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?

 

[Maxperson]

That could have been a critical on Vader's part, not a fumble on Luke's.

It could have been, or it could have been a fumble. That's the point.

 

[Maxperson]

Nope, they really aren't. It doesn't matter how many monsters you kill, I have an unlimited supply of new ones that will never, ever run out. And, no, PC's don't crit many times more often simply because the PC's attack far, far less than the monsters.

There are two possibilities. One, you send a never ending stream of monsters at the PCs until they die (unlimited monsters). Two, you don't do that and self-limit the number you use. "Unlimited" is meaningless if you aren't ever going to use unlimited monsters.

A group of 10th level 5e character, say 5 PC's, 2 fighter types, a cleric, wizard and thief are adventuring. They get 7 attacks per round, presuming they attack every round and don't cast spells. There might be some exceptions - feats, that sort of thing - but, by and large 7 attacks is all they get. 10th level party, I'll throw half a dozen troll at them. Not an overwhelming encounter by any stretch right? Guess what? I've got 12 attacks per round from those trolls. Even if you crit twce as often, which 5e characters don't (only Champions get higher crit ranges), I've still got twice as may attacks per round as you. I will crit more often than you will.

12 attacks and on average zero will crit in a round, and only one will crit in two rounds. 7 PC attacks with improved critical/keen and we're talking crits every round on average, and more powerful ones, too. PCs have more feats and such to modify their crit damage than most of the monsters do.

In 3e, which is where this little sidebar started, it gets even worse. Standard party is 4 PC's. Monsters frequently have 3 attacks per round. The party has, maybe, 5, 6 attacks per round. The monsters can have easily twice, or even three times more attacks per round than the party with little difficulty. Again, it doesn't matter what your crit range is. I am guaranteed to crit more often, simply because no single character comes remotely close to the number of times that the DM rolls, and even the group combined still lags behind.

Er, no. In the vast majority of instances, it takes a natural 20 for a monster to get a crit threat. More attacks still means fewer criticals in combat due to the harshness of needing a 20.

 

[Maxperson]

I agree that it is a wholly fallacious argument but I know where they are coming from, because I've seen it personally and heard of it second hand.

I have also experienced it first hand. However, just because a tool has been used incorrectly, does not mean that the tool is a bad one or that such an incorrect use is what fumbles must look like.

Many oldbies experience with fumbles and critical hits comes almost entirely from the Dragon article 'Good misses and bad hits'. A few might have experience with Warhammer Fantasy or Rolemaster, which have their own issues, but this being primarily a D&D forum it's mostly going to be those old unofficially fumble and critical tables.

That article had a lot of awesomeness to it, which is why it was so influential and popular, but it also had a lot of fail in it. For the most part, the fumble and critical results on the tables weren't tested for reasonableness by the table itself. Whatever the table said simply happened. So for example, a non-magical sword was basically just as likely to break as a +6 holy avenger.

Yes, that's true. The DMs I experienced who used that table, including myself, generally took +6 holy avenger and the like into consideration.

One of the good things about the rules though was that the chance of you fumbling decreased as you got more skilled. The rules presented by the article said that the chance of a critical was a percentage equal to the difference in your modified to hit roll and the number you needed to hit. So for example, if your character needed a modified 14 to hit, and you rolled a modified 22, then you'd have an 8% chance of a critical. On the other hand if you rolled a modified 6, you'd have an 8% chance of a fumble.

That worked pretty well but it generated a ton of fumbles and criticals, and a lot of the results on the table were pretty extreme - critically hit self being an example. D&D combat wasn't naturally very gritty, but if you threw in the fumble and critical rules from the article it would get pretty darn brutal in a hurry. High level fighters - already arguably OP in 1e after Weapon Specialization was introduced - would generate critical hits on like 10-15% of their attacks, often ending the fight right then and there.

To make matters worse though, quite a few tables house ruled the article to simply it so that you always fumbled on a 1 and always had a critical on a 20. That common house rule is actually the direct ancestor of the 3e critical hit rules. But unlike the 3e rules, this wasn't just a threat to critical, but an automatic critical or fumble. So if you had 2 or 3 attacks per round, every attack you made was a chance to roll a 1 and critically hit yourself or your ally. Naturally, things like that would happen all the time.

If that is your whole experience with fumbles, then you probably automatically imagine those situations whenever you hear the word 'fumble'.

I remember, and I agree that if that's all you experienced, that's what you would initially imagine with fumbles. However, that doesn't excuse keeping that outlook once people start explaining to you here that fumbles are not required to be that way.

 

[Maxperson]

Yep. Plus the party is likely to have at least one PC casting spells which tend to require saves rather than attack rolls. So that cuts down on the number of crits, too.

This is true. Spellcasting PCs drastically cut down on the number of crits monsters can possibly get by eliminating them. Spellcasting > melee. By having PC spell casters, the number of PC crits vs. monster crits just becomes even more skewed in favor of the PCs.

 

[Maxperson]

Luke having his hand chopped off is not a failure on Luke's part but a critical success on Vader's. Note, after the hand is chopped off, the fight is over. Vader wins. This is simply a perfect example of why HP does not equal meat. This is a perfect example of a PC being reduced to negative HP.

You have no proof of that. It could just as easily have been a Luke fumble as a Vader crit. That's the point that you are ignoring. You are making gross assumptions and trying to pass those assumptions off as fact.

If two systems don't actually have any real difference, then what's the point of having two systems? Why have a critical fumble system that gives you identical results to a simple fail system? It's complexity for no purpose. It adds zero to the game.

Just because you don't like the purpose, doesn't mean that it has no purpose or that it doesn't add to the game. Here's a fact. Crit and fumble tables have both purpose and add considerably to my game. Therefore, you cannot be right when you make an absolute statement like that. You'd be better served to be speaking in terms of, "To me it has no purpose..." and so on. At least you'd be correct, then.

 

[Imaro]

No, I think it pretty much connotes something worse than failure - if it doesn't, someone's misusing the term fumble and misunderstanding will ensue. That said, I don't think anybody requires it be sticking a sword in someone's eye or a decapitation selfie. It could be something like a broken bow string, a damaged weapon, or a follow-up penalty on the next turn. In pretty much all events, if it's no worse than a simple failure, someone's failing at the term fumble.

I still disagree that it has to be worse (for whatever value we are placing on that here) than a regular failure. Different than what happens with a normal failure, yes... but "worse" is again totally subjective. As to a failure having to involve decapitations, self inflicted blinding and ally induced harm... from the posts earlier... that seems to be the lion's share of what's been presented as "fumble" worthy by certain posters so you would have to take that up with them.

 

[Bedrockgames]

But part of the reason I think you could run Star Wars in the Cypher System is precisely because GM Intrusion can be and most naturally is, a fumble.

I wasn't weighing in on whether that was a fumble or not (seems like a good mechanic to me, and I have no issues with it). My only disagreement with the original article this came from, and one that I see as more of a quibble than a serious complaint, is that laughing at a character due to a hilarious fumble isn't the same as laughing at the player (that we can all laugh at what happened to Bruce's character and it isn't a big deal----we might even jokingly rib Bruce if he knows we aren't literally faulting him for the fumble). I'm totally fine with GM intrusion, and I think there are some good reasons why a GM might prefer it to a traditional fumble. My point was spectacular failure can be great fun even if your at the center of it. I don't need the system to protect me from embarrassment.

 

[I'm A Banana]

A 1 isn't a catastrophic failure, but it IS an auto-failure. I don't mind the intrusion mechanic, it's sort of a codification of something that happens at a lot of tables, and it basically says, "DM, make this failure fun." Generally, though, I'm fine with it being an auto-failure and moving on with life. You say "whoops" and pass the turn onto the next person, no reason to interrupt the flow.

 

[Celebrim]

My point was spectacular failure can be great fun even if your at the center of it. I don't need the system to protect me from embarrassment.

I agree, although that's not the end of my rejoinder to the original essay or the extent of my problems with it.

It seems I need to define 'fumble' as a technical term.

In a typical RPG system, the following process is at the heart of play.

1) The player makes a doubtful proposition regarding something they'd like their character to try to achieve. The stakes of this proposition are implicitly, "Either this thing will happen or not."
2) The fortune for the proposition is set by the rules and determined by some randomizer (usually dice).
3) The consequences of the fortune are resolved by the GM based on the success of the proposition. Either the thing happened or it didn't, and the results of that are narrated.
4) Return to step #1.

A game has a fumble mechanic if in step #3, there is an additional negative complication that can occur above and beyond simply not achieving the doubtful proposition based on having had extremely bad failure during the fortune step. So not only did the thing not happen, but now there is some new problem the player has to cope beyond what one might expect from failure. Note that this doesn't mean that simple failure can't be catastrophically bad, as for example proposing to jump a ravine usually has as its simple consequence of failure, "You don't jump across the ravine, therefore you fall in." No, in the case of an actual fumble, something would happen worse than just the usual consequences of falling into the ravine.*

A game has a critical mechanic if in step #3, there is an additional positive result that can occur above and beyond simply achieving the doubtful proposition based on having had extremely good success during the fortune step.

Based on this definition - which I think a rather natural and good one - the GM Intrusion rule in Cypher is certainly a fumble mechanic. It is an open ended fumble mechanic, which has good points (as you note) and bad points (as I've noted), but it is certainly a fumble mechanic.

One of my problems with the original essay is that the author tries to argue that his fumble mechanic isn't really a fumble mechanic, because the GM Intrusion could have the color of not being a result of character ineptitude. But a fumble is still a fumble even if it is not in the fiction the result of the player's ineptness, and at some level it is always true that if the player had simply been more adept the fumble consequences would not have occurred. So while it may be true that Luke lost his hand in the fiction more as a result of Vader's legendary skill with a lightsaber than his own ineptness, but at some level it is still true that that happened because Luke at the time was inadequately skilled.

Monte comes off as offering a potentially useful insight that he himself doesn't fully understand and can't adequately explain. And his explanation is so bad, that taken literally it's probably worse technique than the problem the technique is trying to solve.

*Side note: It's impossible to determine in a non-gaming medium whether or not a failure was a fumble or a simple failure. To do this, we'd have to know what would have happened had whatever happened in the story not happened. That is to say, we'd also have to know what could have happened. Since we don't normally know the 'what if' cases outside of a gaming medium, we can't say whether any particular action in say Star Wars was a fumble or an ordinary failure. All we can say is that they are often pretty spectacular failures leading to all sorts of additional complications. And for myself I can say that though I find the failures of the PC's humorous at times, it's precisely in overcoming the stacked against them odds, and precisely because they are heroes that retain their mortal stature, that I find myself rooting for the heroes and wooping for joy (ok, so I haven't done that since I was about 3) when they succeed.

 

[Arilyn]

The GM looks at all of the possible worlds that could potentially exist, and selects one that will make for an interesting adventure. And while there are an infinite number of worlds to choose from, the one thing that they all have in common is that they exist independently of who the PCs are.

It's not hard to avoid meta-gaming, as long as you're aware of it.

Okay, and what is the difference between that and tailoring your adventure to suit the player characters? Unless, you are meditating to choose one world from many? Sounds like "hippie storytelling" to me.