> rather odd style Greg prefers in which the players are as much
> audience at a storytelling session as gamers. Works for him,
> wouldn't worth for me.
For my part I would be grateful if we could be cautious about attributing opinions to Greg or anyone else. It is impolite because those people can speak for themselves. You may feel that those people made comments in the past that support your belief in their opinion, or know from speaking to them on another medium but I believe it is a courtesy to let those people raise those beliefs themselves.
Moving on. People play in different ways. Some people like 'participationist' adventures in which they witness, or are part of, great events without being the protagonists of them. And other folks hate play where they are not the principal protagonists and call it 'railroading'. Some Sartar Rising scenarios provide participation in, rather than authoring of key events. If your players are the kind that would consider that railroading, then use the material appropriately.
If Red Cow ever reached Orlanth is Dead I would make it clear that 'How to bring Orlanth back' was not the story we were playing, but 'How to save your clan'. I would probably persent much of the Windstop as background starting the player's story not with the failure of the wind itself but at the point they can make meaningful choices about helpoing the clan survive Fimbulwinter*. But I'm glad I have the outline in OiD to do it.
If I was to run Shiprise I might work on building a heroquest that was important to the heroes into Shiprise, positioning participating in Shiprise as 'hitching a ride' to their own goal. Or I might make the personal relationships on board the source of the story. But I'm glad I have an outline of the event to weave my own stories into.
In both cases I tend to think of these metaplot stories as setting not as scenarios. Indeed OiD with its timeline is close to that.
II has a metaplot in the 'The Hero Wars'. Like all metaplots, II scenarios that focus on key events within that metaplot are going to present an 'official' version of events. The nature of the medium is such that those events may not dovetail exactly with your campaign, or the stories you want to tell.
So I suspect most people are going to want to tailor them. For my part I hope that Dragonrise is pitched as 'setting' (closer perhaps to the approach in OiD) over out-of-the-box scenario. Hopefuly it would have enough detail to allow an ambitious narrator to have their heroes lead the Dragonrise. But what I personally want is setting detail about the event. That way it will be 'open' enough to weave my own stories in. Some vignettes or ideas about stories to run in that period could be good. For my part Gathering Thunder would have been better with some setting detail about events in far-off Esrolia, to allow a rebellion campaign to extend its wings there, over out-of-the-box adventures (including mine). But others doubltess hold contrary opinions, hence the difficulty for publishers.
*When we tried OiD in Benedict Adamson's Firebull game there was a lot of frustration in playing through a crisis - the Windstop - that all attempts to rectify would fail at. Failure can be an important part of a story, but players tend to want to succeed, not fail. Failing again and again becomes disheartening and folks lose interest, especially if after all those failures an off-stage npc appears to solve the problem. So its best not to have to play through too-many failures before the players get goals that can have positive feedback.
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