FWIW, I've run some initiation scenarios myself (there's one of my
players here who could talk from the player's perspective ;) ). It's a
campaign centered on the Greydog clan, and it started at the players
initiation to adulthood. I played that first, and then indibidual
initiations to their gods before starting the "usual" scenarios.
The way I designed them the initiation themselves couldn't fail, but
those initiations had stages, which had contests, and those contests
could have any outcome. The different kind of outcomes had different
consequences on the future life on the character.
Cheers,
-Sergi Dïaz