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In the fiction, sure. In terms of rules-based action resolution, however, the 'why' is irrelevant. You could be climbing that cliff for any of a thousand different reasons but for the purpose of resolving whether you succeed or fail on the climb, none of them matter in the slightest. Same...

It's not so much an extreme need for immersion as it is a matter of preserving the sanctity and integrity of play that has already occurred. AW (I think it's AW?) has as a hardline core tenet "if you do it, you do it", which at face value I rather like. This is more like "once it's done, it's...

In-fiction logic. If the secret admirer is a common barmaid at the local tavern then she might not hear about the imprisonment until (if ever) the rest of the party return to town and tell their tale; and may very likely be unable to do anything about it in any case. If the secret admirer is a...

Ideally the DM has the attitude of whatever happens, happens. I've had fail-forward explained (and have seen this repeated even in this thread) that a fail can sometimes (not always!) be turned into what I read as a success-with-complication. For example, instead of failing to climb the wall...

Yes, and as such I will never do it. Retcons are to me the worst thing a DM can ever do, due to the consequent invalidation of play that has already happened which IMO should be sacrosanct, and as such I go to great - even extreme - lengths to ensure I never put myself in the position of having...

None. But if said secret admirer has no in-fiction way of knowing the PC is imprisoned then it becomes a rather moot point.

In my game world they've met a variety of faux-ancient/medieval human cultures plus a bunch that aren't human. And even in some real-world western cultures haggling was far more common in the past than it is today. You don't know that until-unless you try haggling the price. If for the sake...

Uh...er...before I jump in on this one you'll have to redefine what this is about, I'm afraid, as I've lost the topic somewhere. Well, yes it is; if the die roll says 'fail' and the DM decides it'll be something else instead then it's fiat all day long. It has fail in the name but not always...

If the rules or the players' action declarations or the dice or the situation dictate that these characters will die then I-as-DM feel I'm under no obligation to artificially keep them alive. The group of people meeting up on a regular basis are well aware of this and will IME continue to meet...

While we don't agonize over every second of the PCs' existence, if it comes to a question of playing a given situation out in more detail or less I'll tend to err on the side of "more" every time. In our euro-western culture it might be ridiculous, but in other cultures haggling is not only...

Can't speak to Conan but in Frodo's case it's because his captors were, collectively, idiots. Same is true of many a James Bond scenario - he gets captured but not killed, even though killing him makes the most sense in the fiction at the time; and that he isn't killed in those situations bugs...

The relevant feature for me is, to put it simply, character development. Wa-a-ay more of my characters' development comes through downtime and-or no-stakes events e.g. campfire chats or shopping trips than through high-stakes field adventuring, in large part because in high-stakes field...

Perhaps. Not necessarily. In a true sandbox, the players won't know any of this until-unless they have their characters make some in-fiction inquiries. And if they don't then they very much can wander into areas far above their pay grade, and get slaughtered for it. If you ask, sure. If you...

It's bending over backwards when a) the "something interesting" is clearly contrived just for that purpose and otherwise makes no in-fiction sense, and-or b) "interesting things" keep happening over and over again, far more often than random chance would dictate.

This is one of those glorious kitchen-sink threads, where everything gets talked about at once rather than in fifteen different threads each with its own more focussed topic.

In which case yes, they're hosed. Roll up new characters. That they all got captured without even one managing to avoid it, however, seems odd....unless the PCs collectively and individually have no sense of self-preservation. And if one character avoids capture then the party can continue...

I think it might hinge on the level of in-fiction contrivance required to keep making things happen where logic says nothing should.

Thing is, a conflict-neutral or low-no stakes event now may - or may not - have all kinds of consequences down the road. And as you don't know what "down the road" is going to consist of until after you've got there and beyond, I say the default should be to play them out unless the players say...

If the players are inhabiting their characters then when it comes to obstacles wouldn't these two things kind of run in lockstep? That said, I can think of loads of times where the characters weren't having any fun at all (usually at the hands of each other) and yet the players were roaring...

Which can be fine even in the sandbox-iest of games. They've found or self-generated a mission, completion of that mission requires their getting though this obstacle, and they can't do it. Which means, while the game as a whole can go forward if-when they go do something else, that particular...