Quote Originally Posted by Willie the Duck View Post
So, now we're getting to hypothetical DMs who are lording things over people. I'm going to interject here because that's where a lot of threads blow up. Regardless of opinions on the appropriateness of any kind of railroading structures is to gaming or not, someone being a genuine jerk-player or jerk-DM is a separate issue. If a DM decides they're going to 'lord it over' a game or playing field, they will do so (and presumably lose players because of it) completely independent from any railroading going on. I'm not going to call it a non-issue, because we have all met 'that guy' in gaming. But it has very little to do with the subject at hand and runs the risk of conflating the two issue/accidentally implying that all those who do not game as MK prefers are somehow the same venn circle as these people.
When someone describes the GM as equivalent to a sports referee (see the post I was replying to for the context), that's that they're describing as far as I'm concerned. Most sports officials are way WAY too full of themselves and have a grossly exaggerated opinion of their own importance to the games.