This, I think, rather pithily highlights exactly what I'm trying to say. The time you spend away from the table creating fiction by yourself entitles you to exactly nothing, IMO.
I mean, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with restricting options in and of itself. Personally, I’d just as soon have everyone be human as I said earlier in the thread. And if I made such a setting, then I’d hope that people would stick to it. Nothing wrong with that.
This problem, such as it is, seems more a product of online discussion than actual experience. Whenever these conflicts have come up in games in which I’ve been involved either as a player or a GM, we’ve talked it out and found some solution. Again, nothing wrong here.
But if we couldn’t figure it out… if attempts to compromise or reskin things somehow all failed… I’d simply give the player what they wanted. It’s just courtesy. As GM, I decide so much of the setting and its elements… I can yield one decision to someone else.
I think a lot of this comes down to control. The DM controls the setting. They’re the master of the world. All that rhetoric from the books. Many people spend months preparing their worlds, devoting hours upon hours to it. It’s no wonder they get attached to them.
But that’s all bollocks. None of it is necessary to run a game. You don’t have to spend all those hours doing all that work in order to do the job of the DM.
So if you do that amount of work, it’s a choice. You shouldn’t hold your choice over others’ heads.
And as I’ve said in the past, no one is going to share your connection with the world you’ve crafted. It’s just not going to happen. Players may enjoy it and even find it interesting, but they’re not going to be attached to it in the way the DM is.
Expecting others to be as faithful to your setting as you are is kind of odd. If that’s what you want, then you need to convince them in some way. If you’ve described your unique setting where it’s only humans and elves, and everyone shows up wanting to play dwarves and tieflings… then you dropped the ball.
I think that, generally speaking, the hobby overall but especially D&D in particular, involving more people in setting creation is a good idea.
I’d love to see them drop this “the world is yours” BS once and for all in One D&D. You can do things that way, and if everyone’s cool with it, great. But as a default I’d love more focus on collaboration.
I think limiting options becomes much easier when everyone has a say in what’s limited.