What I'm harping about is for the DM to do a bit of self examination and answer the question for himself. That, yes, you should come up with a better justification than, "I just don't like it". To me, that is a piss poor justification and smacks of a DM who takes things WAY too seriously for my tastes.
In your opinion.
You seem to be arguing that the DM absolutely knows better than the players what will make a good game and the player should always bow down to the greater knowledge of the DM. I say ballocks to that. No, the DM can be wrong. The DM can make mistakes. The DM's personal biases can result in a game that is less fun than if he relaxes those biases.
Nice way to combine a 'red herring' with 'poisoning the well' in a few short posts. Now suddenly we are talking about DM infaliability? When did that happen? We've gone pages and pages and pages and its never been brought up, and now suddenly whether or not the DM can make mistakes is what we've been talking about. No, I'm not letting you drag this topic in a whole new direction.
I am not arguing and never have been arguing that the DM absolutely knows better than the players what will make a good game, and I'm quite sure that haven't said anything remotely of the sort. I am simply arguing for the right of the DM to make the choices, rightly or wrongly. If you'll look at what I've said, I've very consistantly argued that there isn't anything like an objective 'right campaign'. I haven't been passing judgement at all, and I haven't broached the topic of whether a DM's setting can be objectively bad. Elves aren't objectively bad. Elves aren't objectively good. The players concede the right of the DM to be the DM not because he's more experienced, smarter, better, or even a better DM than the other players at the table, but because they've agreed that for this session he is the DM. It's just that simple. Of course the DM will make mistakes, but whether or not you say 'Yes' or 'No' to elves has nothing to do with mistakes because the inclusion of elves or not is simply a personal preference and isn't wrong either way.
Sure, conceivably the DM's game might get better if he relaxes his personal biases, but equally conceivably the DM's game might get worse, might get less enjoyable, and almost certainly will get less personalized, less unique, and in all probability less imaginative if it is just allowed to drift towards concensus fantasy.
There are alot of DM's out there running their own distinctive games, and the distinctiveness of the DM's game is part of the attraction. I don't want to stamp myself on their game except to the extent that my character is memorable with in the framework of the game.
That's all I'm saying. You keep wanting me to clearly define something that is indefinable.
You claim that all your really crying out for is more self-evaluation. Well, fine. But let's start with the idea that you can make some absolute judgement about what is good or bad DMing based on concepts that you find yourself totally unable to define.
You cannot absolutely say this or that. It doesn't work. But, at the end of the day, when the DM sits back and evaluates his reasons for disallowing something, if the only reason he can come up with is, "Gee, I just don't like X", then IMO, he should get over himself, let it go and let the player have it.
You cannot absolutely say that. It doesn't work. At the end of the day, you can't pass absolute judgement over a DM's personal preferences. Since you can't pass absolute judgement over them, then you should respect them even if you don't agree with them.
That's all. That's the whole thing in a nutshell.
You seem to want me to say, "Oh, DM's are all stupid, and players always know better, and blah blah blah". That's totally NOT what I'm saying.
I didn't say it was. I certainly have no desire to claim that you said that, since I'm quite confident of my ability to attack your main line of argumentation. I don't need red herrings, and if I introduced one it would just distract from my main points.
Look, if you still don't get it after this post, just whack me on ignore and stop responding. I've said it as clearly and as simply as I can. I'm not about player entitlement or anything like that. I'm saying in one very small area, the DM may very well be mistaken and it's a mistake for DM's to force their biases on the players. That's all.
It's rapidly became a vanishingly small area. It's shrunk to such a small area, I can't find it anymore. By your own admission, you can't define what this area is. So let's just admit that it doesn't exist, and that personal preference may be just as valid of a reason for the DM to do something as anything else.
Now, could the DM be wrong? Perhaps. But any of the DM's reasons for doing something could be wrong, regardless of how many justifications he may have. If he's wrong, he's wrong, whether his justification is simply 'personal preference' or his got a list of reasons as long as this thread.
And in any event, I'm abit hesitant to throw around objective concepts like 'wrong' and 'mistake' over such subjective things as setting design and which races ought to be allowed within a campaign. When I throw around terms like 'wrong' and 'mistake' with regard to DMing, I generally am talking about something that they did which is objectively wrong that led to a lack of enjoyment, and not any of their aethestic decisions about which the most we are usually able to say is that the DM's aethestics didn't match those of a particular player or group. I'm very hesistant to make any claims about flavor or style being 'wrong' and 'mistakes'.
As for ignoring you, I'm not about to start ignoring someone in the community with your stature and who has 6800+ posts over an argument which we had in one thread. Regardless of how much I may disagree with you over this or that, I've no intention of ignoring you because I don't want to miss what you have to say.
