100% hear you about preferring story over stat-heavy “gameplay”. I mean ideally, the stat-heaviness should be seamless with the story, to a point where it doesn’t feel like it really gets in the way for the reader/player. And I am trying to make it so, being a lover of narrative first, lover of programming second.
Edit: I should mention, I also have a soft-save system in place to mitigate the disaster of failing important skill checks. That is, if you die (you can die, by the way) you’re able to load to the most recent “checkpoint” rather than having to start over. I’m strategically placing checkpoints in places where, the player is free to leave, prepare more, then return, so that they can come back and succeed where they otherwise had failed.
This doesn’t include failures that don’t result in death, because failing can be just as narratively interesting as succeeding 
The WIP in question, if you’re interested:
https://forum.choiceofgames.com/t/the-battle-of-hoags-object-wip/76243?u=evan3michaels