I think you misunderstand some of my comment. First, I wasn't using anything "published in Dragon", we were playing the Old Dragon RPG, a d20 System variant.
Ok, cool. I wasn't familiar with that variant.
That being said, it looks like an OSR clone, so the connection to the Dragon magazine article may be more direct than you think.
More importantly, the poor design of the critical miss table wasn't supposed to be the point, and again I know this wasn't an ideal example. I just used the situation because it happened very recently and it would have had a much more plausible result should the DM have in mind the character rolling the natural 1 doesn't need to necessarily cause the bad outcome himself, with his own hands and his own lack of skill. As Cook's article suggests, the DM should be able to use just anything in the environment to cause a bad outcome if it's more plausible/interesting/fun.
I got that part, however, I have two responses to that.
First of all, nothing guarantees that the DMs intrusion is necessarily more plausible, interesting, or fun than referencing a table. When you require a GM to improvise a fiat fumble on a very regular basis, you run a rather high risk that the GM will create results with consequences no one - including the GM - is prepared for or finds fun or that in frustration the GM will throw up his hands and default to a small set of stock results that are easy to resolve.
Secondly, the reason I brought up the poor design of one particular very famous fumble table is that quite often, people with only the experience of badly designed fumble tables and resulting table arguments, will argue that GM intrusion is inherently superior and even necessary because fumble tables always produce unbalanced and illogical results.
UPDATE: And I see that as I was thinking about this, Maxperson posted this very claim in the post above mine.
As I tried to say, I like the idea that a natural 1 should cause some small catastrophe, but there are many situations where the catastrophe couldn't just possibly happen in that particular setup. That's when I think a DM intrusion is useful: the DM rules that you weren't as safe as you anticipated because... a hidden character was watching the whole time and now you're in trouble.
Part of the reason that I'm not a big fan of fumbles as a system wide mechanic that potentially applies to any roll you make, is that quite often the stakes of a roll are such that there is no obvious catastrophe that can happen on failure. In order for situations to occasionally go disastrously wrong regardless of what the situation is, the GM will have to retroactively insert or invent details about the game fiction. An example would be you fail a check to open a lock, and as a result the lock doesn't merely remain closed but the DM invents on the spot a trap, or a second security feature, or a wandering patrol that arrives which didn't formerly exist in the fiction. To me that feels like that opens up too much potential for unfair rulings by the GM, with players being punished for well conceived plans that simply go awry because of random chance.
Now, that's not to say I'm opposed to catastrophic failure if the stakes of the situation demand it. If a player wants to leap across a deep chasm, then obviously the stakes are, "Jump across or fall into pit." If the player tries to get a wand to function, the stakes might be, "Wand functions, wand malfunctions, or nothing happens.", where the degree of success determines between the three results. If the player tries to shoot a giant octopi that another player is grappling with, the stakes might be, "Hit octopus, miss entirely, or hit ally.", again with some mechanic based on degree of success to determine whether you succeed, merely fail, or catastrophically fail. But systems that try to create a universal mechanic of failure, as Cypher and FantasyCraft do, leave me rather cold because as a GM I rather dislike systems that require routine GM intrusion. The risk a player might have feelings hurt because he failed catastrophically (at least with my players) are insignificant compared to a player holding a grudge because he felt I made a wholly unfair fiat ruling. Likewise, since I strive to be the GM I'd like to have as a player, as a player receiving consequences that can't be inferred from the proposition or the stakes strikes me as vastly reducing my agency as a player, as the world starts to behave cartoon world or narrative logic far beyond my ability to control or plan for. That might be OK if we are playing 'Toon', where the whole point is to highlight the funny, but it doesn't necessarily make for good gaming in other genres or styles.
And of course, my personal feelings on whether fumbles are a good idea are not, is still tangential to the main points that whatever you call them, GM intrusions in Cypher are fumbles and bad rolls always punish the player (otherwise, in what sense are they 'bad'?).
