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?

 

[steeldragons]

I'd really like to know how a player rolling a one is supposed to be see as equivalent to "GM intrusion"?

I also find the premise "we don't want to 'punish' players for rolling badly" to be flawed. Why not?! You give them extra special bonus goodies for rolling well. It's called a critical hit. Why shouldn't rolling badly have bad things happen? First of all, NEITHER is "the player rolling." It's a die roll. It's a game of chance. Random occurrance.

The "player" is no more responsible for it happening than the DM is "punishing" anyone by saying "X happens on a 1."

Just more of this cockamamey world in which no one is ever supposed to lose and everyone is supposed to think that only good things happen and/or THEY, specifically and in all cases, are supposed to have "good things" happen to them.

And three, if one is necessary, it's a GAME! Thicken your damned skin and grow the hell up. The DM is not "punishing" you. The player is not "responsible" for the die roll. Not to mention, the CONSEQUENCES of that die roll...ARE. NOT. REAL.

This entire subject is nonsense overwrought thinking.

 

[Panda-s1]

I think my only beef with 1 = fumble was back in my 3.x days, every DM I had treated this as RAW. And being so widely believed, it was hard to convince any DM I knew otherwise :/ This wouldn't be so bad, but like Monte says this was largely an excuse to make fun of characters, and this combined with the commonly mistaken belief that you can only use a skill if trained, put them in some unrealistically slapstick situations (really there were a lot of rules misconstrued as RAW that made my early RPG days miserable, but that's another story...).

Like I understand the need to make things upsetting, you literally did the worst job possible, but if you roll a 1 and still pass the check I don't see why that has to fumble every time. Thankfully I know more sensible players these days, so rolling a 1 usually just means doing a poor job in my current game.

 

[Maxperson]

No, it is. He is talking about "Bruce's" feelings here.

Yes, the % is high, though as noted in the thread, it is symmetric with critical hits. And its not a simulation, but a game where you want interesting stuff to happen pretty often.

But it was really more the tone. As I said, the actual mechanic is interesting.

Cook also conflates consequence with punishment. A fumble and the result is a consequence, not a punishment. There is a difference.

 

[Maxperson]

I've always hated the automatic fumble on a 1. Depending on the game and the build if your character has multiple attacks the odds are that a high level character will roll a 1 every 3-4 rounds (or more often depending on the system/type of attack). A warrior at the pinnacle of skill should not be dropping his sword or be accidentally stabbing his buddy several times per minute.
I like 5E's take on it. A 1 is a miss and a 20 is a good hit, but not a fantastic one.

What we did was that once you hit 6th level, you had to roll a second time with the result of 10 or under to fumble. At 11th level that second roll had to be a 5 or under. At 16th level you had to roll two consecutive 1's to fumble.

 

[Celebrim]

And one may say that he moved the argument to a position of feels, which some gamers likely believe to be irrelevant, but it is something which a smart party and GM should be cognizant about since it affects group dynamics. It does not affect everyone or every group the same way, but it should be monitored, especially if it has a long-term negative impact on player enjoyment.

I don't find emotions to be irrelevant at all. But what I would criticize the article for is seeming to validate a very immature emotional response. Granted, it seems to want to do that in preference to some other equally immature emotional response - mocking your fellow players for failure - but going the other direction is probably no more functional, and in most cases the ribbing and teasing at the table tends to be rather good natured. Failing to separate out good natured ribbing from ill-tempered or arrogant mockery fails to understand the problem, and more over attempting to fix a problem with the social contract by some mechanical in game artifice is just doomed to failure. Problems in the game can be fixed with mechanics, but problems that are external to the game - like some player seeing the point of play being to express his superiority to the other people that are present and to abuse them emotionally - can't really be fixed by fiddling with the mechanics. No end of problems at a table are owed to treating out of game problems with in game solutions, or in game problems with out of game solutions.

Also, one may argue that if the Natural 1 is no longer a critical fumble, then the Natural 20 should not be a critical or automatic hit.

That's not at all what I'm arguing. What I'm arguing is that success and failure are two sides of the same coin, and have to be accepted together in any sort of mature game. There is nothing inherently bad about the idea of fumbling. Indeed, there is nothing inherently bad about the idea of bumbling. My example of Hon Solo was not chosen at random, as one of the things that marks his character (at least in the original trilogy) is that he's all the time fumbling and all the time dealing with failure. He basically fails every 'fast talking' roll he ever tries. He comes across as extremely competent at times and yet at other times he fails a Stealth check and gets backhanded in the face. The exact mechanics of how a system does this are irrelevant to the point.

Furthermore, rolling a Natural 1 is not a critical fumble/failure, nor should it be treated as one in the context of the Cypher System. A GM intrusion, however, represents a greater degree of narrative flexibility in convey that Natural 1. If all Natural 1s are critical fumbles and automatic failures, then that limits the narrative. But a GM intrusion can not only be a critical fumble but also a myriad host of other narrative complications. The player may even succeed at that skill check with that Natural 1, but in the process alert the attention of the guards.

All of which is just semantic gloss for the practical effect that rolling a 1 is a fumble in the system. The nature of this fumble may be very broadly defined to basically anything that the GM may wish to invent, but it is a fumble nonetheless. Indeed, it could be said that in general a player might find this system to be the most extreme sorts of fumbles imaginable - worse in some fashion than a table of results. For even more so than a table of results, the mechanic ensures that a roll of 1 carries with it some reality warping jinx that creates complications in the fiction even where no complications were previously present in the stakes.

 

[Morrus]

I'd really like to know how a player rolling a one is supposed to be see as equivalent to "GM intrusion"?

I'm not sure I fully understand the question, but "GM Intrusion" is the name of a specific mechanic in the Cypher System. It's their name for a complication whereby the GM injects something new into the encounter.

And three, if one is necessary, it's a GAME! Thicken your damned skin and grow the hell up. The DM is not "punishing" you. The player is not "responsible" for the die roll. Not to mention, the CONSEQUENCES of that die roll...ARE. NOT. REAL.

Calm down, please.

 

[Celebrim]

I'd really like to know how a player rolling a one is supposed to be see as equivalent to "GM intrusion"?

In the system in question, it is. In the Cypher system, if you roll a 1, the GM may intrude into the fiction to create a complication of his devising. Monte wants to assert that this isn't a fumble, and he wants to open up the idea that this intrusion need not always highlight the personal failure of the character but can take the form of bad luck of some sort.

 

[Neonchameleon]

As has been said by others, the problem Monte Cook is pointing out is there - but his justification is silly. 1/20 Fumbles are an issue, especially if you have multiple attacks for high skill.

Personally I've been using "Double or nothing" fumbles since 4e Dark Sun. If you roll a natural 1 it's a failure. But you then may reroll simply because it's a natural 1. If on your reroll you succeed, you succeed. If on your reroll you fail then that's a fumble (in DS your sword breaks). Which means that if you're fighting 13th orc spear carrier you are probably playing it safe and you won't fumble. But if you're fighting a dragon and are pulling out all the stops then you are more likely to choose to take the extra risk. Choice is key to agency.

(Likewise crits work well the same way - on a 20 you can decide to take the hit or you can decide double or nothing.)

 

[Celebrim]

I think "Interesting Complications" are much better than detrimental fumbles. Also, complications can occur on any skill check, not just a combat one.

Well, it is certainly a term that is more attune with human psychology. It's been shown repeatedly that you can take the exact same mechanic and depending on whether you call it a penalty or a benefit, people will respond to it completely differently. Reading a history of World of Warcraft's fatigue mechanic could be informative here.

 

[Xethreau]

In the system in question, it is. In the Cypher system, if you roll a 1, the GM may intrude into the fiction to create a complication of his devising. Monte wants to assert that this isn't a fumble, and he wants to open up the idea that this intrusion need not always highlight the personal failure of the character but can take the form of bad luck of some sort.

Right. Some of the best examples of which are when a character or object has a special quality that is hard to quantify in game mechanics. For example, if you roll a 1 your Nausicaa-style wind glider may glitch up, or the bizarre mutterings of that creepy extra-dimensional mega owl might start to make sense and infect your brain.

These things are of no fault of the player-character, but are certainly worthwhile consequences in every sense.