How to Embrace Your Rules Lawyer

We are excited to introduce our newest guest writer! After nearly 20 years of playing D&D, our writer has finally started a blog, Scroll for Initiative, where he writes about his love of the game. In his spare time, he paints minis and feeds kibble to his two animal companions, Holly and Annie. In the real world, he is a mid-level secondary school teacher (and he chose the English teacher archetype at 3rd level).

If you’ve ever DMed a game of D&D, you’ve probably encountered a situation like this:

Acererak rises into the air with an evil cackle and points down at the platform on which you stand. A fog of poisonous, yellow-green vapor rolls outwards in a plume –
‘Um, this is Cloudkill, right? Doesn’t fly require concentration as well?’
Acererak disappears for a moment in a silvery mist, reappearing almost instantly in a space ten yards away. A bright streak flashes from his finger towards you, then blossoms with a low roar into an explosion of flame!
‘Er, no. If you use a spell with a casting time of one bonus action, you can’t cast another spell during the same turn, except for a cantrip with a casting time of one action.’

Players who argue about the rules are pejoratively known as ‘rules lawyers’, and, judging by posts on Reddit, they’re pretty standard. But are rules lawyers as bad we think, and if they are, how should we tame them?

Why Rules Matter

There are many different ways of playing D&D. For some players, it’s akin to a wargame, with miniatures and a battle grid. This is where the game started, after all. For other groups, there’s maybe more of a focus on shared storytelling and improv, but even then, they need to roll dice sometimes, and track hit points, and so on.

The lead rules designer, Jeremy Crawford, has this to say at the start of the Sage Advice Compendium:

“Rules are a big part of what makes D&D a game, rather than simply improvised storytelling. The game’s rules are meant to help organize, and even inspire, the action of a D&D campaign. The rules are a tool, and we want our tools to be as effective as possible.” (Crawford, 4/6/20)

Rules are useful because they are an agreed framework that enables everyone at the table to have fun. Good rules mean that you don’t have to referee what’s going on in the game continually: you can instead focus on the action and adventure of an exciting fantasy story. Rules are also a check to stop the game from becoming unfair or unbalanced. Anyone can check the rules at any time, and if rulebooks are consulted to resolve a disagreement, it makes the dispute less personal. If everyone in the group is confident with the rules, there should be fewer disagreements, and if there are fewer disagreements, there should be more time available to sit back and enjoy the game. So why are rules lawyers a bad thing?

Working with Your Rules Lawyer

There are many good reasons for trying to minimize rules disputes.

• Talking about rules breaks immersion for everyone else.

• Rules disputes slow down the game.

• The rules don’t cover every situation, and 5th Edition assumes considerable DM fiat.

• Too much focus on the rules can hamper creativity and imagination (‘the rule of cool’).

Rules lawyers publicly undermine the DM’s credibility and knock their confidence. Having said all this, it’s worth remembering that most rules lawyers are Lawful Neutral or even Lawful Good, not Lawful Evil. Many rules lawyers are only trying to help. If they care about the rules, it’s probably because they care about fairness. If you’re a new DM, perhaps they’re trying to teach you the ropes. And if you think for a moment about the rules lawyers in your group: what is it they do fora living? If they work in a field where systems, precision, and procedure are essential, it’s hardly surprising if that washes over into their D&D games sometimes.

There’s a difference between a rules lawyer and a rules expert. Embrace your rules lawyer and make them your rules consultant. If you need someone to look something up, ask the rules lawyer. At the end of every session, speak to them in private and find out if there was anything you got wrong. You can even involve them at the planning stage. Dave, how do you think an airship battle would work? What are the best rules for managing a stronghold? What are your thoughts on game balance in a low-magic campaign? There’s no such thing as a disengaged rules lawyer, so channel that engagement positively.

DMs: if you are still having problems with a rules lawyer in your group, it might be worth reflecting on your DMing before you take it up with them. Are you playing competitively, for example, DM versus the players? If so, don’t be surprised if they playback and try to win every advantage over you! Do you have a different play style to the rest of the group? Are you more interested in storytelling than wargaming? That’s fine, but it’s something to talk about. Whisper it: are you as confident in the rules as you need to be? It’s fine to get the rules wrong sometimes, and even über-DMs like Matthew Mercer make rules mistakes from time to time. The DM doesn’t have to have the best rules knowledge at the table. But they probably shouldn’t have the worst rules knowledge at the table. If you’re getting confused about basic things like attack rolls and hit points, maybe it’s not the worst thing in the world for the players to correct you once in a while. There’s no shame in admitting you got something wrong. However: if a rules lawyer is repeatedly getting into arguments with the DM – because they are playing antagonistically because they are trying to manipulate the game in their favor, or because there’s something personal going on between you and them – then it’s time to talk. Amusingly, someone on Reddit has already put together a useful flow chart for how to deal with these situations (see below). ‘Difficult conversations’ might not be fun, but sometimes they’re necessary, and if that means someone has to go . . . well, that happens sometimes. Ultimately, no D&D is better than bad D&D.

Art Credit - Reddit u/TheUnreal

The Rules that Matter the Most

There are two basic rules in roleplaying which go back to the earliest days of the hobby. Other games have imitated it, and it’s now known affectionately as Rule Zero:

“It is the spirit of the game, not the letter of the rules, which is important. NEVER hold to the letter written, nor allow some barracks room lawyer to force quotations from the rule book upon you, IF it goes against the obvious intent of the game.” (Gary Gygax, AD&D Dungeon Masters Guide (1979))

The second is the so-called ‘Golden Rule,’ familiar to pub quizzers everywhere. In pub quizzes, you don’t argue with the quizmaster. In D&D, you don’t argue with the DM.

I would add one more. Wherever possible, save the rules discussions for after the session—the three overlap. Embrace your rules lawyer, but channel their engagement positively.

Got words to say? Think your ideas are the best?
We’d love to talk, drop us a line here.

Header Art Credit - Elderscroll