In a more RPG stylized story, having a “fail state” that was something humorous like ‘going to jail’ ah la Elder Scrolls that doesn’t end the game just because you got a bad roll wouldn’t be a bad thing as a result of randomness.
As long as the reader was able to do something like choosing between breaking out, or serving what little time was required of them (probably less than half a page of descriptive text, tbh) that could be a silly sort of diversion. Any game that does this would have to be somewhat up front about it, since many readers really do like to go over the same path more than once sometimes, and games with a random element to them are less appealing to the readers that favor no randomized chances to their choices.
Skewed randomness is good. Usually in D&D the dice rolls are random, but they have modifiers to account for skill and/or luck. That would probably be the best way to do it.
The worst way is total randomness (ie. the deus ex.) For instance, imagine a race in a choice game. Ten pages of you racing someone else, sometimes being first, sometimes not. At the end of the race, you are first. Then someone trips you. The ideal way:
Roll for chance of success. Modify by agility score.
The lazy, annoying way : just assume failure (ie. “you trip and fall”) or success (“you manage to regain your balance”). Success isn’t so annoying as failure (for obvious reasons) but it’s still a forced event. It makes me think that I’ve just read ten pages for… what? seemed like a waste of time.
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