Pages

Wednesday, July 20, 2011

Improve your GMing: Fumble - Let your players come up with their own misery

Rating: 4 of 5 stars

Foreword: D&D lacks good fumble rules. In the Dungeon Master's Guide House Rules are proposed for what happens if someone fumbles but I was not able to find or come up with rules to my liking. They either discriminate characters with many attack rolls since more rolls often means more fumbles. And/or they are rather boring because they are pure 'board game' mechanics and their effects are always the same and add nothing to the roleplaying component of an encounter.
When we started playing D&D a creature granted combat advantage whenever his player rolled a 1 on a attack roll, a rule which falls in both categories mentioned before. I eventually got feed-up with this House Rule and removed fumbling all together from the game.
Some GMs have created their own fumble charts or Paizo has published a Fumble Deck (which is very brutal) to add some randomness. But nothing did really appeal to me until I heard from the following concept.

Details: On The Exemplary DM Podcast Session 2 Episode 1 (at around 36 min. in the podcast) a simple but yet good way to handle fumbles is presented. Whenever a player rolls a potential fumble (a 1 in case of D&D) he chooses whether he wants his character to fumble or not. And if so, he comes up with what happens and he receives some kind of reward. The GMs in the Podcast give away Drama Points which can be used as re-rolls.
The combination of these components make the concept so appealing to me.
First of all if the players can choose whether his character fumbles or not and therefore no type of character is discriminated. Controllers in D&D for example which are area attack heavy, roll many attack rolls and are therefore more likely to fumble if a 1 on an attack role always meant a fumble.
Second of all if the player sets up with his own misery nothing is pressed on him and he will have more fun.
Third of all players are encouraged to be creative since they receive a reward if the select the fumble and have to come up with what will happen which hopefully will make encounters more unpredictable and make it more fun for everybody.
And finally the reward reimburses him for for his bad luck and the dire consequences he might face.

Advice: Be cautious whenever a player comes up with a fumble that effects other players in a negative way. Check whether the players idea is OK with them and do not be shy to say no if it is no fun for somebody.

No comments:

Post a Comment