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Message: <blockquote data-quote="CharlesRyan" data-source="post: 7694989" data-attributes="member: 5265">Hi, all--First, full disclosure: I'm the COO at Monte Cook Games, and I game with Monte on a fairly regular basis. Given those facts, I don't usually jump into public conversations about MCG stuff, but this conversation has grown too interesting to resist!I don't want to put words in Monte's mouth, but let me start by addressing posters that think Monte is advocating that PCs never fail, or that GMs should be all touchy-feely about their players' poor hurt feelings. In the article, Monte says, "It could mean that the character accidentally shoots a friend, or drops her weapon, or slips and falls, but those should be rare." I think he means both parts: That it should be rare, but also that it could certainly be a result that happens.And I can personally attest to that. I've seen a character accidentally shoot a friend in one of Monte's games (I was fortunately not at either end of the exchange!), resulting from a GM intrusion that was triggered by the roll of a 1. I've also seen a zillion other interesting things happened when 1s were rolled, and overwhelmingly they didn't represent a moment of extreme incompetence on the part of the character.(By the way, Monte's use of "Bruce" as his example wasn't coincidental. Bruce Cordell's ability to roll many, many 1s in a single game session is unparalleled.)Which brings me to the crux of what I think is the disagreement here (or at least 70% of the disagreement): What does the word "fumble" mean?To some people, it means "a result with more than routine negative consequences--something that doesn't just maintain the status quo, but directly increases the challenge for the players." If that's you, you can stop arguing against Monte: You agree with him. You're just using the word "fumble" differently.But I think most people interpret the word "fumble" to mean "a major screw-up." As in, rolling a 1 means your character did something that really screwed the pooch. You shot another character instead of the monster you were aiming at. Dropped your sword. Uttered a major faux pas in front of the Duke. Reached for the bottle of healing balm and accidentally grabbed (and applied) acid instead. The situation got worse because YOUR CHARACTER did something uncharacteristically incompetent.If that's how you interpret the word "fumble," Monte (and the Cypher System rules generally) argue that you should broaden your horizon. Not that a 1 result is meaningless--in fact, the Cypher System codifies that it is always meaningful. (Note what I just said there: While 1=fumble is a common house rule for many games, in the Cypher System 1=escalated challenge is actually part of the core rules.) The GM introduces a twist, and that almost always means the situation becomes more challenging. This is the OPPOSITE of coddling the players or negating failure--it's making the players work harder to succeed. The point is that the increased challenge doesn't come (or rarely comes) from character incompetence.So what does all this have to do with player feelings and "punishment?" If your ONLY way of introducing additional, randomly-triggered challenge escalation is via character incompetence--if a 1 represents a screw-up, and you have NO OTHER mechanic for introducing the many other ways things can go randomly wrong in a tense situation--I'd argue that you're being kinda mean to your players. You're loading all the unpredictability into a single narrative cause.That's the not-fun part.</blockquote>

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