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?

 

[edhel]

My house rule for 5e fumbles:
- You always lose consecutive attacks after the natural 1
- You get inspiration if you choose to fumble - if you do, draw a card from the fumble deck

 

[pemerton]

I mean you're using everything from 0 hp's = slipped and fell to a cursed sword did it to justify things.. at what point did the hero just have an extraordinary mess up?

Have you read the Silmarillion recently? The sword was cursed (forged by Eol, the dark elf). That's why it killed Beleg.

And on 0 hp = slipped and fell, that's exactly the sort of thing that the hit point system is meant to encompass, at least according to Gygax in his DMG. As I said, it is easier to read it that way in AD&D, with 1 minute rounds.

We're telling you what fictional events constitute a fumble in our minds...So then tell us, what defines an actual fumble in your mind? Otherwise the back and forth is kinda pointless

For what it's worth, I don't think gritty fumbles make much sense in an abstract resolution system like D&D.

The reason they can work in RM/MERP is because the whole of that system, in its resolution, tries to break things down to that level of granular detail (hit locations; rules for parrying and weapon breakage, including whether a miss was blocked on the shield, or the weapon, or dodged; etc).

A system that I could see working in D&D would be something equally abstract as its to hit and damage mechanics - eg roll a 1, and lose your inspiration token; or roll a 1, and your next roll suffers disadvantage or the next roll opposed to you gains advantage; etc.

 

[Hussar]

Supposed to fail? Supposed to succeed? These types of thoughts are anathema to game play. If you throw game play out the window then just toss the dice out along with it because they are ultimately meaningless.

A TPK is not a bad thing or a good thing, it is merely one possible result of playing. A team that loses a game can play again and win the next time.

Really? Your encounters are designed to be unwinnable? You don't give your player's a fair chance in encounters? Where "fair" in this sense means that the party, barring major catastrophe, is going to succeed in the encounter? Heck, we've just had three or four lengthy threads about fudging dice *specifically* to ensure that extremes in the dice don't negatively impact the characters.

I'm really not sure what tree you're barking up, but, it has zero to do with actual game design or game play.

 

[Hussar]

Does a basic failure on stealth also give the enemy a surprise round? a fumble probably would (but then so could a GM intrusion)... The problem with discussing fumbles with your examples is that they are going to the extreme (not just hit point loss, but you loose a limb or an eye... really??) and it makes them kind of ridiculous for a serious discussion.

How was it a surprise round? Han moves, fails his stealth roll vs Stormtroopers Passive Perception, initiative is rolled, Stormtrooper wins initiative, and buggers off on the bike. No fumble required. Three Stormtroopers (it was three IIRC) rolling initiative vs Han's one roll has a pretty decent chance of at least one Stormtrooper winning.

 

[Hussar]

In a white room where the existence of them was all that factored into things, sure. In the real game where you have wide ranges that move the advantage from monsters to PCs, they no longer favor monsters.



So what. They still have those options, so crits favor the PCs.

No, they absolutely do not. The 3e DMG has an excellent little article on randomness in the game that sums it up nicely - crits favour the monsters. Full stop. Because it doesn't matter that you crit three times more often. I have unlimited monsters. I only have to crit a small amount of times to change the nature of the game.

Then again, since you were the one arguing very strongly that you change die rolls when they go extreme against the PC's, perhaps it isn't surprising that you would think crits favour the PC's. That makes sense if you're simply fudging NPC crits away. In a game where dice are not fudged, crits will always favour the monsters over the PC's because the monsters don't have to crit as often - the PC's have to get lucky every time, the monsters only have to get lucky once and you get a dead PC.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Really? Your encounters are designed to be unwinnable? You don't give your player's a fair chance in encounters? Where "fair" in this sense means that the party, barring major catastrophe, is going to succeed in the encounter? Heck, we've just had three or four lengthy threads about fudging dice *specifically* to ensure that extremes in the dice don't negatively impact the characters.

In the traditional role of the Game-Master, as world-builder and impartial adjudicator, it is improper to take the capabilities of the party into consideration at any point. The party isn't supposed to defeat the dragon or run away from the dragon or even necessarily encounter the dragon. The PCs are free to do whatever they want, and the GM will narrate without bias, and any outcome that happens is valid.

If everyone dies, then so be it. If the party succeeds, then so be it. If the GM thinks that either is supposed to happen, then that's an example of bias on the part of the GM, which must be ignored in order to uphold the duty of impartial adjudicator.

"Fair" means that it's set-up without bias. The dragon is what it is, without regard for who the PCs are. The GM doesn't throw in a young white dragon because the party is high level and has tons of fire effects; and the GM doesn't make it an ancient red dragon because it has the best chance of killing the party. The GM disregards the existence of the PCs as meta-game information that cannot possibly matter, and figures out what kind of creature makes the most sense for this place in the world.

 

[Imaro]

How was it a surprise round? Han moves, fails his stealth roll vs Stormtroopers Passive Perception, initiative is rolled, Stormtrooper wins initiative, and buggers off on the bike. No fumble required. Three Stormtroopers (it was three IIRC) rolling initiative vs Han's one roll has a pretty decent chance of at least one Stormtrooper winning.

No one said a fumble was required... but if you're going so far as telling me it's not a fumble there has to be some criteria you're using to determine a fumble vs. a normal failure, so what is it... otherwise the discussion is pointless.

 

[Hussar]

In the traditional role of the Game-Master, as world-builder and impartial adjudicator, it is improper to take the capabilities of the party into consideration at any point. The party isn't supposed to defeat the dragon or run away from the dragon or even necessarily encounter the dragon. The PCs are free to do whatever they want, and the GM will narrate without bias, and any outcome that happens is valid.

If everyone dies, then so be it. If the party succeeds, then so be it. If the GM thinks that either is supposed to happen, then that's an example of bias on the part of the GM, which must be ignored in order to uphold the duty of impartial adjudicator.

"Fair" means that it's set-up without bias. The dragon is what it is, without regard for who the PCs are. The GM doesn't throw in a young white dragon because the party is high level and has tons of fire effects; and the GM doesn't make it an ancient red dragon because it has the best chance of killing the party. The GM disregards the existence of the PCs as meta-game information that cannot possibly matter, and figures out what kind of creature makes the most sense for this place in the world.

OTOH, virtually nothing in D&D is ever set up that way. There's a reason you don't have giants in Keep on the Borderlands, despite having an ogre. There's a reason that random encounter tables, outside of the wilderness encounter tables in the AD&D DMG, are almost always designed based on the level of the party, and, in fact, DM's are advised to do so in many editions.

Never minding that your "traditional role of the Game-Master" runs counter to the advice given in pretty much every DM's advice book in every edition. Yup, DM's shouldn't be biased when adjudicating an encounter. But, in the set up of that encounter? Bias is not only unavoidable but is desirable. No one, ever, designs an entire campaign from purely random encounters. And, guess what, when you start designing scenarios, it's unavoidable that you will bias the scenario in favour of the PC's.

Otherwise, if encounters were actually "fair", you'd never get past 3rd level because the party would keep dying.

 

[Imaro]

For what it's worth, I don't think gritty fumbles make much sense in an abstract resolution system like D&D.

The reason they can work in RM/MERP is because the whole of that system, in its resolution, tries to break things down to that level of granular detail (hit locations; rules for parrying and weapon breakage, including whether a miss was blocked on the shield, or the weapon, or dodged; etc).

A system that I could see working in D&D would be something equally abstract as its to hit and damage mechanics - eg roll a 1, and lose your inspiration token; or roll a 1, and your next roll suffers disadvantage or the next roll opposed to you gains advantage; etc.

So your issue is with granularity?? The less granular it gets the more it could fit any situation presented. So now, going by your criteria, I'm really unclear on why the situations presented couldn't be the result of a fumble... not enough inspiration to succeed or disadvantage causing one to fail initiative or loose their balance... So again what differentiates a regular failure from a fumble fiction wise and mechanics wise for you?

 

[Hussar]

No one said a fumble was required... but if you're going so far as telling me it's not a fumble there has to be some criteria you're using to determine a fumble vs. a normal failure, so what is it... otherwise the discussion is pointless.

Good grief. FOUR people before me said EXACLTY the same thing as I did - that there's no reason we need that to be a fumble - the regular rules work perfectly well for that scene - but you choose ME to pick an argument with? Look, when four people tell you the exact same thing, perhaps, just perhaps, you might want to consider that your argument might not be the work of beauty you think it is.

When a scene can be modelled without resorting to extraneous mechanics, why would I add extra mechanics to model the scene? What's the point? The argument was made that fumbles are common in genre fiction. Han brings down the blast door, Han steps on a twig, apparently Luke stumbles and falls, swordsmen kill allied swordsmen all the time. But, when proof is asked for - actual examples from genre fiction, suddenly it's shown that no, there's no need for fumble mechanics and in fact, fumble mechanics would actually make following genre conventions MORE difficult. Because, outside of some very corner case examples, our heroes don't catastrophically fail in genre fiction. Holmes doesn't botch his investigation role meaning that he contaminates the evidence allowing the killing to go free. Luke doesn't slip on some greasy floor and hack off Han's hand. Legolas doesn't skewer Gimli with a botched bow shot. Bond's gun never explodes in his hand.