I don't think you did anything wrong you stated your views about an example
My point is that if you tell someone that a GMing decision they made was
very poor, and then they rebut your reasoning, you don't get to hide behind "It's just my opinion, man!"
[MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION]'s reason for saying my GMing decision was poor is that
he wouldn't do it because
his players might get confused/misled. When I point out that no one at my table was confused or misledj, and that in fact the decision had very good payoff in play, instead of saying "OK, maybe in your context the decision wasn't a poor one" Maxperson doubles down on the claim that it was poor.
That is a textbook case of projecting one's own play preferences onto someone else's situation without having any regard to the differences in that other situation. If that's not "onetruewayism", what would be?
( [MENTION=23751]Maxperson[/MENTION] also seems to think it's a big deal that he called the decision poor GMing but didn't call me a poor GM. I personally don't think that that is a distinction that carries a lot of weight. What is a poor GM, afterall, but someone who makes poor decisions?)
So let me get this straight...
You consider the addition of the wizard order to the Grayhawk campaign 'poor GMing' (or 'a poor GMing call') because the game was specifically called out to be Grayhawk?
Not quite. The actual imputation of poor GMing was
calling the wizardly order WoHS. And the reason that is said to be poor GMing is because it is a bad thing to evoke Krynn (via the name WoHS) in a GH game.
The reason why this is poor GMing has not been entirely spelled out, but as best I can tell is because some players
who weren't actually playing the campaign might have been confused and/or had their enjoyment of the campaign spoiled because the GH game had one element that evoked Krynn.
It is also not relevant that these same players might have LotR/JRRT evoked by a 10th level ranger's ability to use a palantir, because the world "palantir" doesn't actually appear in any AD&D rulebook.
What the theory of player psychology and imaginative response is that underpins this analysis - such that having Krynn evoked by a name is bad but having JRRT evoked by a class feature is not bad or even good - I'm not sure about. But given that, as I've posted several times, no one at my table was perturbed by whatever may or may not have been invoked, I don't really care that much!