What is Player Agency?

[Nifft]

The real question here is if this 3rd party needs to see the DM's notes or not to determine player agency.

The Agents of the Agency Agency are bound by law and duty to evaluate the notes of every DM, which is why I for one support our new ubiquitous corporate surveillance state.

But seriously: No.

IMHO you should be able to read a thread of a PbP, or sit in on a couple of game sessions, and you'd probably have enough data to determine the objective status of Player Agency in that game. You'd be able to point to the sorts of decisions which players are making and characterize the decisions, and the results.

Note that "free form" and "open question" depend a lot from the player. If a DM gives them the choice between "city A" and "city B", it isn't clear if the DM should reward a player for metagaming the source of the names with a slightly better city. It should be clear that if they are looking for a specific thing and did some sort of research (divination, bardic lore, gather information, hire a sage) to determine the better city they should wind up in the "better city" (assuming they got a good roll on the information source).

Should a DM have an answer to all possible outcomes? Should a metagaming player be rewarded for guessing many of those outcomes? And how much should a DM railroad to avoid forcing the players to make choices without information (that would still require them to have "agency").

Giving players too little info can be a type of illusionist railroading.

IMHO it's very much preferable to tell the players enough about the setting that they can make at least a partially informed decisions about City A vs. City B, and not rely on metagaming.