A Question Of Agency?

[OldTrees1]

Players complaining about "lack of agency" just hasn't been a big deal at the tables I've seen, whether running a published module or custom material.

Player buy-in as I have seen it in the real world (rather than forum white-rooms) has been easy to come by. To the point that I can treat it as a given that if someone has taken a seat at the table, they have agreed to take the leap with whatever comes next.

I think the forums reflect that when examined. These "forum white-rooms" talk about preferences/agency/buy-in as if it were normal for groups to be doing something that works for them. In a happy group those aspects probably blend in with "game as normal" (just like in your experience). It is the uncommon unhappy group, or the concept of such a group, that creates threads like this. So the white-room discussions are about investigating the hidden assumptions/structure/mechanics of RPGs as social games to help identify why the abnormal unhappy group (real or theoretical) is unhappy and how to restore the normality of everyone enjoying themselves.