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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7694728" data-attributes="member: 4937">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.</blockquote>

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