Agreed. The DM works with the player. That is what that means to me. If it is more than one player (I have never seen it, but I am sure it happens), then you probably need to scrap the idea. That would be my suggestion. When a DM says, I want to run the "We Be Goblins" campaign from Piazzo, ok, cool, we are goblins. Unless a few players are like, I don't want to play that. Then, scratch the campaign.
I guess I just don't see any given concept as so air tight, or so...idk important?...that I'd default to "play as is" vs "scrap the whole idea", when "modified the concept in small ways to accommodate the players" is also an option.
The concept of time, as has been noted, is important. It is clutch, in my opinion, of the entire argument. Early on I asked how long a campaign was and got a few answers. For my students, I tell the DMs to count on running this for a half year. A big commitment, considering at that point 5 months is like a super long relationship to them.
But if your campaign is a few years, I would think (imho) that the DM should probably bend a lot - like an awful lot, if you are asking the players to make a commitment of that length. My campaigns for my curated world are short, which is one of the reasons I have the views that I have. I, as a player, play in generally 3/4 to year long campaigns. (Double or triple mine.) That (again imho) is more than a fair time for the DM to set almost any limit they want.
Here's the thing that amuses me about these discussions. We probably mostly actually play and run the game about the "same", accounting for stylistic, thematic, etc, difference and probably different houserules, etc. But the basic process of the game is about the same once things are rolling.
What I'm saying is, in my group we recognise the voluntary group social activity nature of dnd by the fact that the DM doesn't ever present a fully fleshed out campaign concept and say, "I'm running this next. Whose in?" Instead, a member of the group says, "Hey I've got an idea for a game, what do you think?" and the concept forms into a campaign concept as the discussion develops, and we try to make sure that the whole group is accounted for. Even in the short story arc games, we try to have as much player buyin before characters are even made as possible.
I'll often start with, "Hey, John, what sort of character would you be interested in for a game where everyone is a wandering duelist/fighter/swashbuckler/similar, and a "Great Hunt" has just been called, the ultimate chance for glory and honor, and wealth and fame?" or "Hey, Mel, would you be interested in playing a game where everyone is tied strongly to a powerful Church analogous to The Church in medieval Europe, and the group is brought together to solve a problem for said Church, exploring issues of faith, standing against darkness, and protecting the faithful? (the details that all PCs would probably be knights of the church, with maybe room for the equivelent of an Orthodox Knight having been sent from Constantinople by his Bishop, or an alchemist-priest whose expertise is related to the case, etc, would come after Mel says that such an idea is interesting to her, and would be open to debate. Or I might start with the "All Knights of Faith" pitch, if that is the main thing I want from the campaign.
In one instance, I mentioned in a group chat that I'd had an idea bouncing around my head for ages called Church Mice, where we play mice of Faith of The Light who are working to protect the faithful, including the clumsy blind humans who call The Light "God" and build grand cathedrals in "his" honor, from The Darkness. The idea being that we are mouse knights and such living on the grounds of Notre Dame or some other great cathedral, and the game is more about investigation and understanding a threat and then working against it, than it is about running in holy swords blazing. Keep our efforts secret from the big folk, dogs are also protectors but can only help so much because they sort of between the human and critter worlds, cats are dangerous and often villainous but some also fight The Darkness, and so alliances can very carefully be made (heck I'd allow a Fey warlock as a character who made a pact with an Elder Cat), etc. It's very Mouse Guard in concept, but we don't like the mechanics of that game so it will be DnD with a lot of reflavoring.
And, as we talked about it, my buddy Drew chimed in that he'd love to run that, and I know he'd kick ass at running that concept, so I've handed it over to him and it is on "on deck" list for the group.
Anyway, the point is that recognizing the authority of the group doesn't actually change the game that much. It's still rude to interrupt play to challenge a ruling, you save that for the break or after the session or whatever. It's still the DM's job to run the world and the players' jobs to run their character. It's just that because we don't, as a group, accept the idea of the God DM, no such thing exists at our table. Because the God DM is entirely something that exists only because the group consents to it.
