I don't recall you earlier post except in vague details. But as I understand what you have posted, the GM authors <stuff> into Rainbow Rocks in order to motivate the players to declare actions that will take their PCs to Dark Clouds.
This is the GM using their backstory authority to manipulate the players' use of their authority over action declarations, in order to try and bring a pre-conceived event (the PCs' arrival at and exploration of Dark Clouds) into play.
Right, and this is where I'm taking a page from
@Ovinomancer in terms of the general uselessness of a lot of the terminology used to label things in the 'traditional' paradigm. I don't care about anything except where the STORY AUTHORITY comes from. That is what is really significant in this whole topic. If the GM is bending everything to create a path to Dark Clouds, then they are asserting story authority, authorial control over the direction of the plot and content of the game. It is a moot point if the players have 'autonomy over character action' if the only situations they are presented with are designed to inevitably give them no real option except Dark Clouds! And make no mistake, this is exactly what happens, and its exactly why the whole 'AP' type of setup is almost inevitably going to lead to some measure of GM assertion of authority, because you have only certain finite material in your AP and it needs to be engaged.
So, given that we are hardly going to give up on the idea of pre-written adventures, at least for most people engaging in RPG play, there would seem to be a need for a way to avoid this pitfall! Well, you can obviously make what has been discussed, what
@Manbearcat calls 'Mass Effect Play' where you get a bunch of choices but inevitably they lead to one or a few endings. I don't know that this is a bad compromise if the goal is to stick to published material. A more pure 'Sandbox' approach could work too, which implies, in contrast, less 'directed flow' of events. In other words location is primary over plot, and there's not so much to tie things together, or not such a strong thematic compulsion to "get on towards the next set of goals" or whatever. I'd note that design can substitute other things for 'location' in this case, not just geographical coordinates.
Honestly, I think it is REALLY not that easy to generate adventures in a Story Now paradigm. At least not complex or extensive ones. OTOH if the focus is really more on characterization/character development, and such factors, vs just 'action' and traditional D&D-type considerations (loot, XP, environmental exploration) then you can probably do it, because the dimensions in which you care about force become different. In other words, do we really care, in a DW game if the PCs are on the mountain or in the dungeon? If they are fighting the Orcs or the Dragon? What SHOULD be germane is, what bonds exist, how are they being resolved, how does the interplay between the PC's dramatic needs and the plot of the story play out. This is more central than the coarse 'grist' of the story. It matters not if I save the halfling from falling rocks or orcish spears, if I risked my life for my ally, that is the salient point.
Thus if neither the players nor the GM is all THAT invested in which corridor the PCs go down, then perhaps there's a more Story Game way to make material work for you. I think Doskvol sort of seems like it falls into that category, for all that its a built in assumed part of BitD. Every 'job' has a lot of common structure, the interesting part is how the PCs cope with individual challenges, and what the consequences are, and how that reflects in the fiction going on from there.
