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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6651474" data-attributes="member: 82106">The term 'rules lawyer' goes WAY back. It was a common term in use in wargaming in the late 70's, and my guess it predates even that. Given that 70's era RPG and wargame play were part of a single community the term was certainly current in RPG groups. Honestly, when was the first time I heard it applied to a player in an RPG? It absolutely certainly predates 1985 by a good bit, because I can think of players from the 1980-85 period that were branded with that moniker. Also it must LONG predate 3e because I pretty much didn't play ANY D&amp;D between 1994 and 2008 except just a few sit-in sessions, and I sure didn't learn it after 2008.My recollection is that back in the 1e days there were rules lawyers. They argued about things like exactly what their spell could do based on their (usually biased) view of how the wording should be read, etc. While 'RAW' was certainly not a term used in those days (THAT one I only heard in 2008), there was still 'what was written in the book' vs what the DM thought should happen, and possibly argued in terms of what the 'intent of the rules' was. And of course there were many games besides D&amp;D, some of which, RM, Aftermath, etc had a LOT of rules and the presumption was you were supposed to follow them. So the term was certainly applied in those games (and often such games were denigrated as being fodder for rules lawyers).</blockquote>

[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6651474, member: 82106"] The term 'rules lawyer' goes WAY back. It was a common term in use in wargaming in the late 70's, and my guess it predates even that. Given that 70's era RPG and wargame play were part of a single community the term was certainly current in RPG groups. Honestly, when was the first time I heard it applied to a player in an RPG? It absolutely certainly predates 1985 by a good bit, because I can think of players from the 1980-85 period that were branded with that moniker. Also it must LONG predate 3e because I pretty much didn't play ANY D&D between 1994 and 2008 except just a few sit-in sessions, and I sure didn't learn it after 2008. My recollection is that back in the 1e days there were rules lawyers. They argued about things like exactly what their spell could do based on their (usually biased) view of how the wording should be read, etc. While 'RAW' was certainly not a term used in those days (THAT one I only heard in 2008), there was still 'what was written in the book' vs what the DM thought should happen, and possibly argued in terms of what the 'intent of the rules' was. And of course there were many games besides D&D, some of which, RM, Aftermath, etc had a LOT of rules and the presumption was you were supposed to follow them. So the term was certainly applied in those games (and often such games were denigrated as being fodder for rules lawyers). [/QUOTE]

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