You're claiming because the DM does the most work, then their word is law. That's entitlement dude.
No, it's not. It's earned. Their creation; their rules; their labor. To constrain it is to lay claim on the DM's effort. Or do you contest that the guest has claim over the house owner and builder about what rules the host sets over what goes on in his own house? It is not authoritarian to say that you own what you own. It is authoritarian to say that you own what belongs to someone else. On this, even I agree with the Objectivists.
Entitlement is special rights and priveledges which are not earned but granted to you by social standing and civic custom. Ownership and control of what you've worked for and what you yourself have built is not entitlement but its opposite.
But if you must have it be entitlement, then the DM
is entitled - by some of the oldest social customs in all of Role Playing - to be master over his game and to rule over it unquestionably as he sees fit. He is by social custom, convention, and often the explicit statement of the rules, and absolute dictator that need not bow to anyone else's opinion unless he desires to do so. I believe that this common entitlement is only a recognition of the fundamental truth that the DM creates the game for his own reasons, and the players choose - or do not choose - to participate in it. The DM in my mind unquestionably has the right to control his game, and the only questions therefore is in what fashion a wise DM conducts himself if he wishes to entertain himself and to have players and to entertain them.
It was for this reason I found it ironic that a player would charge the DM with, "enjoying the game on the cost of the players" as if the players labored to please the DM rather than the DM laboring to please the players. I typically put in 10-20 hours a week in to a game, and I've rarely met the player that makes an effort at all until they show up. If DM's were paid for their time, there would hardly be a game ever, because players simply couldn't afford the rates. The DM gives his work away; the player therefore has even less right to lay claim to it.
