So the problem you have is not so much that you are forced to dance to the GM's tune, but that you are forced to dance without "shoes" so to speak.
At this point I think the metaphor is losing its communicative power, at least on my side.
But I think that if a RPG is to run in something like the traditional way, but not be a railroad, then there has to be some sort of accommodation of the role of both GM and player. The GM plays the opposition, and - in virtue of that - plays a key role in framing the PCs (and thereby the players) into challenging situations. The players - using the resources that the game gives them, which includes stuff on the PC sheet plus stuff in the fictional situation that the GM has laid out - engage with those challenges. Telling the players
how to engage, or punishing them for their choice as to how to engage, seems to me to be the GM intruding into the players' sphere.
It is complicated, of course, because a natural consequence of action resolution is that the players' resources become depleted. But this is where judicious decisions by the GM are necessary. The player who built the paladin PC has probably signed on for fighting a dracolich, and losing hit points, perhaps life levels, even in extremis having the PC die, are consequences that the player is therefore bound to accept as part of playing the game at all. But the player probably
didn't sign on for the game of "guess how the GM thinks I should play my PC", with resource depletion being a consequence of making the wrong guess and sticking to it.
It would be different if the PC's god were itself framed as an obstacle for the PC (and therefore the player) to overcome. Doing this with a god is fairly unusual (because the standard power levels of D&D make it hard for PCs to challenge gods) but an analogue might be a thief character trying to steal from our outwit his/her guildmaster - the leader/mentor has become the opposition, and suffering resource depletion and similar adverse consequences as a result of failing to keep the guildmaster on side are part of what is at stake in such a situation.
But nothing about the paladin scenario we are discussing suggests to me that the player was approaching the situation in that way. The player was focusing on the dracolich as opposition, not his PC's own god.
Using the conceptual framework I have just set out, I would say that the GM has done two things that I wouldn't do myself: he has framed the player into a scene (conflict between the PC and the PC's god) that the player is not interested in, and which rests on a premise (that the PC is being cowardly) that the player appears to reject; and he has then imposed a consequence as part of the resolution of that scene (depriving the PC of an ability and thereby the player of a resource) without engaging any action resolution mechanics whereby the player had a chance of winning the confrontation.
So are you saying you or your players have never experienced a "non-traditional" RPG game where perhaps one of the characters is suffering and does not have his full suite of resources for one reason or another, or perhaps you have experienced it and it was not fun?
The issue is where the loss of resources comes from. It is one thing to engage a situation and lose resources as part of the application of the action resolution mechanics. It is another thing to have the GM frame you into a situation you didn't want and which rests on a premise about the fiction that you reject, and then to lose resources within that situation with no chance to do anything about it (eg say via persuading your god that in fact you're in the right).
How is this unlike your Vecna scenario, where the character purposefully thwarted Vecna and lost his familiar as a result. In Greg K's situation, the character purposefully made the choice to ignore the vision from his deity, while still requesting divine power from the same deity, and so lost his powers.
The deity decided to admonish his insolence.
Because in my scenario (i) the player wanted to be framed into a situation of conflict with Vecna, and had deliberately set things up (eg the way he had had his PC deal with the Eye of Vecna, but not only that) in order to bring about such a state of affairs; and (ii) the loss of resources was not a mere stipulation from the GM, but an ordinary consequence of the skill challenge mechanics, whereby the player got to achieve his desires for the situation (namely, Vecna was thwarted) but at a cost.
From the point of view of both framing and resolution, I don't see the two results as remotely comparable. (Within the fiction there may be similarities - though there is also one obvious difference, namely, that the character in my game got what he wanted whereas that does not seem to be true of the paladin under discussion here - but in any event that is not a very good guide to play experience. From the fiction you can't tell whether a scenario was the greatest RPGing experience of all time, or an unadulterated railroad.)
Are you also saying that the players would not be able to see through the "thin veil" hiding DM judgement by having the Dracolich attack the paladin so overtly? Worse still, they might even think, wow, you're actually playing soft - cause you could have killed the shaman but decided to spare him to go after an ineffectual combatant.
I don't know how you GM, but in my case there would be no veil at all! The dracolich would swoop towards the paladin taunting as it went.
I also don't understand your remark about an "ineffectual combatant". The whole scenario is premised on the assumption that the paladin is a highly effective combatant - otherwise, the notion that he might help his friends by engaging the dracolich in melee would be obviously wrong.
