Off the rails in what way? I'm assuming this is known to be a game of D&D 5e, right? If so, then I don't think there's anything I have a problem with regarding the above. But I'd probably want to know more. If we had played together for a long time, I'd likely have a very good idea of what to expect. But since this would be our first game, I'd likely have some questions.
But this is very similar to how the game I'm currently playing in started. We had a region and a general description of it, and then we made characters.
Seems pretty standard approach for D&D.
So, as I posted upthread (and as
@Manbearcat has riffed on not far upthread), I think Torchbearer is an interesting case study that I've described as "intermediate". I think Manbearcat is correct to intuit that I'm drifting it as far as it can be drifted away from hard step-on-up play to story-now play, while keeping the mechanical framework intact.
The reason I mention that by way of preface is this: in my first Torchbearer session, I was using a scenario from the Cartographer's Companion - "The Tower of Stars". So from the story now perspective, there is more fiction pre-established by the GM than would be the case in (say) Burning Wheel.
We started the session with PC gen, and I laid down my Greyhawk map, pointed to the region around the Bandit Kingdoms/Tenh/The Pale, and said that this is where things start. (Because Torchbearer defaults to taking place in "the north", and that is a northern part of GH.) One PC was from the Wizard's Tower, and suggested that it was in the Bluff Hills. Another was from Elfhome, and I think I might have skimmed the gazetteer before suggesting that was to the north (I can't remember the name of the woods north/west of the Bluff Hills). The player whose PC came from a Forgotten Temple Complex told us quite assertively that it was in the Theocracy of the Pale.
Players decided on their friends, family members and enemies. Then we went around, and everyone told us why their PCs was here at the Tower of Stars. I don't recall most of the answers, which suggests they were probably mere colour, except for one. The player of the Ranger from Elfhome was looking for his enemy, his brother, and thought he might have come through the Tower. And had the PCs actually got to the bit of the Tower that had papers in it (as it turns out, they didn't) I was ready to resolve the action declaration to search for the brother's name in the records and log books.
To me, what I've just described seems clearly to involve less player agency than Burning Wheel. But more than what you've described as default for D&D 5e. This is why my response to
@Raiztt's question is much the same as
@soviet's - the presentation of the situation leaves out all the stuff that actually lets me know whether or not I am interested in playing that game. But
@Manbearcat does seem correct in his conjectures as to where things are probably heading, and none looks as high in agency as Torchbearer let alone Burning Wheel.
I don't know why you are implying that I don't trust the people that I play with. I'm saying that many past DMs in past games in which I have partaken have made similar promises that they have failed to deliever.
