Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is coming! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Monte Cook On Fumble Mechanics
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 7695308" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Even more than saying fumbles are badwrongfun, what annoys me right from the original essay is that it takes what I consider an incidental, unessential, and subjective aspect of a well known game mechanic and defines that secondary trait - that they can be funny - as the core attribute of the mechanic itself. </p><p></p><p>The essay then goes on to assume that being maybe the source of humor will likely make the player feel bad, and that he's perfectly right and reasonable for feeling so.</p><p></p><p>And then on top of that, the essay goes on to suggest that we should be mostly using improvised disassociated fiction insertion to resolve the fumbles in order to avoid the possibility of making a player feel bad, as if improvised disassociated fiction had absolutely no chance of going wrong or offending or annoying players or otherwise diminishing their enjoyment of a scene.</p><p></p><p>One small tiny area I will agree with pemerton on is that it takes an extremely skilled and experienced DM to improvise fiction disassociated from the actor or action and pull it off to good effect. Someone experienced just tried to tell me how to pull it off well, and by my standards failed in every single example. So yeah, don't try this stuff at home unless you have a very good reason. I don't agree we can agree on how we ought to label every possible complication, but I do believe that it takes great skill to find good ones.</p><p></p><p>So on the whole this just seems like terrible bad GMing advice even if on some level I do understand where he's coming from and what problem he wants to solve, if for no other reason than there is all these other people in the thread that associate fumbles with silly results and mocking and belittling players and can't seem to imagine anything else, and he's got a game system with a fumble mechanic in it that some of those people are probably misusing.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 7695308, member: 4937"] Even more than saying fumbles are badwrongfun, what annoys me right from the original essay is that it takes what I consider an incidental, unessential, and subjective aspect of a well known game mechanic and defines that secondary trait - that they can be funny - as the core attribute of the mechanic itself. The essay then goes on to assume that being maybe the source of humor will likely make the player feel bad, and that he's perfectly right and reasonable for feeling so. And then on top of that, the essay goes on to suggest that we should be mostly using improvised disassociated fiction insertion to resolve the fumbles in order to avoid the possibility of making a player feel bad, as if improvised disassociated fiction had absolutely no chance of going wrong or offending or annoying players or otherwise diminishing their enjoyment of a scene. One small tiny area I will agree with pemerton on is that it takes an extremely skilled and experienced DM to improvise fiction disassociated from the actor or action and pull it off to good effect. Someone experienced just tried to tell me how to pull it off well, and by my standards failed in every single example. So yeah, don't try this stuff at home unless you have a very good reason. I don't agree we can agree on how we ought to label every possible complication, but I do believe that it takes great skill to find good ones. So on the whole this just seems like terrible bad GMing advice even if on some level I do understand where he's coming from and what problem he wants to solve, if for no other reason than there is all these other people in the thread that associate fumbles with silly results and mocking and belittling players and can't seem to imagine anything else, and he's got a game system with a fumble mechanic in it that some of those people are probably misusing. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*TTRPGs General
Monte Cook On Fumble Mechanics
Top