What behavior do you think he's claiming disagreements lead to?
I made a list of all his player examples a post or two ago. They are all, in my opinion, immature people trying to win DnD.
The monk player trying to act like the Flash or the Cleric of Odin thinking that Odin will just point them to whatever it is they are looking for. Things like that. They are his only examples with anything beyond vague "but people disagree"
You and I both know this isn't true. Hyperbole to this extreme is never a good look.
This isn't true either.
What is being said is that reasonable people don't always agree, even after they talk it out. When that happens one of those in the disagreement either ends up deferring to the other person or the group splits over irreconcilable differences. All calling the DM the final authority means is that when something comes to this, he's the one that everyone has agreed to defer to.
In the post i just responded to, where I quoted him back at himself because "I never said that" he took the position that some people are claiming to have "complete harmony and never any disagreement"
That is how he characterized the question of "why can't a group of reasonable people come to a consensus", that it is basically a fairy tale of no one ever disagreeing. Heck, I straight up asked , because Oofta said he and his wife had been playing together for multiple decades, if she had ever tried to do something outside the rules, and after she presented which rules she thought applied, he agreed with her proposal. His first response? "Yes, I have disagreed with my wife." The exact opposite of what I asked.
Additionally, if two people disagree, but one decides to defer to the other? That is still reaching a consensus. The issue is that the "deferment" has come into this via the idea that it is only being done to save relationships. But, it can be done for other reasons as well. If I disagree on how a rule works for the barbarian, but the barbarian makes a reasonable claim for their side and it mostly affects them... yeah, deferring works. It is mostly about their character and how they want it to run. The problem is, this example is likely to immediately get taken to something ridiculous instead of being reasonable.
Of course it's possible. It happens 99% of the time. It wouldn't change anything if it happened 99.99% of the time. What matters is that it doesn't happen 100% of the time.
Of course it doesn't. I never claimed it did happen 100% of the time.
But here is the kicker.
If the DM is only needed for the rare 1% of the time that reasonable people can reach a consensus.... then 99% of the time, you don't need a DM. That's the facts. If you are only needed for the rare occurrence, then by definition, you aren't needed the rest of the time.
So sure, maybe a game that has a "rulings by committee" set-up is going to very rarely have to deal with a big disagreement that they can't work through... but since everyone seems to be saying that these events are incredibly rare, then on the off chance they happen, that group can likely figure out some solution.
People do that. A lot.
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Sure. But it's equally reasonable for them to disagree on what the vague rule means and not be able to come to a consensus. We see it here all the time in threads. Multiple interpretations with different people thinking that they are right. So #3 is an example of a situation where people very often don't come to an agreement and need a DM ruling.
But those situations are rare. Quite rare, and additionally, they are rather static.
And, it is completely possible that the group does reach an agreement on it, after all, many of those threads end up having people who are quibbling over small differences. People can handle those situations without needing to turn to a DM.
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Thats the reason for me. I like to DM, because I really enjoy thinking up worlds and settings, and writings plots and characters.
I don't welcome the input of my players into the world building, because I want to have final say in my campaign and be the only author of its setting.
As a side note, but relevant:
I've been running a 3.5 pirate campaign for several years now. To man a ship, you need a crew. So I wrote various named npc's to fill the crew. As the players formed alliances, and more ships joined their fleet, this meant more crew. I did not intend for the off screen crew to all be named npc's. However, one of my players took it upon himself to write all the npc's of this crew and tried to push them into my story. Not only was this addition unwelcome to me, but I noticed the rest of the players also didn't appreciate someone elses writings being forced into a campaign they've enjoyed for years. They really like my npc's and they don't like npc's written by this player. Further more, I would not know how to run these npc's... I'd have to memorize their backstories, and I don't even like them myself.
I'm curious about this example, because I did something similar for my DM a while back giving a whole bunch on names and some small bits of backstory for citizens of our city.
Was there something inherently wrong withe the PC making those characters? As in, no matter the content, what they did was wrong? Or was it more that some of the characters they created that were the problems?
Because, it sounds like it is the specific NPCs that were written, not that the player sat down and wrote them at all.
After all, whether you named the NPC or this guy named the NPC, player #3 is just absorbing the information. And you specifically said they like your NPCs, but not this guys, making it sound like it is the content, not the act of creating it, that is the problem.