Why Rules Lawyering Is a Negative Term

Rules lawyers have a tendency (in my experience) to argue about my interpretation or application of the rules in the moment, grinding the game to a halt. It's difficult enough to actually schedule a game session when all of the players can make it; interrupting the game and making everyone wait while they argue about something that is inconsequential 90% of the time is just disrespectful of everyone's time.

My general policy as DM is that if I don't know the rule for something, I'll make a quick judgement and then look it up/discuss it later. If a PC's life is in the balance, I'll usually take a moment to look it up if it won't take more than about a minute.

In the past, I've engaged with rules lawyer types during the game and watched as the other players tuned out, one at a time. Usually, the RL is the only person who cares, and it just becomes another instance of hogging the spotlight.

These days, I'm always upfront about how I will generally make a ruling then discuss the rule after the game. IMO the greatest sin in DMing is to waste everybody's time.

Interesting discussion.

I think that the term rules lawyers gets used a bit too often and loosely. A couple posters have at least taken the time to clarify the difference between 'Knowing the rules and using them' and 'Exploiting the rules only when it benefits the player'.

However, I think theres this idea that 'The GM is God of the table' that has made some call anyone who dare question the GM ruling a rules lawyer. This is not so. This idea has gotten so prevalent that, when a new player comes to my table, it is very difficult to get any sort of actionable, honest feedback from them because they are worried that any sort of criticism will bring down my wrath or something silly.

Rules, clear and concise, are important because it empowers the players and fights back against the asinine notion that somehow GMs are lords of the table. I try NOT to make rules mistakes, but when I do? I am very glad that there is a player there willing to point it out to me. Then we can either retcon whatever happened right there, or worst case make a note for later and simply continue on. I don't want them coming to me after the game. I want them to point it out to me as soon as it happens, so it can be fixed as soon as it happens...and thus have as little impact on the game as possible.

The issue I have with 'rules lite' systems is that it too often has way too ambiguous rules and it leads to rules arguments. Now, that can happen with rule heavy systems too (especially badly written rule heavy systems) but in my experience it only is an issue when one party decides that they'd rather be Right than play by the rules. This, too often, happens on the GM side. "Im the GM and what I say goes, and if you don't like it leave my table" is a thing that has been said in this thread, for goodness sake!

Anyway, yes. Rules Lawyering IS bad. But worse is the GM who behaves like a Rules Lawyer but calls it 'What the GM says goes, Rulings not Rules'.

I know, I know. I've an axe to grind here against some frustratingly bad GMs I've had the 'pleasure' of playing with.

Rules lawyers exist, in part, because game designers are building complex systems, and- for a variety of reasons- are not always clear about what they actually mean.

A BIG reason is using ambiguous language that is open to interpretation. This isn’t necessarily intentional. Sometimes people forget or never knew a word has more than one meaning.

Another one is, as the systems increase in complexity- especially as the game’s rule set expands- people forget about or fail to contemplate how the newly accreted rules interact with the older rules. Even attorneys and other legal pros run into this.

Back in the 1990s, I had the privilege of taking Criminal Law with one of the lawyers who had helped the state of Texas revise huge swaths of the Criminal code. He was lecturing on a particular section when one of the foreign students (for whom English was not her primary language) asked about how it worked, because by HER reading, there was a problem.

He stopped class to read the statue in question. He stared at it for several minutes in utter silence. When he spoke, he said (I paraphrase), “Even that would not be the most common interpretation of that language, it is still a completely valid reading of that statute, one that could win a defense attorney a lot of cases. After we finish in here today, I have a lot of phone calls to make so we can get this clarified. Quickly.”

Were I designing a game- and I am NOT*- I’d try my damnnednest to avoid those two pitfalls, starting with having someone else read the rules back to me, telling me what THEY** thought it meant.

Since so many others are doing so, here’s my “Obligatory Lawyer Joke:
Q: How many lawyer jokes are there?
A: Only one. All the rest are true stories.






* Never again, nossireebob. I’m pretty sure I suck at it.

** for those keeping score from another ENWorld thread, that is a singular/plural pronoun.

I think it's a good idea to make the distinction between rules lawyer and what my group calls a rules guru. A rules guru is just someone who has an encyclopedic knowledge of the mechanics of the game and you can always ask her (in my group it's a her) for the rules and know that whatever she says is going to be right far, far more often than it's wrong.

I LOVE rules gurus. Hug one today.

OTOH, rules lawyers suck the fun out of the game because they are actively trying to interpret the rules in such a way as to gain advantage. This gets doubly egregious when you have a player who tries to rules lawyer but doesn't bother looking up the rules first and then argues with the DM until the books get broken out.

I once had a player like this. It was so bad, we had a table rule that if you interrupted the game for a rules argument, and you were wrong, you lost all XP for the session. Solved that problem nicely. He still tried to rules lawyer from time to time, but, it meant that he really, REALLY did his homework first.

One of my friends sometimes knowingly "rules lawyers" to his own detriment. (He famously killed his own character by remembering to bring up a rule in a game we were in.)

Extreme example, but that tends to be more representative of the sorts of rules-lawyering with have--pausing the game to try to figure out and be consistent with the rules. Personally, while I love consistency, during play I'd rather make a ruling and move on and worry about it after the session, but a couple of my players are happier if we figure out right now (whether it's to their benefit or not).

EDIT: So maybe this is more "applied rules-guruing" that rules lawyering.

I hear those of you who are saying that someone who simply knows the rules well is not a rules lawyer. I might be inclined to agree. However, I think there is still a fine line between good rules lawyering and bad.

For example, there have been times that I played under DMs who could be described as having a tyrannical side. There were numerous occasions that I could see that another player was upset by what I deemed to be a bad call. At those times I would aggressively engage the DM in debate on the rules. Bad table behavior? Arguably so. Rules lawyering? That's what I'd call it. Yet, I'd do it again in the interest of fairness.

There's a lot of hate for RL lawyers, yet there are those lawyers who seek out clients to defend, Pro Bono, in the interest of Justice. So I think that those who call all lawyers bad are painting with a very broad brush. I've known lawyers who I'd consider scum, except for not wishing to insult scum. But they're not all like that.

As I've gotten older, I've learned to stay away from bad DMs when possible and pick my battles when it isn't. Sometimes rules lawyering can definitely impede the fun of other players more than it helps. On the other hand, sometimes a bad rules call can ruin a night, particularly if it kills an invested character. At those times, I don't think there's anything wrong with talking to the DM, and even ratcheting it up to full on rules lawyering if the DM decides to dig in.

For example, in a 3.x game the DM was doing his worst to engineer a scenario where we would get captured by drow. We were completely outmatched but determined to fight our way out. The drow at one point threatened to poison a teammate of ours (who had been polymorphed into a frog). Still we refused to surrender. Then the DM had the drow inflict the poison (which was the DM's invention) on the frog, which caused instant death with no saving throws. Everyone at the table looked pissed, so I stepped in arguing that in 3.x all poisons allow a saving throw. He argued that he was the DM and could do whatever he wanted. So we walked away from the table and that was the end of that campaign. He could have set an arbitrarily high DC and we might have called it BS but we'd likely have finished the fight, hoping in vain that our friend rolled a 20.

That was arguably the worst incident. There were many cases were I acted more as an arbitor between the DM and player's, even arguing on the DM's behalf when a call was fair but simply didn't go the way a player had hoped.

In essence, I think rules lawyering is more than simply trying to twist the rules to your advantage. I think that's simply a rules lawyer gone bad (like how some lawyers seek out the worst of society to defend). It's like how actor types can be good or bad for a table. Some will seek to hog 99% of the spotlight for themselves. Others help to elevate the quality of role play at the table, and share the spotlight. Or how one power gamer will try to build a character to outshine everyone else, while another will take the rest of the table into consideration when they build a character, either helping the others with their concepts or displaying system mastery by building a character that shines yet doesn't overshadow the others. In other words, I think there are both healthy and unhealthy ways to express an approach to the game at the table. Maybe we need different terms for the two sides of the coin, but if there's an agreed upon terminology, I'm not aware of it.

lowkey13 said:

I pay $25, cash for the heads of Paladin players, and fund research for a time machine for the sole purpose of traveling back in history and removing the class from the D&D timeline.

Some people are like, "Would you kill baby Hitler?"

And I'm all like, "Yeah, because he's the reason we have Paladins. Probably."

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I love paladins. They are my most played class from 3rd, Pathfinder, and 5e. I never got to play one in 2e because I just DMed, and I probably wouldn't have gotten the rolls needed to make one. I'm currently playing one in a 5e game. Paladins = <3

More on topic: I know the thread that spawned this one, and read all 500+ responses (I believe it is up that high now). There is no such thing as a good rules lawyer. To me, there's a difference between someone who knows the rules, and a rules lawyer. I like the moniker "rules guru" and might end up using that. But I see "rules lawyer" similarly to what others have described: Someone who goes against the spirit of the game and tries to poke loopholes in everything to get them some sort of advantage. They are almost always minmaxers who choose things (classes, races, feats, etc) that they interpret to give them some absurd advantage. They are never fun to play with, and I notice most don't try to be in the DM chair (so very thankful for that). The ones that do, though, don't make for very fun DMs.

oreofox said:

I love paladins. They are my most played class from 3rd, Pathfinder, and 5e. I never got to play one in 2e because I just DMed, and I probably wouldn't have gotten the rolls needed to make one. I'm currently playing one in a 5e game. Paladins = <3

More on topic: I know the thread that spawned this one, and read all 500+ responses (I believe it is up that high now). There is no such thing as a good rules lawyer. To me, there's a difference between someone who knows the rules, and a rules lawyer. I like the moniker "rules guru" and might end up using that. But I see "rules lawyer" similarly to what others have described: Someone who goes against the spirit of the game and tries to poke loopholes in everything to get them some sort of advantage. They are almost always minmaxers who choose things (classes, races, feats, etc) that they interpret to give them some absurd advantage. They are never fun to play with, and I notice most don't try to be in the DM chair (so very thankful for that). The ones that do, though, don't make for very fun DMs.

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They also tend to ignore the rules that deal with lore or fluff, even arguing that those things aren't rules at all. That rules are only for mechanics. It goes along with the min/maxing thing, and goes back to people who wanted all of the mechanical benefits of playing a paladin, but never wanted to follow the rules on how to play a paladin.

lowkey13 said:

I would much rather deal with human imperfection, than the horrible compromises we make chasing a perfect system that will never happen.

I have seen the future, and it is 6 hour football games, with instant replay looking for offensive line holding on each and every play.

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I'm from the Big Blue Nation - Kentucky Basketball is life. I've watched NCAA basketball since I was far too young to remember anything else but basketball. Instant Replays to check the referees' ability to be fair and impartial has been a huge assistance to the game of NCAA basketball, though I agree with the right kind of limitation as you've stated. Flagrant Fouls being able to be reviewed has drastically stopped fouling in the sport by a considerable margin, at least those with animosity behind them, and has barely affected accidental fouls.

I would obviously hate to see every play get an instant replay, but even if every referee just gets their call checked once per game, it does create a better pool of referees. A certain player of a certain school intentionally stepping on the chest of another player from another certain school, and that first player not getting ejected, is the exact reason I'm for instant replay call checking, with limitations. Do I worry those limitations will keep being conflated? Yeah, and it's a valid concern, but I'd never want it done away with altogether, to be certain.

Fanaelialae said:

For example, there have been times that I played under DMs who could be described as having a tyrannical side. There were numerous occasions that I could see that another player was upset by what I deemed to be a bad call. At those times I would aggressively engage the DM in debate on the rules. Bad table behavior? Arguably so. Rules lawyering? That's what I'd call it. Yet, I'd do it again in the interest of fairness.

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So, speaking as a GM, here is my take on that. Every GM makes a bad call from time to time. Sometimes, you can fix it. Sometimes you can't. As a player, I can certainly sympathize with having been on the receiving end of bad calls. Sometimes they were poor judgment by the GM. Sometimes they were GMs with too much ego. Sometimes they were GMs that wing it too much. Sometimes the problem was the GM simply didn't know the rules of the system they were running very well. There can be a lot of sources of bad calls.

But arguing with the GM about a bad call in the middle of the game pretty much never works and never helps anything, even if the GM is sympathetic to some degree, they are not going to be sympathetic to the delay and distraction from the game.

If you are on the receiving end of a bad call, bring up your case politely and briefly immediately - preferably before any fortune rolls are made. Say something like, "I'm pretty sure the rules don't work like that." or "I thought the rules said in this situation X was the way to handle things." or whatever. But if the GM doesn't want to hear you out then or rules immediately against you, arguing about it won't help.

What you can do is after the session bring up your concerns privately. Have the rules reference ready and say something like, "I thought you might want to know that according to page 76...."

The important thing here to remember is that when dealing with humans they act irrationally and act differently between being corrected and shown to be an idiot publicly and corrected and shown to be an idiot privately. With humans, they'll hate you for showing you to be an idiot in public, but they might actually appreciate the same thing in private. I don't get it, but there it is.

With correcting a DM midgame, it's even worse than that because you are dealing with someone who not only doesn't want to be embarrassed and have his authority challenged, but someone who is in a fairly high stress position who has a responsibility to ensure everyone is focused on the game and enjoying it. So if you start arguing with that person in the middle of play, all you are is an annoying distraction that is increasing his stress and taking away time from the game, most likely (in his mind, and reinforced by past experience) for some anti-social ulterior motive.

And very likely, if you've anointed yourself a Rules Justice Paladin in your mind when you are making the argument, it's going to go even less well.

So my suggestion is give the GM a break, and talk about any issues after a session when he's not as stressed out and not juggling 12 different things.

And if he's still a jerk or a bad GM who makes no effort to master the craft, well there is going to be nothing you can do about that and you'll just have to find a different GM.