“tell a story” is kind of a loaded phrase here. Baldur’s Gate III tells a story, but while some failure here and there will not stop the game, there are specific events where you have to succeed, one way or another TTRPGs don’t tell a story, so much as help the players (host and guest) *reveal* one

for many RPGs with higher amount of narrative elements, one of two things is usually the case: 1) There is an extremely specific story, and you get to choose the finer details (TITAN/child, The Mountain Witch, etc.) 2) There is a genre or concept, and the game reveals any number of stories in it

Obviously a broad generalisation - you can do plenty of narrative forking in D&D. And for other games, contsant downbeats in storytelling can still feel bad. But with heavy combat focus, there's no getting away from the fact that often Big Number (and other mechanical effects) > Small Number.