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?

 

[delericho]

I missed where Luke slipped and fell in a fight with random mooks. In fact, I'm kinda missing where the hero's weapon breaks in any situation other than a specific high tension one. Han fails to open the doors to the Power Generator and the blast doors fall. This has exactly zero consequence because two seconds later Chewie shows up to open the doors.

Yes, but Han also stepped on a twig while sneaking up on the Scout Trooper earlier in the film, a fumble that lead directly to the speeder bike chase, the split party, and the Ewoks.

This is why Critical Fumbles must be banned: Harrison Ford rolled a '1' in 1983, and we've all been suffering Ewoks ever since!

 

[pemerton]

High fantasy heroes who save the world, rescue the sexy prince, and conquer the world do sometimes slip in blood, have weapons break, say the wrong thing, and so on.

Aren't those just failures, though? They don't seem to need a special "fumble" mechanic.

EDIT:

Yes, but Han also stepped on a twig while sneaking up on the Scout Trooper earlier in the film, a fumble that lead directly to the speeder bike chase, the split party, and the Ewoks.

Ewoks to one side, isn't that just another example of failure? I mean, what does a failed Move Silently roll amount to, in the fiction? It means you stepped on a twig, or sneezed, or . . . Again, I don't see the need for a special "fumble" mechanic to capture this.

 

[delericho]

Ewoks to one side, isn't that just another example of failure? I mean, what does a failed Move Silently roll amount to, in the fiction? It means you stepped on a twig, or sneezed, or . . . Again, I don't see the need for a special "fumble" mechanic to capture this.

I don't think so. Because immediately after the *snap*, Han freezes up for a moment, allowing the Trooper to get the drop on him, and actually knock him down in turn. Instead of gaining surprise on his opponent he is, in effect, surprised himself.

For me, that goes beyond a simple failure and into fumble territory.

But YMMV, of course.

 

[ExploderWizard]

The problem with Fumble Mechanics in D&D is that they obviously disfavor the players. That's the long and the short of it. It doesn't matter how often the baddies roll fumbles because the DM has unlimited numbers of baddies. The baddies are supposed to fail. It's pretty rare to set up a scenario where the baddies are supposed to succeed because, typically, that means a TPK for the group and that's generally a bad thing. Even arguments about the number of die rolls miss the point. Sure, a PC might have more die rolls than any given monster, but, there's usually more monsters than PC's and, in the long run, since I have infinite monsters as the DM, I don't care if the baddies fumble. In the long run, fumble mechanics only hurt the PC's.

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.

 

[Maxperson]

I missed where Luke slipped and fell in a fight with random mooks. In fact, I'm kinda missing where the hero's weapon breaks in any situation other than a specific high tension one. Han fails to open the doors to the Power Generator and the blast doors fall. This has exactly zero consequence because two seconds later Chewie shows up to open the doors.

And yet Luke does slip and Han does fail. That another PC covers Han's fumble is beside the point.

The problem with Fumble Mechanics in D&D is that they obviously disfavor the players. That's the long and the short of it. It doesn't matter how often the baddies roll fumbles because the DM has unlimited numbers of baddies. The baddies are supposed to fail. It's pretty rare to set up a scenario where the baddies are supposed to succeed because, typically, that means a TPK for the group and that's generally a bad thing. Even arguments about the number of die rolls miss the point. Sure, a PC might have more die rolls than any given monster, but, there's usually more monsters than PC's and, in the long run, since I have infinite monsters as the DM, I don't care if the baddies fumble. In the long run, fumble mechanics only hurt the PC's.

And yet the fumble mechanics also favor the players. That's also the long and the short of it. If you are looking purely at mechanics, then you are right. When you include story and what the fumbles add to the non-mechanical aspects of the game, I'm right. What favors the players or not is subjective here and depends on what you personally prefer to look at.

The 3e crit rules suffer from the same issue. Sure, everyone has the same chances of critting but, the results of those crits are different. I have infinite monsters that are supposed to die. That you kill them in 2 rounds instead of 3 doesn't really matter. But, killing your PC with a random die roll is pretty much guaranteed in the long run. All I've done is make the monsters stronger.

The 3e crit rules favor the players by a very large margin. The vast majority of monster crit only on a natural 20. The vast majority of players crit ranges were much wider due to improved critical, keen, weapon crit ranges, etc.

 

[Maxperson]

provide quotes my good man, or off ye go.
Did Gandalf accidentally dropped his staff at the bridge of Kazad Dhum? Did Aragorn fumbled and dropped Narsil? Bah to the lot of ye and your silly fumble charts, I will take the heroic road.

You're right. Aragorn did not fumble the sword that had to be reforged due to being, oh yeah, shattered. The mighty weapon did break. It's not as if Turin didn't accidentally kill his best friend Beleg. Oh, wait. Now let's talk about the mightiest fighter in Middle Earth history who faced down Morgoth himself. How did Fingolfin lose? He slipped and fell.

 

[Maxperson]

Aren't those just failures, though? They don't seem to need a special "fumble" mechanic.

Ewoks to one side, isn't that just another example of failure? I mean, what does a failed Move Silently roll amount to, in the fiction? It means you stepped on a twig, or sneezed, or . . . Again, I don't see the need for a special "fumble" mechanic to capture this.

Need has nothing to do with it. It only matters whether it models failure or not. If it does, and it does, then it's a useful system for people who like that sort of thing. That there are other ways to model failure only has meaning if you prefer those ways.

 

[Umbran]

Need has nothing to do with it. It only matters whether it models failure or not.

As has been said many, many times in the thread - fumbles don't model failure. Fumbles model things well beyond plain failure. In the typical fumble system, stepping on a twig and being herd is not a fumble - it is just a plain failure. On a fumble, he'd have tripped and put the stick through his eye.

So, his point is relevant - whatever fumble mechanic the system had would not have been engaged in that scene.

If you want to discuss fumbles and Star Wars, you probably have to go to Jar Jar Binks, and I don't think anyone in the thread wants that.

 

[delericho]

And yet the fumble mechanics also favor the players. That's also the long and the short of it. If you are looking purely at mechanics, then you are right. When you include story and what the fumbles add to the non-mechanical aspects of the game, I'm right. What favors the players or not is subjective here and depends on what you personally prefer to look at.

The 3e crit rules favor the players by a very large margin. The vast majority of monster crit only on a natural 20. The vast majority of players crit ranges were much wider due to improved critical, keen, weapon crit ranges, etc.

This is incorrect. It's discussed at length in the 3e and 3.5e DMG, and Angry DM usefully goes through it again here (about halfway down). Anything that adds randomness to combat favours the underdog, and since in D&D combats the monsters are the underdogs almost all the time, that means they work against the PCs.

Rationally, players should be opposed to the use of both critical hits and fumbles.

(Note: that doesn't necessarily mean you shouldn't use Fumbles. That's a matter of taste.)

 

[RotGrub]

The issue under discussion in the original piece isn't generic failure. It is spectacular, disastrous failure, the archetype being a result imposed such that the player doesn't have any way to mitigate the impact. Not just, "I fail to hit the orc," but, "in failing to hit the orc, I accidentally chop my teammate's leg off."

Yes, I understand that, but I don't see any reason why a spectacular failure can't also be fun to role play.

With that said, I don't recall any fumble system automatically chopping a teammate's leg off. You would have to add in a critical hit location system to make that happen. Still, even if I was using the 2e critical hit system from the players options books, it's a highly unlikely event. On the other hand, if the leg was cut off, I'd imagine far worse was occurring to PCs on a regular basis in that campaign. I suspect the players of such a campaign wouldn't mind either. If something bad happens they simply take a step back and consider how it will change their characters. They would enjoy role-playing that process too; magical peg legs and psychological issues included.

From a realism standpoint, I've seen people get seriously hurt by their own team mates several times. In fact, it happens all the time in hockey. Wild swings do hit other people by accident.