This is a player type that has nearly always been with the game. Again, as already noted, it is someone who attempts to use the rules to overrule the DM. This, in a game where the original approach was to solidly position the DM in authority OVER the rules in order to facilitate a better game. Now, sometimes the DM IS wrong and players have a certain right and expectation to be able to appeal to the established "rules". The Rules Lawyer is the one who makes himself a pest by repeated and frequently unnecessary insistence upon adherence to the rules when the DM's adjudication is quite sufficient.
I've long been a fan of the notion that rul
ings are more important than rules. Heck, some of the authors who have written, either in game or in supplementary material (Dragon articles and whatnot) have gone so far as to assert that there
are no rules to D&D, just suggestions.
Curiously, although third edition was launched with "rule 0" prominently displayed in the first page or two of text, and the motto "tools, not rules" it's widely believed that this paradigm gradually shifted during the third edition era. I'm genuinely curious if the presentation of the rules... perhaps at some point after 3e migrated to 3.5... contributed to this, or if it's more of a gestalt thing that just happened amongst a portion of the player base.
Certainly our group didn't really adopt that approach. Although we like to play "correctly" more often than not, and don't mind asking the resident rules encyclopedia guy his opinion on thorny issues, in general, we're all perfectly happy to accept a GM ruling and move on. Although we like, often, to have the player impacted by the ruling try and look it up if he can to tell us later what we "should" have done according to the rulebook. Just for curiousity.
But we don't always do that. We're just as happy just having a ruling and go.
I believe it is a term that has arisen mostly out of 3rd Edition, though it may have seen some use prior to that. 3E in particular, however, was designed rather specifically to embrace the notion that a large part of the fun of the game was SUPPOSED to be found in manipulation of the rules - the concept of "Rules Mastery". In promulgating that concept the natural implication is that it would be contrarian to let characters evolve naturally. A player is intended to devote notable amounts of time and effort to gaming the system because that's where the fun is. Problem is that just isn't universally true but those rules were designed to focus on it anyway.
A character "build" then, is seen as a product of rulesets where players do not "get" how the game was originally played and intended to be played. Again, a certain amount of pre-planning of the career of a PC is to be expected but D&D is not supposed to be a competitive excercise. Too much emphasis on character "builds", upon gaming the system rather than playing the game with less... obsession?... with the rules rubs a lot of people the wrong way. That would include myself.
I heard the term used first with Champions, I think. I also associated it a lot more with systems like Hero or Gurps than with D&D, before 2000 anyway. I think the connotation of a planned approach to building a character requires nothing more than tools with which to customize the character, and then it's a natural outgrowth of that.
However, I don't really associate "character builds" with characters who start at first level and play through. Although certainly I've seen characters who grew according to pre-planned "routes" or paths, and I've done a little bit of that even myself, I consider "character builds" to be characters that are crafted for a certain purpose at a certain level. Either for one-shots, as NPCs or villains, or as characters who start at a game that's higher than 1st level.
I also think a lot of the perception you're noting here is just that: you're perception. There's nothing in the nature of the game itself that stipulates that this type of system mastery is necessary or even desireable; that's just an outgrowth of those who's tastes run that direction and wish to play that kind of metagame with their characters. For those who don't... well, the customization tools also serve plenty of other purposes too. Little things like the swashbuckler who takes a few ranks of Craft (needlepoint) so his frilly shirt can always be kept in top condition, even after he's been out and about adventuring, or the barbarian who has a few ranks of Profession (juggler) to make a little bit of cash between adventures add a level of character development that has nothing whatsoever to do with "gaming" the system or system mastery.
Of course, you could always have come up with that kind of character development fluff on your own, but I'd argue that without the mechanics there to suggest the, chances are that much less of it would be done.
In older versions there was little or no room for character customization except through roleplaying. All the abilities a character would ever have was clearly and perhaps narrowly defined at the time of character creation. There had long been a call for greater room to customize characters abilities without them being graven in stone by the simple choices of race and class. 3E is seen by some as having swung the pendulum too far in the other direction, giving players too much freedom and too much ability to "dictate" to the DM what they are allowed to do within the game through the exercise of "Rules Mastery".
Older editions didn't have any means of customizing your character, that's true. And for many people, that was a serious flaw with D&D. You refer earlier to how the game was "meant" to be played originally; I submit that that's an irrelevant consideration. How the game is
meant to be played is the way that brings the most enjoyment to
your table. If character customization isn't something that you want, that's all well and good, and I can hardly fault you for your taste and preference. But casting the addition of character customization into the game as if it were a case of the game having "gone astray" and fallen from its pure and holy state or whatever is a mistake, I think.
The inclusion of character customization options was, I strongly believe, done because WotC percieved a shift in demand in the marketplace that was
asking for exactly that. I know in my case, it was one of the main reasons that I was willing to come
back to D&D after having given up and left in frustration with the system way back in the mid-80s... before 2nd edition, even.