Prelude:

Recently; via certain blog posts, I have stumbled upon this weird position held by some people that "Rule 0 gives license to fudge" which I found as an interesting take.

Now said author failed to define rule 0, or to bring up a concrete codified version of the concept, or  definition, the author of this blog post warned his audience that we ought return to using the rules of our games as written, and that we should gatekeep out those who can't read the rules.

I do not inherently disagree with some of these takes, where I think a line was crossed as the author's implicit assumption that the game designer somehow ranked higher as an authority than the DM.
I find the hubris that a game designer believes they own a book post sale to be egregious, and that they have foreseen all possible problems or discrepancies; and thus have provided for such, I find dubious...

The Real Question:

The nameless blog author mentioned above seemed to imply "Rules as Written" was simply known, explicit in what that meant, but if such were true then why are there rules lawyers and people who will endlessly debate them? I've personally been witness to debates where two players claimed to be follow a rule as written but had grossly different interpretations.

In those cases it seems GM fiat, which is to say "Guessing as to the intent of the rule"  or RAI (Rules as intended) is somewhat implicit to any RAW position? though I suspect someone who was a RAW advocate would disagree.

Quote from: Socratic-DM on February 04, 2025, 12:00:08 PMThe Real Question:

I was put onto to a mental track that I felt the need to ask and express, the nameless blog author mentioned above seemed to imply "Rules as Written" was simply known, explicit in what that meant, but if such were true then why are there rules lawyers and people who will endlessly debate them? I've personally been witness to debates where two players claimed to be follow a rule as written but had grossly different.

In those cases it seems GM fiat, which is to say "Guessing as to the intent of the rule" is somewhat implicit to any RAW position? though I suspect someone who was a RAW advocate.

I would say gamers will most likely argue over a rule if the rule is poorly written. Meaning: is the rule written in a clear and concise way? If not, then the rule has the potential of being interpreted in a way not intended by the game designer.

If there isn't an official errata on the rule, then it's up to the GM to make a ruling on behalf of his group to settle the issue, with consensus of the gaming group of course.

From there, if a situation comes up where the rule comes into play, there isn't any problem.

I've done this several times with my own group and I never had a problem.

Now, if we're talking about someone just plain doesn't like a certain rule (player or GM), that's a whole other thing.

In Ye Olden Dayse - we believed the written word of St. Gygax and St. Arneson was sacrosanct. This is generally true of all newb players.

But inevitably we realized the great Saints of D&D also were mere mortals. We'd see some opening where we didn't like a rule "WTF do you mean a Katana has the same stats as a Shortsword?!?!?!? They can cut through battleships!!" Or we came to believe we can add on to the established rules with our heartbreaking designs and make our game even better.

Rule-Zero is highly subjective to the GM at the table. GMing is, to me, a developmental skill that goes through various phases and has very common pitfalls. The vindicative GM that is playing against their players, or the Novelist Jerkoff Artist GM that is cramming their unpublished drivel down the throats of their players. Or the moderate GM's that simply are trying to run a fun game, and are passive and don't want to challenge their players vs. the hardcore GM who is all about setting-fidelity at the cost of repeated TPK's. All of them use Rule-Zero differently and for different reasons - and NONE of those reasons are equal in value.

At the core of it is a relationship that GM's need to develop with their players where the players TRUST the GM so that Rule Zero is light in touch and powerful in impact. Cultivating that trust in players is an often under-discussed tool of GMing. I find it absolutely indispensable. Without the ability to cultivate that trust, Rule Zero becomes this bullshit fiat for weak GM's to run games that are either inconsistent or invariably bad.

To extend tenbones's answer ...

The overall goal, as he said, it for the GM to be consistent and fair.  The rules are a tool to that end. In a traditional RPG, that's all they are. They are a starting place, if you will, so that the GM doesn't need to make rulings on every little thing.

Nor is this some kind of bright line that gets crossed, either. Rules stretch from "firm" system rules to "loose" system rules to system guidelines to house rules for setting to house rules to address perceived deficiencies in the system rules to "merely" a written form of a ruling to better remember/share it with the players.  And there is considerable overlap in some of those categories, too.

I think a better way for an experienced GM to view the matter is that some of the first rulings the GM makes when starting a new campaign is which system rules are operative. Of course, if the same ruling is going to go against the system, and come up a lot, it's probably better to state it as a house rule.

Finally, even given all those ways to approach it, a good campaign cannot have rules for everything. It's impossible. A good campaign allows the players to try anything feasible for their characters in that setting. A set of rules is an abstract model--even in the most hardcore simulation. All models have gaps, roughed off edges, simplifications, etc. That's part of what makes them good models, that you can get your heads around the abstraction and use that as an approximation that everyone at the table can understand. When the players act and the GM adjudicates, we are now in the realm of the specific.

the Rule 0 vs RAW "debate" never made much sense to me. rule 0 is RAW.

Also, this may be of interest: All models are wrong. Some are useful.

Fantasy roleplay games are in a separate category from traditional games like chess or monopoly. In traditional games the rules are meant to be followed to the letter to make the game fair and because there's winners and losers. In RPGs the rules provide boundaries that need to be altered and made flexible according to the situation. The objective is not to win but something more abstract like goal setting or creative problem solving This can create a schism between those who bring a wargaming win/lose mentality and those who want a more free form exploration and role play experience

My opinion is that, the rules are important for a common framework to base your experience off of.  Either the DM alone should be familiar with the rules framework and the players can just let the DM handle that stuff with a bare minimum of their own understanding of the rules,  or more people can familiarize themselves with the rules to a degree where they can help the DM whenever there is a delay.  I don't really know which way is best, I can see merit between the spectrum of "only the DM should know the rules well" to the other extreme of "all players should know the rules as well as the DM"

I don't know if this analogy ultimately makes sense, but you know how some movie directors want to "subvert expectations" of whatever genre the movie they're making? and then they can either end up making a good movie, or a bad movie?  The ones who make a good movie end up having mastered the genre they are trying to subvert, they had to "learn the rules" in order to know how to effectively change/break them without ruining the movie experience.  I think RPGs are kinda like that too.  If the game is good/solid it will have a rules structure that just works, and if you want to house-rule or rules-zero it or play the game effectively without doing "rules as written" it greatly helps to have mastered an understanding of the rules as they were written in the first place to know what works, what doesn't, and how you can improve.

I can see examples existing where the might not be the case, and personally I'm less uptight about 'rules as written" than I used to be, but people almost always play chess "rules as written" or card games "rules as written", and just because an RPG has many more possibilities for player action and choices, doesn't mean that you shouldn't try to do "rules as written" when it makes sense.  Of course if the game you're playing requires massive amounts of deviation from "rules as written" just to be played in in a fun way, maybe its just a badly written game.

Exactly.

I'm a very confident GM. I know what I'm aiming for in my games - each campaign is entirely different, even if they're in the same setting. My players have high-trust in me not because I know all the rules, or because I have some "story I'm trying to tell" (which I don't ever do). Rather they trust I'm going to deliver consistent performance in delivering more than our collective expectations.

And I do this because I *never* trust I have it all correct. The rules are never perfect. My take on the rules are never perfect enough (for me), my players think I know what is going on - but I tell them over and over again: my goal is to get the game where *I* have no idea wtf is going on because my job is to be totally invisible, I'm trying to let them drive everything and the rules are just the things we use to adjudicate how decisions play out with me playing the NPC's will all the gusto they play their PC's.

No model is perfect, it's totally true. I'm *constantly* re-examining rules (outside of the game) looking at other systems to see how they handle things, examining the abstractions of mechanics in what they're trying to emulate to determine whether it "feels right" despite my instincts which may say otherwise.

I trust nothing except my experience and my approach to a certain point which is about 90% certainty. Where that point ends, and will never be "complete", I question everything. I *need* the model to evolve because my views are always evolving.

Rules As Written - are a guide for those that are new to the hobby. And that's GOOD. Once you get deep into it, and start knowing what you want beyond those rules, you can and *should* transcend them as needed to get the performance you want in your game. The Rules are not the game itself.

I tend to stick as closely as I reasonably can to RAW during the game primarily because the players designed their characters and approached game-play using their knowledge of the rules as written. They picked the attributes, skills, and other class features with a certain expectation of how they would work in my campaign. If I suddenly rule that a fighter can take an extra swing just because it would be cool, or that Sleep doesn't work on the goblins just because, I've pretty much screwed over those who made decisions that I have now negated. Sticking to RAW - which is a set of expectations - is one way I keep their trust.

That said, agreeing beforehand to house rule some things (like how flanking works), is a different matter, since they can then make character decisions based on this new information.

RAW might work for the first few sessions before you see what's going on, then it's best discarded in the trash heap, so you can tailor the game to your personal preferences.

I understand Gygax didn't play his own game RAW so why should anyone else?

I was confused by this too. I saw The Basic Expert's video a week or so ago where he was making his argument for RAW, and he seemed to be arguing with a theoretical listener who believed that the options were "RAW" or "Fudge the dice and make everything up". I always assumed the dichotomy was "RAW or Homebrew". I'm an inveterate homebrewer and always will be, but I stand by my homebrew rules and try to apply them consistently.

Quote from: ForgottenF on February 04, 2025, 04:45:26 PMI was confused by this too. I saw The Basic Expert's video a week or so ago where he was making his argument for RAW, and he seemed to be arguing with a theoretical listener who believed that the options were "RAW" or "Fudge the dice and make everything up". I always assumed the dichotomy was "RAW or Homebrew". I'm an inveterate homebrewer and always will be, but I stand by my homebrew rules and try to apply them consistently.

Expert is where I first found this position held, I agree with him so far as warding against and gatekeeping those who refuse to read the rules, or those DMs that make arbitrary rulings, but you put a discerningly fine point to it. he argues against, and accuses his detractors of positions they do in fact not hold, he is quite good at poisoning the well.

I think that RAW can and does exist when game designers are clear and succinct and the rules aren't terribly ambitious. Whether or not you should pay attention to RAW? That's a whole 'nother can of worms.

I personally don't put a ton of stock in either RAW or RAI interpretations. The problem with RAW is that it isn't always explained clearly and that it quite often doesn't cover the specific situation players get themselves into. (Players are very good at finding a way to put themselves into a situation where the RAW does not work particularly well, and sometimes it doesn't work at all.)

The problem with RAI is that it expects the GM to be a mind-reader. And to a less extent, the designer's intentions are the beginning of the game, not the end. A group of experienced players can wind up being held back by the RAI.

This is why I tend to view RPGs as a creative handshake. The game designer provides the rules and setting backbone, but these shouldn't be considered "finished" products. Rather, they are seeds for the GM and player creativity to crystalize onto. The GM is supposed to fill in some of the material, and the players are supposed to fill in some material.

Exactly where the game designer should step back and let the GM take over and exactly where the GM should step back and let the players take over is not a one-size-fits-all decision. In fact I would say that this not only differs from group to group, but that two different campaigns played by the same group likely have different creative handshakes. Horror especially tends to disdain when players have significant input past their own characters.

So instead of saying I prefer RAI over RAW--which is technically true, but kinda misleading--I say that I prefer the game designer to focus entirely on designing the parts of the game the GM probably can't do for himself because of a skill or design specialization reason, and for the GM to focus on designing the parts of the game which the players shouldn't for metagame reasons. This isn't exactly RAW vs RAI; it's why I am going to defer to the RAW sometimes, use the RAI on occasion, and completely ignore both the RAW and RAI as often as possible.