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I don't believe it be so. If you don't like posts with uncaveated opinions that make specific judgments about playstyles, then TwoSix in '26 may not be the right poster for you. Let me know if you need assistance finding the block or ignore functionalities available to you.

If you want more clarity, it isn't so much "wrong" as much as "worse". But yea, I'm making a normative judgment call here; caveating it with "well, for me... just weakens the declaration.

Yes. You should be accomodating the player. Your world-building interests are of lesser priority. I've said that like three times already. :)

It has nothing to do with selfishness. It has everything to do with the GM making poor decisions on how to maximize their effectiveness at GMing an actual table.

The point you seem to be blind to is that you can do all of that stuff without a ton of prep, AND without making choices to invalidate player options. Player wants to play a tortle? Swap out those swamp goblins in the SE corner of the map for tortles and maybe some other reptilians.

Obviously I can't act as some universal arbiter of correctness. But if we define wrong using the criteria "A table that is right is one I would want to play in", yes, I think you're doing it wrong.

Most importantly to me, nobody is asking the important question, which is "WHY did the PCs burn down a village?" There seems to be an assumption that the players are just being chaos agent chuckleheads. Now, granted, many players ARE chaos agent chuckleheads, and in the absence of players who...

Or the DM could just not, you know, make that terrible decision and stamp it into their world-building.

"Wrong" is a spectrum. My argument is twofold. 1) If you're playing D&D and you aren't embracing cosmopolitan diversity, a central point of the game for the past 25 years, you're doing something wrong. If you think a setting should only have a few races, then the OSR is probably a better for...

I agree that many people make poor choices around what to make important, yes. But I'm certainly not going to tell you that using the back-end of your screwdriver to hammer in a nail is a correct choice, and just as good as a hammer.

If that's the only reason to have lore, why are you banning races? The only impact on the player is to deprive them of a choice. I've played with 8 other DMs over the last decade or so. They've ranged from decent to very good. All of them have made choices I've disagreed with, or have...

Well, "burn down" is metaphorical. Usually. :) I'm more emphasizing the greater point that the rationale for a setting is to give the players and their characters a backdrop for their actions.

Exactly. The work you do for a campaign setting frame is like building a bonfire. You stack a bunch of pieces together to give the players something satisfying to burn down.

What kind of GM needs a statblock just to run a NPC? Just improvise!

I GM as often as I play. GMs don't need some special form of empathy. If you're GMing for people who don't appreciate your efforts, stop GMing. There's no Prisoner's Dilemma around people engaged in a shared hobby activity.

I DM as often as I play, probably a little more. The setting simply isn't that important.

And the point I'm making is that building a setting that isn't anchored in a group of players' interests and choices is a waste of time. Go outside, touch some grass, connect with friends, volunteer at a soup kitchen....anything besides spending effort on Tolkien Pastiche #12014172. And when...

Players still don’t care about lore. They might care about lore if the game is a licensed property they’re familiar with. Or if you present some lore that gives them a clear and demonstrable character-impacting choice within the game. But no one wants to read your game notes to figure out why...

Much like Pam in the Office, I can’t find the difference between these pictures. All 3 of those rationales are terrible.

And that’s totally fine. If a player agrees to a game with a tight premise, and later on decides they don’t want to do that anymore, the onus is on them to step aside gracefully.