Political Memes

There's this thing in DND where there's a whole table of people and when the DM says 'you go into a tavern and see a mysterious stranger in a dark cloak half lit with moonlight lighting up a pipe you catch a small glimpse of his rugged face, the other patrons look uneasy at his presence... also that's a gnome called Gifgledork picking his nose at the bar' the party will almost always go 'we ignore The Dark Ranger of Mystery, and spend all night buying drinks for our new best friend Gifgledork. If he set up a 'The Good Guys' power structure the players could have all easily decided said good guys were secretly evil and opposed them at every turn. I had a party once INSIST on eating the two birds in a glade I put there as guides to help them get through the trials of the area for plot reasons. they killed and ate the guardian forest birds... it was incredibly upsetting to decide that eating ancient forest guardians probably gave them cool powers. but playing the game is about playing the game and letting your party have fun is more important than playing YOUR game. and when you add in stuff you're excited about, sometimes the party says fuck that and intentionally sets your bread crumbs on fire and walks into the forest with no hints and finds a witch that makes wooden coins that are bewitched to look like real money. for no reason at all. Is really dumb to go at it with your personal feelings all deeply attached to every plot point.