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No, these aren't things I think about only in retrospect, but are things I have actually thought about when actively deciding which games to play and all my opinions have formed after I had access to both games. In fact, it is probably safe to say that I am an utterly atypical example, which...

I think @AnotherGuy the nail on the head with their previous comment. Dynamic power levels that match the PCs aren't incompatible with sandboxes, but they are contrary to living world sandboxes. I don't think any of this is unique to D&D. You can have regions/threats of greater or lesser...

If it's an NPC name, I usually hope one of my players remembers it, or has written it down, because I probably have no clue and, even if I wrote it down, I won't be able to read whatever I scrawled on my tablet (if I can even find where I wrote it). For other stuff? Honestly, for a reasonable...

Again, to be clear, this wasn't my group. It was a GM talking about what had happened, wondering if other GMs have had similar experiences and looking for people's thoughts. Idle chit-chat in a discord. It felt to me like they just pitched the basic idea of a game, left the players to come up...

Seems pretty straightforward to me but, unfortunately, for a lot of people, it doesn't count.

If you're just talking preferences, then cool. It's clear you don't like certain GM styles. That's OK, we don't have to like the same things. Concerning? Now we've gone from preferences to moralising. I'm emphasising it in this conversation because GM power is what the conversation is about...

They weren't my players. But choosing to play a game other than a Viking one is exactly the solution I arrived at, assuming everyone remained adamant they didn't want to play Vikings. If it was my group, we would not have reached the point where everyone was presenting characters and none were...

This thread probably contains at least a thousand posts where various people, including me, have pointed out that no, they can't. If this point isn't already clear, it never will be. ;)

Again, almost every post I read from you is telling me otherwise. You absolutely have said things "like it" even if you haven't literally used the words I did. Declaring what? I absolutely do have right of veto for anything that goes into a game I run. I had a player ask if they could play an...

If my intention was to run a game about Vikings, and not about visitors to Norway hanging out with Vikings, I would most likely be disinclined to allow someone from southern Europe, Africa or the like. Whether I ultimately would or wouldn't would depend on all the specifics, who's asking, why...

You don't like GMs having the power to decide what is acceptable in their game or not. I do. The difference is that you seem genuinely upset that GMs like me even exist (and won't admit we're wrong and unreasonable and power hungry), whereas I am perfectly OK with you gaming happily with a GM...

Typically, I establish what the canon will be in a game I run, so I don't see much of a difference. As I've mentioned, my next game is likely to be set in the 1e Savage Frontier but, anywhere they differ, my vision trumps any and all official Forgotten Realms material. I feel zero obligation to...

Fine. My choice of example did suggest how little energy I have left for the argument you're making. Replace catgirl ninjas with storm troopers or Japanese traders or French nobles or aliens or Chinese animists or elves or Norse gods. I'm still a tyrant in your eyes and I'm OK with that.

Yes, as I just mentioned to @EzekielRaiden, that particular response was a flippant one. That said, I made it in large part because it doesn't seem to me that ER would care in the slightest about that nuance and would, indeed, believe that the GM with all the previously listed powers to say "no"...

Other than the very final comment about catgirl ninjas all the way down, all my responses were serious. As a GM, I absolutely do feel entitled to decide what races, cultures, classes, species, backgrounds etc are appropriate for a game I'm planning to run. If a player wants something outside...

That's news to me. Well, depending on what XYZ are, possibly. Absolutely. You are not playing a bohemian catgirl ninja in my historical Viking game. Absolutely. You are not playing a bohemian catgirl ninja in my historical Viking game. Absolutely. You are not playing a bohemian catgirl ninja...

And the one armed man in the pub. ;)

The journey towards bardhood can be just as much fun as achieving it. I played in a short lived 2e game where I convinced the GM to let me play a 1e bard. The campaign never went anywhere, but while it lasted I had much more fun playing a 1st level fighter who considered himself an apprentice...

Speaking only for myself: Several restrictions on magic users were removed or loosened, for the worse: Preparation time drops from 15 minutes per level to 10 minutes per level, which means high level magic users can recover their full complement of spells much faster. Bonus spells for...

That was my first exposure to it. I don't know if it existed as an example prior to that. In any case, no, I don't really see it as sandbox specific at all.