When to stop your players and say "Its just like that because it is"

I know as a DM I should aim to have everything make sense, but the worlds a fantasy, none of us can make a perfect setting.
At what kind of stage do you turn to your players and decide "its like that because I say so", rather than trying to make logical explanations that they "accept".
Pic unrelated.

As soon as you run out of explanation. Or does their character even know? Can you just say 'you have no idea' until they do some research?

I've literally never run into that problem in six years of GMing, is that a common problem?

At the point where I’m ready to atop being a GM. “Because I said so” is a shit reason. WHY did you say so? If you did it because you thought it was cool, SAY THAT. I can get on board with rule of cool most of the time. If it’s your fetish, come out with it. If you didn’t bother to carefully research tectonic structure and erosion statistics, that’s fine too. Whatever the reason, just fucking give it, even if it’s purely meta.

“Because I said so” is hiding behind and clinging to whatever sense of authority you have as a GM. It’s the last refuge of shitters. Don’t be a shitter.

No, it's a way of shutting your players up over something completely unimportant so the game can move forwards. It's the gm's way of saying 'I'm bored with explaining this, it's time to move on'

GM's aren't analog computers, user. If it's frustrating or borin for us to do a session then that session was a waste on our end too

I dont consider myself a shitter for having ideas in fantasy land that dont always have a real world logical reason.
You sound entitled as fuck user

You can tell he's never DM'd, at least not more than a pre-written dungeon room if he thinks the players aren't the biggest pain in the ass involved with a tabletop session

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I’m sorry players and GMs don’t respect each other enough at your table to be homest with them and feel the need to throw their “authority” around.

What are they pestering you about? What’s the reason behind it? If you actually read all of my post, you’ll see the part that amounts to “if it’s worldbuilding mistake, that’s fine,” and that applies to (smaller) plotholes as well. “Ah yeah, I didn’t know that about rivers when I made this map” or “Shit, yeah, my bad, can we just try and roll with it” is infinitely superior to “Fuck you Steve, I’m the GM, what I say goes!”

Don’t have such an ego that you prefer bossing your players around and shutting them down to owning up to your mistakes. Now, if they won’t let it go after that, then the issue is with them, but telling them “because I said so” is unlikely to shut them up either.

Yeah, if anything certainly never with a more interesting setting than "generic fantasy world 234" with standard dnd lore

If you as a GM dont feel you can tell people that rivers can work differently to how they do in the real world, you may have issues.

Nope, I'm being about as blunt and honest as I can. That's not bait, players are where every good plan gets crushed. Where all the prewriting gets wasted and all my effort turns to dust and these faggots still have the gall to get upset that I can't salvage their campaign from the prisons they like to wind up in. I've been doing this for years and it's more exciting to just write a campaign than to perform it these days

>Why can't I do this with this? Can I do this? Can I do this? Can I do this?

Nope, it's a phylactery so until you figure that out, this gem is pretty impervious to the shit yore trying to do with it. That kin of thing. They get locked on a thread of logic and convince themselves that's the end all be all. You made a lot of really cute assumptions about me and my players user, but that's all those were.

Yeah I don't think you correctly assessed who I was replying to, it wasn't you.

As OP im gonna add a little more to the story for you to contextualize.

This is pre-session 1, while world building

The gods of islands exert a field of influence over their islands inhabitants.

People do not know of the gods.

This is a passive thing, the gods arent abusing mind control, and the effects are generally peaceful and result in positive effects.

A player has turned around and said "these gods are evil as they mind control"
He refuses to listen to anything I try to explain, and has decided my lore and worldbuilding is wrong when I say "this isnt evil, in this world it just /is/, and.most people dont even know about the slight influence it has on them, unless they move to a new island and feel a different presence"

I have put my foot down and said this is not evil because I say so.
The player says it is, as mind control is evil.
(Player is playing a sorcerer who uses enhancement and illusion magic, which supposedly isnt evil as its in self defence)

>real world logical reason
Try reading the post. If the reason your game has cowboy-samurai that easily parry bullets is be because you think it’s cool, or if you have a river splitting into two because you aren’t super bothered by realistic river design, THAT IS A-OKAY. Just say that. Both of those issues came up in previous games of mine, but I didn’t cry that my players should shut up and leave me alone—I told them the honest reason. For the former, they agreed, and for the latter, we laughed and they gave me some ribbings and that was it. Swinging my GM card around wouldn’t have solved anything and instead would have made me look like a child that was afraid of people qestioning my authority or worse, a GM that didn’t respect his players enough to be honest with them.

You have essentially done the same thing, but with better players.
Imagine if a player refused to accept those reasons.
This is clearly whats happening, as "brute force" is being needed.
If you say "because its cool" and a player doesnt accept it. What now?
What now user, do you just repeat yourself? Cus thats swinging the gm dick without realising it

>Hating your players this fucking much
Then why play

The only way you can run a "fair" game in a setting that runs on fiat is to not have the game revolve around verisimilitudinal thinking. If the DM's actions don't have to be grounded in logic, then it follows that neither do the players.

You're going to have to give them free reign to do stupid shit you might not agree with just because they like it or think it's cool, or else make you setting internally justifiable. But you can't do both without being a shitty DM.

>I know as a DM I should aim to have everything make sense
What?

But whaf if the ability of someone to act outside of verisimilitude while the players cannot is actually a plot point?

>Every first-time GM after playing Undertale

...

People like logic and consistency

>its like that because I say so
Wrong
>you don't know that, would you like to investigate?
Right

If your players start asking too many nitpicking questions about how magic/FTL/whatever works, just tell them what their characters would know, not what you know.

Just kick the player, he sounds like an asshole.

I know I'm just going to make your point further, but Undertale was neither my first nor my last metafictive thing. I *think* my first one was 1/0, and the latest one was Gwenpool.

Though I can understand that the line between a metafictive villain and an omnipotent GM-sue can be groan-inducingly thin.