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?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Right, but the difference between stabbing someone accidentally and a weapon breaking accidentally is that the PC has no control and is not in any way responsible for the weapon breaking.

The PC has exactly as much control over accidentally hitting an ally as they have over accidentally breaking their weapon - they chose to attack an enemy, knowing full well that they might hit an ally or break their weapon, and then they decided to go through with it anyway.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

We are talking about GM intrusions... they are triggered by rolling a 1 (on any roll, not just attacks)... that is what this entire article Monte wrote is about...

The article was talking about both, and suggesting that intrusions are preferable to fumbles because they paint the character in a better light (unlucky, rather than incompetent). He neglects to mention that many players prefer that the outcome follow causally from the action at hand, and why that would be one reason to prefer fumbles over intrusions, but presumably anyone who signs up to play Cypher system knows what they're getting themselves into.

The OP made it seem like Monte's point applied more generally than that, but upon reading it again, it does seem limited to only those game with heavily abstracted checks (goal-based rather than process-based).

 

[Imaro]

The article was talking about both, and suggesting that intrusions are preferable to fumbles because they paint the character in a better light (unlucky, rather than incompetent). He neglects to mention that many players prefer that the outcome follow causally from the action at hand, and why that would be one reason to prefer fumbles over intrusions, but presumably anyone who signs up to play Cypher system knows what they're getting themselves into.

I still think you're misunderstanding the article as well as what a GM Intrusion is in relationship to a "fumble"... In the Cypher system as written there is no specific "fumble", it is (as Monte is choosing to use the term in his article) a subset of GM Intrusions but the distinction is not made in the system itself. A roll of a natural 1 in the Cypher system is a GM Intrusion where something bad happens.

Now to the issue of causality and the sword breaking. There is causality in the breaking of the sword because it directly arises from the sword being used in the example action we are discussing... plain and simple that is causality.

Assuming that all swords in whatever game you are speaking too... are made perfectly and all flaws are detectable by those who wield them (as opposed to smiths) and swords in your hypothetical world never suffer wear and tear in your games (which in my opinion is way more disassociated than assuming no weapon forged by a man is perfect), but given all that...

I was specifically speaking to the Numenera game, in which the conceit that weapons, vehicles, equipment, technology, etc. is made from advanced/past/alien/trans-dimensional/etc. materials and knowledge that is poorly understood, re-jiggered for purposes it was never meant for and often dangerous to use. This means the fact that a sword might break due to some unknown weakness in it's strange materials or some alien flaw in it's design it has that you are unaware of has been established as part of the world itself. In agreeing to play Numenera you are agreeing to play in a world where this is fact and thus not created out of thin air.

The OP made it seem like Monte's point applied more generally than that, but upon reading it again, it does seem limited to only those game with heavily abstracted checks (goal-based rather than process-based).

Well the OP isn't the article and Monte makes it clear in the article that he is speaking to his own system/games.

 

[Maxperson]

The PC has exactly as much control over accidentally hitting an ally as they have over accidentally breaking their weapon - they chose to attack an enemy, knowing full well that they might hit an ally or break their weapon, and then they decided to go through with it anyway.

False. The PC knows that if he swings or fires into a chaotic melee, hitting an ally is a possibility. He has chosen to take that risk. He does not know that there is a flaw and that his weapon might break in this fight. He has less control.

 

[Maxperson]

If a previous flaw is required for the break, and that flaw isn't established until you make the attack, then it's in exactly the same category as conjuring up guards - the category of outcomes which cannot possibly be follow from the action which causes them. Swinging a sword cannot cause a flaw to have existed before you swung it, just like swinging a sword cannot cause guards to appear where previously none existed. They are the same gross violation of causality.

You can keep repeating it, but it's not at all in the same category. The flaw proceeds directly from the action and is related to it. The guards are not.

Fumbles aren't real things, within the game world. You can't ascribe blame to the fumble itself. The poor outcome of the swing is the fault of the PC who swung so poorly. It's the fault of the PC that they were such a terrible fighter that they managed to break their sword against a rock. Everyone within the world can see it, and see how the outcome followed logically from the action.

Fumbles are a real thing within the game world. They may not be called "fumble", but bad luck is a thing. It exists. The PCs know it exists.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

False. The PC knows that if he swings or fires into a chaotic melee, hitting an ally is a possibility. He has chosen to take that risk. He does not know that there is a flaw and that his weapon might break in this fight. He has less control.

Why does the PC know that he might hit an ally (and possibly kill them), but not know that he might hit an adjacent stone wall (and possibly break the sword)? Those both seem equally (un)likely as outcomes for swinging a sword. I mean, that's a really weird premise, for him to be aware of one possibility but not aware of the other possibility. Does he not know that sometimes swords can break, if you hit a wall?

 

[Balesir]

Sooo... you fail your perception test... alot. That seems internal to me.

A world of extraordinarily hidden creatures is not a premise of Numenera... one uses the Perception skill to determine whether one does or does not detect creatures... thus if you don't detect a creature it is an internal intrusion (auto fail on perception).

This doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. By this measure, it is a "failure of perception" that we don't know the location of every other creature on the planet - this is obviously false. Perception isn't about being aware of some creature or not - it's about when you become aware of a creature that may interact with you. If I have no idea if my neighbour across the road is at home or not, that's not a "failure of perception". If I miss them leaving via their front door, it's more a matter of happenstance whether I happen to be stood by a window that overlooks their front door than any skill on my part. If I miss them coming in my front door (while I am in the house), on the other hand, the claim of "failed my perception" would hold considerably more weight.

For the reinforcements, nothing so far said (as far as I can tell) suggests that they have to pop up in close or even melee range of the PCs. They might be 30 or 40 yards away or more, emerging from a wood or a nearby village, or closer but emerging through a door that they have just opened. The "perception" question I usually resolve by having the players roll against Perception - the results dictate how far away the reinforcements set up. Poor rolls means as close as they might conceivably have got while remaining out of sight; good rolls mean some way away, with possible opportunities for ranged attacks on the way in (if the characters can spare the time from dealing with the enemies already in contact with them...)

I read it as external to the character. The PC slips would not be external to the character. The PC is the one slipping. The sword breaks is external to the PC. The PC is not the one breaking the sword. That was just bad luck. Both can be linked to causally to the attack, though.

By that measure, wouldn't the PC missing because the opponent ducked be "external"?

As an aside, most if not all plausible ways I can think of for a sword to actually break arise directly from the interplay of moves by the fighters - in other words, they do very much depend on the relative skills.

 

[Hussar]

I guess my question would be, would there be any way to detect that flaw in the sword beforehand? IOW, did the flaw actually exist in the game world before that fumble was rolled?

 

[Balesir]

I guess my question would be, would there be any way to detect that flaw in the sword beforehand? IOW, did the flaw actually exist in the game world before that fumble was rolled?

I wasn't thinking so much that, but a sword that has survived everyday handling and use (practice and so on) is not going to break merely by being whipped out of the scabbard a bit fast

You don't really aim to put your own weapon under much stress in a fight at all - it's your opponent who will try to stress it while bashing it out of the way or trying to wrest it from your grasp or leverage it against you in some sort of 'lock'. Getting into any of these situations is at least partly your own fault (with the possible exception of the hard parry - you might actually be trying to draw that to set up a closing move).

 

[Imaro]

This doesn't really hold up to scrutiny. By this measure, it is a "failure of perception" that we don't know the location of every other creature on the planet - this is obviously false. Perception isn't about being aware of some creature or not - it's about when you become aware of a creature that may interact with you. If I have no idea if my neighbour across the road is at home or not, that's not a "failure of perception". If I miss them leaving via their front door, it's more a matter of happenstance whether I happen to be stood by a window that overlooks their front door than any skill on my part. If I miss them coming in my front door (while I am in the house), on the other hand, the claim of "failed my perception" would hold considerably more weight.

For the reinforcements, nothing so far said (as far as I can tell) suggests that they have to pop up in close or even melee range of the PCs. They might be 30 or 40 yards away or more, emerging from a wood or a nearby village, or closer but emerging through a door that they have just opened. The "perception" question I usually resolve by having the players roll against Perception - the results dictate how far away the reinforcements set up. Poor rolls means as close as they might conceivably have got while remaining out of sight; good rolls mean some way away, with possible opportunities for ranged attacks on the way in (if the characters can spare the time from dealing with the enemies already in contact with them...)

I said this earlier and I'll say it again... you're loosing me here... what exactly is this discussion we are having about? Let me review for you...

I stated that a conceit of the Ninth World (Numenera) was that technology, weapons, vehicles, cyphers, artifacts, etc. were constructed of poorly understood materials, knowledge, etc. from various past epochs, dimensions, alien races, etc. and rejiggered for the purposes they were now being used on the planet. Thus an unknown flaw, malfunction, short, jam, etc in equipment at anytime is something the player buy into when agreeing to play Numenera...

pemerton asked if creatures always holding forces back could be accepted as a "fact" about the world if a GM played all creatures as tacticians who held their forces back and I stated that IMO it was to vague & broad (there are specific Numenera creatures who just wouldn't do this whether due to lack of intelligence, contrary instincts or being loners) and that even if the DM plays in this manner there is no in-world justification, as there is for equipment.

So with that recap out the way... what exactly is your point? Are you claiming it's not too broad or vague for all of the creatures in the Ninth World to behave in such a manner? Are you claiming there is an in-world justification for it? If not what exactly are you even talking about?