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.

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?
 

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Aldarc

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

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?
And that's my point, both here and with a number of your points in this post. A Natural 1 does not necessarily conjure these things into being as you said. That is the mischaracterization of the Cypher System that I find problematic, and I will get to that more below.

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.
Condescension aside, my point here with that line of questioning is merely that different games cater to different playstyles for groups. Regardless of your strong opinions about more Narrativist > Simulationist games, you do seem to prefer a particular style of game play for your pen 'n' paper RPs. And your preference does not seem to be what the Cypher System offers. But also, it seems as if your experiences and what you are criticizing seems detached from how the Cypher System plays out in practice. If the Cypher System is not for you, then great. Continue playing what you are playing. But it seems as if you are fighting for a cause that does not affect you since you are playing in other game systems with other play styles anyway. So what does an online debate regarding Monte Cook's article on fumbles and the GM Intrusion achieve for you? Why are you worried about what effects these new mechanics would produce in a game system you don't even play or imply that you would enjoy regardless of this mechanic?

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".
Right now the only person "huffing and panting" is you, and I respectfully suggest that you calm down. I have not moved goal posts. I have been consistent with my point of opposition in my reply, namely this idea that the "missed bow shot conjures the trumpet and reinforcements into being" as it seems to imply that they come out of "thin air" and not within the realm of narrative plausibility.

The player rolls a Natural 1. In the Cypher System, this triggers a GM Intrusion. Obviously, this roll happens outside of the game narrative. The shot likely misses, but it's not an automatic miss in the Cypher System as it would be in some systems or house rules. The missed bow shot did not conjure the trumpet and reinforcements into being either. Although the in-narrative bow shot is tied to the out-of-narrative player attack roll, the complication is also attached to the Natural 1 as a sort of "organized chaos effect." It is not that the missed bow shot conjures these things into being, but, rather, the out-of-narrative Natural 1 triggers the introduction of an in-narrative complication in addition to the actions of the attack roll. The Natural 1, in some respects, represents the player unintentionally poking the GM to change their regularly-scheduled scenario. It's also worth noting here, as others have before me, that the player is free to spend 1 XP to reroll their dice, effectively negating the GM Intrusion and the in-narrative complication.

It's not necessarily a fumble. It's not necessarily a comedy of errors for the player, as Natural 1s sometimes become. (I have had my fair share of GM's who have conjured rocks from the sky that they have dropped on players' heads who have rolled Natural 1s.) It's not necessarily a bumbling goof. It's really more an opportunity that invites the GM-as-narrator to provide unforeseen narrative twists. And these are moments that we see in movies, shows, and books. The player can do things well, but sometimes the unexpected happens that lies outside of their competence or foresight. You may see this as splitting hairs or a case of semantics. That's fine. But semantics do impact the game, as we have discussed much earlier in this thread, and which was something that you seemed to tacitly agree with.
 
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Celebrim

Legend
A Natural 1 does not necessarily conjure these things into being as you said. That is the mischaracterization of the Cypher System that I find problematic, and I will get to that more below.

Regardless of how you want to characterize it, the truth is that these complications - however plausible - are introduced into the fiction at that moment that action is attempted. If these complications don't associate with the actor attempting the action or perhaps with the target of the action making a countermove, then they are indeed conjured out of thin air. They are plausible within the narrative, and obviously agreeing to play in that style is agreeing to allow the fiction to be morphic and modified on a whim.

So yes they come from the realm of narrative possibility, but that is also out of thin air and indeed it is the missed bow shot that conjures them into being.

So you do not understand what I'm arguing or where I have a problem. The problem I have is that Monte claims that it is better that usually the complication introduced by GM Intrusion be one which is not associated with the actor, or necessarily even with the target, but rather be like random coincidences invoked by some diabolic spirit that hates the number '1' or what you call "a sort of organized chaos effect". But I don't agree that that is necessarily or even often a better approach, I think it one fraught with problems regardless of the system you are playing, and that the problem Monte is trying to solve here is not serious enough to warrant repeatedly using disassociated mechanics or repeatedly improvising antagonistic elements of the fiction.

Now, Monte has quite correctly given the player Narrative currency that he can spend to mitigate against the GM's call, but as I understand it, the Cypher system doesn't implement a separate narrative currency pool but instead the player has to spend XP to counter the DM's call. And if the GM can call on roughly 1 in 20 rolls, then the intrusion should be relatively minor and inoffensive IMO. So yes, it probably shouldn't belittle the PC, but it should probably not mostly be zany introductions to the fiction either.

One way to handle this functionally in combat would be to have the monster make a move, preferably one that the monster could do. So you might attack the orc, roll a 1 and the DM narrates this as the orc warrior catches the blow on your blade, locks swords with you, with its fang mere inches from your face, and with a roar the monster throws you onto your back! Oh noes!! Things of that nature are good combat calls by a GM. Or you could have the monster use the established terrain of the fiction in some manner, bulrushes you and knocks you to the edge of a cliff, takes advantage of your poorly timed swing to pull a brazier of coals down on top of you and the straw on the floor of the room catches fire, knocks your sword spinning out of your hand, etc. The GM should be creative with what the fiction has already established - that the orc is a strong and frenzied attacker, those things already present in the environment, and yes that the player - as the actor in the proposition - sometimes makes a big mistake is momentarily outmatched.

There are lots of ways to handle this well, but the Cypher system doesn't really have the narrative currency you need to build fiction together in a functional way and Monte's games don't normally play well as strictly Nar games because he has such strong Gamist and Simulationist sensibilities. As someone else I heard comment said, "Monte makes games if you want to heroicly knock down the bad guys." I don't think that he's getting peanut butter into his chocolate here, or even that he's dipping his nori in chocolate because fad. I think he's using the wrong technique for the wrong reason.

But it seems as if you are fighting for a cause that does not affect you since you are playing in other game systems with other play styles anyway. So what does an online debate regarding Monte Cook's article on fumbles and the GM Intrusion achieve for you? Why are you worried about what effects these new mechanics would produce in a game system you don't even play or imply that you would enjoy regardless of this mechanic?

Because these are general technique that aren't tied to any one system and there is this fad going on where people think that Nar techniques are just better regardless of how or when or why you use them. And I don't think that's a very thoughtful approach here. Besides which, I enjoy thinking about GMing techniques because regardless of what system I'm playing now, I'm GMing all the time. I've been GMing for more than 30 years and I'm always learning about new approaches and ways of looking at things. Right now I'm 6 years in to 3.X D&D campaign that probably has 2-4 years left in it to complete it's major story arc, but even in D&D 3e you can make calls and improvise new fiction. It's just not a technique you want to do very often because it the system doesn't give the players tools to respond to that. If you find yourself in 3e doing a lot of that, you are probably doing it wrong.

And in my opinion Cypher doesn't support introducing disassociated improvised fiction through the GM Intrusion mechanic very well. XP is too high of a cost to counter it with; it's not fun for the player to pay that cost, which should be fun to 'bid' in a well designed Nar mechanic. Cypher has more than one creative agenda going - it's got a wonderful exploration of setting theme going for example - so don't expect it to play pure Nar.

It's not necessarily a fumble. It's not necessarily a comedy of errors for the player, as Natural 1s sometimes become.

Comedy of errors is being underrated here. Heroes can bumble and fumble and still be big damn heroes (to quote Firefly) and the players can still have fun. In fact, I've had players that signal that they very much enjoy that sort of thing. And if I had a player that signaled strongly that they didn't, I'd try to meet him halfway. And yes, there are ways to handle GM intrusion that aren't comedy of errors or even strongly color of PC incompetence (though there is IMO _always_ going to be some just because the players can see the metamechanic in action), but in general when roll is failed the results should always be strongly and clearly related to the act and the actor. Otherwise you are running into a problem that the players aren't going to feel that they can control the game setting through their actions (and they'll be right) and the universe (and the GM) is perverse and illogical and out to get them. And it's particularly bad to have this happening on a 'roll of a 1' because they know this is happening, and they don't have sufficient tools for saying 'No'.

It's not necessarily a bumbling goof. It's really more an opportunity that invites the GM-as-narrator to provide unforeseen narrative twists. And these are moments that we see in movies, shows, and books. The player can do things well, but sometimes the unexpected happens that lies outside of their competence or foresight.

Sure, but the bumbling goofs also happens in movies, shows, and books and we don't necessarily like the heroes the less for them. And things that are unexpected and lie outside of any possible foresight will happen to PC's anyway, regardless of whether we have GM Intrusion as a mechanic or not, just because the player's themselves aren't omniscient (at least, not in this sort of game, and if you want to talk about a game I wouldn't actually like to play, a game with all the players omniscient would be an example).

You may see this as splitting hairs or a case of semantics. That's fine. But semantics do impact the game, as we have discussed much earlier in this thread, and which was something that you seemed to tacitly agree with.

I am the world's biggest semantic hair splitter. You don't need to convince me semantics are important. I just ask you to try to understand what I'm actually saying and why, which is sometimes difficult I grant you, because often what I'm saying is finely split and often as not I'm arguing because I haven't hit on exactly how to say it well.
 
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Imaro

Legend
Comedy of errors is being underrated here. Heroes can bumble and fumble and still be big damn heroes (to quote Firefly) and the players can still have fun. In fact, I've had players that signal that they very much enjoy that sort of thing. And if I had a player that signaled strongly that they didn't, I'd try to meet him halfway. And yes, there are ways to handle GM intrusion that aren't comedy of errors or even strongly color of PC incompetence (though there is IMO _always_ going to be some just because the players can see the metamechanic in action), but in general when roll is failed the results should always be strongly and clearly related to the act and the actor. Otherwise you are running into a problem that the players aren't going to feel that they can control the game setting through their actions (and they'll be right) and the universe (and the GM) is perverse and illogical and out to get them. And it's particularly bad to have this happening on a 'roll of a 1' because they know this is happening, and they don't have sufficient tools for saying 'No'.

Sure, but the bumbling goofs also happens in movies, shows, and books and we don't necessarily like the heroes the less for them. And things that are unexpected and lie outside of any possible foresight will happen to PC's anyway, regardless of whether we have GM Intrusion as a mechanic or not, just because the player's themselves aren't omniscient (at least, not in this sort of game, and if you want to talk about a game I wouldn't actually like to play, a game with all the players omniscient would be an example).

Emphasis mine... this has been my biggest issue with the premise set forth for differentiation of fumbles and/or fumbles being bad wrong fun by some of the posters in this discussion such as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. There are a ton of heroes who have moments of ineptitude... and they are still heroes, they are still competent and they still save the day. I'm not sure where this idea arose that a competent protagonist never fails due to his own skills or abilities not being up to the task... perhaps there's a small subset of heroes who never fail due to their own inability to meet a particular challenge but it happens to numerous competent heroes of literature and movies and you're right, we don't enjoy their stories any less for it... in fact I would argue it creates a hero who is easier to relate to than the one whose only failures come from outside forces...

Note... I also think you are correct in your assertion that we shouldn't assume that these types of failures aren't fun for players or the group... IME, most people just don't take the game that serious.
 

Celebrim

Legend
Emphasis mine... this has been my biggest issue with the premise set forth for differentiation of fumbles and/or fumbles being bad wrong fun by some of the posters in this discussion

Even more than saying fumbles are badwrongfun, what annoys me right from the original essay is that it takes what I consider an incidental, unessential, and subjective aspect of a well known game mechanic and defines that secondary trait - that they can be funny - as the core attribute of the mechanic itself.

The essay then goes on to assume that being maybe the source of humor will likely make the player feel bad, and that he's perfectly right and reasonable for feeling so.

And then on top of that, the essay goes on to suggest that we should be mostly using improvised disassociated fiction insertion to resolve the fumbles in order to avoid the possibility of making a player feel bad, as if improvised disassociated fiction had absolutely no chance of going wrong or offending or annoying players or otherwise diminishing their enjoyment of a scene.

One small tiny area I will agree with pemerton on is that it takes an extremely skilled and experienced DM to improvise fiction disassociated from the actor or action and pull it off to good effect. Someone experienced just tried to tell me how to pull it off well, and by my standards failed in every single example. So yeah, don't try this stuff at home unless you have a very good reason. I don't agree we can agree on how we ought to label every possible complication, but I do believe that it takes great skill to find good ones.

So on the whole this just seems like terrible bad GMing advice even if on some level I do understand where he's coming from and what problem he wants to solve, if for no other reason than there is all these other people in the thread that associate fumbles with silly results and mocking and belittling players and can't seem to imagine anything else, and he's got a game system with a fumble mechanic in it that some of those people are probably misusing.
 

delericho

Legend
It really depends on how many monsters the PCs are fighting.

Over the course of a campaign, you can be pretty sure there are more monsters than PCs. :)

By the same logic, the more monsters the more fumbles in the players favour.

That's not the issue. It's randomness that favours the underdog. Since almost all D&D encounters are designed with the intention that the PCs will win (or every session would end with a TPK), that means the monsters are almost always the underdog. Both crits and fumbles increase randomness, so they both favour the monsters.
 

Aldarc

Legend
Regardless of how you want to characterize it, the truth is that these complications - however plausible - are introduced into the fiction at that moment that action is attempted. If these complications don't associate with the actor attempting the action or perhaps with the target of the action making a countermove, then they are indeed conjured out of thin air. They are plausible within the narrative, and obviously agreeing to play in that style is agreeing to allow the fiction to be morphic and modified on a whim.

So yes they come from the realm of narrative possibility, but that is also out of thin air and indeed it is the missed bow shot that conjures them into being.
And that's where I would continue to disagree with your point and see that as a mischaracterization of the Cypher System. If you are just going to repeat that line, then it's clear this conversation is not moving forward.

Emphasis mine... this has been my biggest issue with the premise set forth for differentiation of fumbles and/or fumbles being bad wrong fun by some of the posters in this discussion such as [MENTION=42582]pemerton[/MENTION]. There are a ton of heroes who have moments of ineptitude... and they are still heroes, they are still competent and they still save the day. I'm not sure where this idea arose that a competent protagonist never fails due to his own skills or abilities not being up to the task... perhaps there's a small subset of heroes who never fail due to their own inability to meet a particular challenge but it happens to numerous competent heroes of literature and movies and you're right, we don't enjoy their stories any less for it... in fact I would argue it creates a hero who is easier to relate to than the one whose only failures come from outside forces...

Note... I also think you are correct in your assertion that we shouldn't assume that these types of failures aren't fun for players or the group... IME, most people just don't take the game that serious.
And my counterpoint of emphasis would be what I wrote earlier:
It's not necessarily a fumble. It's not necessarily a comedy of errors for the player, as Natural 1s sometimes become. It's not necessarily a bumbling goof.
The problem is the bold. Moments of heroic bumbling goofs and ineptitude happen, and they can make for a compelling narrative, as Monte Cook himself says in his article, but the problem is when the Natural 1 is played necessarily as those things when there are a wider array of options available.
 

Psychometrika

First Post
Great thread. I rarely like most fumble systems since the mechanics of the game often mesh poorly with the narrative of a character growing in skill. In basically all editions of D&D and many other systems, the number of rolls you make typically increases as the character gains experience. Thus, while it makes sense narratively that such an experienced character will land devastating critical blows with increased frequency, it does not follow that they trip over their own feet more often as well.

Why would a 20th level fighter (4+ attack rolls in a round), the greatest warrior in the land, be dropping their weapon more often than an untrained peasant who barely knows how to swing a weapon? A lot of fumble systems result in this, and this breaks immersion for me.

Monty's take on it meshes the mechanics with the narrative in much more believable fashion than most any fumble system I have seen. I'll take immersion over mechanical symmetry any day.
 

Imaro

Legend
And my counterpoint of emphasis would be what I wrote earlier:
The problem is the bold. Moments of heroic bumbling goofs and ineptitude happen, and they can make for a compelling narrative, as Monte Cook himself says in his article, but the problem is when the Natural 1 is played necessarily as those things when there are a wider array of options available.

Who is claiming these should be the only results? In fact I've been in a back and forth with numerous posters (coming from the same viewpoint you seem to be advocating) about how they've chosen to narrowly define fumbles as ineptitude of character and/or "silly". IMO it's these people who are most in danger of only using a subset of what a fumble could actually represent during play... and I also believe it's this inability to look beyond that which colotrs a big part of their disdain for fumbles...
 

Aldarc

Legend
Who is claiming these should be the only results? In fact I've been in a back and forth with numerous posters (coming from the same viewpoint you seem to be advocating) about how they've chosen to narrowly define fumbles as ineptitude of character and/or "silly". IMO it's these people who are most in danger of only using a subset of what a fumble could actually represent during play... and I also believe it's this inability to look beyond that which colotrs a big part of their disdain for fumbles...
It's less that they should be the only results as per ideal, but more of an issue that they often are as per practice. How Natural 1s play out in common practice is the critical issue. As a player I have often dealt with my share of GMs over the years who do interpret fumbles along those narrow lines of character ineptitude and silliness. The easy thing to do would be to just label them all bad GMs, but I think that the problem extends more from the wider gaming culture than just GM inexperience or ineptitude. It's why I find the GM Intrusion mechanic more narratively open and a breath of fresh air. It may have always been the case regarding Natural 1s in terms of what they represent, but sometimes it's the little things in the rules that make the difference.
 

Imaro

Legend
Great thread. I rarely like most fumble systems since the mechanics of the game often mesh poorly with the narrative of a character growing in skill. In basically all editions of D&D and many other systems, the number of rolls you make typically increases as the character gains experience. Thus, while it makes sense narratively that such an experienced character will land devastating critical blows with increased frequency, it does not follow that they trip over their own feet more often as well.

Why would a 20th level fighter (4+ attack rolls in a round), the greatest warrior in the land, be dropping their weapon more often than an untrained peasant who barely knows how to swing a weapon? A lot of fumble systems result in this, and this breaks immersion for me.

Monty's take on it meshes the mechanics with the narrative in much more believable fashion than most any fumble system I have seen. I'll take immersion over mechanical symmetry any day.

Just wanted to comment on a few things...

If you are using a fumble system where the only result is "drop your weapon" whenever a 1 is rolled... your fumble system sucks. How about your weapon breaks (redusing the damage it can cause), You stumble in the (muck, ice, mud, foliage, etc.) and find yourself in an awkward position for your next attack so take disadvantage on your next melee/spellcasting attack roll... Your opponent catches you off guard with a feint that you never saw coming, giving your opponent a +2 on his next attack... and so on. These are all things that happen to skilled warriors in fiction and even skilled martial artist in real fights... and guess what... they do happen to them more often over their lifetime because they are fighting & training more often against more skilled opponents than the untrained peasant...

The untrained peasant going up against an average foe for a 20th level fighter is dead before he even gets to react to the attack... or his attack is so ineffective that ultimately if given the chance to continuously wail away at the opponent he will fumble more times than the 20th level fighter because the 20th level fighter will actually kill the opponent at some point. I'm failing to see how this is immersion breaking in any way.

As for the Cypher system... let's not get Monte's preferences confused with the actual GM intrusion mechanic of the system. I like the actual mechanic because it doesn't prescribe the way( except to say make it interesting for whatever value interesting is at your table) in which a GM intrusion has to arise, it allows any type of fumble/intrusion that the GM or group wants, whether that's a failure above and beyond due to the character's own ineptitude or failure above and beyond due to factors outside of the character's control. That's it's greatest strength in that it doesn't force a particular play style on a group (something I value more and more in the games I choose these days) but gives you a nice open ended mechanic and says hey... use this mechanic to suit your preferences... IMO, it seems Monte is advocating for a mixture as opposed to either of the extremes being dominant and that's pretty much how I run Numenera but I also agree with [MENTION=4937]Celebrim[/MENTION] in that the GM intrusion for all practical purposes is just an open ended fumble system as opposed to something totally different... you could just as easily replace it with a table customized for your group that you roll on whenever a 1 comes up... as long as the results are interesting to your group.
 

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