In any era players pretty much always had agency over their own characters - or should have (more on this below) - which is fine. As time has gone on, however, players have slowly been given more agency over and access to things and rules beyond their characters - which is not fine.
Much of your post I feel I agree with yet at the same time, much of your post I don't feel like I quite understand and will need clarification on. Like I really don't understand quite what you mean by "things and rules".
In any era, players had as much agency as the DM extended to them. Railroads are not a new concept, nor is a new thing to have DMs that are control freaks. If anything, some of the things I think you are talking about I think became fads because they were perceived as cures to having GMs being control freaks and/or running railroads.
That said, a part of player agency over their characters is being allowed to play what you-as-player want within the established bounds of the setting. Thus, if a particular setting has no Elves then sorry, you can't play an Elf. But if a particular setting has evil people in it then playing an evil PC should be a valid option - banning them goes against true player agency over both what they play and how they play it. Ditto for banning PvP.
That's a very interesting take on things and on reading it, it was such a novel take that I had to mull it and chew it for about five minutes to know what I thought about it. And to begin with, I don't really think of agency as truly being something that happens outside of the game, such as in chargen - but that's not a strong objection because evil actions and PvP are in game events. And with respect to "being evil" or initiating PvP I think on the whole I agree with you, that it would be heavy handed interference in player agency to put your foot down and say no if that happened.
But, on the completely other hand, I think it is entirely reasonable to have a table agreement that since this is a social game and its meant to be cooperative and for the enjoyment of everyone, that you have to at least intend to try to get along with the other players and that includes making a character that you intend to play in such a away that they can cooperate with the other PC's. Further, I think it is entirely reasonable that if a player insists on not playing the game in a cooperative manner and not playing in such a way that maximizes everyone's enjoyment of the game collectively, that the group simply eject that player from the group. And as a GM, I reserve the right to do that preemptively if your chargen process seems to indicate you are intending to enjoy yourself at everyone elses expense or are otherwise a problematic player.
And, since explusion from a group is a very drastic and often problematic thing to do in itself, I think it is reasonable for a GM to impose guidelines on chargen like, "No evil characters." Or, "This time we are all crooks. No Paladins." Or any other variation of, "As a table rule, everyone has a reason to adventure with everyone else."
Part of that was players soon came to realize that oftentimes the DM was the source of many rules/rulings, and influencing the person sitting at the end of the table is - at least by appearance - likely to be far easier than influencing the writers of a book in Lake Geneva or, more recently, Seattle.
Yes, this exactly. I do feel that it is sign of dysfunction if the player's first recourse is to play the GM rather than play the rules. If there is something about the game that suggests to the players that they need to metagame in some way, then there is probably something either bad wrong with the game or bad wrong with the players. Unfair, arbitrary, capricious, unknowable, vague and illogical rules lead to situations where everyone at the table is trying to play around them in some way. And if the rulings are bad, then the players really only recourse is to not play the game but play the GM, whether that means "I roll diplomancy on the DM and butter them up" or "I roll intimidate on the DM and browbeat them" or "I roll deception on the DM to trick them", you end up with the real game being all about the dysfunctional low trust relationship between the GM and the players.
Er...if there's no door there to be found, how can anyone possibly argue or complain on not finding it?
Never mind that to conceal this very thing, those sort of rolls would logically be made by the DM.
The example assumes the door is there and the player later learns that they didn't find it, and they now object against the earlier ruling that they didn't detect the door. And yes, I do typically conceal such checks from the player, but not so much for this purpose, but generally for the sake of emersion.
Nothing says you have to invite these rules lawyers back to the next session...
In practice expulsion is a very drastic step which has consequences that extend far beyond the game. Often the person is some other players coworker, or a players spouse, or another long time associate of a player. And expelling the person could have considerable consequences for your player's real life, and/or break friendships that long preexisted the game
