Monte Cook On Fumble Mechanics

Fumble mechanics have been part of the tabletop RPG experience for decades. Even where games don't have a fumble mechanic, many players house rule them in. A fumble is the opposite of a critical hit (or critical success) - its most common manifestation is a roll of 1 in a d20-based game (with a roll of 20 being the critical). Veteran game designer Monte Cook has some thoughts on fumble mechanics, and talks about them and how his Numenera RPG (and all of the Cypher System line) use an "intrusion" instead.

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It can be a divisive issue. If you're like me, you've experimented with fumble mechanics of various kinds over the years. When I was 12, I remember one character accidentally shooting a fellow character in the back of the head and killing him. Monte Cook's thoughts on the matter are that "we don’t want to run games that “punish” players for rolling bad. A GM intrusion isn’t meant to be “punishment”—it’s meant to make things more interesting. But a fumble, for many people, just seems like a moment for everyone to laugh at them, and that’s not always fun."

If you look around, you'll find dozens of fumble house rules for most games. They clearly provide a draw to those who like to tinker with their games. But many games deliberately do not include any such rule.

You can read the rest of Monte's article here. What are your thoughts on fumble mechanics?

 

[Celebrim]

I wanted to reply in greater detail but alas by 5 year old is fighting me on bed time right now. Let me just say a few quick things before running off.

LOL. Totally been there. Good luck.

For me, there's a difference between fumble and failure based on the way I use failure in my games. In games like D&D, there is no consequence of failure, unless specific to the mechanic being used (such as falling when making a climb check).

I agree. Again, more with definitions.

Critical Success: Not only did what the player propose to do happen, but he got some additional unusual benefit above and beyond what he expected.
Success: What the player proposed to do happened.
Success with Complications: What the player wanted to happen, did happen, but additionally something that the player did not want to happen also happened.
Partial Success: What the player wanted to happen did happen. However, the player only got part of what he wanted to achieve.
Near Success: What the player wanted to happen, didn’t happen. However, the player did at least achieved something beneficial that prevents this from being complete failure.
Failure: What the player wanted to happened, didn’t happen.
Fumble: Not only did the player not get what they wanted, but the outcome is now considerably worse than we’d expect of a failure.

D&D has no unified mechanic. Depending on what you are doing, you might have the outcomes "Critical Success/Success/Failure" or "Success/Failure/Fumble" or just "Success/Failure". In some cases you might actually have differing degrees of success or failure, which is a whole other approach (See for example Gamma World 3e or Marvel Super Heroes).

Some systems remove the "failure" option from the table. You either get something positive, or else you get something else but you never get "no change". An example would be a system where you announce your attention to attack a foe, and on failure you get damaged by the foe. That's "success/fumble" as outcomes.

All that is well and good if the stakes are known before hand, but some systems define the "failure" outcome (that is, your roll wasn't good enough) in an open ended manner. The Cypher system doesn't quite do that, but it does define the fumble outcome (you threw a 1) in an open ended manner because on a fumble you get a 'GM Intrusion' where the GM is empowered to complicate the situation by introducing new fiction. In the abstract, you can distinguish easily between "partial success" and "success with complications" and a "fumble".

But in general, if the system defines 'failure' as GM Intrusion, then the system becomes so open ended that in practice we won't be able to define failure. 'Failure' in this case will be a range of outcomes from 'Success with Complications' to 'Fumble', and it's a matter of rather subjective opinion which actually occurred.

Let me give an example.

Consider the case of rolling Athletics to determine whether a PC jumps a chasm. A non-open ended system might define the consequences concretely like:

Critical Success: The PC not only jumps the chasm, but moves with such speed and power than they can add up to an additional 2 meters as a bonus to their intended move.
Success: The PC jumps the chasm.
Success with Complications: The PC jumps the chasm, but stumbles on the other side, ending their move at that point. (Unless perhaps a second check is made?)
Partial Success: In order to clear the jump, the PC was forced to lay out, resulting in them landing prone in their intended square and ending their move.
Near Success: The PC failed to clear the chasm, but came close enough that they may grab the edge (perhaps requiring a second check?). They are as a result hanging off the edge of the chasm rather than at their intended point.
Failure: The PC failed to clear the chasm, and as a result fell in.
Fumble: The PC failed to clear the chasm or even to control their motion, resulting in them tumbling head over heels and landing on their head, taking more than the usual amount of damage.

We could probably hard define such a spectrum for almost any sort of check.

This superficially seems like a straight forward spectrum from ‘best’ to ‘worst’. But note we can probably always find edge cases where the above ‘Near Success’ was a better result than ‘Success with Complications’. For example, if the ultimate intention was to charge a bow wielding assailant, the PC achieving only ‘near success’ might at least benefit from near complete cover from missile fire.

If the system is open ended though, defining the clear cut case from 'best' to 'worst' becomes basically impossible, and if its all GM fiat, we can't begin to distinguish one case from another usefully. One GM might imagine that ‘success with complications’ in fact is hanging off the side of the chasm, while another might imagine that ‘near success’ is coming just close enough to the chasm edge that you miss the top but instead land on a lower ledge and take only partial damage. Or indeed, since the two GM’s can’t really compare notes, the reverse might be the case with a different group and a different GM ruling that a PC that achieved ‘success with complications’ is now clinging to ledge 10’ below the top of the chasm. Someone might decide that partial success is clearing the chasm but twisting your ankle on the landing. Someone might decide success with complications is clearing the chasm but landing in a hitherto unnoticed pile of shaving cream or perhaps even failing to clear the chasm but landing in a sufficiently deep pile of shaving cream that little or no damage is taken. And what happens with the GM starts feeling empowered to metagame, taking into account how much of a complication any particular alteration to fiction might be to individual PC’s or to the party? Now we have to deal with each GM’s own subjective sense of difficulty, fairness, and how antagonistic he should be.

As such, in any open ended system ‘near success’, ‘success with complications’ and ‘partial success’ are going to be synonyms. Indeed, I’m not sure any open ended fiat system has actually tried to mechanically require differences between the terms. Maybe there is a system out there were miss by 1 is "success with complications", miss by 2 is "partial success", and miss by 3-5 is "near success" but I haven't read the rules to such a system. Typically they just note that the GM is empowered to treat the failure result as any one of those things according to what they think is best.

I don't think I've seen a D&D tack on fumble chart that incorporated fumble effects that went beyond the immediate character (for example, when narrating the fumble of the archer, the GM describes the creature dodging his attack and tearing down the sails creating a complication for the entire party). The effect is primarily attached to a specific character.

This is because with the exception of 4e, D&D has generally avoided disassociated mechanics. If a player announces his plan to fire an arrow at a target, the implied stakes are that you will hit with the arrow or you won't. It's in the range of easily imagined possibilities that the arrow shot would be particularly poor or particularly good, but the cause "You tried to fire an arrow" and the effect "the monster tore down the sails" don't seem related. In D&D, complications like your sails getting tore down, don't happen as a result of your failure directly. They happen because the antagonist proposed to tear down the sails, and then you failed to thwart that plan and they succeeded.

This is a very different sort of game than open ended DM fiat. I'm running the antagonists, and they fumble as well. Sometimes NPC's go down hard to unforeseen failures and any intention I had for the NPC's to have an aura of suaveness is thwarted. I propose actions for the NPC's, without any certainty that the rules will allow those actions to succeed. My antagonists have limited resources and those resources can be depleted, leaving them without good options. My antagonists can only summon reinforcements if the established fiction says reinforcements are available. The PC's can only become entrapped in hitherto unseen bramble bushes if unseen bramble bushes exist in the fiction. I can't invent resources to complicate the scene. Well, I mean I can, but I believe that doing so would be inherently bad GMing on my part because a big part of my job is giving the PC's a fair shake and I don't believe I will be able to do that if I have an excuse to intrude into the fiction in an open-ended manner.

For me as a player, when my missed bow shot allows an Orc to blow a horn to summon reinforcements from distant rooms, I'm ok with that. But when my missed bow shot conjures a trumpet and a room of reinforcements into being, I just give up. I'm no longer interested in playing that game. I'm certainly not interested in running that game either. For that matter, I know from experience I can't run such a game according to its intention. I'm unable to run Paranoia (for example) as a wacky, gonzo, game where silly things happen. I try to run Paranoia and my basic sense of fairness, and my sense of realism and ability to paint a world very granularly, and my sense of drama and characterization, and my general lack of a sense of humor, ends up turning it into an angsty dark dystopian horror game.

 

[Umbran]

But one thing that hasn't varied is I never find you particularly insightful or interesting or helpful. So goodbye.

Ladies and gentlemen,

It is a fine thing for you to disengage from a conversation you find isn't constructive or pleasant for you. We encourage you to not put yourself in situations that are aggravating. We even give you functionality to help you avoid discussion you don't like.

It is less fine to give a really long, in-depth post that would call for response, and put at the end of it the fact that you're not going to be listening any more. It comes off as a variant of winning by getting the last word, an sort of parting shot or a "golden flounce". We should be more mature about it than to announce such things publicly.

If you're going to disengage, do so with a bit of class and decorum, and just quietly stop responding. Thanks.

 

[RotGrub]

The fumble system I use models everything from a slight failure to a catastrophic event. A roll of 1 is simply an indication that something might occur. Subsequent ability checks can lesson or even nullify the event.

For example, in my system, a weapon can go flying off and kill companion. Of course, a dex check, a direction check, another to hit roll, and a half damage roll is required, but it can happen. And if I'm playing with a critical hit location system, an eye might be lost in the process.

Therefore, I don't understand why some people are attempting to restrict the definition of a fumble. Clearly, that definition can be different at every table and the fumble system in use can spawn any number of situations to occur.

 

[Aldarc]

For me as a player, when my missed bow shot allows an Orc to blow a horn to summon reinforcements from distant rooms, I'm ok with that. But when my missed bow shot conjures a trumpet and a room of reinforcements into being, I just give up. I'm no longer interested in playing that game. I'm certainly not interested in running that game either. For that matter, I know from experience I can't run such a game according to its intention. I'm unable to run Paranoia (for example) as a wacky, gonzo, game where silly things happen. I try to run Paranoia and my basic sense of fairness, and my sense of realism and ability to paint a world very granularly, and my sense of drama and characterization, and my general lack of a sense of humor, ends up turning it into an angsty dark dystopian horror game.

This caricaturization seems like an unfairly hyperbolic misconstruction or misreading of the Cypher System and its GM Intrusion, as well as what Charles Ryan and Monte Cook have written. That may simply be because you have neither interest nor experience in running the Cypher System. If you have no experience, then you can hardly be faulted for your misunderstanding. If you have no interest, as you may naturally prefer another system, such as D&D 3E/Pathfinder or D&D 5E, then one certainly may have suspicions regarding your heated investment in this topic and why you feel compelled to interject your repeated aversions on the Cypher System and attempts to portray it as "bad-wrong-fun."

What you describe in terms of a "basic sense of fairness, and [your] sense of realism" is precisely what the GM Intrusion attempts to encourage, according to the GM sections in every iteration of the Cypher rules thus far (i.e. Numenera, The Strange, Cypher System Rulebook). It's not about making things unfair. Or summoning things out of thin air. It's meant to provide an internally-consistent and in-narrative complication produced as a result of a Natural 1.

 

[Celebrim]

This caricaturization seems like an unfairly hyperbolic misconstruction or misreading of the Cypher System and its GM Intrusion, as well as what Charles Ryan and Monte Cook have written.

First of all, has anyone defending or describing the GM Intrusion system in particular or failure as "complications" actually denied that reinforcements arriving is an appropriate sort of complication? Indeed, is it being said that having reinforcements arrive is generally a worse use of GM intrusion than producing a "fumble" as Monte defined it (failure with complications that produce the sensation of PC incompetence). When I talk about reinforcements arriving as a complication, I'm not actually introducing an idea well beyond the realm of possibility or which the system doesn't provide for.

But ok, my general point doesn't at all depend on this specific case. You say, "It's meant to provide an internally-consistent and in-narrative complication produced as a result of a Natural 1." An orc blowing a trumpet and summoning reinforcements from elsewhere in the complex is internally-consistent and generally within the narrative. The players in general will have no way of knowing whether or not that could happen, as they have only limited information about the environment. And it's certainly possible that such things could happen. But, ok, the reinforcement example offends you.

Let's examine some cases that were brought up by defender's of the system, where GM intrusion occurs as a result of a failed attack action, to see if I really am misreading and misunderstanding as you suggest:

1) "It starts to rain.": So if I'd hit with my arrow, would it not have started to rain? Yes, it's certainly possible that it starting to rain at any moment is internally consistent, but unless rain was going to start anyway whether or hit or miss it's still summoning things out of thin air. It may not be a dragon or another party of orcs, but the rain storm was invented as a result of me throwing a '1'.

2) "It turns out the orc is an unusually keen tactician (for an orc).": In this case, the orc acquires a new ability or power to exercise as a result of me missing him. Unless it was the case that the orc was already an unusually keen tactician before I shot an arrow at him, this too is conjuring something out of thin air. Fundamentally, because I threw a 1, the creature acquired more hit points, more powers, more spells, or more abilities that it didn't have before. Now again, this is also still internally consistent, as the PC's would have no way of knowing that the creature didn't have these abilities before they manifested and its conceivable that some orcs are unusually keen tacticians. But if we can see behind the screen, as a GM can, we know that the ability has been summoned into existence.

3) "As you planted your foot for the shot, it tangled in some roots.": Was this hazard around before I threw a 1? Or was it in fact conjured from thin air by the GM intrusion? Yes, it may be true that this is a forest and some roots were around to get tangled in, and thus this is internally consistent - after all, who marks ever root on the battlemap? But it is still true these particular roots became super entangling on the whim and at that moment. There is really nothing the player could have done to foreseen the particular hazard of these roots and avoided them (indeed, at best doing so would have just invited different hazards).

4) "This brush is filled with stinging nettles!": Again, was this hazard around before I threw a 1? At the start of the combat, did the DM secretly record that squares X, Y, and Z contained stinging nettles, with a certain percentage chance that if entered they would provide a painful distraction? Yes, it's of course possible that hitherto unnoticed stinging plants are hidden around the field of battle. We aren't breaking consistency to conjure them into being, but that makes them no less conjured out of thin air.

5) "The orcs move to a defensive posture. They all gain a bonus to their defense for a few rounds.": This is a variation on the orc battle-field technician where the foe gains powers and abilities on the fly. Did they have the option to take this "defensive posture" before I fired a shot? Is there no penalty or tradeoff involved in this posture that prevents them from taking it all the time? Can I take this defensive posture as well? Again, this is perhaps internally consistent, but it's none the less still conjured into being on the fly.

6) "Surprise! Turns out there were two more orcs, just waiting for the right moment to jump into the fight. Your stray arrow shot flushed them from their hiding spot."

Wait.... didn't you just call this idea of reinforcements arriving as a "caricaturization seems like an unfairly hyperbolic misconstruction or misreading of the Cypher System and its GM Intrusion, as well as what Charles Ryan and Monte Cook have written." Didn't you just claim that my statement that reinforcements could arrive as the result of a failed bowshot meant I have a "heated invested" and was "injecting repeated aversions" and "misunderstanding" and portraying it as "bad-wrong-fun"? It was Charles Ryan that introduced that as an appropriate complication, so maybe I'm not actually the one that is misunderstanding, misreading, and being overly heated here or the one throwing around aspersions.

Since it was Charles Ryan that endorsed reinforcements arriving as appropriate GM intrusion, perhaps you should take up your claim that this is a misunderstanding that indicates ignorance of the system with him. I'll pop popcorn.

And I'm not even going to get into your repeated attempts to turn this from a conversation about the art of GMing, to a conversation about me. I have no problems with the idea of GM intrusion per se, and in particular the intrusion system does have the sort of narrative balancing elements (you can buy out of it using resources) that I think indicate an overall well done holistic design. I don't however think this latest article shows the concept in its best light, because in an attempt to fix a very minor problem Monte appears to be introducing far more serious ones.

 

[RotGrub]

No, those are two different things.

The existence of critical hits at all favours the monsters.

The fact that PCs get those expanded critical ranges is an artifact of them being so vastly superior to the monsters in the first place. Take away those options and they'd take something else and overwhelm them just the same.

It really depends on how many monsters the PCs are fighting. The more monsters (or # of attacks ) the more crits against the players. By the same logic, the more monsters the more fumbles in the players favour.

 

[Aldarc]

First of all, has anyone defending or describing the GM Intrusion system in particular or failure as "complications" actually denied that reinforcements arriving is an appropriate sort of complication? Indeed, is it being said that having reinforcements arrive is generally a worse use of GM intrusion than producing a "fumble" as Monte defined it (failure with complications that produce the sensation of PC incompetence). When I talk about reinforcements arriving as a complication, I'm not actually introducing an idea well beyond the realm of possibility or which the system doesn't provide for.

But ok, my general point doesn't at all depend on this specific case. You say, "It's meant to provide an internally-consistent and in-narrative complication produced as a result of a Natural 1." An orc blowing a trumpet and summoning reinforcements from elsewhere in the complex is internally-consistent and generally within the narrative. The players in general will have no way of knowing whether or not that could happen, as they have only limited information about the environment. And it's certainly possible that such things could happen. But, ok, the reinforcement example offends you.

As a GM, do you tell your players everything about their environment and every piece of equipment that the orcs wear or have on their persons? Do you say tell them that the orc is wearing a healing potion at his belt when the orcs arrive at the scene or do you only bother to provide that piece of information when the orc simply decides to pull one out?

The idea that players would ever be able to know the entire environment is implausible and unrealistic, whether as a player or as a GM. If an orc did pull out a horn in an attempt to summon reinforcements, it would not strike me as odd or "out of thin air" as a player. It would just be a part of the narrative. It's the GM's job to provide and maintain a plausible narrative for the game, and that would include narrating the GM Intrusion. And perhaps the complication introduced by the GM Intrusion is not at once. If the orc blew the horn, then perhaps the complication is not that orc reinforcements jump out of thin air but, instead, that other orcs in the area are alerted to the presence of the PCs.

Let's keep in mind, for example, that a GM could decide - at their leisure - that an orc pulls out a horn that she blows for more reinforcements without the need of a Natural 1. The only difference is that the player himself that triggers the complication through the dice roll. In itself, it says nothing about whether the 1 is an automatic failure. It says nothing about whether its the result of character incompetence or a bumbling/major fumble. It simply says that the player's dice roll triggers a narrative complication of some sort. It could be as simple as, the orc finds an opportunity to knock the character prone. You can say that the character feels incompetent because "they created the opening" or "they fell prone" but one could also say that this Intrusion allows the orc to feel more menacing or more than just a mook. I think that this is particularly important given the nature of the Cypher System: i.e. the GM never rolls. When the GM does roll, those mooks can fumble, crit, disarm, and such, particularly if they are playing with a more simulationist rules set. This is less so in a number of more narrativist-leaning rules sets, like the Cypher System. I presume, so please correct me if I am wrong, that you prefer simulationism over narrativism.

Let's examine some cases that were brought up by defender's of the system, where GM intrusion occurs as a result of a failed attack action, to see if I really am misreading and misunderstanding as you suggest:

Wait.... didn't you just call this idea of reinforcements arriving as a "caricaturization seems like an unfairly hyperbolic misconstruction or misreading of the Cypher System and its GM Intrusion, as well as what Charles Ryan and Monte Cook have written." Didn't you just claim that my statement that reinforcements could arrive as the result of a failed bowshot meant I have a "heated invested" and was "injecting repeated aversions" and "misunderstanding" and portraying it as "bad-wrong-fun"? It was Charles Ryan that introduced that as an appropriate complication, so maybe I'm not actually the one that is misunderstanding, misreading, and being overly heated here or the one throwing around aversions.

Since it was Charles Ryan that endorsed reinforcements arriving as appropriate GM intrusion, perhaps you should take up your claim that this is a misunderstanding that indicates ignorance of the system with him. I'll pop popcorn.

You take all of this as examples of "out of thin air" or "incompetence" whereas I and others do not. What you seem to be repeatedly and blatantly missing is the key idea that the GM Intrusion should be internally consistent and appropriate for the narrative. If orc reinforcements are within the realm of possibility and realism for the narrative context at a given time, then they are not out of thin air.

And I'm not even going to get into your repeated attempts to turn this from a conversation about the art of GMing, to a conversation about me. I have no problems with the idea of GM intrusion per se, and in particular the intrusion system does have the sort of narrative balancing elements (you can buy out of it using resources) that I think indicate an overall well done holistic design. I don't however think this latest article shows the concept in its best light, because in an attempt to fix a very minor problem Monte appears to be introducing far more serious ones.

Your fear may be exaggerated given how the GM Intrusion more often than not plays out in practice.

 

[Von Ether]

As for #3 and #4:
In Dungeon World, they suggest the practice of "leaving blanks on the map" and Fate does encourage hidden aspects to the scene that players can suss out. Both are practices I'd suggest using if one wants to use GM Intrusions in a more narrative sense.

Not just because there's more "justification" for what happens narratively when a "1" is rolled, but because these a good tools to inpire the GM's improv when the "1" hits.

Sometimes, as it is in our geeky nature, we get locked thinking that continuity and consistancy is the same thing when things would be easier on a GM if we were a bit more lenient on both.

 

[pemerton]

All that is well and good if the stakes are known before hand, but some systems define the "failure" outcome (that is, your roll wasn't good enough) in an open ended manner. The Cypher system doesn't quite do that, but it does define the fumble outcome (you threw a 1) in an open ended manner because on a fumble you get a 'GM Intrusion' where the GM is empowered to complicate the situation by introducing new fiction.

<snip>

But in general, if the system defines 'failure' as GM Intrusion, then the system becomes so open ended that in practice we won't be able to define failure. 'Failure' in this case will be a range of outcomes from 'Success with Complications' to 'Fumble', and it's a matter of rather subjective opinion which actually occurred.

<snip>

Consider the case of rolling Athletics to determine whether a PC jumps a chasm.

<snip>

Success with Complications: The PC jumps the chasm, but stumbles on the other side, ending their move at that point. (Unless perhaps a second check is made?)

<snip>

Near Success: The PC failed to clear the chasm, but came close enough that they may grab the edge (perhaps requiring a second check?). They are as a result hanging off the edge of the chasm rather than at their intended point.

<snip>

This superficially seems like a straight forward spectrum from ‘best’ to ‘worst’. But note we can probably always find edge cases where the above ‘Near Success’ was a better result than ‘Success with Complications’.

<snip>

If the system is open ended though, defining the clear cut case from 'best' to 'worst' becomes basically impossible, and if its all GM fiat, we can't begin to distinguish one case from another usefully.

<snip>

Now we have to deal with each GM’s own subjective sense of difficulty, fairness, and how antagonistic he should be.

<snip>

As such, in any open ended system ‘near success’, ‘success with complications’ and ‘partial success’ are going to be synonyms.

<snip>

If a player announces his plan to fire an arrow at a target, the implied stakes are that you will hit with the arrow or you won't.

<snip>

I can't invent resources to complicate the scene. Well, I mean I can, but I believe that doing so would be inherently bad GMing on my part

<snip>

For me as a player, when my missed bow shot allows an Orc to blow a horn to summon reinforcements from distant rooms, I'm ok with that. But when my missed bow shot conjures a trumpet and a room of reinforcements into being, I just give up. I'm no longer interested in playing that game. I'm certainly not interested in running that game either. For that matter, I know from experience I can't run such a game according to its intention.

There seem to be at least three things going on here.

First, you seem to be saying that you don't play or run "fail forward"-style games. As I conjectured upthread. I think this helps me understand why your characterisation of the techniques used in those games seems out of touch with the actual practice.

Second, and elaborating on that "out-of-touchness" - you correctly point out that, in such a game, there is no universal or generalisable ordering of outcomes from "best" to "worst" for the PCs, but then incorrectly infer that, as a result, there is no difference between "near success", "success with complications", etc. This is not so. Actual play examples have been given upthread that illustrate that this is not so.

In any given moment of resolution, a range of different narrations for failure may be available to the GM (in the sense that all would fit with the established fiction, maintain the impetus of play, etc) - some may be success with complications (yes, the feather is an angel feather, but is also cursed); some may be partial success (you have reached the Abor-Alz, but the waterhole you were heading for is fouled); some may be total failure (the mace is not in the tower where you were hoping to find it; instead, you find black arrows apparently crafted by your brother). The GM's job is to choose between these. Making good choices is part of the skill of GMing this sort of game. (Somewhat comparably to the Gygaxian GM needing the skill of good dungeon design.) One of the things the GM will be having regard to is the way in which the outcome is success, or near-success (which is a form of less-than-total failure), or total failure - each of which has different potential consequences for the impetus of play. Another will be the degree of complication, and/or of escalation, introduced by an outcome - which matters to pacing, potentially to resource depletion, etc. Further relevant factors will be things like how many PCs a given outcome involves, connections between outcomes and player flags, etc.

The third thing you raise is at what point the stakes are set. On that matter, I'll speak to Burning Wheel. The rulebooks say that stakes are set before the dice are rolled. In his GMing advice (the Adventure Burner), Luke Crane notes that, at his table, he tends to ignore this rule and to leave the stakes implicit. He goes on to say that this works because he plays with people who know him and trust him, and so can appreciate the stakes implicit in the ingame situation. He goes on to encourage his reader to follow the written rules.

When I GM my BW game, it is for people whom I've known for over 20 years and who have all been RPGing with me as GM for most of that time. I therefore generally (not always) leave the stakes implicit. If I was GMing for comparative strangers I'd probably take a different approach.

You express concerns about GM antagonism/fairness. That's not really the relevant notion - or rather, the rulebook will answer it. In BW, for instance, the GM should basically always be antagonistic, in the sense of pushing the players hard in relation to their PCs and their flags. But the GM should also always be maintaining the momentum of play, which means that dead-ends or arbitrary shut-downs are not in the repertoire. Rather than antagonism or fairness, the issues that confront GMs in this sort of system tend to be managing backstory in a consistent way - given that a lot of fiction, from the existence of the dark elf who fouls the waterhole, to the existence of the curse on the feather, to the absence of the mace but the presence of brother-manufactured black arrows in the tower, is being authored in the spot - and avoiding outcomes that a boring, unmotivating to the players, or shut-downs.

(These games also tend to have mechanical solutions to some of these problems. For instance, they tend to have more flexible and generalisable action-resolution mechanics - not unlike 4e's skill challenges - so that the propsect of any situation being a shut-down is reduced, because the players have highly flexible mechanical tools to try and impact the fiction.)

 

[Celebrim]

Oh for crying out loud, do you ever get tired of moving those goal posts around?

If you are going to reply to me, please do me the favor of at least having read what I said.

As a GM, do you tell your players everything about their environment and every piece of equipment that the orcs wear or have on their persons?

Hint:

Yes, it may be true that this is a forest and some roots were around to get tangled in, and thus this is internally consistent - after all, who marks ever root on the battlemap?​

So what do you think?

The idea that players would ever be able to know the entire environment is implausible and unrealistic, whether as a player or as a GM.

Did I ever say otherwise?

An orc blowing a trumpet and summoning reinforcements from elsewhere in the complex is internally-consistent and generally within the narrative. The players in general will have no way of knowing whether or not that could happen, as they have only limited information about the environment. And it's certainly possible that such things could happen.​

What you seem to be repeatedly and blatantly missing is the key idea that the GM Intrusion should be internally consistent and appropriate for the narrative.

Seriously? I must have discussed that like 10 freaking times in the post you are quoting. If you can't be bothered to read, don't respond.

I presume, so please correct me if I am wrong, that you prefer simulationism over narrativism.

Considering how little I owe you at this point, I'm not even going to open that can of worms. I will say however that at some level I feel this is like asking me whether I like Thai food or Mexican. What I like is food that is well prepared. What I don't like is someone who has heard that Kale is cool, or that Icelandic food is really awesome, or that everyone is cooking with Argula or that Unami is where it is at right now, and decides to go sprinkling his food heavily with those things without fundamentally understanding how those things work and what their limitations are as ingredients, or when they are appropriate and when they can be paired with other ingredients or techniques. Too often what people call Narrativist is stupid or bad Narrativist (sort of like ordering Tex-Mex or Thai here in central Ohio) justified in some mistaken idea that just because some authority figure said Narrativist is real role-playing that you can dump ideas like that into your game higgly-piggly like some sort of magic seasoning that always makes your food taste better. I would crawl through gravel to get some good experience under a very skilled Nar GM and some serious RPers in the same way that I would crawl through gravel for some really good Thai food or Tex-Mex.

But I'm certainly not going to get into an argument with you over something as controversial as GNS theory while you are huffing and panting running the goal posts down the field, apparently completely oblivious to the fact that one post ago you were saying reinforcements showing up as the result of a missed bow shot was "unfairly hyperbolic misconstruction" and now you've spun about and are telling me just how reasonable it is. You're not even very good at paying attention to your own key ideas, so don't try to tell me what I'm "repeatedly and blatantly missing".