I was curious about the Trapped conflict that the Creeping Ooze forces upon an unwitting character - are other players allowed to help in that conflict ( at risk of their own life, of course? )
Yes.
Anyone who helped has to participate in the conflict.
Those who did not help can opt to join the conflict.
And, I suppose, those who did not help could opt not to participate, though that’s not a very nice thing to do.
Yep. Imagine a character a character coming into contact with a jelly or slime that immediately tries to suck in and dissolve the character. The other characters leap forward to grab their unfortunate comrade’s limbs to pull him or her free, allowing the slime to crawl up the original character and begin to suck in the others as well.
Or or it can just drop from the ceiling onto the entire party…