[erganemic]

I'm not sure how you read my previous comment and concluded my objection was to people having fun in a way I don't like. To be super reductive: I think it's better to not play D&D at all if the only way you can see to have fun with it is by lying to your friends in order to provoke a certain emotional response in them.

The relation this has to my top-level comment is that both anecdotally and through "actual play" media, I've noticed that DMs who don't care about the /systems/ of D&D made to enable player choice instead care about using the /vehicle/ of D&D to tell their own story, and that they're willing to steamroll the agency of the characters to do so. I believe /the essential promise/ of D&D is player choice--no one would agree to meet up if they knew you were just going to read your unfinished fantasy novel at them for three hours, they come because they believe they'll get to make choices and have those choices affect things. As such, I'm leery of DMs who (in my experience) are willing to shove mechanics that enable player choice to the side in order to tell the story they want to.

I don't think this is an unreasonable perspective, and I'm a little confused since it seems like you didn't engage with my previous comment at all?