If the risk is purely hypothetical - which in this context means it's purely imaginary, given that no reason has been given to think that the hypothesis is plausible - then why do we need to even worry about it?
Again with the catch-22. If it happenned at someone's table, then it's fault of the individual, and not the rules that allowed it. If it didn't hapenned at someone's table, then it means it won't happen and rules are fine. It's a deflection from criticism. Just because I didn't personally had my game ruined by bad rules doesn't mean I'm blind to the fact the rules are bad.
To offer a parallel - to the best of my knowledge, every version of D&D permits a player to decide if their PC has any scars, birthmarks etc. This is not within the remit of the GM. Do we need to change that allocation of authority because I can imagine a PC deciding that their PC has some crass/vulgar/hateful symbol emblazoned on their face in the form of a scar or birthmark?
Of course. We had this thing called session 0, on which we set up what we want in the campaign. If a player decided to cross that line I have an authority to put my foot down. If the player argues what we established as offensive content doesn't apply to his own character because he has control over it, then the player is not a good fit to the table.
By this logic, where player gets ultimate freedom at expense of the GM, that you are championing, as a GM I am no longer allowed to list my own triggers and hard lines. One of my hard noes is gases and extrements - burping, farting, poor and rest of toilet humor - because it makes me want to vomit. A player following your logic can argue I am not allowed to set a line against it because it is their character and they decide whenever their character burps or farts, and if that makes me sick, I should go ef myself because I'm a GM and giving a foot back to the GM is destruction of player freedom and creativity.
And to return to your imagined scenario: if it were to really come about that a player was playing a PC who (i) purported to be the leader of a community of devout and honourable knights, and (ii) was themself a scoundrel, and yet (iii) the player was not interested in exploring the tensions between (i) and (ii), or the consequences that (ii) might have for (i), then the problem would not be the bastion rules. The problem would be one or both of: (a) the player is not very good (or worse); (b) the player and the GM have different ideas about how they want to do their RPGing.
I'm of beleif even the best players will behave in the way encouraged by the rules. And rules that can be exploited actively encourage being exploited and encourage bad behavior. A player who abuses bastion rules is not doing anything the rules did not encoruage them to do and may not even think of doing it in the first place in a system, where the rules don't give such opportunnity.
I didn't say anything about the quality of your GMing.
Nor did I say either of these things.
I have been around RPG communities to know "author" is used as a derogatory term, refering to a railroady GM who should never run the game and instead just write a book or is a failed novelist. I'm not stupid, I have seen through your plausible deniability attempt.
Well, there's no need to make many assumptions about me, as I have dozens if not hundreds of actual play posts on these boards, mostly from the perspective of a GM (see eg
my current Torchbearer game) but some from the perspective of a player (see eg
this Burning Wheel actual play report).
You wrote multiple paragraphs to defend your quality as a DM or player, while completely missing my point that it's freaking rude to make negative assumptions about how someone plays based on few posts on a forum. You are trying to show my potrayal of you was wrong, while refusing to engage with my point that it was wrong for you to make assumptions about me. You are shooting point-blank at the barn and somehow hitting the sheriff two counties over.
Re (a) - there is no reason I know of to think that it will be true. I mean, whose suspension of disbelief is going to be harmed? That players? Why - presumably they enjoy the whole thing given that they are the one who introduced it. The other players? Why - what is it about a player-authored bastion that is going to stretch their credulity more than anything else that might be part of the shared fiction.
And why can't you build your fiction around the player's thing, just as I have built around the Forgotten Temple Complex with an explosives cult?
Quite frankly, after experiences in my current campaign - where I let player build a fringe community their character was from, only for them then to ignore plot hooks related to that community only because other players were interested in other things and that player doesn't like to impose on them and whenever party votes which quest to take next, they default to "I do what rest of the group does" - I would discourage a player from adding something that I cannot easily integrate into the plot so I can more organically integrate it into the game.
I am running on assumption if a player wants to add something to the setting, they want it to come up and factor into the story we're telling. The way Bastion rules are set, I am prevented from doing that. And yes, this breaks suspension of disbelief if a part of the setting is not integrated. Let's say your Forgotten Temple of god of explosions wasn't in a Greyhawk campaign, but on Krynn, where there is a set in stone number of gods and all other gods are the same few under different names? Wouldn't you just say that one of these gods is god of explosion's true form? Or is Matt Mercer a bad DM for the fact that every time a player in Critical Role brings a new diety their character worships, he eventually reveals it's not a true diety, but some different entity or a servant of an actual diety, because his world has a set number of dieties?
Re (b) - what it communicates to me is that the player wants to have their thing. That doesn't show that they don't trust you to do your thing. Unless your thing is deciding everything about the fiction other than what actions the players declare for their PCs. Which goes back to the impression you have given me of your preferred approach to RPGing.
As I have said, it is my responsibility to integrate their thing into the setting and their campaign and I find offloading it on the player to be lazy and against why I'm the GM. If a thing just exists separately and doesn't come up in the story, aside "number go brrr" mechanical bonus, does it REALLY exist in the campaign? Not in my opinion. As far as I see it, that player is screwing themselves over seemingly just because they don't trust me.
