Quote Originally Posted by Pleh View Post
I see it this way: the players create a PC for the game, then present the character for approval by the DM and the party.

Who does the DM play? The game itself. They have choices between which game options to put into their game, whether to make the game linearly focused or highly adaptable.

While it's fine for a few details to be witheld for the element of surprise, the general layout of the game is the DM's responsibility to announce to the table.

In my solution, no "assuming game expectations" happens, because all players inform each other what to expect so nothing need be assumed.
I just think it's a bad idea to put all the responsibility on talking about the game on one person. Because everyone has things they want out of the game, so everyone should talk about them.