letting them be in the room when Marcus tried to assassinate the queen. They all beat him in initiative and managed to grapple him before he could loose his arrow despite me giving him 3 hero points. So the Queen never got shot.

They sent their stealthy scout into Vencarlo's house and both she and the mantis assassins failed the check to notice each other so they just left the empty house without exploring it any further.

And worst of all the skipped blood pig! They all drank invis potions and stealthed/flew their way into Pilts palace at night and slumber hexed him in his bead before he got a word in.

In my game I had Majenko and a mate protecting a nest of eggs on top of Lamm's Fishery. They were stealing pastries from nearby food carts to feed the orphans enslaved by Lamm. My player's were smart enough and perceptive enough to notice and befriend them and thus got some intel on Lamm's operation before kicking in the door. Afterwords my player's took over the fishery and turned it into a legit business/orphanage/base of operations. Majenko and his mate stayed around to act as guards. I had planned to have majenko captured in one of Devargo's webs while out hunting thus giving the player's motive to go into Eel's End but they wound up following other plot hooks to get there before Majenko had a chance to get caught.