In the game I’m working on, which is all about leading a rebellion against an evil empire (sorry, Drazen), you start out by choosing your strength and weakness from a list of combat, intellect, charisma.
Shortly afterward, you find yourself at one of the evil empire’s regular blood harvesting events, where it looks likely that a friend/lover of yours is likely to end up on the menu. You have the choice of trying to get the oppressed helots to rise up against the blood mage, using strategies that major on combat, intellect, or charisma… and you have the choice of backing away.
There’s no reason to choose to play to your weakness here, and backing away would require a serious commitment to role-playing a MC who’s realistically nervous and not ready to get all heroic. The player knows the game is about the rebellion, and it’s pretty clear that this is where it all gets started. Deciding that you’re going to chicken out or fail is not a choice I’ve seen anyone playtest yet, because it does look pretty obviously like “click here to lose.”
But if you do – and accordingly find yourself temporarily in a dungeon, rather than leading a band of rebels out of your village – there are pros and cons. You’ll start the next chapter with fewer followers and less reputation, but you’ll have made at least one powerful friend who will return usefully in Ch 5. And you’ll have more data for the interesting question of whether that friend/lover of yours is actually a traitor, because you (the player) will now know how they respond when it looks like you’re going to die, or when it looks like they’re going to die.
Sound like an interesting choice of failure?