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?

 

[Imaro]

For me personally I find the most interesting thing about GM intrusions (and the main difference between them and what most consider a fumble) something Monte seems to gloss over in his article, mainly that the player has the ability to buy out of them (similar to how compels can be rejected in FATE). IMO this gives the player a way to signal to the GM what he does or doesn't want to accept in so far as consequences for a roll of 1 go... but because XP is a resource that must be managed by the player, it also does not allow him to escape the consequences of rolling a 1 indefinitely. Since GM intrusions are for the most part used to make things interesting (which 99% of the time equates to more problems for the PC's), as opposed to helping the players attain their goals I do however consider them a subset of fumbles...

 

[Celebrim]

The fact remains that stepping on a stick and being heard is a *basic* failure in a Move Silently check, not a fumble. Basic failures should not be used as a reason for having fumble rules.

As I've said before, it's very difficult to talk about a fiction that isn't a product of a game system and say anything definite about how the same fiction would be produced by a game system. But it's probably impossible to talk about a fiction that isn't a product of a game system and say anything definite about how it would be produced by a hypothetical game system.

We can't really say for sure whether Han stepping on the stick was a simple failure, resulting in him being heard and then losing initiative, or whether it was a catastrophic failure resulting in additional penalties. For example, we don't know if in some hypothetical system, fumbles of a Stealth check also result in disadvantage of some sort to initiative. This would indeed by a fumble, as the character is now subject to some additional penalty beyond having lost the stakes.

Even in systems where it is possible, "Decapitate Ally" is not the normal result of a fumble. I mean, theoretically speaking, "Decapitate Ally" is possible in my system. The sequence of events though is highly improbable:

a) Attack an opponent while squeezing with an ally or while the opponent is grappled or clinching an ally.
b) Fumble and don't have some sort of fumble mitigation feat.
c) Confirm the fumble by missing the target with a second roll.
d) Attack the ally and hit.
e) Score a critical on the attack.
f) Confirm the critical by successfully hitting the ally with a second attack roll.
g) Do sufficient damage with the critical to drop the ally to 0 hit points or less.
h Roll against the traumatic injury table and obtain the 1 in 36 chance decapitation/crushed skull result.
i) Ally fails DC 15 fortitude save to avoid traumatic injury.

That's obviously a fumble in the fiction, but like 10 things had to go perfectly and unlikely wrong to achieve it. Probably that sequence is so rare you'll never see it in a game. Maybe 1 in 40,000 attacks would go that wrong and only in situations where it was obvious the attack carried risk.

The more common results of fumbles wouldn't be so obvious 'on screen' in the movie version of the fiction. They include things like loss of initiative order, becoming flatfooted for a round, stumbling and needing to make a balance check, yielding an attack of opportunity, loss of shield bonus for a round, having a weapon become unreadied, becoming fatigued, straining a muscle, and so forth. These are all extra penalties and therefore fumbles, but they aren't necessarily large obvious results like accidently jabbing a stick through your own eye.

 

[Maxperson]

Again, nobody is arguing for randomness to be removed. It's a question of how much randomness is appropriate.

Agreed. That amount is not set, though. Each group will have its own measure for it. Crits and fumbles are 100% awesome for any group for which they are 100% awesome, and your dislike for that level of randomness doesn't affect that.

 

[Maxperson]

No, those are two different things.

The existence of critical hits at all favours the monsters.

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.

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.

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

 

[delericho]

Agreed. That amount is not set, though. Each group will have its own measure for it. Crits and fumbles are 100% awesome for any group for which they are 100% awesome, and your dislike for that level of randomness doesn't affect that.

Of course. I certainly wouldn't argue otherwise.

 

[pemerton]

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.

I think this is another one of those cases where different mechanics can produce the same fiction. For instance, a failed Move Silently/Stealth check followed by the troopers winning an opposed Surprise roll (as per AD&D) or succeeding on their Stealth check (in some other system) could produce the same outcome.

Or, in a "fail forward" or "stake-setting" system, the same thing could happen: in order to get the Stealth roll at all, Han's player stakes being surprised by other troopers.

Well... there was that one time where Luke is fully aware there are sand people nearby and is actively looking for them... with advanced equipment...in a hiding place with a droid accompanying him... but is ambushed by a sand person literally a few feet directly in front of him and beaten senseless... I could definitely see that being the result of a fumble on a PC's Perception roll...

Or, again, it could just be failure on a surprise check, AD&D-style. Even rangers can be surprised on a 1 on 1d6. Or a failure on opposed Perception vs Stealth.

let's talk about the mightiest fighter in Middle Earth history who faced down Morgoth himself. How did Fingolfin lose? He slipped and fell.

In a hit-point system, that looks like it might just be dropping to zero hit points. Especially in a more abstract system like AD&D's 1 minute rounds.

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.

D&D is particularly unlikely to give "sword shattered" as an outcome of a die roll - there are certainly other systems that can give that outcome without needing a fumble system (eg Rolemaster via crits or via its parry rules; BW via its stake-setting-and-manipulation rules).

In the case of Turin and Beleg, once again that could easily be the outcome of stake-setting in the context of a cursed sword. Or, in D&D, there could be a sword which has the curse "on a roll of a natural 1, roll an attack against one nearby ally". That curse doesn't require general fumble rules to implement, and in fact becomes less of a curse in a mechanical environment in which fumble rules are being used.

 

[delericho]

I think this is another one of those cases where different mechanics can produce the same fiction.

That's certainly possible. But...

Or, in a "fail forward" or "stake-setting" system, the same thing could happen: in order to get the Stealth roll at all, Han's player stakes being surprised by other troopers.

It was the same trooper. Hard to be surprised by the guy who's right there.

 

[Celebrim]

For me personally I find the most interesting thing about GM intrusions (and the main difference between them and what most consider a fumble) something Monte seems to gloss over in his article, mainly that the player has the ability to buy out of them (similar to how compels can be rejected in FATE).

What I find most interesting about the article is that it appears to be another example of Monte being uncomfortable with what were apparently unforeseen consequences of his design that he wants to mitigate against. Monte added critical fumbles to his system, and now that the system is out in the larger world he's getting some feedback on it that he didn't entirely expect or desire:

1) Most GMs when asked to imagine an additional consequence of the failure of a character's action very naturally color it as being the result of that character's action. He isn't comfortable with how that always plays out, so he encourages the GMs to start coloring the consequences of the failure of a character's action as being at least most of the time... unrelated to the action itself. This strikes me as rather incoherent, not just because it creates a disassociated mechanic, because at the level of the metagame players themselves will inevitably still associate the consequences with the player action.

Because however you want to color it, as a point of fact, it still is. If you didn't try to open the locked door, the guards wouldn't have come around to investigate. Indeed, the gaurds might not have existed until you failed to open the door. To me this creates the same sort of incentive you saw in 1e for the thief to avoid using his find/disarm traps ability whenever possible, because it was not reliable enough to depend on. As a result, the skilled 1e thief found and disarmed traps as a player, and only fell back on character skill when he had no choice as a sort of saving throw. If I thought there was a 1 in 20 chance of making matters significantly worse, I'd always treat my skills as unreliable.

Worse, thinking up good ways for something to go catastrophically wrong that aren't the natural results of the action is probably a much larger mental burden to impose on the GM than asking the GM to imagine how the player might have screwed up the action. Leaving the system that open ended is going to give GM's serious choice fatigue in rather short order.

2) Most players when they fumble opt to buy out of the consequences because really, who wants to find themselves in a situation that is actually worse. Monte seems to think this behavior is driven not by the player's reluctance to have the situation get worse, or by the player's reluctance to turn the situation over to capricious GM fiat, but by feelings of guilt or embarrassment or a desire to protect their character from the color of ineptitude. I don't know a whole lot about human emotions, but I find that rather unlikely. I think its just logical to want to buy out of any open ended long term consequence if you have the opportunity. As such, rather than actually being a system that introduces new drama to the situation, in practice the penalty for rolling a 1 is deducting a metagame resource which greatly undermines his intention.

Lessons here:

Game design is hard, even for the professionals.
There is no such thing as a free lunch. Everything has a cost.
If you make your process too burdensome, your participants will try to find ways to make a new process.
DM fiat isn't actually a simple system.

 

[Imaro]

I think this is another one of those cases where different mechanics can produce the same fiction. For instance, a failed Move Silently/Stealth check followed by the troopers winning an opposed Surprise roll (as per AD&D) or succeeding on their Stealth check (in some other system) could produce the same outcome.

Or, in a "fail forward" or "stake-setting" system, the same thing could happen: in order to get the Stealth roll at all, Han's player stakes being surprised by other troopers.

Or, again, it could just be failure on a surprise check, AD&D-style. Even rangers can be surprised on a 1 on 1d6. Or a failure on opposed Perception vs Stealth.

In a hit-point system, that looks like it might just be dropping to zero hit points. Especially in a more abstract system like AD&D's 1 minute rounds.

D&D is particularly unlikely to give "sword shattered" as an outcome of a die roll - there are certainly other systems that can give that outcome without needing a fumble system (eg Rolemaster via crits or via its parry rules; BW via its stake-setting-and-manipulation rules).

In the case of Turin and Beleg, once again that could easily be the outcome of stake-setting in the context of a cursed sword. Or, in D&D, there could be a sword which has the curse "on a roll of a natural 1, roll an attack against one nearby ally". That curse doesn't require general fumble rules to implement, and in fact becomes less of a curse in a mechanical environment in which fumble rules are being used.

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...

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?

 

[Maxperson]

In a hit-point system, that looks like it might just be dropping to zero hit points. Especially in a more abstract system like AD&D's 1 minute rounds.

It also looked like a fumble. The point is, failure is what you make of it and what you want it to be.

D&D is particularly unlikely to give "sword shattered" as an outcome of a die roll - there are certainly other systems that can give that outcome without needing a fumble system (eg Rolemaster via crits or via its parry rules; BW via its stake-setting-and-manipulation rules).

Dragon put out a fumble chart for 2e that involved swords shattering. The party lost a few magic ones. Easy come, easy go. We loved that chart

In the case of Turin and Beleg, once again that could easily be the outcome of stake-setting in the context of a cursed sword. Or, in D&D, there could be a sword which has the curse "on a roll of a natural 1, roll an attack against one nearby ally". That curse doesn't require general fumble rules to implement, and in fact becomes less of a curse in a mechanical environment in which fumble rules are being used.

I'm not arguing that there couldn't be other reasons that explain these things. Fumbles explain them just as well, though.