I'm A Banana
Potassium-Rich
The issue can come in regarding what sort of work the DM has put into it.
Every bit of work a DM puts into their world is entirely elective and voluntary and doesn't entitle them to anyone's appreciation. Of course, that can be part of a DM's fun, and a DM who derives a lot of fun from that should probably find a group that is going to appreciate that effort and let them have fun making worlds, but the DM isn't owed anything by their efforts. But just because my DM invests a lot of work into his world doesn't mean I'm obligated to simply passively accept it as a player.
The point is that I didn't put anything into that adventure or world. It is a published adventure that is in what for me is an alternate version of the Forgotten Realms that will never come to be in my normal D&D multiverse.
On the other hand, a lot of DMs (including me) create our own worlds and spend dozens or hundred of unpaid hours crafting cultures, pantheons, nations, histories, calendars, etc.
Both approaches are fine, and the DM should do whatever is more fun for them. The motivation to make a world like that should be intrinsic, though - you can't make other people appreciate it, and it shouldn't matter if they do or not.
If someone comes to that game and asks if they can play a race that isn't a part of my world, it would be like asking if you can play a Vulcan or Klingon in a game set in Middle-Earth. No, you can't. Maybe you can be an aloof elf, or a strangely honorable orc, but that's as close as you can get without taking a crap on the world's integrity. If you allow a Vulcan or Klingon you are no longer playing in Middle-Earth. It might work if you are playing some sort of multi-dimensional game where you hop around from fictional realities to other fictional realities all posited to exist in the same multiversal arrangement or something. But that is hardly a shift in your campaign idea that a player who has put little work on designing it has any right to even seriously ask you to do, much less expect it to happen.
Maybe the players don't really want to play in middle-earth, then. Maybe the group would be happier playing something in a more Trek style. A DM should be able to roll with that vibe and give the group what they want (or give up the DM's chair), not stubbornly insist that everyone attend to their carefully constructed world-baby. If your own races and nations and archetypes aren't giving them something cooler to aim for than their own pre-conceived character types, there's a mismatch going on.
Which is part of why my "default" approach is to build the world around the characters and go from there, but I don't get a lot of joy out of worldbuilding in a vacuum anyway.
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Now, if player asks, "can I be a member of an order of knighthood that is kind of like..." I can accommodate that, and am usually happy to do so. Unless the world is built around a few specific orders of knighthood being the only ones on the block, it doesn't mess with anything. It's like saying you want to be from a seaside village. I'd ask the player what they want the village to be like in general terms, or maybe even let them design it! But if they say, I want to play a cleric of Thor, when Thor isn't known on the world, the answer is straight up no. I'll give them alternatives that are present, but I'm not going to bend what has already been established about the nature of the world to accommodate it. When we get into races that is just as fundamental a part of what the world is all about as the pantheons, history, or nations. Maybe that's where I differ from some people. If you see races as just a variety of nationalities, it might not be a big deal to throw in a country of race x here or there. But fantasy species are as big of deal as anything else in my essential world definitions, and you just can't add your Vulcan to my Middle-Earth.
There's not much constructive in being stubbornly insistent that others appreciate this thing you did. Either they are keen on it or they're not, and you're not going to force them to have fun with it by refusing to change and adapt to the actual group that's together here and what they're interested in.
If someone came to my Dark Sun game and wanted to play a cleric of Thor, my first step would be to make sure we're on the same page about what this game is going to be like, not just to dismiss them. Do you know what Dark Sun's about? Do you know why a cleric of Thor might be a problem? What do you hope to achieve by playing that character? What is fun about that concept for you? Do you think we can keep what is fun and work with the rest? Or should we just not play Dark Sun?
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