hawkeyefan
Legend
Given in this analogy, everyone has to share all the food brought and each take a bite, I would question why my "friend" would purposely bring tacos to a Bollywood party when they know it won't complement any of the other dishes and everything will just taste weird and off.
If they're not going to bow to social graces for a small thing about food, would I want them continuing to interact with my other friends for the rest of the party? What else are they going to do?
There's an immediate lack of trust.
Ah, the analogy breaks down I suppose....maybe the friend doesn't like Indian cuisine or is allergic to curry or he felt like tacos and didn't realize he'd be ostracized for not adhering to a party theme!
But back to gaming....sure, talking about it all ahead of time will most likely solve the problems. Looking at it in that context, let's say the DM gives a campaign write up (something that does't always happen, but we'll go with it). On that list is "No Tieflings", but one of the players has had a Tiefling in mind for his next character, and has been looking forward to playing one, and the idea of spending the next year or so not playing this character seems crappy.
Now, in a public game of some sort, perhaps it's easy to simply see this as a mismatch and the player can find another game. But in a regular gaming group? I think the DM needs to examine the reasons for disallowing Tieflings and then consider if having one will really impact the setting as much as he thinks.
I see this consideration on the DM's part to be no different than people who are advocating for the player to consider playing another character or perhaps working to reskin the tiefling to something more suitable to the game.